Once Forbidden, Twice Shy

by Carrie Aarons

This is the boy who had been my childhood crush, my teenage dream, and my adult fantasy. One that had actually come true until he shattered me into a million pieces.

Jack stares at me, unblinking, those mesmerizing hazel eyes he possesses haunting my present as they’ve always haunted my past. When he wasn’t looking at me, which was typically all the time because what would interest him about his best friend’s little sister, I used to study his irises. An emerald flecked with gold, the color of a sunset, swirled together to make the most attractive twist. He looks grown up since I last saw him, which is ironically about four years ago to this day, if I think about it. Except thinking about that night makes me burn with shame, rejection, and fury. How the fuck could I be this stupid? How the hell could I have not double-checked this? Probably because I hadn’t asked Kit, my older brother, about his best friend since the night he left me under the cover of darkness. Probably because I locked down any memory, remembrance, or wistful thought about him.

The night of my college graduation party, he found me in my room and confessed that kissing me on the night of my high school graduation party had been the best and worst decision of his entire life. Because he hadn’t stopped thinking about me since because I was his best friend’s sister. Because for four years, he compared every other girl to me, just like he had when he was still in high school and couldn’t shake his feelings for me. Even though I’d been heartbroken at eighteen after he hadn’t called or followed up in any way after that kiss, I let him kiss me again. I was twenty-two, older and much wiser when it came to boys. Didn’t mean I also hadn’t compared every guy I dated or hooked up with in college to Jack because, of course, I did. I’d been doing it almost my entire life. I let him kiss me, strip off my clothes, and lay me down on the bed. I let him make love to me in the sweetest, sexiest, most intimate way a man ever had. That was the moment, or so I thought, that he’d fall in love with me despite the risk of pissing off his best friend.

That he’d fall in love with me the way I’d always been desperately in love with him. A week later, after seven days of no calls or texts and zero communication, I heard from my brother that Jack had taken a job in Sweden a month prior and finally packed up to move across the world. To say that my heart was obliterated would be an understatement. But I shut it down, became a shell of myself, and convinced my brain that I’d moved on. Until this very moment.

Yet here he is, the very symbol of how unwanted I am. This city suddenly isn’t a clean slate for me; it’s a chalkboard marked up with years of history, rejection, and unworthiness that no matter how hard you try to scrub away with an eraser, a thin film of dust would always remain, reminding you.

There is no way in hell that I can do my job effectively when I have to sit ten feet from the one girl who has always scrambled my brain.

Taylor, my best friend, Kit’s, little sister. Taylor, the girl I called Cookie since the night I found her eating them in her kitchen when I slept over Kit’s house in elementary school. Taylor, the girl I’ve been secretly in love with since I was about seventeen and could never do a thing about. Until the night of her college graduation party. The night I royally fucked everything up.

Taylor always knew too much. I could see it behind her eyes, even when we were little, yet she never spoke about it. That’s what I always remember about her; she’s too smart for her own good, but she keeps a secret like a vault. It’s probably why her brother never sucker punched me to the jaw, because she never told him what I did.

Her face is somehow more angular, like she lost weight and hasn’t been looking after herself. Taylor is the most beautiful woman in the world to me, but she always had curves and cheeks that made her sweet. Right now, even though she looks stunning, I can tell there is a sharpness about her that has never been there. Although, I guess I didn’t know her anymore. I still know the dips of her body though, and in those black and white pants that hug her hips and the soft cream-colored sweater that molds to her breasts, my hands itch to touch her. The one and only time I got to taste heaven, I memorized her body, and traced every inch of it. Taylor Arnold is my nirvana.

I know she prefers mint desserts over almost any other, that her favorite movie is About Time, that she hates slow walkers and loves sitting by the ocean almost any time of day. The information I know about Taylor Arnold hits me like a tidal wave as I am supposed to be learning about the company I moved countries for, and yet I can’t stop it.

Plus, me being her boss is just weird … because it is. But add in the fact that we slept with each other, then I ghosted her, which probably broke her heart and is the reason she’s now glaring daggers at me? Yeah, I’d say those are pretty imperative reasons to talk. But I’ve been in love with her for nearly ten years.

“You may not want to have this conversation, but this job opportunity is one I moved my life for. I’m here, I’m ready for the challenge, and I’m not going to tiptoe because we have history.” “As if I didn’t move my life to work here as well?” Her sassy question ignites something in me. The throb of longing and missing her comes back full force. I thought I’d dulled it over the years, but it has always been burning in the center of my chest, a five-alarm fire I’ve been ignoring until the smoke chokes me from the inside out.

“I earned this job, and I’m going to be damn great at it. I’m not going anywhere. No one needs to know how I know you. You’re my boss, I’ve worked with people I communicated with less. So, to you, I am no one. That should be a pretty easy rule for you to follow, considering you’re the one who created it.”

Even after he broke my heart into a million fucking pieces, I can’t look in his direction without butterflies filling my belly.

In another timeline, one where he hadn’t slept with me and then taken off, never to be heard from again, working with Jack would have been a dream.

there have been the occasional comments from my family about a childhood crush on Jack, but none of them really know the severity. If my father knew that Jack and I had done the dirty in my childhood bedroom or that we had a few close-call run-ins in the hallway when I was younger and he slept over with Kit … well, let’s just say Jack would fear moving back to the United States. Not to mention what Kit would say or do. No, keeping my family in the dark about the entire heartbreak saga is for the best.

It’s not that Taylor didn’t have her own friends growing up, but they always seemed like people who wouldn’t be in her life for long, and she knew it. She’s the rare person who seems to be able to be perfectly happy without a ton of friends. I have always admired her ability to feel secure without the approval or input from others. Unlike me, who is the quintessential people pleaser. I guess that’s what happens when you spend your early formative years trying to impress and gain the love of two people who never gave you the time of day. It’s not that I had a bad childhood, or that my parents were abusive or anything very traumatic. It’s just … we all have shit from our parents. Mine just happen to be two divorced brain surgeons who probably never should have gotten married in the first place. They passionately loved their work more than they did each other and had no time to dedicate to a child.

It left me with all the usual things fucked-up parenting situations do; a deep sense that I’m unlovable, a hatred toward how my parents neglected me, and the desperate urge for everyone I come in contact with to like me and want to keep me around. But I at least can acknowledge it. The only thing it’s done is to make me a workaholic, just like the parents I barely keep in touch with. Oh, and it’s made me unable to fall in love with any girl or woman for fear that I’ll do to her exactly what they did to each other.

Couple that with the news I’d gotten just days before Taylor’s college graduation, and it was the perfect cyclone of commitment-phobe disaster. No biggie, though. Except, if I’m being brutally honest? That isn’t the reason I haven’t found anyone to settle down with. All my high school and college friends are getting wifed up, putting rings on their girls’ fingers, and walking down the aisle … I can imagine all of it. I can imagine getting down on one knee, moving a couch up steep apartment stairs, and trying to plan our first dance song. I can imagine all those things with her.

Taylor Arnold is the only girl I’ve ever loved. I fell fast and hard the day I turned around at sixteen and she was standing in our high school cafeteria, looking like a completely different person. We’ve known each other since I was six and she was four. But until that moment—and I’ve memorized it down to the second—I never understood what love truly was. It hit me like a ton of bricks as I was sitting on top of a table goofing around with my buddies, including her brother. All of a sudden,...

Taylor is staring at me, everything we’ve left unsaid in her hypnotizing whiskey eyes. Her tongue darts out to wet her bottom lip, and I know it’s her tell when she’s anxious. Just like she knows I’m sorry when I bite the inside of my cheek, which I do now.

There is so much to figure out between us, and I’m not even sure it’s worth it to try. Because at the end of the day, I can’t be the man she wants me to be. Physically, it will never be possible.

“Why don’t you just pretend you never saw this? You’re good at that, pretending and forgetting, right?” I go for the jugular, my embarrassment loosening my tongue to speak on topics I swore I’d always bury when it came to him. Jack’s lips purse and I think I’ve left a mark. “Just like you pretended not to know me the other day?” Apparently, he’s not holding his punches either. He’s talking about in front of our team. “Oh, would you like for me to detail all the ways we know each other to these literal strangers? I was simply saving you, boss. Because if you’d like to play it differently, I’m not sure how highly they’d think of you. But if you want that, be my guest.”

“I never forgot.” The words are so quiet, but he’s looking straight at me, and I don’t mistake them. “Don’t,” I warn him. “You’re the one who brought it up.” He raises an eyebrow, still keeping that intense stare on me. “I never, not for one day, forgot.” My heart, what’s left of it anyway, cracks, and the sound echoes through my chest cavity. “Is that supposed to make me feel better? Because I’ll tell you, it’s doing the exact opposite.” “I may have pretended, I may have fooled myself, but I never forgot.” He shakes his head, those brown locks dusting his shoulders as he does so.

“I don’t want to know that you thought about me. I don’t want the excuses. All I want is for you to leave me alone. We’re trapped in this impossible situation, and all I want is to do the job I came here for. I don’t want to mend fences, I don’t want to laugh about childhood memories or make Instagram slideshows of our travels as old pals in London. I don’t want a second chance at what we could have been, because if you haven’t forgotten then you have to remember what you said to me. How you promised me everything I’d ever wanted. Did you also not forget how you left without a word? How you claimed to love me and only me for years? Or how my texts and calls wouldn’t send because you got a new number once you left? One I couldn’t even ask my brother for because we lied about it all, to everyone. I never forgot those things, Jack. I didn’t forget the days and weeks and months I spent crying over you because of what you’d done. So do me a favor and forget. Pretend. Do whatever you have to so that I never have to talk about this, and very sparingly will I have to talk to you.” “Taylor …” That gorgeous face is sheer horror, lines of heartbreak bracketing his mouth. I can’t care, I tell my heart. I can’t care what he was going to say, what excuses he would make. Of course, I want to fucking know them, but what the hell would it change?

“Do your fucking best.” The words are quiet, almost like they’re an afterthought. My head whips in his direction, confusion narrowing my eyes. “What?” Jack points down at the table, my coloring book still open to the page I started. Anger licks up my spine. “Yeah, exactly. Do your fucking best to never bring this up again, or act like we can be great pals after time apart.”

“Words mean nothing to you now, I get that. If I know you even a little, I have zero shot at redeeming myself. But for what it’s worth, I’m so fucking sorry. No more explanation, you don’t want it. But I am sorry.” With that, he and his tray vacate my little corner. It’s hard not to inquire. I think I taste blood the way I’m biting my cheek to keep from screaming why in a desperate, angsty fashion.

“I don’t know; I barely believe in love and those two do have an undeniable spark.” Taylor smiles, and it’s the first genuine one I’ve seen on her since we started at Homeboty. Wait a minute, she doesn’t believe in love? Guilt wracks my bones because that lack of faith is definitely because of me. Her words from the cafeteria the other morning have been echoing between my ears ever since. She shot all my faults and mistakes back at me, and they were dripping with venom, too.

It’s clear as day how much animosity she still holds after all these years, and I can’t blame her. I left with no notice, no way for her to contact me. I lied to her brother about how I felt about her, and I took the coward’s way out. Taylor is completely justified in calling me on all of that bullshit. But I hate hearing how guarded she is now, even if it’s just her making jokes about a dating show. The thought fills me with shame and anger toward myself.

Taylor’s words are still fresh on my heart, like she carved them with a dull knife, and I kick myself for the millionth time since I got on a plane to Sweden four years ago. I should have at least told her, even though I knew my confession would end any chance for us. But now she just assumes I’m an asshole who didn’t want her, when it’s the exact opposite. Why the fuck would the universe play the cruel trick of having us move halfway across the world only to have to interact with each other every day?

Except as I get into bed, my mind replays the conversations of the week and what I could have done differently. Taylor thoroughly dressing me down in the cafeteria. Her flippant comment that she doesn’t believe in love. And then Sally telling the group that she said she doesn’t date. I should put it out of my mind. I shouldn’t care or have the audacity to wonder about Taylor anymore. I lost that right when I walked out on her. Except … I haven’t spent a day of the last two decades not thinking about Taylor in some sense. Now she’s right here, as if fate put her in front of me. Is it a challenge? Is it a way to finally make things right? Or is it a reckoning coming for me?

I want to be there for Taylor. I’m worried about her. She’s hurt in a country where she doesn’t know the protocols or customs for medical treatment. I want to hold her, make sure she’s okay. The pace of my heart right now is frantic to know that she’s not in pain or worried out of her mind.

“You shouldn’t have come.” “I couldn’t exactly tell your brother that I wouldn’t come check on you,” he grumbles. “Why? Because then you’d have to tell him the reason we don’t speak anymore? ‘Yeah, sorry, bro, I fucked your sister and then ghosted her for four years, so I think going to see her at the hospital is out of the question.’ You’re right, that probably would have gotten your best man status revoked.” “You think I ghosted you, cookie?” He looks like I’ve just relayed brand-new information he never considered. The use of my nickname does twisty things to my stomach. I laugh, a sarcastic, bitter sound vibrating in my throat. “Jack, are you kidding? You literally promised me the world, told me you’d been in love with me since we were kids, were inside of me. The next day, I woke up, and you were gone. Then it was Kit who informed me that you moved across the world six days after that. What exactly would you call that?”

“I called.” He drops these two words as if they’re not an atomic bomb to the organ in my chest. When I do nothing but cross my arms over my heart, protecting it, he throws his arms out. “I called! I swear. The night before I left for Stockholm, I called. The house line because your cell kept going straight to voicemail. I wasn’t going to. That sounds horrible but if you knew why … fuck, it doesn’t matter anymore. But I called. Your dad picked up, said he’d give you the message.”

“You can’t come in,” I say, trying to keep my tone neutral even though my panic is rising. This is Jack here, not a stranger. Aside from the emotions he can inflict, he would never hurt me. Not in the way I fear. “Taylor, you’re hurt; I want to make sure you get situated. If you need to reach anything or need help, I want to make sure you can do it. Then I’ll leave.” I’m at my door now, keys poised at the ready to stab as if I haven’t known this man my whole life. “You can’t come in.” My voice shakes. Jack rolls his eyes, but in front of me, I see no one but a dark, hooded figure here to finish a job. “Can you open your door now and stop being so—” “YOU CAN’T COME IN! DO NOT COME IN TO MY SPACE!” I scream, my throat already feeling the burn that will stay there after this outburst.

Jack stumbles back a step or two, stunned at my freak-out. His mouth gapes open, and he tries to talk once and then twice, without success. I watch as his eyes turn from shock to confusion to realization and then to flinty, hazel stones filled with fury. “What. The. Fuck. Happened to you?” His words are clipped like he can’t even growl them past his throat. And in seconds, he’s on me, invading the space I just told him not to come into. A tear slides down my cheek, but my skin feels numb, and I don’t fight it when he gently grabs my upper arms to keep me steady. “Taylor. What happened? Who the fuck did this to you?” I haven’t said anything about the attack to anyone, but I should have suspected that Jack would read my brain better than any other person.

I grab his jaw with as much force as my non-injured hand can manage, rise up on my toes, and crush my mouth to his. There is nothing hesitant or weak about the kiss I’m laying on him, and it gives me back some of the power the fear stole from me just seconds ago. The familiar ache, the sense of completeness, the absolute panty-dropping lust … those are there, too. And it’s not like Jack and I have kissed many times, but it’s always been like this when we have. Like coming home to exactly where I belong.

This kiss may have started as a way to smother the questions he had, but it’s quickly morphing into something I can’t stop as easily as I thought I could. So when he moves those skilled, perfect lips to my neck, I silently reach behind me and attempt to stick my keys in the lock. They connect on the third try, and I swivel my wrist, swinging it open. Jack seems dazed as I step back and away from him. I stare for the one second I’ll allow myself. Those mocha curls rumpled by my fingers, knowing I’ll never have this again for the rest of my life. I can’t allow it. It broke me too badly last time.

No one can find out what happened in New York. Most of all Jack, the one man who would swear to avenge me and then break my heart in the same breath.

I’m not giving up, though, because this is serious. Deadly. I saw her face when she screamed bloody murder at me. Saw the way her entire body froze like a deer in headlights, about to come colliding with a vicious smack of danger. Something happened. Something bad happened to her, and I’m not going to let up until she tells me. Or until I can put whoever made that look appear on her face six feet under.

Another thing I haven’t been able to remove from my mind in the last five days? How it felt to kiss her. Like an earthquake swallowed me whole. Like the sky was crashing down on our heads, but desperation and lust won over saving ourselves. Like nothing in this life will ever feel as perfect and good as my lips on hers did. I’ve loved her from afar, yearning for the one person I couldn’t allow myself to have, since I was a kid. In some form or another, I’ve known she’s always the girl I’ll be in love with. Part of me sparked this kernel of hope the moment that she kissed me; maybe this is finally our window. But, unfortunately, it has always been wrong place, wrong time, one of us holding ourselves back or being frightened by the possible fallout.

In another life, this could have been our shot at trying to be together without anything else getting in our way. That is until I realized she only kissed me as an escape plan. That tender moment was nothing more than a red herring, and I’d fallen hook, line, and sinker.

I tap my glass to Taylor’s, who doesn’t maintain eye contact as we take our first sip. “That’s seven years of bad sex.” I chuckle. “Excuse me?” Taylor chokes on her second sip. “If you break eye contact during a cheers, they say you’re cursed with seven years of bad sex.” Of course, that only makes me think of our world-shattering sex. It’s been four years, and no one has compared to her.

“Taylor, I … there are a lot of things I did wrong when it came to you. I’m sorry will never cover it. But right now, I need to know that you’re okay. What happened the other night was intense, and don’t you dare lie to me and say nothing happened to you. Because I know you too well.” It’s a sensitive subject to bring up anywhere, much less in this London Eye pod, but at least here she can’t escape again. “I’m not talking about this. Especially to you. What gives you the right, Jack?” Her drink disappears too quickly, and she flags the bartender down again to get another. “I don’t have the right, I know I don’t. But the fear I saw in your eyes … who hurt you? What happened?” A darkness comes over her features. “You’re right, you don’t. So drop it.” “Does your family know?” If Kit had called me about her being in the hospital and didn’t mention this, I’d kill him.

I’m here, trying to pry information out of a woman who is right; I owe her the world. I owe her a secret kept since she always kept the one I never explicitly told her not to disclose. Taylor hid us because she knew I would never publicly claim her. The guilt that always drowns my heart when it comes to her surges once more, wrapping its hands around the organ in my chest’s neck.

“This beer tastes like that brewery your dad would always go to around Easter.” “You got to taste one of the batches? Lucky. He still hasn’t let me try any.” I pout. “I think the year Kit and I turned twenty-one, he sat us down and let us have our first drink as men.” Jack chuckles at the memory. “I love your dad, but your parents were always a little naive. Imagine if I told him about Kit doing keg stands on the roof of our freshman year dorm.”

So many moments over our lifetime that have been solely ours, that made us … us. And none of them amounted to anything, yet they amounted to everything.

“Remember that time you came to visit Kit and me sophomore year of college, and we all snuck into a bar?” I snort. “Excuse me, we didn’t sneak into a bar. I used my fake and got you two in because the bouncer was flirting with me.” “I wanted to punch that guy in the nuts,” he grumbles.

“Ignoring you was so fucking hard, cookie. Do you know that I remember the exact outfit you wore on your first day of high school? It’s burned into my brain, because it was the first time I knew for damn sure that no other girl would get under my skin the way you did. For years, I ignored every flip of your hair, every sway of your hips. I ignored the fuckboy idiots at our high school who tried to get you to go out with them. I ignored the pull to sneak into your room every time I slept over because of your brother. Christmases, birthdays, summer vacations … it was so fucking hard not to get you alone and finally admit everything I’d been feeling for you. And then came that night, and you looked so happy and perfect. It had been more than a year since I’d seen you, and I just couldn’t help myself. I shouldn’t have, not after … Taylor, there are things you don’t know that would change how you see me. But trust me, ignoring you has been death by a thousand, silent cuts.” Well, fuck my weak, pathetic heart. The heart that has belonged to him since Kit brought him home for their first playdate after first grade. “You shouldn’t say things like that to me. I told you not to.”

“I miss American Oreos so much, they’re just not the same.” “Oh, do you like them?” I bite my tongue to stop the sly smirk that wants to appear. Of course she does. We both know I know that. It’s the reason I call her cookies. “They’re my favorite.” She ducks her head and goes back to work, but I don’t miss the way her cheeks hold a blush.