Page 37 of Tomorrow Belongs to Us
“It was just a kiss. It was a mistake. It just happened.”
“It. Just. Happened?” Arla asks slowly, as if she were trying to remember the phrase in a foreign language. “You stuck your tongue down Mr. Turner’s throat, and you expect me to believe that itjusthappened?”
“I did not … do that.”
“Then he stuck his tongue down yours,” Arla concludes. “You’ve been good lately. You’ve even kept Preston at bay. He’s been trying to get into your panties for a long time and the poor guy only managed to get a kiss off you. Now superhero Lance turns up and bam! You kiss him. This isn’t just a random guy you meet in a bar, Megan. You have history with Mr. Turner.”
“It just happened.”
Arla rolls her eyes. “That’s what you always say. Where did it happen and how? I need all the dirty details.”
I tell her everything, about the pen and the reason for my visit.
“What’s his body like?” she asks. “Does he have any saggy bits?”
“It was just a kiss.”
“But you were obviously close enough to him to feel him.”
I press my lips together at the thought of him. “No saggy bits.” The man is hard and firm, and has a better body than most men my age that I’ve dated.
“How old is he now?”
“I don’t know. Forty-one, I think.”I think.I know perfectly well how old he is, because I’d lamented over our fourteen-year age gap as a student. At the height of my infatuation, I often fantasized about how our lives might turn out once I graduated high school. He is forty-three, and I’ve shaved off a few years already.
“Forty-one?” Arla shrieks in astonishment, as if I’ve said ‘a hundred.’
“He was our teacher. How can you not remember?”
“Becausehe was our teacher and we’re not supposed to ask such questions.” She gives me a perplexed look. “How did you end up with his pen?”
“He came to my workplace last week and we went for coffee.”
Arla snorts. “You kept that quiet. You’ve been acting as if nothing happened when he almost ran you over at the crossing.”
“Nothingdidhappen.”
“But since then he’s been to your workplace, you’ve been for coffee and the third time you two meet, you end up with your lips stuck together.”
My insides churn. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
“Uh-huh.” Arla sounds as if she doesn’t believe me.” “So, you’re at his apartment and?”
“Do you really want a blow-by-blow account of the evening?”
“I don’t know. Is there anyblow-by-blowaccount you want to share with me?” Arla collapses into laughter while I sit there, my face burning.
“No!” I reply emphatically. “I don’t know how, or why…”
“You’re such a bad liar!”
But I do know how, and I do know why. It was because I felt something. Maybe it’s true that past loves are hard to forget. Something between us has reignited. Something shifted since the day of the campus shooting, when Lance Turner reappeared on my TV screen. Those memories from my school days came back with a vengeance. They infected my mind and my thoughts, creating a fog I couldn’t cut through. Slowly, the feelings returned, those pointless, heart-wrenching feelings for a man I could never have. When I saw him at the crossing, things had shifted some more.
One look into his eyes and I was transported back to that time in my youth. Every memory, every emotion, every tiny feeling I’d ever had for him that I’d buried has now come to the surface and opened a Pandora’s box of bad things—lust, misplaced attraction and forbidden desire.
But this is all it will be. We had one crazy kiss in one crazy slice of time. It’s a huge mistake, even I know that, and now I feel uneasy thinking about him.
After the type of day I’ve had, I want to go home. I shouldn’t have come here. I make a move to leave, and Arla looks at her watch and decides she can still make her class. She says she’ll only be a little late for Scott.
