Frenemies? Or Something More?: a Blake Gray Fanfiction *completed*

39

-five years later-

"Mom! Dad!" I heard Ben yelling up the stairs. Blake and I were meeting Ben's new girlfriend today, and he seemed really happy, so I was excited to meet her.
I walked down the stairs, Blake in tow, and greeted the little boy that had since become a man. "Hi, honey. I'm so glad that you're home." It had been weeks since I had seen him.
"Mom, Dad, I want you guys to meet my girlfriend, Ashley."
I extended a hand. "Hi, honey."
She shook my hand and moved on to Blake's. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you, Ms. Wilde and Mr. Gray."
"Please, call me Tiffany. Tell us about yourself, sweetie."

We moved the conversation to the living room. "I was born and raised here in LA. My parents were influencers, but I wasn't really interested in that scene. I'm a junior at UCLA, and I'm majoring in education. There's not much else to me, really."
I heard that her parents were influencers, but I didn't think to question it. "I think that's great. When I was a kid, I always wanted to be a teacher. Sometimes, I still wish that I would've gone that route instead."
We sat and talked for a few hours, and then, Ben suggested dinner. We piled into Ben's car, and I looked at Blake lovingly. Twenty years ago, we were two dumb kids that had a baby. That baby wasn't so little anymore, and I truly believed that we had done a good job.

"Hi. I have a reservation for six for Gray," Ben said as we approached the hostess.
"He's just like you, babe, except he actually made a reservation," I whispered jokingly to Blake.
"Are Ashley's parents joining us?" Blake asked.
Ben nodded pulling the chair out for Ashley and sitting next to her. "We thought that it would be good for you to meet them."
I wasn't really sure why it was important for us to meet them, but I didn't question it as I ordered a glass of champagne. I sipped it slowly, waiting for Ashley's parents.

"Mom! Dad! We're over here!" I turned to face them and nearly choked on the sip of champagne that I had just taken. It was unbelievable that I hadn't put two and two together earlier that night.
"Amelie and Tucker," I choked out. "It's good to see you. It's been, what, twenty years?"
Ben and Ashley looked back and forth between one another. "You guys know each other?"
Blake chuckled lightly. "We don't just know them. We dated them."
Ben's spit take was dramatic. "You what?"
"That's how your dad and I got together. We had the same manager, and he suggested that we fake date after we broke up with Amelie and Tucker. It turned real eventually. I guess I could've asked who your parents were when you mentioned them earlier, Ashley."

Amelie and Tucker had both sat down, and the glimmer of her engagement ring made me feel a twing of jealousy. Blake and I had decided that getting married wasn't that big of a deal, but sometimes, I wished that we had gone that route instead.
"If it makes the two of you feel any better, we clearly didn't know that our daughter was dating the child of our exes," Tucker said, flagging down the waitress.
"Oh, come on, Tuck. It's been what, twenty years? I don't think that there are any hard feelings. We definitely don't have any. I didn't even know that you guys had a kid together. Did you, sweetie?" Blake said, turning to look at me.
I had been thinking of the struggles that I went through with Amelie and Tucker, but Blake's voice snapped me back to reality. "No, I guess we didn't really keep up with anyone outside of Sway after we had Ben."
Amelie appeared to be Tucker's voice of reason. "Honey, it's over and done with. We've all moved on, and I think it's wonderful that our kids have found company in one another."

I took a deep breath, and we all seemed to relax. "Guys, we have something that we would like to talk about with you," Ben said, not trying to hide him taking Ashley's hand under the table. The last time that I had heard a sentence like that, Blake and I were telling our parents that we were pregnant.
"Go ahead, Ben," Tucker said, and I watched as a flash of anger came across Blake's face. We could pretend that we were over the damage that the two of them had caused, but we had never addressed it, so I knew that there were unresolved feelings there.
"Ashley and I have been talking, and after a lot of consideration, we've decided to move in together," Ben said, turning to smile at Ashley. I was secretly grateful that they weren't having a baby. At only forty, I was definitely too young to have anyone calling me Grandma.

After the four of us had congratulated them, we ordered and engaged in a little small talk. Tucker and Blake were amicable, discussing the things that they were doing now that their social media accounts weren't as exciting. Amelie and I were getting along surprisingly well.
"I knew that you had a baby, but I guess that I never put it together when he told us that his parents were influencers, too," Amelie joked.
I laughed. "That's what I said! I even noticed that she looks like you, and for some reason, I didn't make sense of it until I turned around and saw you two. If I'm being completely honest, I didn't even know that you two were still together."
"Sometimes I wonder how we are," Amelie said, looking over at Tucker, "but at the end of the day, I think that we work really well together."
"After twenty years, I would hope so. It's funny how everything ended up, isn't it?"
As I saw back to observe the situation, my heart filled with love at just how happy my son looked. As his mother, there was nothing that made me happier.