Love Lost And Found: A Holiday Romance Read online

  Both of her friends gasped. “Hey,” she replied, then her voice faltered. The way Kyle stared at her made her stomach drop in nervousness. He had the greenest eyes she had ever seen, like granny smith apples. It didn’t help that her friends were giggling obviously.

  “You’re Lara McClure, right?” he asked.

  “Ye-yeah.”

  “Nice to actually meet you in person.” He shook her hand.

  “Come on, man,” one of his friends whined. “Let’s go get that pizza.”

  “Well, nice talking to ya. See you later.” Kyle gave Lara a little wave, smiled and nodded to both her friends, and then followed his friends out of the school.

  “What just happened?” Lara demanded.

  Molly and Cassie both burst into giggles. “You know he just split up with Michelle Fuentes,” Cassie said, nudging Lara.

  “Whatever. There’s no way he would be into me. I can’t compete with Michelle.” Michelle Fuentes was a tall Hispanic girl with perfect black hair and a perfect body. She had more friends than she could count and was one of the most likely candidates for Prom Queen that year.

  “You got it going on, girl,” Molly said.

  “And he seemed totally into you!” Cassie added.

  Lara didn’t believe them until later that week, when she was at the river with a group of friends. They were hanging out in the parking lot, debating if they wanted to float the Guadalupe or not. It was April and while the air was warm enough for shorts and tank tops, the river was still cold. Carl, the guy who had driven them all to the river, was playing loud country and drinking a beer. Lara felt out of place. At least Cassie was there.

  Kyle and some of his friends pulled up in a Jeep right then. Lara felt faint as soon as she saw Kyle. He was always so handsome, just like a Ralph Lauren underwear model or something. She and Cassie were whispering about what he must look like without a shirt on when he spotted Lara and strode right up to her group. All of her friends fell silent, puzzled by the approach of one of the most popular guys in school. A few of her guy friends, who weren’t intimidated by Kyle, greeted him with the proverbial fist bump.

  “Lara! What’s going on?”

  “Oh…not much.” Lara’s mind went blank; there was no chance of her being interesting and making good conversation with this stud.

  “I was actually wondering what you were doing this weekend?”

  “Uh…nothing?”

  “Cool. Some friends of mine are having a party and I was wondering if you would like to come? You’re welcome to come, too,” he added to Cassie, who promptly blushed and didn’t reply.

  “Uh, sure?” Lara didn’t understand why he was inviting her. She didn’t hang out with any of his friends and she had a feeling that she would feel very out of place at the party.

  “Cool. Could I have your phone number? That way I can pick you up.”

  “I have a ride,” Lara said, referring to Cassie’s yellow Bug.

  Cassie elbowed her viciously in the ribs. “Lara!” she hissed.

  “Oh, OK. Cool. Well, I’ll see you there.”

  “I still need the address,” Lara added, as Kyle began to walk away.

  Kyle smiled and got out his phone. “Just give me your number and I’ll text it to you.”

  Lara was dazed. She was even more dazed when Kyle texted her later, wanting to actually talk. He asked about what she was doing and what she liked to do when she wasn’t in school. She attempted to be interesting, but all of her efforts seemed so flat. There was no way she could be as charismatic and charming as Michelle Fuentes.

  But when the weekend came and she arrived at the party, Kyle couldn’t seem to take his eyes off of her. While his friends got obnoxiously drunk, he just sipped a beer and talked to everyone. Mostly, he focused on Lara. He kept asking her questions about herself, trying to get to know her, and none of her answers seemed to disinterest him. At one point, when he asked what kind of music she liked, she blushed and said, “Oh, I have odd taste.”

  “Like what? Name some bands.”

  “Oh. The Shins. The Strokes. Florence and the Machine. Of Mice and Men.”

  Kyle grinned. “I love those bands! Have you heard the band Broken Bells?”

  Lara gasped. No one in her school listened to her special brand of alternative! Everyone just liked hip-hop or country, even her best friend Cassie. “I love Broken Bells. And Bon Iver.”

  The two talked music for the next hour. Kyle guided her out onto the porch so that they could have some relative privacy. People kept interrupting them to talk to Kyle, ignoring Lara as if she wasn’t even there, but after greeting people and exchanging jokes, Kyle always returned his attention to Lara. Lara felt the most conflicting mix of being special and out of place. Kyle had the strangest effect on her, and his eyes hooked her.

  Finally, Cassie came out to find Lara. She had been sitting alone on the couch for the whole hour, unable to fit in with any of the popular people at the party. “Can we leave?” she pleaded, her eyes full of distress.

  “Sure,” Lara said reluctantly. She just didn’t want to leave this amazing conversation and the glowing sensation of being Kyle’s object of interest.

  But as she told Kyle bye, she knew that this was not the end of their talk.

  Shortly after that, he took her to dinner and kissed her on her doorstep. They were inseparable after that. Around school, they were suddenly the It couple. Girls couldn’t believe Lara’s luck and she suddenly had more “friends” than she could count. She tried to fit in with Kyle’s friends, but she just couldn’t break into that group. They seemed like entirely different animals, on a different wavelength of communication than her. Michelle Fuentes and Michelle’s group of friends now hated her and stared her down in the halls, but they never touched her. Kyle made sure of that. Kyle made sure that everyone treated Lara with respect. But Lara couldn’t figure out why he hung out with the people he did, when he was so unlike them, so special. It often seemed that she knew a side of him that no one else did.

  The worst part was his mom. His mom always looked at Lara with a mixture of puzzlement and disappointment. Her smiles were always strained as she asked Lara, “Oh, you’re still dating Kyle? Well that’s nice. Don’t track mud on the carpet, please.” Sitting in their beautiful house above the country club, where everything was white and glass and perfect, Lara always felt so uncomfortable.

  She preferred his house to her own, however. She hated bringing him over to her rickety house, with the stained and torn couch and the dusty knickknacks Aunt Lynn had. Before she had started dating Kyle, she had never noticed how dingy her house was. With him at her side, Aunt Lynn’s plants suddenly seemed to wall her in, choking her with vegetative must.

  It was also awkward explaining to him the situation with her family. Her family was not unbroken like his. He knew his entire bloodline, and the names of his forefathers ten generations back; he came from an old Texas family that had always lived in the area and he had a great deal of Southern pride. Lara didn’t even know who her paternal grandparents were, and she barely knew her dad.

  Nevertheless, he was understanding. And he was so sweet to her when her dad didn’t appear at her graduation, smashing her heart into smithereens. Lara began to feel like she could tell him anything. Despite the awkwardness of trying to bond with his friends, Lara found Kyle’s presence rich and wonderful. She was never bored around him. Gradually, her fear of being boring around him thawed and she began to show him her true self. He seemed to love every bit of it. She imagined her future, and all she wanted was to be with Kyle.

  “You need to focus on college! Get your head out of the clouds. If you two make it through college, then you can think about marriage,” Aunt Lynn told her during one of their many disagreements that summer. Aunt Lynn sensed how ashamed Lara was of the house and the family and it created a lot of discord. Looking back, Lara now understood that she had been a complete jerk to her aunt and uncle. She had hidden her relationship with her dad f
rom them and she had not appreciated anything that they had given her. But she was only a teenager. All she wanted to do was lay around by the lake with Kyle, or swing in the hammock behind his house lying on his chest.

  In May, Kyle already knew that he had been accepted in several Ivy League schools. But he swore that he would go to the University of Texas in Austin, where the men in his family had a legacy. He had a full-ride scholarship for pre-law and a fraternity membership already lined up there. It came as such a horrible shock when he announced at the end of June that he had decided to go to Yale.

  Lara had been accepted at UTA, too. She was going to go for journalism. What else should she do with her life? Journalism seemed like the only vaguely appealing option, though really it didn’t appeal to her all that much. She wanted to go to art school, but there was no money to be made as an artist, she knew that much even at seventeen. She honestly didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life, but it all seemed OK just because Kyle was going to be there with her every step of the way, she thought.

  Aunt Lynn kept telling her to go for fine arts and Kyle insisted that she look at some place like the Art Institute. When she reminded them that she didn’t want to be homeless and starving at thirty, they both said that there was money in art if she really tried. “You can get a job in design. You could be a cartoonist or an animator. There’s lots of money in that,” Kyle kept telling her. But Lara just wasn’t sure at the time.

  “I want to go to UTA,” she kept telling him, until the day he said he would go to Yale. “I want to make real money, you know. Just because I’m artistic doesn’t mean that I can’t be a college student. I wish you guys would stop treating me like I can’t handle college and can only do art for a living!”

  She looked into moving to Connecticut. She really did. There was no way she could afford Yale, but maybe she could go somewhere else. Maybe she and Kyle could love together. But it just seemed impossible.

  Aunt Lynn cautioned her that moving across the country was a terrible idea. “You’re so young. Kyle is wonderful, but he’s only in college. Things may not work out. Then what will you do? I just don’t want to see you like your mom, desperate and in a bad situation.”

  Lara exploded. “You really think Kyle is like my father?” she demanded.

  “Not at all. But he’s young. Wait until he’s older and see if you two last.”

  “We won’t if he’s in Connecticut and I’m here!” Lara envisioned the American Pie movies, where college campuses crawled with hot girls in crop tops and short shorts. She knew that Kyle wasn’t a dog like that, but being that far away with that much temptation scared her. Besides, she couldn’t bear the thought of being without Kyle for four years.

  When she proposed her idea of moving to Connecticut together to Kyle, Kyle gave her a condescending smile and said, “Honey, I’m going to be living at the frat house. And my parents would never approve of us shacking up like that. Why don’t you consider a local school? You know I’ll be back to visit a lot.”

  Lara was devastated. That statement led to their very first fight. Lara kept demanding if Kyle really loved her, and Kyle wouldn’t give her a straight answer. “I can’t believe you decided to go to Yale and just leave me behind. Am I not important to you at all? You didn’t even talk to me about this. You just made up your mind. What’s wrong with UTA?”

  Kyle stared at her as if he was shocked. Then he demanded, “Do you even really care about me? I am about to do something major with my life and you’re not even happy for me. You act like this is all about you and us. Why are you trying to limit me?”

  “What? Limit you? How am I trying to do that?” Lara sobbed.

  “My mom said you would try to hold me back. Don’t prove her right, Lara.”

  At that moment, Lara began to wonder if her aunt was right. Kyle was a prize, the best thing that had ever happened to her, but she felt nothing but horrible around him. All day long, she doubted herself and felt ashamed, of her appearance, her lifestyle, her family. And she was so desperate to earn his mom’s approval, which seemed like it would never come. Now Kyle made her feel as if she were truly a horrible person, too.

  Then one day shortly after, as Lara worked on late college applications to places in Connecticut, Kyle told her, “Why don’t you go to the Art Institute? There’s one in San Antonio and one in Austin. I think you can afford it better, and I don’t think you will do well in the typical college environment.”

  Lara began to sob. “Why not? I’m just as smart as you and I can do well. I can’t believe you just said that.”

  “Look, Lara….I don’t want you to move to Connecticut just because I’m there. I want you to do what’s best for you.”

  “Being near you is what’s best for me,” she said, practically pleading with him. She sensed that he was pulling away from her emotionally, and she was suddenly terrified.

  “Look, Lara, I…I don’t think this is going in a healthy direction. I think we need to take some time apart for college. Really expand our horizons. Then maybe we can see about being together. But right now, life is pulling us in different directions and I don’t think we can be together without some major compromise that will end up hurting us both.”

  Lara shook her head. She couldn’t focus on the bad memories right before her friendly date. Tonight was a time to have fun and catch up with Kyle, not dwell on the past.

  She went back to brushing her hair, trying to get it as long and luscious as it had been when she was seventeen. She spritzed a little perfume under her chin and her underarms. Then she pulled on the dress she had bought that afternoon. She and Aunt Lynn had decided to brave the shops downtown, which weren’t too crazy in their small town despite it being Black Friday. Aunt Lynn had picked the dress out for her since she had only brought one dress and had worn it yesterday for Thanksgiving. It was a cute little cotton sundress with polka dots. It suited her well. Aunt Lynn had such good taste.

  Lara inspected herself in the mirror one last time before heading downstairs to wait for Kyle in the F150.

  She was ready.

  Chapter 7: Lakeside

  Kyle rang the doorbell. Lara was already waiting, sitting on the stairs, her gut full of butterflies. She jumped to the door as soon as she heard the ding-dong. Kyle beamed. He was wearing a nice shirt and tie. “You look lovely,” he said, handing her a rose.

  She gasped. This date was already beyond friendly.

  “By the way, you should grab a heavier coat,” he nodded at her thin sweater.

  “Oh, where are we going?” Lara asked.

  “Well, I figured that everywhere would be packed since its Black Friday. So I prepared a picnic for us on the lake.”

  Lara’s jaw dropped. The lake was a very sentimental place for them. They had spent so many afternoons there, kissing in the shade of the cottonwoods, lying in each other’s arms drifting in his rowboat. “Uh – uh, let me go get my parka.”

  Huddled in her parka, they drove out to the lake. It was already dark and the water looked black. By the light of a lantern, they laid out a blanket. Kyle began to unload some containers of food from a cooler in the back of the truck. Lara tried to help him, but he insisted that she sit down. So she sat cross-legged and stared in wonder as he laid the food out. Kyle had cooked chicken Alfredo himself. For dessert, he had bought mini chocolate cupcakes. Lara’s mouth hard as she shivered against the cold. As a last touch, he lit a candle and set it in the center of the spread, next to a bucket of ice with a large bottle of champagne.

  “This is so nice,” Lara gasped. “And champagne! Oh, I remember drinking cheap Moscato out here. That and that horrid punch we always made,” she laughed, thinking about to the many parties she had partaken in in this very spot. A little clearing near where they sat had once been where the partygoers had always put kegs. Though she had been a good girl for the most part, sometimes she and Cassie got wild out here. She had even tried a keg stand on graduation night. After just eight seconds, she coul
dn’t handle the cold beer spewing into her mouth and she quit. Everyone had jeered good-naturedly.

  “Well, this is actual champagne,” Kyle said. “I actually have wine money now.”

  Lara laughed.

  “Would you like a glass?” he asked.

  She nodded. As he filled a flute with bubbling white champagne, Lara asked, “Why are you doing all this?”

  “Well, Lara, you are very special to me. You always have been. And I’ve been trying to prove to you how much I care, despite the past.”

  Lara nodded slowly. “I don’t know…”

  “There’s no pressure for anything, Lara. But I wanted you to have a magical time.”

  “OK. I just don’t you to think anything is going to come of this?”

  “I don’t expect a thing. Really, I just want to spend time with you. And I want to see you when we get back to Seattle. I want to know you, Lara.”

  “OK,” she said hesitantly, overcome by the romance of the occasion.

  Kyle handed her a flute and raised his own for a toast. After they took a sip, he handed her a paper plate and began to put food onto it.

  “This looks so delicious,” she said. “Wow. I really didn’t expect this. I thought we would just go to some restaurant and…”

  “Would you have preferred that? We can still go somewhere, but I can’t get a nice reservation this late.”

  “No! This is really perfect. I’m just surprised, is all.”

  “Why?” he laughed. “You don’t remember how romantic I am?”

  Lara shook her head. Actually she did remember, very well. “You’re just a big lawyer now, you know, and…I didn’t expect you to do something like this. Something so real. You always were real.” She looked into his eyes without meaning to. There they were, so green, so absorbing. “That’s why you stood out to me in high school. You were popular yet you weren’t like everyone else.”

  “And that’s why you stood out to me, too,” he said.

  “Well, I was hardly popular. More like a loser.” She laughed.