MIA

Mia fought the urge to get up immediately after Xander. Despite all the tension, she found solace in his presence. As if they met on the same scale in the universe, understanding each other's dissatisfaction.

"I didn't take him for a smoker." Mia lied with an underlying agenda. She figured out Annie quickly enough and counted on her need to be a perfect couple, with perfect friends that got along with each other.

"He smokes when he's on edge. I suppose it's work again, it's taken a toll on him lately. He says it calms him down." Annie smiled politely.

"Maybe I should try, if it really helps." Mia murmured, earning a nod of understanding coming from a ken-doll called Daniel. Him and Brie were the kind of couple one saw in magazines – all wide smiles, shiny cars and underlying marital issues.

Brie was the perfect poster girl, with blond hair that went on for miles and the right amount of make up to hide everything that made her special at all. Daniel was the male counterpart, his beeline hair was shiny from the gel and he was buffed just enough to have a six-pack.

I mean, why would one even want a man without a six-pack?

"Here," Annie got up and skipped to the kitchen. Once she returned, she had two glasses of whiskey ready, "you two should bond." She handed the glasses to Mia and nodded towards the backyard.

Mia's heart fluttered like a hummingbird in her chest, but she was beginning to despise the feeling. Careful not to get up too quickly, she finished her drink first.

As she watched Annie's eager doll-like face, Mia felt guilty again. It didn't matter that nothing happened between them. The mere lie was enough to add meaning to the encounter. Mia remembered Annie from high school, the energetic, positive girl that brought light with her presence. Yet she understood Xander's dilemma, because behind the energy, there was a planned-out life, without a spark of anything spontaneous.

Taking the two glasses, Mia went to the backyard, enjoying the post-rainy smell of the grass. Backyard lamps lit her way across the stony paths to where Xander sat, on a bench overlooking the lawn.

"I did not think we would meet again this soon." Mia said as she sat down next to him, offering a glass of whiskey.

"Turns out not knowing someone makes it extremely hard to avoid them." Xander chuckled, but there was no humour in his smile. The boyish mischief was gone, replaced by some good old adult seriousness.

"I'm sorry. We should've guessed something like this would happen." Mia apologized, already used to saying "sorry" when she wasn't guilty of anything.

"It's not your fault."

"The fault is in our stars?" Mia asked, earning a real smile from Xander.

"Ignorance is the real mover. If only I had told you Annie's full name, you would have connected the dots. If I had paid attention to whom I'm having over for dinner, I would've known. Nothing we can do about it now." Xander sipped the whiskey, reminding Mia of the night before.

"We should just get through it." She said it as convincingly as she could, even though a part of her was glad she saw him again.

"Jeff seems nice." Xander switched the subject, an underlying sneer reaching the surface.

"Annie, too." Mia turned to him putting on a smug smile.

"I think you're gonna dump his ass if he doesn't stop talking about children or houses, though." A small laugh escaped his lips, the mischief returning to his face. Now he looked exactly like he did the night before.

"Jeff's like that. He just turned twenty seven and I think he feels like it's time to settle down. It's his way of showing affection towards me, letting me know he wants to settle down with me." Mia shrugged her shoulders.

"We're at that age when a lot of relationships break because one partner wants to marry and the other wants to party." Xander said. "Let's be honest, the same thing's happening to Annie and me."

"I noticed." Mia smiled, taking the sip of the whiskey. She thought she would vomit at the scent of alcohol, but it weirdly soothed her. "But it's not that I don't want to marry. I mean, I want to have children one day. But my 'one day' is much later than Jeff's. I guess we'll eventually have to compromise."

"Can I be honest and mean?"

"That's a pleonasm." Mia enjoyed the laughter that followed her sentence and chuckled for herself.

"Alright, it sounds better if I say I'm honest." Xander went through his hair with his hand. "I don't think it's something you can compromise on. Not on something so important as children. If one partner doesn't want them yet, he or she should not compromise. Otherwise, everyone's going to end up frustrated."

"So, you're telling me that a relationship with such a dissonance is doomed to end." Mia nodded, feeling that turmoil in her stomach again. She did not want to leave Jeff. They shared so much already. All the memories and laughter and love could not so easily be pushed down the drain.

"Telling you that would mean that I believe my relationship with Annie is doomed, so I'm going against my own rationale here." Xander sighed and Mia tried to guess what was happening in his brain.

On the surface, they had the same sort of problems to deal with, but Xander was in a relationship much longer than Mia. Which meant much more love and laughter and memories, and above all, compromise.

"Do you want to be with her?" Mia thought the question would be hard to push over her tongue, but it was somehow so simple. Everything about talking to him was extraordinarily simple. Another thing that scared her.

"Look, Mia. I don't know what last night meant to you and I now we agreed that it didn't change anything." Xander abruptly stopped, his mouth open. "I'm sorry, I'm trying to unscramble my scrambled thoughts."

"If it makes you feel any better, I'm still trying to figure out what to do." She smiled and turned towards the house, seeing the group engaging in a conversation.

"It changed something for me, that's the point. It changed my entire vision of myself and my relationship." Xander took another sip. "I never thought of myself as someone who would want to cheat on my partner. I thought that wasn't me. And don't get me wrong, this isn't really about you-"

"I get it, Xander. It could've been someone else, it could've been some random girl in some random club. There is no need to say it." Mia realised the dilemma, because she had the same one. It wasn't about Xander as a person, it was about what that act might mean for her current relationship.

"I realise everyone says this, but I'm really not the one to cheat. I was faithful to Annie for three and a half years, but lately..."

"Something's gone wrong, hasn't it? Something in the relationship wasn't working out and you began looking for something else. Subconsciously, most likely. And now you're scared because you don't want to leave her." Mia smiled. She knew she was interrupting him, but she couldn't keep her mouth shut. The desperate need for him to feel the same way she did was too overwhelming.

"Is that how you feel? Because that would be comforting." A nervous smile escaped Xander's lips.

"To tell you the truth, for the past two years I saw nothing but Jeff. Every scenario I had in my head included him. But two months ago, I began working at this law firm and the dissatisfaction shook my world hard. Thoughts I didn't know I had surfaced in my brain and suddenly, not all of my scenarios included Jeff." Mia never said that out loud, and lately, those repressed thoughts clouded her mind.

"I get it. And trust me, you're not alone in that strange bubble." Xander saluted with his almost empty glass.

Mia kept quiet for a moment, enjoying the light breeze in the beautiful backyard. Of course she wanted a house like this, perhaps she even wanted a life like this. But not now. She wanted to explore now, to push herself to her own limits. Who knew what sort of a person she would be if she had never chosen the path she did. Was there even such a thing as a path? Or everyone was simply running around scattered, looking for something, instead of creating it on their own.

"Where does that leave us?" She asked eventually.

"You and me? I guess we could be friends." Xander shrugged his shoulders.

"To friends, then." Mia saluted, staring into his eyes. The backyard's illumination made them greener than they truly were.

A shadow of a doubt crossed over his face for a moment; a clear promise of an upcoming mistake.