Love Lost And Found: A Holiday Romance

by Ava Celeste McCullough

  “Mom, let’s stop talking about Kayla, please,” Kyle said.

  “Very well. But you talk to her every day. You can’t just pretend like you have nothing to do with her to impress Lara.”

  “You talk to her every day?” Lara demanded. She was confused. For some reason, she had just assumed that Kyle and Kayla were not on speaking terms. The idea that they still had some sort of closeness made her jealous and made her wonder how over each other they really were.

  When they had finished their salad, bread, and pot roast courses, Mrs. Brennan brought out a French apple pie. Lara wondered if it was store-bought or if Mrs. Brennan really was able to make the latticework over the filling so perfectly. At the first taste, she knew that it was store-bought, just like the turkey Mrs. Brennan bought for her Thanksgiving dinners.

  Suddenly, Lara laughed out loud. “Sorry, I have a funny thought,” she muttered when everyone looked at her with their eyebrows raised. But she was overcome with happiness to know that in many ways, her home really was better than this home. She had never seen that as a kid. Kyle was right, there was no need for her to be so jealous of him.

  As for Kayla, she did not know what to think. But she knew that Mrs. Brennan was being horribly rude.

  “So is there good money in graphic design?” Mr. Brennan said.

  “Somewhat. I get by,” Lara replied. She knew that she was doing well when two years ago, she was able to survive without a roommate. She had had roommates for years, but after her last one moved out, she found that paying all the bills each month was not a hardship for her.

  “I admire a woman who works,” Mr. Brennan went on, raising a glass of wine to his lips.

  Mrs. Brennan smirked again. “I suppose that is the way for poor millennials.”

  “I have to admit that I admire it too,” Kyle said. “Lara is the type who will work because she wants to, not because she has to. She isn’t some leech.”

  “I suppose you are a feminist, too?” Mrs. Brennan said accusingly.

  “I have to say that I am,” Lara said. It was hard for her to look Mrs. Brennan in her steely eyes, but she did. Mrs. Brennan held her gaze for a minute, before finally dropping her eyes to her wine glass as she set it down.

  Lara felt slightly triumphant.

  “I suppose that’s the thing now. I can’t say I disagree with it, though. You ladies deserve your rights too,” Mr. Brennan said. “I pay my girls the same as my boys at the country club. No wage gap here.”

  “That’s nice. Well, a lot of people think that feminism means that we support only women and hate men. That’s simply not true. I am for the equality of the genders, not the superiority of either gender.”

  “That’s my girl,” Mr. Brennan nodded approvingly.

  “Women and men have their places,” Mrs. Brennan spoke up. “But no one seems to understand that anymore. That’s why everything is so confused. You don’t know if a man wants to be with you because he is your equal and he might just want to be friends. It is a real mess, what you youth have gotten yourselves into.”

  Lara opened her mouth to defend herself, but then she realized that perhaps there was some truth to what Mrs. Brennan had just said. Dating really was confusing, and lacked the simplicity that it seemed to have for generations like her Aunt Lynn’s.

  But Kyle was quick to say, “It has always been a real mess, Mom. People throughout the centuries have written poetry about what a mess love is. Our generation is not unique.”

  Lara just loved Kyle.

  When dinner finally concluded, Kyle offered to drive Lara home. He knew that there was no point staying any longer. Again, Lara realized how much she loved him. His sensitivity and delicacy were rare qualities in men and she admired them in him.

  As she started to step out the door, Mrs. Brennan called good-bye without much feeling. Something overcame Lara. She had to put an end to this awkward relationship now. “Mrs. Brennan? May I talk to you for a moment, please?” she asked.

  Kyle looked confused. “Lara…?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be right back.” Lara boldly pecked his lips, then led Mrs. Brennan back into the dining room, where the dinner candles were still burning.

  “Mrs. Brennan. I just felt like I needed to say this to you, before I fly back to Seattle tomorrow. I know that you don’t like me. I can sense that you don’t think I’m good for your son. But I just want you to know that I care very deeply about Kyle. I always have, since we first laid eyes on each other in high school. And I understand that you care about Kyle more than anything and you want him to do well in life. But I promise that I will take care of him and his heart. I will do everything I can to keep him happy.”

  Mrs. Brennan visibly softened. Probably she had never been spoken to so directly before. She certainly didn’t expect such a bold, direct speech from Lara. “Lara,” she sighed. “That is very sweet. And I do appreciate how much you care for my son. But I do not feel that you are right for him. Kayla is the perfect woman for him. She had the proper upbringing, she went to private school and Yale, and she knows how to act in society. Kyle…he leads a very important social life, Lara, and he needs a woman who knows how to conduct herself at galas and events. He needs someone with style and fashion sense, someone with taste.”

  Lara was aghast. “I don’t have fashion sense or taste? I’m a graphic designer. I know how colors….”

  “You know what I mean,” Mrs. Brennan snapped. Then she softened again. “I am sure that this is hard on you. It really is not your fault, it’s Kyle’s. He made a foolish decision but I think he just does not know how to deal with his problems with Kayla. But all marriages have their problems. That does not mean that divorce is necessary. I am sure that Kyle and Kayla will work things out. I just don’t want to see you caught in the middle of it with your heart broken. You are a very sweet girl, and I think you could make a man who is more suited for you very happy.”

  Lara had trouble speaking. Tears stung her eyes and the back of her nose. “Thank – thank you,” she finally said. Then she walked away, hating herself. Mrs. Brennan always held such power over her, like a vise grip on her throat. It shamed her that when she thought she was standing up to Mrs. Brennan’s rich snootiness, she was really just setting herself up to be torn down.

  She didn’t say much to Kyle on the drive home. She kept thinking about his mom’s words, how they hurt. What if his mom was right? No, she had no clue how to conduct herself at a gala. She had never been to a gala in her life. And what about his friends? In Seattle, he surely had other snooty rich lawyer friends, like that idiot Benjamin. There was no way she could fit in and make a good impression.

  But there had to be a way to make it work. If they loved each other, they could survive anything. After all, they had already survived quite a bit. It seemed like at last their lives were in line for them to be together. Lifestyle probably would not change that, if it was meant to be.

  Kyle was just so sweet. There was no way he would dump her for failing some sort of social image that he needed. He knew what he was doing, dating her. He knew that she was not like Kayla yet he still seemed to really love her.

  But what if she was just a rebound, like his mom said? He wasn’t even divorced yet! And he had not told her that fact.

  Lara was so ready to get to bed. When Kyle wanted to kiss for a while, she just told him that she was exhausted.

  “Are you sure? Is something else wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing is wrong. I’m fine. Just tired.” She smiled.

  “What did you and my mom talk about?”

  Lara sighed. “I just tried to make peace with her after all of her comments about Kayla and how I’m not good enough.”

  Kyle groaned. “And how did that go?”

  “Horribly.”

  “I figured as much. Don’t worry about it, Lara. We are adults and if she doesn’t like us being together, that is her problem. She is just going to have to get used to it.”

  “Well, she sur
e seems to like Kayla.”

  “Trust me, she isn’t that nice to Kayla, either. She just approves of Kayla.”

  “Because Kayla went to Yale and came from a rich family and all that,” Lara nodded.

  “Well, yeah, I guess so. But none of that really matters. Lara? Come here. I want a kiss.”

  Lara smiled and pecked him on the cheek. But her heart was not in it. “I really need to go lie down. Night, Kyle.”

  Chapter 1o: Sunday

  Lara woke up Sunday. As she stared at the familiar ceiling of her childhood, she realize that she would be leaving at six, in about eleven hours. The thought of going back to Seattle made her sad.

  It wasn’t that she hated her life in Seattle. She had worked hard over the past eight years to build a good life, the kind that she could be proud of. She loved her little studio apartment in an eclectic neighborhood, and her job, and her co-workers. She loved the little Zoot Suit Café, where she went almost daily to sip on a decadent caramel espresso macchiato while surrounded by her own elaborate watercolor flower paintings. Gary, the barista, was the classic sassy gay friend, always offering wry commentary on her dating life and giving her a sense of humor about her life. When it wasn’t busy, she and Gary could talk for hours about how horrible men were. He could commiserate more than the average woman; he went through bad date after bad date, just like Lara.

  Sketching in the park on clear days, or under an umbrella dug into the earth on drizzly days, also made her happy. She loved watching the bikers stream by and the row teams toil on the lake, their sleek muscles rippling under their vinyl suits and determination in her eyes. While she tried her best to sketch them, it was always hard for her to capture the racehorse motion of their bodies. They looked too flat, too stationary, in her drawings. She relished the idea of working on that.

  Usually, though, her life was all work. She had nothing else but her job. She always brought her work home with her. If there was nothing to do for Avery, then she picked up freelance design projects online. She filled the empty void in her heart by staying busy and immersing herself in creating designs. Fighting with Illustrator and other software and figuring out exactly what kind of logo expressed a company’s true personality kept her mind preoccupied so that she could not drown in her sorrow. Really, her life in Seattle was very lonely. Having no family nearby was very hard on her.

  She would miss Texas so much. She always missed her family so fiercely when she left. Seattle was a lonely place without Aunt Lynn and Uncle Joey and her other family members in it. The distance often made her heart ache, especially when she returned from Thanksgiving. But usually, she never missed Texas. There was a reason that she had moved out of the state. Now she had the sense that her growing nostalgia would follow her home and she would miss the peace of her small town and the bright stars in the sky.

  The idea that a new life with Kyle awaited her in Seattle, however, made her both happy and nervous. Maybe she wouldn’t be so lonely and empty anymore. She couldn’t wait to see Kyle in the setting of a new city, in his suits, in his true environment. Here he was like a more grown version of his high school self, but in Seattle she would get to see how he really was. While the idea of dating him in Seattle thrilled her, it also scared her. Would she like him once they were there? Would he still be the wonderful, tender romantic who devoted so much time to her? What if they had the same problems that he had with Kayla, where he was too busy to be with her?

  She tried to imagine how she would have to rearrange her life to have a boyfriend in it. She would have to start cooking, instead of just stuffing her face with pho and drinking wine from the bottle while tackling design projects on her laptop late into the night, Drew Barrymore romcoms playing on her little TV. She would also have to get a bigger bed. Her current one barely comfortably fit her. But the idea of snuggling against Kyle’s chest and waking up to see his green eyes open made her feel warm inside. She wanted to be held by him so badly, but how could she?

  The fact that he was still married to Kayla had put a major damper on her excitement to be with him again. There was the whole drama of the divorce for them to get through before they could be together. She didn’t even feel right about sleeping with him, when he still had a wife. She felt like he had deceived her a little bit. Why couldn’t he have been more forthcoming? Was there something he was trying to hide? Like maybe the possibility of a reconciliation?

  When she thought about them kissing beside the lake with the black water rippling next to them and the whip-poor-wills crying in the trees above, the sense of romance was soured by the knowledge that his divorce wasn’t even filed yet. Wasn’t he just a little dishonest when he said, “Oh, it’s final?” That flippant dismissal of her questions about his divorce and then the things she had learned from his mom made her a little angry.

  Then a horrible idea occurred to her. Why did his mom say, “I am sure that you two can work things out when you get back to Seattle"? I do hope you work things out, anyway. Don’t let…other things distract you from what is important” and “I don’t want you to be in the middle of it with your heart broken”? Was she implying that there was a chance that Kyle and Kayla may work things out? Kyle seemed so adamant that they were through, yet he had been evasive about the whole topic of actually being divorced from her. Was he being dishonest about anything else? The fact that Kayla and Kyle talked every day made her especially nervous.

  Lara’s mood suddenly turned dark as she grabbed her phone. “We need to talk. And I think we should before I leave today since I won’t see you for a few more days,” she texted Kyle.

  “What do you want to talk about?” he asked.

  “I need to talk to you in person,” she replied.

  “OK,” was all he wrote back.

  “Lara!” Aunt Lynn called up the stairs. “We don’t want to be late for church!”

  Church was on thing that Lara had neglected while living on her own in Seattle. She only went on Easter and Christmas and when she visited home. Uncle Joey was equally lax about attending, only going along because Aunt Lynn was so adamant about it. Aunt Lynn went every Sunday, and she even had a personalized Bible with her name embossed in gold on the cover that she carried in a special pink clutch along with cash for tithes. She was very generous about tithing, even factoring it into the monthly budget. Even though now they were retired and Uncle Joey only made a little income each month from odd jobs like cutting firewood, she made sure that they always had money to benefit their church.

  As a teen Lara had hated church. It was always so boring. But now she found church a special time, when she could clear her mind and purify her heart for the Lord. She decided it was time to shake off her insecurities and get dressed to go. “Come to Sunday dinner after church and we’ll talk. My flight leaves at six,” she texted Kyle.

  The little Lutheran church still smelled like musty old paper and lemon furniture polish. The velvet backs of the pews were still dusty and little plumes rose around Lara’s legs when she sat down. Lara felt like a kid again as she squeezed between her aunt and uncle and took a Bible out of the shelf in back of the pew in front of her. So many boring afternoons had been spent here, just wishing she could get out and go run and play with her friends. How could she bear it? Adulthood was strange that way.

  “Today we are here to talk about the sanctity of family,” the pastor began. “We just had Thanksgiving dinner, and I’m sure we have a few weeks of turkey left in our refrigerators.”

  A ripple of polite laughter coursed through the church.

  “But none of us should forget what Thanksgiving is truly about. It is about giving Thanks. To our families. To our loved ones. The people that you love don’t have to be blood relatives. If you took a vow to your husband or your wife, then that’s family too. So are your in-laws. They are just the baggage that you take on when you get married.”

  Again everyone laughed politely. But Lara started to feel her dark mood creep back. Vows. Kyle seemed so perfect, yet
he was violating his vows to Kayla. Who cares if she had her own boyfriend now?

  After the service, everyone gathered in the dank church basement to have Sunday dinner. It was a post-Thanksgiving potluck that the church ladies had been doing for years. They all brought leftovers from their own Thanksgiving dinners to share with everyone else, as well as dishes that they made especially for the occasion. Lara always left the place in as much stomach pain as after she ate Thanksgiving dinner. Aunt Lynn brought her special grits casserole and her second pumpkin pie. This pie was even spicier than the first and made Lara’s mouth water.

  One rule of the dinner was that everyone had to say what they were thankful for. When it came to Lara’s turn, she stated how grateful she was for her family and her job. Beyond that, what did she have? She wanted to say how grateful she was to Kyle, but somehow it seemed wrong in this church atmosphere, when Kyle was still married. That fact had truly ruined everything for Lara, she felt.

  Lara didn’t feel like packing and definitely not like flying home when she got back to Aunt Lynn and Uncle Joey’s. Her tummy was so full that it poked through her sweater like her uncle’s beer gut. She ignored her pain and started to pack, however, knowing how soon she would have to leave for Austin.

  Kyle knocked on her bedroom door as Lara was in the middle of packing. It was around two and the sunshine that streamed through her window seemed wan. Everything seemed as faint and sad as she felt.

  Even Kyle looked like a faded version of his usual self. He seemed somewhat defeated. His hair did not have as much volume as usual and it looked like he had not styled it at all. His eyes were full of sadness and his shoulders drooped.

  “What’s wrong?” Lara asked, startled to see him so down. Never in her life had she seen him look this way, except the day that they broke up and she began to yell at him about how he was a stuck-up snob.

  “Nothing. I’m just so glad to see you.”

  Lara swallowed. “It’s nice to see you too. This isn’t good-bye. Well, it is, but just for a few days, right?”