Page 24 of Tomorrow Belongs to Us
“His sister died?” Arla asks. A gasp follows.
“Yes, and his brother-in-law was in a coma. It was a bad car accident. They had a young daughter but, luckily, she wasn’t with them.”
Arla looks distressed. “That’s so sad.”
“Lance said she hadn’t even turned one yet.” Even thinking about it now makes me sad; I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind and I asked Arla to come over because I needed to tell someone, because the weight of his tragedy is so heavy.
I feel distraught for Lance, for what he’s been through. All this time I’ve blamed him for abandoning but the real reason is so sad. I feel like a whiny fool.
“It’s Lance now?” my friend asks, her tone playful.
“We’re not in school now.” We’re adults now. Our status and age gap no longer matter. Or get in the way.
“That poor man.”
I’ve tried to imagine what it would be like to lose one of my siblings, but the thought is too dark, too painful to hold. “I had no idea what he’d gone through at the time.”
“How could you have? We were knee-deep in exams,” says Arla. “And your mother had gone and taken an … I mean, she was ill, and in the hospital. Your dad had left you and things were hard for you.”
“True.” My world had crashed to pieces but spending that night with Lance had given me a few hours away from the ugliness of my life. He’d made me forget. Now that I know the truth, a heavy weight has been lifted from my chest because up until then I’d felt abandoned, discarded.
Used.
I thought he’d left because he wanted to forget about me, but now I know that he didn’t desert me willingly, that maybe he wanted to be with me, and that he, too, might have entertained the idea of a future together.
I've held so much resentment for him over the years, for him taking away the promise of what might have been. I hated him for not being there, I hated him when Erica and Jensen would come home upset. I didn't have to suffer the rumors for too long because I left school that summer, but my brother and sister were teased all the time, and my mom hated the things they were telling her.
Only Lance and I know the truth.
That one night, that one time, gave me a memory I've held onto forever. A scorching, steamy, sexy memory I turned to many times over; a memory as vibrant and as real as the night it happened.
Lance was the older and more experienced man. He was the best I’d ever had, not only then—I was so naïve and sexually inexperienced save for Shaun’s fumbling attempts—but even now, in my adult years. Maybe I’ve held onto the memory of that night and immortalized it, and have turned Lance into some sort of God-like Svengali figure, made even more potent because he left soon after.
One truth remains, I’ve never had anyone work magic with his tongue the way Lance Turner did.
“At least now you know why he never got in touch with you again,” says Arla, her big eyes sparkling with excitement. “Mr. Turner had his own problems to deal with.”
I refill our wine glasses. “We’ve already established that.”
“But imagine if that tragedy hadn’t happened,” Arla continues, “the two of you might have ended up together. You might even have had babies and—”
“It was a high school crush.” I fix my gaze on my deluded friend. “It was nothing more than that.” My guilt makes me look away. I harbored ideas as crazy as that. The possibility of a future with him wasn’t so fanciful. We could have made it happen. He liked me, he wanted me, he needed me as much as I needed him.
“You talked about him for years afterwards—”
“That is not true.” A year, maybe, tops.
“He was all you ever talked about. You were so angry that he’d left—”
“Because I flunked my exams.”
My friend eyes me pointedly. “I don’t recall you ever complaining about his teaching. I still don’t understand why you went to him that night, when you could have come to me.”
“It was late at night.”
“That didn’t stop you from going to him,” Arla retorts.
“He was a good friend to me by then. Someone older, wiser, someone responsible. A caring grown-up. I needed that. My own parents had failed so miserably.”
