Forbidden Love

by Phillips, Laura

  Anna had spent the last seven years trying to forget about her. She never tried to contact her after she left, and she’d resisted the temptation to stalk her on Facebook.

  Now that Anna was back, the thought of running into Lara Preston made her heart race but she was here today to get her classroom set up and prepare herself for Tuesday morning.

  Anna knew she was in room 207 and that she’d be teaching English to sophomores and juniors this year.

  She headed down the hallway towards her classroom, surprised that her feet seemed to know exactly where to go. She had the last room on the right at the end of the hallway.

  She closed the door behind her and walked across the carpeted room. She left her bag down on the desk as she surveyed the room.

  She stood at the front of the classroom with her hands on her hips trying to imagine herself delivering a lesson in two days’ time.

  She knew this was what she wanted but the nerves were starting to creep in.

  She went over to the wooden desk that was in the corner of the room and pulled open each of the drawers, surprised to find folders and stacks of paper in them.

  She emptied the drawers one by one, filling one of the boxes she found in the storage cabinet with the files.

  The files were labeled ‘Lara Gardner’ and Anna guessed that she must have either retired or changed rooms and forgotten to clean out her desk.

  Just as she was pushing the lid down on the overflowing box, the door burst open and a beautiful woman with her chestnut brown hair falling below her shoulders met her stare.

  Anna’s heart stopped as she met those piercing green eyes.

  “Anna…”

  The sound of her voice transported her back in time and in so many ways she wished she could have stayed there, lost in the mostly happy memories from seven years ago, before Lara had put up a wall between them.

  Anna swallowed the lump in her throat, willing herself to keep a poker face. She wasn’t going to let Lara see the effect that she still had on her.

  “Hi,” Anna said simply, maintaining eye contact with Lara. “So, I guess we’re colleagues now?”

  “Looks that way,” Lara said as she slowly crossed the room. “I’ll just pack up the rest of my things. I wasn’t expecting anyone to be in here just yet.”

  Anna glanced down at the papers on her desk.

  Yes. I did read them right.

  Lara Gardner.

  “This was your room?” Anna asked.

  “Yes,” Lara said as she made sure all the drawers were empty. “For the last four years.”

  Anna took a step back to give Lara space. She also found her perfume intoxicating.

  “Your last name is Gardner now?” Anna asked.

  “I went back to my maiden name.”

  “You got a divorce?”

  “Yes. Three years ago,” Lara said as she stood up. She leaned against the desk, half sitting, so that she was facing Anna. “We should talk.”

  Anna took a deep breath. She didn’t know what to think. Lara was acting like nothing had happened, that she hadn’t done anything wrong.

  “What happened?” Anna finally asked. Lara’s calm demeanor was infuriating her.

  Lara sighed. “I owe you an apology.”

  Anna’s eyebrows rose. At the very least that’s what you owe me. “And an explanation.”

  “Yes. We should talk… outside of work.”

  “Okay,” Anna said slowly. “When?”

  “Whenever you want.”

  “The suspense is killing me,” Anna said sarcastically. “Why not now?”

  Lara nodded. “Let’s go,” she said, her voice heavy with sadness. “I’ll just bring these boxes over to my new room.”

  Anna lifted one of the boxes and followed her out. This wasn’t exactly how she imagined things going.

  In the weeks leading up to today, there were only two scenarios that she daydreamed about.

  One where Lara dropped everything when she saw her and ran into her arms, the other where they had a massive argument and Anna told her exactly how she felt, how hard the last few years had been.

  She hadn’t imagined things being normal.

  Well, maybe not normal… but civil.

  But Anna didn’t know how to talk to her. Not until she knew what had happened. She didn’t know if she should forgive her or continue to hold a grudge.

  When they got to Lara’s room, Anna left the box down on her desk alongside the one Lara had been carrying.

  “Will we take my car?” Lara asked.

  “Sure.”

  Anna followed her out to her car. She didn’t care where they were going. She just wanted answers.

  “So…,” Lara started once they were on the road. “You’re back?”

  “For now,” Anna said, glancing over at her. “I needed a change and I’ve hardly seen my new niece and nephew. My brother and his wife had twins two years ago.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah and then my mom told me about the job opening at the school, so I applied… not really thinking I would get it but here I am.”

  “It’s good to have you back,” Lara said with a slight smile as she looked over at her.

  “It’s good to be back,” Anna said, returning her smile. They were stopped at a red light and Anna was the first to look away.

  She could feel Lara breaking down her defenses.

  Anna had spent the last seven years hating her and it had only taken a few minutes in her presence to wear her down.

  Anna didn’t know where they were going but she wanted to get there fast.

  She needed to hear Lara’s explanation and she hoped it was a good one, something that she could make sense of.

  Twenty minutes later and they were still driving. Anna broke the awkward silence that had fallen between them.

  “So where are we going?” Anna asked.

  “I thought we would go to that bar… Do you remember when we first met, and I had to go to one of Jake’s work things?”

  “For the Fourth of July? Yeah, of course I remember. We had that great chat down by the lake.”

  “That’s where we’re going. If that’s okay with you…”

  “Why not?” Anna said, thinking back to that evening.

  “I figured we could use a drink.”

  “Definitely.”

  A few minutes later they parked outside the bar. It hadn’t changed much in the last seven years. There were still Red Sox and Celtics jerseys and pendants on every wall.

  “What are you having?” Lara asked her once they were inside and at the bar.

  “I think I’d better have something strong enough… A Captain Morgan and Coke.”

  “Sure,” Lara said as she turned her attention back to the bartender and ordered Anna her drink and a bottle of beer for herself.

  “Do you want to go outside?” Lara asked when the bartender had their drinks ready.

  “Yeah… Are you afraid I’m going to cause a scene?” Anna asked, half joking as they went out to the deck.

  “No… although I wouldn’t blame you if you did cause one.”

  Anna didn’t know how to respond to that, so she went over to one of the picnic benches at the far corner of the large outdoor space.

  They sat down across from each other and Anna hoped that Lara would just tell her what happened all those years ago. She didn’t think she could wait much longer to hear her explanation.

  “So…” Anna said after she’d waited for a few seconds for Lara to start.

  “So… You’re not a journalist? When did you decide that you wanted to teach?”

  Anna just stared at her for a moment, trying to figure out if she was being serious. She was. Anna knew that look.

  Lara was so nervous. The bench was shaking underneath them from her foot tapping.

  “Lara… I can’t do small talk right now. I’m sorry…”

  “I know,” Lara said, peeling the label back from the glass bottle in her hand. “I didn
’t think it would be this hard…”

  “Why didn’t you show up that night?”

  Lara sighed. “I wanted to… You have no idea how much I wanted to.”

  “You could have at least answered my calls or my texts. I wasn’t a student at that point. There was nothing to worry about… But you ignored them all.”

  “I don’t know how it happened…” Lara took a drink and left the bottle down with a shaky hand. “When it started…”

  “Lara, what are you talking about?” Anna was losing her patience. She just wanted answers.

  “I guess when I told Jake that I was unhappy… This was months before that night… He got suspicious. He assumed I’d met someone else… Which was true, but you weren’t what he was expecting.”

  “Wait… Your husband knew about me?” Anna asked, bringing her tumbler to her lips.

  “Yes… I didn’t know that he did… Not until that night that I was going to officially end it. That’s when he…”

  Anna watched Lara wipe away a tear that fell from her beautiful green eyes.

  “Lara, what happened? You’re scaring me.”

  “He said that he’d been watching me… I didn’t know what he meant. We were careful. We only met up when he was out of town… I couldn’t understand what he was talking about… Then he took out his phone and showed me…”

  Anna eyes narrowed as she tried to put together what Lara was saying. Her heart was hammering in her chest while she waited for Lara to continue.

  “He… He showed me a video of us… We were in the guest bedroom…”

  “What?”

  “When I told him that I wasn’t happy anymore… He didn’t make a big deal of it. He said we’d get through it… Meantime he was putting hidden cameras all over the house.”

  Anna felt her jaw drop.

  “There were dozens of clips… from the guest bedroom… my room… the pool…”

  “Oh my God,” Anna said as she reached for her drink. She felt sick, but she didn’t know what else to do. Rum seemed like the best solution.

  “So that night when I said I was leaving him for good… He shows me all these videos… If I left, he was going to send them to the police. You were a student… Even though you weren’t mine… Even though you were eighteen… It was never going to end well.”

  “So, you stayed…”

  Lara nodded and brushed away another tear. Anna got up and walked around the table to sit down beside her.

  “Hey,” Anna said softly as she wiped away a fresh tear. “I’m so sorry… I had no idea.”

  “No. It’s okay… There was nothing you could have done. It was probably better that you didn’t know…”

  “The last seven years have been torture. I never forgot about you,” Anna confessed as she reached for Lara’s hand. “What happened after that night?”

  “I just tried to get through each day. You were never far from my mind,” Lara said with a sad smile. “I hated that I couldn’t contact you. I didn’t want to risk it. Jake would’ve used those videos.”

  “How did you leave him in the end?”

  “He left me. He got bored of my depressed self and he met somebody else. He filed for divorce.”

  “And you weren’t worried about him still using the tapes?” Anna asked.

  “I went through his files on his desktop, laptop and phone and deleted the videos when he told me he was moving to Florida. I checked his cloud storage and found a few more there too. I’m pretty confident that I deleted them all, but I can’t be sure. I know I could’ve done that straight away, but I never had the guts to.”

  “Why didn’t you find me after you got divorced?”

  “I couldn’t just show up and disrupt your life again… Besides, I was afraid that you would have met someone else by then… I wouldn’t have been able to handle it. I never checked your Facebook profile…”

  “Did you know that I was going to be teaching at your school this year?”

  Lara nodded. “I heard… I didn’t expect to see you in my old room today… I was trying to psych myself up for seeing you again… What I would say… I thought I had until Tuesday,” Lara said with a weak smile. “But there you were…”

  “I was just as shocked as you were,” Anna said, returning her smile. “I never checked to see if you were still working there.” She ran a hand through her hair. “I can’t believe that’s what happened… I’m so sorry… Jesus, what an asshole. I know I wasn’t exactly innocent, but blackmail is a whole other thing.”

  “It was a rough couple of years…”

  Anna’s eyes locked onto Lara’s. It was like no time had passed in some ways but in other ways, Anna felt like all of that had happened a lifetime ago.

  Anna was a different person now and clearly Lara had changed as well. She’d been through hell and back and Anna hadn’t been there for her. But as Lara had said, what could she have done?

  Anna lightly squeezed Lara’s hand. She couldn’t imagine what she’d been through these last few years.

  “So what’s been going on with you?” Lara asked, glancing down at their hands.

  Anna knew she was trying to lighten the mood, but she also sensed her hesitancy. She was probably wondering if Anna had met someone else.

  “Not much really…”

  “California seems to have agreed with you,” Lara said with a smile.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “You’re tanner than I remember you being. Your hair is a lighter shade of blond,” Lara said as her eyes wandered over Anna. “You’re beautiful,” she said softly.

  Anna felt her cheeks darken. “Thank you.” She took another drink, embarrassed by the attention. “It’s hard to believe that I’m almost as old as you were when we first met.”

  Lara nodded. “I know… You’re twenty-five now?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I was twenty-seven then.”

  At thirty-four, Lara was as stunning as she ever was. Her hair was a little longer now and she had lighter streaks running through her chestnut colored hair.

  They’d never taken any photos together. They didn’t think to before Lara started working at Anna’s school and then they would’ve been too afraid to once she was.

  But Anna never forgot those piercing green eyes. They were burned into her memory: those golden flecks that stood out from the deep green hues.

  Anna finished her drink, already feeling the effects of the alcohol hitting her body but she felt a weight being lifted off her shoulders.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” Lara said softly, taking Anna away from her thoughts. “I was afraid that you might be gone for good.”

  Anna nodded. “It’s going much better than I had imagined it would… Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure…”

  “Are you seeing anyone?” Anna asked, feeling her heart rate pick up. “You don’t have to answer,” she added quickly. “It’s none of my business.”

  Lara smiled at her, tilting her head slightly. “I’m not... Are you?”

  “No… Well I broke things off with a girl I’d been seeing for a few months. She wanted to try to make it work but I told her that I wasn’t interested in having a long-distance relationship.”

  Lara nodded but didn’t say anything.

  “I think,” Anna started. “If I’m being honest with myself… That wasn’t really the reason. I’m not against long-distance relationships… I just knew that being back here… Even if you weren’t here, I would still be thinking about you, about all of the good times we’d had here.”

  “I know what you mean. I considered leaving… for that very reason. All of the memories… When the divorce was final, I spent a few months looking for a new job… even thinking about moving back home.”

  “But you stayed…”

  “Yes…I left that house though. I couldn’t stay there… I knew I needed to find another place to live but I got lucky. I think you can see my house from here,” Lara said, turning so that she could l
ook out across the lake and the woods surrounding the water.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. You can just about see the roof,” Lara said, pointing out to the left.

  “That’s my next job… finding a place to live. I’m staying with my parents for now because I’ve hardly seen them in the last few years, but I’d like to find my own place to rent… sooner rather than later.”

  “Are you free tonight?” Lara asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s our last night of freedom.”

  Tomorrow was Labor Day and then they’d be going to bed early, ready to start their first day of school year in the morning.

  “What did you have in mind?” Anna asked.

  “Nothing too crazy… What about a few drinks at my place?”

  “Sure.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Anna arrived at Lara’s lake house that evening with two bottles of wine, one red and one white. She didn’t know which Lara preferred.

  Why does this feel so normal?

  Anna knocked on her door with one bottle in each hand.

  She’d spent over an hour getting ready. She wanted to look good but not too good which might suggest that they’d just pick up where they left off and fall into bed together.

  She ended up wearing skinny black jeans and a teal sleeveless top. She left her hair down in loose curls and wore minimal makeup with smokey eyeshadow and a subtle shade of lipstick.

  When Lara opened the door, their eyes met, and Anna got the reaction she was looking for.

  Lara’s eyes moved across her body, lingering on her lips before finding her eyes once again.

  Anna’s blue eyes mirrored Lara’s, taking in her red v neck top and dark skinny jeans before glancing at her lips.

  “Hi,” Anna said with a warm smile. “I wasn’t sure what you drank,” she said, holding up the bottles.

  “Anything,” Lara said, returning her smile. “Thanks,” she said, taking one of them from her. “Which would you prefer?”

  “White?”

  Anna followed her inside and into the kitchen where Lara poured them each a glass of white wine.

  “So, are you still as romantic as you were back then?” Lara asked, handing her a glass.

  “You thought I was romantic?”