Stubborn Love (2 page)

She is totally laughing at
me now and I’m laughing back at her, feeling like an idiot because I must have
the cheesiest fucking grin on my face at the way she is playing with me. That
strange feeling in my chest is back now, too.

“Just saving you the
humiliation Mia, that’s all,” I say quickly, trying to joke with her and shake
whatever this is.

“Funny,” she says, leaning
over to select the hard level. “I thought I was doing the same thing for you.”

I can’t help but smile as
she gestures for me to stand up beside her and take her on at the game. She’s
like a little kid now, so excited, and it takes a second or two for the reason
why to hit me. Of course, she never would have had this as a kid. Never would
have played a
playstation
or video game. I wonder if
she even had any girlie shit either. Because I know from the minimal amount
that Luke has told me, neither of them probably would’ve had much in the way of
fun stuff at all. Not because they couldn’t afford it, but because they
wouldn’t have been allowed it. It makes my chest ache a little to think of what
that must have been like for either of them. Watching Mia now, seeing how
excited she is, how happy she looks, makes me wonder how either of them
survived it at all. Survived a childhood that I now realise, was the complete
opposite of everything I ever had.

And it also makes me want
to make this fun for her. I want her to enjoy it, I want her to laugh and
forget about all of the shit that’s just happened with her family, even if it’s
only for a couple of hours. And for that reason, I want to let her beat me too.
A small victory for her after what must seem like an afternoon of epic fucking
failure.

She fires up the game and
starts playing. Given I’ve been playing this game for years, I thought I’d have
to hold back, go easy on her, but no. Instead, I find myself standing here
watching in both awe and amazement. And yeah, I’m also
kinda
strangely turned on. I watch her complete her
first challenge. Now I know why she selected the hard level. Fuck me, she can
actually play, I don’t know how, but she really can play. When it comes to my
turn, I pull out everything I’ve got. It’s nothing like playing real guitar,
but I think the musical ear helps and I don’t hold back, using all the times
I’ve played against my brothers, to try and beat her score. But it doesn’t
happen, she still beats me on the first challenge and I’m
kinda
blown away right now.

“You
wanna
keep going?” she asks me when our first songs are over.

I turn to look at her, see
the light that’s now shining in her eyes and I suddenly realise, I will do
anything to keep that there. That she can completely kick my ass, in this game
or any other game we have and I don’t care one little bit. It’s completely
worth it to see this look on her face right now.

“You bet,” I say, smiling
back at her.

We play a couple more
songs and I’m pretty much rendered speechless.
Alright
,
she doesn’t just beat me, she totally kicks my ass. I mean I have never seen a
girl play
Guitar Hero
like she just
has, and I play the game a lot. It doesn’t make sense, I have no idea how the
fuck she’s done it, but she has. After about twenty songs I have to call a
breather.

“Conceding?” she asks.

“No fucking way, Mia,” I
say. “A drinks break, nothing more.”

She smiles at me as she
says, “Yeah, you probably do need to rehydrate any way, being how bad you just
were, it’s really only an advantage for me if you don’t. You’re making it too
easy for me Jared, really.”

“How the fuck do you know
how to play like that, Mia?” I ask. Maybe I was wrong about them having this at
home. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s super impressive, it’s just not
something I expected a girl to be all that into.”

Mia just smiles and rolls
her eyes at me as she says, “Oh we play it at school all the time. I’m
kinda
the current champ in my dorm.”

I shake my head in amazement,
knowing I have just been completely played by this girl. But the most surprising
thing is how much I don’t care that I have. If this had been anyone else,
either of my brothers, Ben or Damien or even Luke, I’d have been pissed and
demanding a do-over. But with Mia, I don’t care; do not give a shit, because as
far as I’m concerned, she can do this to me any time she wants to.

“You want something to
drink?” I ask her.

She smiles and nods at me,
and she is still that excited little girl who started this game. I’m starting
to think that this might be the real her, this and the girl who cried in my
arms upstairs. She might put on this tough girl exterior when things get real,
but I don’t for one second buy it. Not now that I’ve seen what’s hiding
underneath.

I smile back at her before
throwing my guitar on the couch. As I walk past her to go get us some drinks,
she smacks me on the ass and I literally have to force myself to keep walking.
Had it been any other girl who’d done that, I would have taken it as a total
come on. Actually, I probably would’ve stopped, turned around and jumped her,
right on the couch. But with Mia, I don’t. All I do is look at her smiling
face, give her a quick wink, a fucking wink for fuck’s sake, and then keep
walking.

Knowing if I did stop, it
really would be game over.
For me anyway.

Last night 11pm – Mia

Ash walks back into the
living room and hands me a beer, taking a seat next to me on the couch. We were
supposed to be going to a movie while the guys are at practice tonight, but
somehow we didn’t get there. I don’t really mind though, I enjoy spending time
with Ash, getting to know the person my brother so clearly adores and who’s
made him happier than I’ve ever seen him. That alone is enough to make me love
her too.

I’ve been here since
Christmas Eve and it seems Ash has now made it her mission, ever since we
talked at the Cape, to get me talking to Jared again. I know she doesn’t know
the full story about what happened between us, how could she? Luke doesn’t
know, not even Jared knows. But she seems to think that this is all completely irrelevant,
and apparently tonight is the night she’s decided to start making things happen.
I haven’t even told her about the bathroom incident, God knows that would only
encourage her even more.

The hardest part about it
all though, is that I do want to talk to him and I do want to try again. I want
it all; Jared, us back together, me living in Boston. Everything. But I can’t.
Not just because of what I did to him a year ago, but for all the reasons why
too. I’m not sure he’d understand me; much less forgive me for them.

Ever since I’ve gotten
here, we’ve fallen into the same routine as before. In front of everyone else,
both of us act like we are fine, friends even. But the second we are alone,
that all turns to shit
;
tense, awkward, hostile, shit.
We aren’t friends anymore, not even close, and it seems with every new time we
find ourselves alone together, it’s getting harder and harder. The Cape was
just about unbearable.

“Have you tried just
telling him how you feel about all of this?” Ash asks me, breaking up the
self-pity party going on inside my head.

“No,” I answer, taking a
sip of beer. That’s true, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t wanted to talk to him,
been desperate to actually. “I already fucked things up once before, badly, and
I don’t know how to fix that. How to undo the things I’ve done.”

Not that I’ve really tried
though, if I’m being completely honest. I kind of made it pretty obvious to
Jared that it was over when I stopped taking his calls and refused to see him
anymore. God, the things I said to him, the things I did to him. I was fucking
awful to him. I basically just screwed everything up and then hid, refusing to
talk about any of it, to anyone. My friends, my brother and especially to
Jared, the one person I should have been talking to all along.

And deep down, I’m still
afraid to try and talk to him now. Because I know what I did was wrong. I knew
it at the time and I know it now, nothing is going to change that. And despite
acting as though everything is completely fine, there isn’t a day that goes by
that I don’t regret my decision or any of the things I did. There’s not a day
that goes by that I don’t wish everything could be different.

But even though I want
things to change between us, that I want to go back to how we were, I have no
idea how to make that happen. How to undo any of what I’ve done to him, or how
to make any of it right again. Back in the bathroom, I’d stupidly thought I
could lean in and kiss him and just make everything okay. As though the fact
that we’d crashed into each other and supposedly shared a moment up against the
bathroom wall, would fix everything. What a joke. It wasn’t anywhere near being
fixed and the longer I ignored the problem, the longer it would continue to
stay broken. Maybe it would eventually be irreparable.

“Maybe you need to make
time, find a way. Remember what you told your brother, Mia?” Ash says to me
now. “You just need to do something, anything to show Jared how you really
feel, that you feel the same way he does.”

I shake my head at her. “I
can’t sing Ash, you know that.”

I hear Ash laugh at me,
try to explain that’s not what she meant, that she’s only saying I should do
something like what Luke did for her. If only. How could I possibly do
something like that? I wouldn’t even know where to start, what to even do. Ash
and Luke are very different to Jared and me. They are new, a shared and intense
attraction and connection that can’t be ignored. Jared and me, we are an old,
probably broken, love story, driven apart by stubbornness and secrets.

I take the opportunity to
change the subject though, swing the conversation back to her and my brother.
This is much safer territory than Jared, me, and all the shit that’s still
between us. But even though Ash and I keep talking about all the things she needs
to say to Luke. Those three big words, which she has yet to say out loud,
despite it being so obvious to everyone, there’s a tiny thought, somehow
planting itself in my brain and taunting me.

The bathroom.

How close we’d been to
each other, closer than we’d been in so long. A shared
hug
a couple of months ago, nothing in comparison to what happened back in the
bathroom tonight. I have no idea what came over me, no idea what would have
happened if I’d managed to press my lips against his. Would he have kissed me
back like he always did, or would he have pushed me away like the very first
time?
All I know is, given half a chance
,
I
would have kissed him
.
I would’ve kissed him hard, and never stopped.

“Mia,” I hear Ash say to
me.

“What?” I ask, refocusing
on her.

She smiles at me. “You
haven’t heard a single word I’ve just said, have you?”

I take a sip of my drink,
nodding at her. “Yeah I have. You knowing how much Luke
loves
you. You telling him you love him too,” I say, hoping that really was the last
thing we were talking about.

Ash shakes her head in
response, but she’s still smiling at me. I watch as she reaches out, grabs my
hand again and waits until I look at her. “Talk to him Mia, just tell him what
you did and why. I’m sure it’s nowhere near as bad as you think it is,” she says,
squeezing my hand.

I wouldn’t be so sure about that.

“I don’t even know if he
wants to hear it anymore,” I admit, my head falling, as I remember what
really
happened back in the bathroom. He
walked away. He didn’t kiss me and didn’t let me kiss him. He let go and he
walked away.

I feel Ash move so she’s
sitting beside me now, her arm wrapping around my shoulder as she pulls me
close in a half embrace. “Trust me Mia,” she says quietly. “He wants to hear
it, I know he does. And you should tell him, tell him before it’s too late and
you run out of time altogether.”

There’s something about the
way Ash says these last words that suddenly has me paying attention. I don’t
know if it’s the sadness in her voice or the regret on her face, but she speaks
to me as though she knows what she’s talking about, as though she’s experienced
a lost opportunity before. It makes me want to ask if she’s
alright
,
if something happened to her in the past, but before I can, she speaks again.

“You know, your brother
once told me something, Mia. Something which changed a lot of things for me,
changed how I look at everything actually,” she says squeezing my shoulder.
“And it’s something I’m holding on to, something I’m never letting go of.”

I look up at her now,
curious. “Oh yeah, what was that?”

I watch as Ash smiles at
me, the same dreamy eyed smile she always gets whenever she talks about Luke.
“He told me that life is too short to live without the things you want, to not
to fight for the things you love… I know you still love him, Mia, and you know
that he still loves you. You should tell him that. You should tell Jared how
you feel.” I watch as she stares right at me without blinking. “Tell him how
you feel Mia, before it’s too late. Before you regret it, forever.”

I look away from her and
stare at the blank TV, wondering how the hell she knows all this stuff, at the
same time thinking, that’s possibly the best piece of advice I have ever heard.
Ash’s words, so simple, yet so goddamn true, ring in my ears and I can feel
that tiny little thought growing, spreading throughout my body as it starts to
take on a life of its own. Life
is
too short and Jared
is
worth fighting
for. That much, I do know.

“You
gonna
tell Luke then?” I suddenly ask her, a dare to see if she really believes it,
if she really believes her own words. “Tell him how
you
really feel?”

Ash smiles. “As soon as he
gets home tonight.”

I nod now, as though my
decision has been made too. I will talk to Jared. Really talk to him. I will
tell him everything, explain what I did and why. I will fight to get him back,
get us back to where we once were. Because despite everything that’s happened,
I do still love him.

I’ve never stopped loving
him.

I just hope he really does
feel the same.