just a feeling [aimee]

[owen]

Relationships were good. Women smelled nice. They were lovely to cuddle. But the one thing that Owen detested the most-- besides the break up, if it were to happen-- was the awkward in between phase during the beginning of a relationship. It was that sort of grey area between not dating and being in a committed, acknowledged relationship. While it was fun and exciting, it was also nerve wracking and worrying. As of late, a certain young woman had been on Owen’s mind. Aimee. She consumed his thoughts and no matter how hard he tried to get her out of there, she was lingering about. Not that he was complaining, not in the slightest. Since the day in the candle store he hadn’t worried about how much he liked her. After all, they had been on a few dates and everything seemed to be going splendidly. But how was one to progress from there? Owen’s past relationships had all sort of started by mistake. Not bad mistakes, but he wasn’t the most smooth guy out there-- though he liked to pretend he was.

But he didn’t want to make a mistake with Aimee, even if it might end well. He wanted to play his cards right and not have to worry about it ending in a way that he would not approve. Instead, he was going to make a big romantic gesture in order to win her heart and get her to agree to being his girlfriend. Or something like that. It had taken him quite some time to think of something to do. He kept getting horribly distracted along the way. He focused too much on the little details, and not enough attention went to the bigger picture. This time he tried to focus on the outcome of what he was planning. The outcome would hopefully be his ability to call Aimee his girlfriend. And that thought warmed him inside, no matter how cheesy that thought was. He just wouldn’t tell his guy friends. Not a chance. Instead, he threw all of his energy into creating a somewhat elaborate-- or so he liked to think-- scavenger hunt. At the end of the puzzle, Aimee would find an envelope with directions to a restaurant. Not his restaurant-- he was saving that for another day-- but a good one nonetheless.

And so he sat at a table for two by himself, awaiting the beautiful brunette’s arrival. The waiting was the worst part. What if she thought it was lame? Well, it was a bit lame, but he thought it had to be a little cute, right? What if she thought he wasn’t worth it? What if-- there were too many what ifs and Owen knew that if he continued to think of everything that could go wrong, he would surely go insane. He cleared as throat as he nervously adjusted his tie. Crap, what if she thought he was overdressed? But looking around at all the other people at the restaurant, he fit right in with his shirt and tie. Were the roses too much? Crap, they probably were. He stared down at them, then at the candle, then back to the flowers. if he burned them he’d probably get kicked out. Okay, well, she’d just have to deal with another cheesy but heartfelt gesture. He really needed to learn how to be romantic without being cheesy, didn’t he?

word count: 568 - tagged: aimee - notes: nom nom nom

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[aimee]

The girl opened the first envelope with nerves and anticipation, expecting a heartfelt note or instructions for a meeting but instead there was a clue, and after that there was another clue which led her to another clue and then… well, you get the idea. As she continued on the treasure hunt Aimee’s heart began to sink and sink, she thought she liked Owen but now it was all wrong, all she could think of was Liam, the name went around in her head, not budging even when she tried to think of something completely different. Every time she read one of Owen’s clues her head recited one of Liam’s, the words seeming far more romantic and poetic than they really were, Scavenger hunts were Liam’s thing, why did Owen have to go and remind her of that. It broke Aimee inside to realise that she was still attached to the man that had broken her heart, he’d left her scared, pregnant and alone but there was a still a big part of her body that longed for him, he was her first love and she’d tried to convince herself that that didn’t matter, she was wrong. The final clue was directions to a fancy restaurant and luckily Aimee was suitably dressed but she sat on a bench, trying to focus on her breathing. A tear rolled down her cheek, she didn’t know what to do with herself, she was a mess over a guy she hadn’t spoken to in over four years, she had the perfect guy one block away and yet she was fretting over an ex, when did she become one of those girls.

Aimee wiped her eyes and knew that she had to make the right decision, she didn’t want to lead Owen on, he was a lovely man but she wasn’t ready for this, she didn’t want him to be her rebound. She walked towards the restaurant and as she stood outside she pulled a notebook from her pocket, scribbling a handwritten note that read I thought I was ready for this, I’m not, I’m sorry

[/i] with her name written in her girly scrawl across the bottom. She refrained from dotting her I with a heart and headed into the restaurant, folding her note perfectly in half. She approached the waiter and asked if there was a table under the name Alexander, when she received an affirmative she rejected his offer of walking her to the table and handed him the note, asking for him to deliver it. As the man walked away Aimee headed back out the door, wishing she hadn’t thought it a good idea to wear heels. She wasn’t really sure where she was headed, Lily was at a friend’s house all night and Xavier wasn’t expecting her back until late, she didn’t feel like telling her little brother her soul just yet. She walked slowly with no patience, tears coming down her cheeks, what had she done.

She wasn’t sure if she’d made the right move or the wrong one, her heart was playing with her, Owen was perfect, he was a gentleman, he enjoyed spending time with Lily and he really seemed to care about her, whilst Liam left as soon as he knew Lily had been created and he hadn’t even bothered to say goodbye to Aimee. Really there should be no doubt in her mind but for some reason, here she was walking away from the guy who could make her happy. That was the problem, she’d found the right guy at completely the wrong time, though it’d been four years, when was the right time going to come and would it let her know, just so she was kept up to date. Aimee had thought she’d put all her Liam problems behind her but it seemed that she was wrong, every time she looked at Lily she felt it, but she tried to ignore it. It was the way Lily furrowed her brow when she was concentrating, it was the bright blue of her eyes and the way she could curl her tongue, they were all things she’d got from her dad, and it made Aimee’s heart break every time she saw them.
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[owen]

Owen looked at the roses. Dammit, they were too much, weren’t they? In a brief moment of panic, he picked them up and let his eyes scan about the restaurant. This was one of those fancy romantic restaurants-- one that was certainly his competitor and he somewhat felt like he was cheating on himself, mind you-- and so it was littered with couples on dates. Some of the ladies already had flowers, mind you. He spotted an older couple in the back corner who appeared to be celebrating an anniversary of some sort. Smiling nervously he walked over and handed the elderly ladies the flowers. ”From a stranger who could only hope to have a love as strong as yours,” he said charmingly. He could charm the hell out of old ladies. Mission accomplished, he scuttled back to the table and hoped that Aimee hadn’t arrived during his rather strange excursion. He was lucky, she hadn’t.

Or so he thought he was lucky. By the time he arrived back to his table he got there just in time to be handed a note from an apologetic waiter. For a moment Owen thought nothing of it, but then he realised what it had to mean. He looked down at the piece of paper and felt his stomach drop. The waiter walked away and Owen just stared at the note. With shaky hands he unfolded it and found the briefest of messages. His heart officially fell to the floor. She wasn’t ready. Aimee didn’t want to be with him. How was she not ready? He didn’t understand it. He wasn’t asking for her to marry him, he just...wanted to take her to dinner. It was true that yes, he did want their relationship to go to the next level, but not in some extreme sort of way. He just wanted them to be exclusive. He wanted her for himself, call him selfish-- call him whatever you want, but he just wanted her to be his girlfriend. And up until this point, he thought that she was enjoying their time together, too. Unless...

Dropping the note he sprung from the table. ”I’ll be back,” he said quickly to the very confused waiter and sprinted out of the restaurant. His legs were long, he was used to running, and caught up to the fading image of Aimee. ”Aimee!” he called when he was still a distance away. ”Aimee, wait please,” he said. Finally, he caught up to her and reached out a gentle hand to place on her shoulder. He came around to stand in front of her so he couldn’t move forward unless she moved around him. ”I...Aimee, I’m not on the ground on one knee here,” he said, adding a nervous chuckle despite himself. ”I just...I know there’s something between us and if I let you walk away from me, I know I’ll regret it. Now come on, tell me why you think you’re not ready to be in a relationship. Is it me? Am I moving too fast? I’ll take it back a notch if that’s what you want. Anything,” he said, rambling out quickly in one breath before he lost the courage to do it.

word count: 550 - tagged: aimee - notes: blah still sick D:

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[aimee]

Aimee really wasn’t sure what she was doing or what the plan was, she just knew she had to get away. Her mind was racing and she couldn’t control her thoughts as they passed through her head, she was a mess. She wished she had someone to run to, an older sister or a best friend but neither were available right now, well I say that, an older sister would never be available, unless her mom or dad had had a child before her that they’d kept a secret. The girl was just running, well as fast as she could in her ridiculous shoes; it was more like a fast walk to be honest. People watched as the brunette came past, the scene was all wrong, she was dressed up, her hair neatly curled and her makeup immaculate but tears poured down her face causing the makeup to run and leaving the once pretty girl a puffy-eyed mess. Aimee was quite an emotional person but once she had Lily she was more careful, the little girl picked up on every change of emotion and so the brunette did her best to only give off happy vibes, but that meant that it got to the point when the sadness just overwhelmed her. She wasn’t really sure what was wrong, all she knew was that she couldn’t get Liam off her mind, she had always tried to convince herself that she was over him, she made herself hate him because that made it easier, but truth was she was just ignoring it.

She heard his voice and her heart fell to the bottom of her chest, she didn’t want to talk to him, she couldn’t talk to him. She didn’t know how to explain herself because she didn’t really have an explanation for what she’d said, not a rational one anyway. Her friends always saw Aimee as quite a rational person but they would all comment on the fact that there were only two people who could cause Aimee to act irrationally, Lily and Liam. She felt his had on her shoulder and she came to a stop as he came in front of her and began to sleep. When he spoke about proposal she wiped her eyes and looked up at him, scared of making eye contact. She stood there as she spoke about not wanting to let her walk away, that he just wanted to be in a relationship with her and that he could slow it down if that was what she wanted. But that was the problem, Aimee didn’t know what she wanted, she didn’t know if starting a relationship with Owen would help cure her of Liam but she didn’t want Owen to be a rebound. Was it a rebound if you really felt something for them, she didn’t know, she wasn’t used to feeling so torn, she’d only ever had Liam, and when he was gone she’d had no-one, this was all too hard.

He rushed through the sentence and she knew it was because he was nervous, she knew him too well and that scared him. One part of her really wanted to forget about Liam but the other half needed him to cope, what if she being with Owen meant that Liam was erased, Aimee wasn’t sure if she could cope with that, he was such a huge part of her life and who she was, though maybe he wasn’t as good as she remembered him as. Life through rose tinted glasses, that’s what they called it when you looked back on your past more favourably than it had been at the time, maybe she was doing that, but unless she saw Liam again there wasn’t much chance of her finding out. “It’s not you” she managed to say, wiping her eyes again and looking away from his face and towards his feet. It wasn’t really difficult for Aimee to avoid eye contact given that the top of her head didn’t even reach his shoulder. She didn’t really know what else to say, there was something about Owen that was so perfect and Liam was so flawed but Aimee couldn’t convince her heart what her head knew full well. Maybe Owen was too perfect, he deserved someone who would care for him, he didn’t deserve to be stuck with a girl who already had a four year old kid, it would never work. “I can only run from my past for so long, sooner or later it’ll catch me up” she said outloud, it was really more of a thought to herself but before she realised Owen had already heard.

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[owen]

Owen hadn’t had the best life growing up. Financially it was hard for his mother to raise him and his father was never in his life. He didn’t have any siblings he could turn to and the closest thing he had to a male role model was the old man down the hall at his grandmother’s apartment who smelled like salmon and cigarettes, and always gave him peppermint candies even though his mom told him not to take candy from strangers. But despite the hardships, he loved his mother and grandmother, and they loved him back. He was a happy enough kid and made it through a lot to get where he was in life. He’d moved from New York like his mother wanted him to, he went to school, he became a chef, and now he was running his own restaurant. The one thing he was missing was a steady girlfriend or, what he would have liked to have had by a now, a wife. And kids. He wasn’t getting any younger and he didn’t want to be one of those really old dads who couldn’t run around after his kids. That thought depressed him. While he didn’t know the first thing about being a dad, he knew that he would try his damnedest to be the father to his kids that his father clearly never was.

And when he looked at Aimee, he couldn’t help but feel like she was more than just a fleeting crush. He was falling for the woman and thought that if they tried, there could be something there that they would both want. While he knew neither of them were ready to move in and start popping out kids, he didn’t think that she should walk away just yet. They’d barely given the relationship a chance. If she gave being a couple a chance and still thought they shouldn’t be together, then fine, they didn’t have to try anymore. But he refused to give up before he even gave a hundred and ten percent. Unless he did everything in his power to give whatever was potentially there a chance, he knew that he would feel like he made a huge mistake and regret it for the rest of his life. Aimee was special and he knew that other men could probably see that just as quickly as he did. He could only imagine some other guy trying to win her heart, and he could only imagine himself chasing those guys away with a baseball bat or pet dinosaur.

Owen shook his head and furrowed his brow. ”Then what is it?” he asked softly, still not understanding why she was just pushing him away when things had started to get good. Owen paused to think about what she was saying, mostly because she was speaking quite cryptically. Then it hit him. ”Is this about Lily’s father?” he asked, almost not wanting to find out the answer. It had to be; it was the only thing that would make sense. Otherwise, why would she be running away? He was nothing but sweet to her, she always seemed receptive to his cheesy flirtatious sayings, and Lily always seemed quite happy to see-- all of those reasons made him all the more confused with their current interaction. ”Aimee, he’s not here. From the sounds of it, he hasn’t been here, and if he’s already missed this much of Lily’s life, I doubt he’s going to just show up on your doorstep. I’m not saying this to be mean, honestly, but you can’t keep the notion of him being a white knight and magically deciding to be in your life again,” he said, shaking his head. He gently took her chin and lifted it so she’d be forced to look at him. ”I’m falling for you, Aimee, every single day I fall a little harder and I can’t just let you walk away from me because you’re scared.”

word count: 667 - tagged: aimee - notes: i am so so so so sorry this has taken so long; exams D:

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