21. Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

The flip side of having been given a whole night off to indulge herself was that by Saturday night, Lara’s home was filled with the shrieks of two slightly overwrought pre-teen girls, who were now on their second consecutive night of sleepovers. Sadie was out with a Gabrielli sibling of her own and Lara was extremely sleep deprived.

“Girls!” She finally intervened when what had started out as karaoke in front of the TV had devolved into a straight up screaming competition. “Let’s start to unwind can we? Come on, pick a movie, I’ll make some popcorn.”

Once they were settled, Lara slipped out into the still warmth of the night, making sure she was fully covered against the threat of mosquitoes. She took a glass of well-earned wine and sat on the deck with her back to the wall of her house and finally, just breathed.

Ollie had left that morning. Lara hadn’t been experienced in the etiquette of one night stands with hot, female, ex-classmates, in your own home. She wondered if she should have done something cute, like made her pancakes. Ollie had seemed more than content with the coffee she’d brought her, then helped herself to a bowl of cereal - for energy , her eyes had glinted - before pulling Lara back down in the sheets with her until Lara could no longer remember her own name. Ollie had kissed her goodbye at the front door, Lara wearing nothing but a pair of underwear and a dazed smile, Ollie groaning as she let her hands roam, before finally slipping out the door.

It was only after she’d left, Lara drifting hazily through her morning, showering and changing the sheets they’d comprehensively ruined together, slowly trying to rebuild herself into someone’s mother and not a wanton sexpot, that Lara realised all the things they’d left unsaid.

Was this a one time thing? She suspected strongly that it wasn’t, not with how comprehensively Ollie had pursued her, nor with the heat of her goodbye kiss. She felt sure that neither one of them wanted to let it go after just one night. So, what then? Like… a fling? Lara thought of a whole series of nights like the one she’d just had and found she could absolutely get behind that idea. Ollie Gabrielli, hers for a couple of months, stolen moments with those elegant and extremely skilled fingers, her hot mouth and long lovely body, her warm arms.

She grinned up at the stars as she imagined herself and Sadie striking a regular babysitting deal with each other in order to accommodate their newfound Gabrielli requirements. She found herself hoping Sadie’s date was going extremely well, though she was equally sure no one on this entire planet was having sex as hot as what had happened in her own bedroom last night.

She let herself do what she’d been longing to do all day, which was take a quiet moment and let her mind drift over the highlights, her teeth sinking into her lower lip. She thought of Ollie losing herself against her mouth, of Ollie’s hands gripping intimately to Lara’s ass while Lara rode her face, of the long tease she’d put Ollie through, trying to maintain a conversation while Lara slowly stroked her with her fingers, head propped up on her hand watching Ollie struggle not to lose it, her chest flushing, her lips parting, her breath getting short before she dissolved into shaky pleasure right before her eyes.

Lara was thirty-five years old when she learned for the first time that sex could feel like this. For all the slurs that had been cast at her - slut, whore, home wrecker, husband-stealer, man-eater - she felt deeply inexperienced when it came to shared pleasure. Oh, she’d had a couple of extremely hot moments in her life, all about being intensely coveted and briefly possessed, but she’d never had a whole night of someone dedicated to making her feel things.

There were so many things she’d missed. Lara squeezed her eyes closed, her mind spooling back through the years.

There’d been a lot of sex with Josh; sex she’d been too young to contextualise or control. Then, years of perfunctory, barely even performative sex, sex that was a duty as his wife, without much of a pretence at caring if she enjoyed it, and only just barely an option that Lara could say yes or no to, as long as she didn’t say no too often. Her whole marriage had been in a grey area when it came to what was a choice and what was something she had to tolerate. For a time she’d been wracked with guilt by the very first feeling that had hit her when the policeman had knocked on her door, early on the morning her husband hadn’t come home: Oh god… I’m free.

Her body was free, her days were free, her life was her own, all of it for the first time since her second-to-last year of high school. And with that, belatedly, came a huge wave of anger she’d suppressed all those years. That motherfucker. What had it been, about her, that had made him pick her, of all the girls in Ribbonwood? A seventeen-year-old, just a baby. Then, came the grief, for the girl she’d been, for the daughter she had, for the life that felt both only just beginning and already wasted.

From there came a long and terrible anxiety. She would never, ever, let someone control her like that again. She felt, fully for the first time, her own vulnerability, and in response she built up her defences. Never again. Lara’s life would be her own.

She spent her days wrapped up in the gentle joys and frustrations of parenting a pre-schooler, delighting in Tilly’s bright face and chubby limbs, the sweetness of their days together now unbroken by what had been unrelenting sulks and dark moods to carefully manage when her husband was alive. She tried to untangle the mess Josh had left - debt, mismanaged business, his collection of “vintage” sports cars he’d been “working on” that cluttered the property - and fumed as she tried to figure out how the hell they were going to survive. When the insurance money arrived one day, seemingly out of nowhere, she’d found herself sobbing, completely taken aback that somehow, somewhere in it all, Josh had thought to take care of her and their child .

And then she’d grieved him.

It was all extremely complicated. So no, in Lara’s life, both during and after her marriage, there hadn’t been a lot of time for pleasure. No awkward goofy teenage fooling around, no mid-twenties spent flirting in bars, no dating app hook-ups, flings or short-term relationships. She was far too wary of finding herself in another unequal power dynamic to entertain the men who pursued her and too shy, quite frankly, to pursue any women that caught her eye. Besides, there was the reputation out there to contend with: Lara Bennett, the seductive sexpot, who could suck a man’s soul right through his dick.

It came in handy at times. She’d used it to lure a bad husband or two, to help out a woman who needed an out. She’d come to pick them easily, the other women in Ribbonwood who held a repressed rage and fear in their eyes that she instantly recognised. It didn’t take long to push through the barriers that had initially pit them against Lara. When you scratched the surface there was too damn much they had in common.

The first time she’d done it, she’d caught sight of a heavy distinctive bruise around Jen Hungerford’s wrist as she’d gingerly put down the child she was holding at the Ribbonwood kindergarten. There was a sleeping baby strapped to her chest and her eyes looked just about dead. She’d been too raw to resist the fact it was Lara Bennett, town harlot, that was offering her an ear and within minutes of walking down the street and sitting in the park together she was spilling her pain everywhere, like it was too big to finally contain in her own body .

The rest came easily. A staged seduction down at the Ribbonwood pub, Lara almost spilling out of her little dress, her giggle helpless, five foot three of pure walking temptation. The public showdown with the innocent wife who walked in, more than forty witnesses to the upstanding Tony Hungerford’s uncharacteristic indiscretion. No one but Lara knew that the kids were already in the car along with everything Jen could pack from the house. No one but Lara knew that Tony had threatened her that if she left him, no one would ever believe her. He was the principal at Ribbonwood High. She was just the wife no one really knew or cared about. After all, she had no friends; Tony had made sure of that.

That night there was no one in the pub who wouldn’t believe her. The refined Mr Hungerford had to be held back by almost three men while he raged at her, purple in the face, fists clenched, filthy words spat from his furious, humiliated mouth.

Jen was in Perth now, sole custody, remarried to someone kind. Tony had left town too, his teaching registration suspended after he finally had a single conviction against his name from all those years of violence. The incident had lingered on in Ribbonwood lore: Lara Bennett, the woman at the centre of a scandal.

That was how she and Sadie had finally become friends. She’d been at the pub too that night, the only person to see how meticulously the pieces had been put in place .

“So. You’re a whore,” she’d greeted Lara cheerfully at the bar after Jen had escaped and the police had escorted Tony to the station for glassing Chris Wiseman in the face during the fracas. There were drops of blood splattered on the bodice of Lara’s dress and Sadie grinned at her broadly. “Can I buy you a beer?”

Audrey Coleman had sought her out not long after that. Her husband came from money and made her sign a prenup, grossly restricting what she’d be entitled to despite the career she’d given up, the four children she’d borne him. There was this one clause though… And so began a pattern. Lara had a new reputation in Ribbonwood, only amongst a few of the women: the ones on the fringes and the ones who might need a friend. Eventually, she’d brought them all together. Bonfire night. The night to remind them that none of them had to be alone. A night to make plans.

So there she was. Small town widow, single mama, shopkeeper, some form of social-worker-cum-vigilante-for-women - though Lara was starting to think she liked Ollie’s take of witch even better - with a best friend and a community of sorts. More or less content with her life and her freedom. And then Ollie Gabrielli walked in and reminded her of everything else she was missing: heat, pleasure, want; how it felt to lose every shred of her tightly wound control while held safely in someone else’s arms.

She’d gazed at Ollie lying beside her in her bed, finally exhausted. Ollie had drifted to sleep, still facing her, her long hair in a gleaming tangle down her shoulders, her lips kiss-swollen, bare to the waist above the sheets. Lara felt something crack open inside her .

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” she whispered as she gazed at the sleeping woman in the low light, unable to hold the words in any longer. Ollie cracked open her eyes and smiled. Lara sucked in a breath. “I thought you were asleep!” she hissed. She turned away and snapped off the lamp, letting the darkness hide the heat of her cheeks.

“I basically was,” Ollie said, her voice sleepy but irritatingly amused. “I’d definitely wake up for that though . ” She gathered Lara in close and found her mouth in the dark, kissing her all over again. She wrapped her whole damn body around her, Lara’s face resting on her upper chest. She inhaled the scent of Ollie’s warm skin, silently revelling in the feel of the firm arms around her. It felt impossibly luxurious.

Ollie drifted back to sleep and Lara only hoped she wouldn’t remember it in the morning, the tender slip-up falling from her lips in the intensity of the moment, dazed by how it felt to be held like this. I was today years old, Lara closed her eyes in wonder, before I learned about this.