Taboo Read online

  “Can we talk?”

  “Okay.” I point to the couch and he takes one side while I sit down at the other. I wait for him to say something—anything, but he’s staring at his hands and then up at me and then back at his hands again.

  “I was surprised that day Finley approached me on campus. I’d seen you before—and her. But you always seemed busy and I knew you didn’t really want to talk to me, so I just let it go. But then there she was—all up in my face like a day hadn’t passed, talking me into meeting you guys at the coffee shop.”

  “Sounds like Finley,” I agree.

  “I felt sick walking in there. Like, completely intimidated.” His eyes flick to mine and I get it—Carter has never been intimidated by anyone. Not his competitors, his fellow students or even a half dressed twenty-eight year old. Again, he turns silent and I wait, because I have no idea where he’s going with this.

  “You messed me up,” he says eventually. This announcement causes a wave of guilt to slam into me. I knew it was possible and I hate myself for it. I start to sputter out an apology but he stops me. “Not because of what you—we—did, but because of who you are.”

  “I don’t know what that means,” I tell him, but an uneasy feeling settles into my chest.

  He laughs darkly. His face tense and serious. I’ve never seen him like this before. Well once, that night in the theater parking lot. Like then the anger makes him even more strikingly beautiful. “It means I was okay with everything that happened. That was, and probably will be, the best summer of my life. I came up here and did exactly what you said. I charmed everyone. My grades were excellent. I had my pick of girls and fraternities. I partied and went to football games. I slept with whoever I wanted. I was picky and I treated them well, just like you taught me, and everything should have been fine.”

  “But it wasn’t?”

  He shakes his head and lowers his voice. “No. It wasn’t. None of those girls could compare. They weren’t you. I had a taste of the woman I wanted, and she was gone.”

  I stare at the pattern on my couch and I feel his eyes boring through me. I take a deep breath and say, “For what it’s worth, I’ve missed you, too.”

  “Don’t,” he grimaces. “Don’t say something you don’t mean.”

  “I do mean it,” I say. But I’m also panicking because I don’t know if I can do this. If I can rip this Band Aid off, because the wound is still fresh and I’m not sure if I can patch it up again. “The last eight months have been hard on me, too, Carter. I told you that night that you meant more to me than just a good lay, but…”

  His eyes cloud over. “But what?”

  “But it doesn’t change our age difference, or that you still have so much life ahead of you to experience.”

  He nods, but he’s hurt. I want to reach over and rub the tense spot on his jaw, I want to kiss him and make it better. And God knows, I want to relieve the ache between my legs, but I don’t do any of these because I promised myself this was over.

  “You’re so funny and smart, Carter, those are two qualities hard to find in a man, and think about it…I already have one failed engagement. I’m probably more of a mess than you are.”

  “You aren’t a mess, Ruthie.”

  I scoff. “I think you have me on a pedestal. I’m not perfect.”

  “No,” he says, giving me the most wistful look. “But for one moment, just one, you were mine.”

  *

  We ended that night with an awkward hug in the driveway. I’m unsure if things will ever be ‘normal’ between us. There is no normal at this point, there’s only right and wrong.

  I walk back to the house and find Betsy sitting on the back step. She has on flannel pajama bottoms and a fleece jacket wrapped over her shoulders. I frown, “Hey, everything okay?”

  “Was that Carter Hightower?”

  I look down the driveway and see his tail lights disappearing. “Yeah, it was.”

  She has a million questions; I see them all written on her face. I sigh and ask, “Do you want to come up?”

  I stop by the kitchen and take two wine glasses out of the cabinet, a bottle off the counter and start pouring. Handing her one of the glasses, I take the seat Carter just occupied and if I close my eyes I can still catch his scent. Betsy sits across from me and says, “Carter Hightower.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you mind me asking what he was doing here?”

  “Just talking,” I say. “We met up about a month ago at a coffee shop on campus. Finley invited him.”

  Betsy’s a pretty woman. And she’s cool. I like her and over the last year, we’ve become friends. We go to dinner and watch movies together, but I’ve never breathed a word about Carter to anyone other than Finley.

  Even so, I’m not completely surprised when she says, “There were some rumors about you two over the summer.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yes. Some people suggested that you two were hooking up or having some kind of fling.”

  I swallow a too large gulp of wine and wipe my mouth with the arm of my sweatshirt. “Those moms sure like to gossip. Let me guess, Bikini Mom?”

  “You mean Debbie?” she laughed. “Well, yeah, she was one of them. But a couple of the others moms mentioned you two sneaking around, plus I saw him here.”

  Shit.

  “Last August? Before school started. I was taking out the trash when he drove up,” she says. “I know he stayed for several hours, Ruthie.”

  Bile rises in my throat, combined with wine and I jump off the couch and heave into the sink. Tears fill my eyes and I start to sob, the ugly, terrible kind of crying that’s been pent up for too long.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say, leaning back against the counter and rest my head in my hands. Betsy enters the kitchen and wraps her arms around me. “Oh Ruthie, it’s okay. I’m not mad—I just felt like this thing was hanging over us and when I saw him here tonight...”

  I lean against her shoulder and continue to cry, partially in relief that someone else knows, but also because I hurt so bad—letting him walk out that door again feels like I’ve stabbed myself in the chest. “I haven’t seen him since that night,” I promise, wiping my face and nose. “He showed up unannounced tonight and I’m so sorry if I embarrassed you or the family.”

  “I’m not embarrassed,” she assures me. “Jealous maybe, but not embarrassed.”

  I laugh but it turns into a sob and I cough. “He’s nineteen. Eighteen then. It wasn’t cool, but it was just for the summer. That’s all.”

  “So you guys…”

  I take a deep breath and confess, “Yes, we spent a lot of time together last summer, which ended up being a really stupid mistake.”

  Betsy pushes my hair back where it’s fallen out of the ponytail. “He’s a little young, sure, but I don’t know. Carter has always been fairly mature and you’re single. It’s a slippery slope, but I don’t think you really did anything wrong.”

  She doesn’t know about the things I did with him, to him and allowed him to do back to me. She doesn’t know where we did it and how often and how I broke his heart twice and how I damaged my heart as well.

  “It was stupid,” I say. “The dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Because,” I stop and take another deep breath. “Because I fell for him, okay?”

  “Oh, honey.”

  “I know, right?” I shake my head at myself. “Like that was ever going to work. It can’t work.”

  “How does he feel about this?” she asks.

  “I wrecked him, too. He’s put me on this pedestal, which sounds nice, but it’s not. He’s a kid and shouldn’t be thinking about someone my age.”

  “Why not?”

  My eyes snap to hers. “Why not? Because he has his whole life ahead of him and it’s time for me to settle down and get serious. He’s nineteen—he can’t be serious now.”

  Betsy shakes her head but then shifts to laughing so hard that she’s bending over at the waist. “Oh man, Ruthie. Stop.”

  Annoyed, I snap, “What?”

  “Girl, you’re twenty-nine, which no, isn’t nineteen but man, do you know what I’d give to be in my twenties again? To have a kid like that chasing my tail?”

  I shake my head.

  “Of course you don’t—because you’re still there. You don’t see how time is slipping away from you and you need to take chances while you can. You’ve got a perfect body. Your boobs are amazing. Look at them.”

  I glance down.

  “They don’t sag and they haven’t been ravaged by children. Your stomach is flat and you have curvy hips and a killer ass. Lord, what I would give for a day in your body.”

  I look at her like she’s lost her mind because Betsy is beautiful and has a nice figure. I don’t get it.

  “See?” she laughs. “You have no idea, but you will. Forty comes knocking and it’s like your body betrays you. So stop thinking about what’s wrong and think about what’s right—before you’re married and have kids. Do you want to end up like Debbie?”

  “Who?”

  She slaps her face. “Bikini Mom! Don’t be that desperate mother hitting on a boy young enough to be her son. Willing to ruin her marriage for a piece of ass.”

  Betsy’s rambling and I think she may be close to her own nervous breakdown. “What are you talking about?”

  “Ruthie,” she takes my hands in hers. “If you love him go for it. If you’re even moderately attracted, go for it. And if he wants to have sex with you, forget your hang-ups because that is what you’ll regret one day. You’ll regret the opportunities lost.”

  “So you think I should see him…”

  She laughs and raises her wine glass up in a mock to
ast. “I think you should find him and fuck the ever-loving sense of him. And then do it again. You have plenty of years to be old, but only so much time to be young.”

  *

  I’m pretty sure Betsy has had a midlife crisis, so I’m wary about her advice. One thing sticks with me though, and that’s the idea of regretting opportunities lost. I already had my opportunity to rock Carter’s world, but I’ve passed up the chance to be his friend, and this is my new mission.

  “Hi,” I say to him in line for coffee. “Fancy seeing you here.”

  “Oh, hey,” his eyes light up just a bit but they’re guarded. I don’t blame him. I’m going off script. “I’ve never seen you here before.”

  “I used to go to that shitty hole-in-the-wall off campus but last week I saw a rat behind the counter so, I’m strictly corporate coffee now.” Most of this is a fabrication, well the rat part isn’t but I’ve been stalking Carter for a week trying to gather the courage to approach him. It only took me a couple of days to figure out his routine. He leaves the frat house at eight every day and then heads to the gym for a swim. Gym, coffee then class.

  “No rats here,” he says. “Well, other than the human kind, I guess.”

  We pay for our coffee and linger around one another, neither sure what to do. How do you say goodbye to someone you’ve already said goodbye to?

  I see his pool bag, the one he carried everyday with him over the summer and ask, “Have you been swimming?”

  “Yeah, I try to go in the mornings. After all those years, it’s a habit I can’t shake.”

  I think about him in the water, his other home and it makes me smile. “I’m glad. Swimming makes you happy. It’s good to keep happy things in your life, don’t you think?”

  He pushes open the door and we both walk out into a beautiful, blue-skied spring day. “Yeah, I do.”

  “Bye, Carter,” I say walking in the opposite direction of his next class.

  I leave him there, bewildered, with the cutest, most confused grin on his face. It makes me happy.

  Chapter 22

  “You need somewhere to sit?”

  The campus café is packed and I’m standing in the middle of the room holding my tray. I must have passed Carter three times, not even realizing he was there.

  “Yes!” He takes my tray and I hang my backpack from the chair. “Thank you. I thought I was going to have to eat on the floor or something.”

  “You looked a little lost.”

  “And you came to my rescue. Typical,” I laugh, picking up my sandwich.

  “What do you mean?”

  My face heats and I wrinkle my nose.

  “What?” he asks again.

  “Remember how Finley and I used to call you Aqua-Man?” I don’t know why I’m so embarrassed about this. “He’s a superhero. And you rescued me.”

  “Aqua-Man wears green tights.”

  “All superheroes wear tights.”

  He makes a face and says, “But his are green.”

  “He has to blend in!”

  Carter leans back in his seat, arms crossed. I try to keep my eyes off his forearms but it’s impossible. “He’s like the lamest of all the superheroes.”

  “Not true.” I argue, but he’s smiling anyway. He loves it.

  “So you guys talked about me, huh?”

  I roll my eyes. “Of course. What else did we have to do all day?” He raises an eyebrow and my blush rushes back. “Beside that.”

  That’s as close as we get to reliving our past, and together we veer the conversation to more current ideas. He tells me that he’s moving out of the frat house next year, it’s just not really his thing. I talk about my schedule and what courses I’ll study in the fall. I breathe a sigh of relief when he tells me he’s still not dating anyone and I look at my hands when I tell him, briefly, about my series of unfortunate first and last dates. I don’t want to see his reaction. I’m not ready for that. Slowly, over several meet-ups like this, we forge a tentative, yet pleasant friendship.

  We hang out the most over morning coffee, when he’s damp and fresh from the pool. The chlorine from the indoor pool is severe and even after a shower I can smell it on his skin. Today, I’m running late and he greets me out front with my favorite coffee.

  “Thank you,” I say, taking a sip. “The girls had a big Mothers’ Day surprise for Betsy and I lost track of time.”

  “I bet they’ve grown a lot since I saw them last.”

  “Haven’t we all,” I muse.

  We sit on a bench outside the shop and the spring sunlight makes his hair glow. He cuts it shorter now than at the end of last summer but it still casts him in a halo’s light.

  “I wanted to ask you something,” he says, placing his coffee between his knees.

  “Sure.”

  “I’m in this intramural soccer tournament this weekend and I wanted to know if you would come.”

  “Really?” I’ve always wanted to see him play. I’ve watched him swim competitively but I never got the chance to see him on the soccer field.

  “I know you like the game and it should be fun.”

  “Can I bring Finley?”

  His eyes light up. “Yeah, sure. So you’ll come?”

  “Of course. It sounds awesome. Plus, you know how I feel about soccer players.”

  He frowns. “Actually, I don’t.”

  “They’re my second favorite, after swimmers.”

  He laughs and grabs me by the neck, in a playful hug. “You’re crazy, did you know that?”

  “I think I’ve heard that somewhere before.”

  *

  “Oh man.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you see the calves on that one?”

  “No, I can’t take my eyes off that guy’s butt.”

  “And his chest.”

  “Oh shit.”

  “What?”

  “His back.”

  “Where?”

  I point across the field to number seventeen.

  “Damn, you can even see the muscles through his shirt—I mean, that’s just not normal.”

  “It’s not.”

  “No. It’s not. It’s almost like he’s—“

  “Genetically superior,” Finley and I say at the same time.

  We’ve come full circle, except this time we’re sitting on the top row of a set of bleachers, fully clothed and ogling a soccer field instead of the swimming pool. It is hot though, and the sun beats down hard enough that we’ve pulled out our trusty sunglasses and I’ve stripped down to a tank top.

  “He’s pretty amazing,” I say, watching him run up and down the field. I knew he would be good, he’s good at everything, but watching him dominate is like poetry.

  “It’s not fair,” Finley points out. “For one person to be so talented.”

  “And hot.”

  “And hot, right,” she agrees.

  It’s an intense match. The guys are brutal with one another, forcing the ref to stop the game more than once. Carter takes more than one spill. From the stands I can see the blood dripping from his knee. It doesn’t stop him—nothing does. He’s all physical and I realize this is why it’s hard to just be friends with him. His body and mind work together.

  It’s hard, but we’ve made it happen.

  From his position at forward, I get the chance to see him race down the field, top speed. He scores twice, pumping his fist and checking for me in the stands. I wave to let him know I saw. And a couple of girls around me look in my direction.

  I’m not used to the attention of being associated with him, so I just keep my eyes on the field.

  The guys are fun and less obnoxious than I thought they’d be. It’s obvious he’s well loved by his teammates, who rush one another in silly, testosterone-fueled hugs when one of them makes a goal.

  It ventures to an almost homoerotic place once the game is over and they’ve won.

  “Wow,” Finley says, and I sigh in agreement. They’ve all taken off their shirts and it’s quite a sight. Carter uses his jersey to wipe the blood off his knees. I would have thought it impossible but nineteen has been good for him. Good for his body. He’s taller and sleeker, making his muscles more pronounced. When he looks in my direction, I turn away because I don’t think about him like that anymore.

  I don’t.

  Finley grows quiet and I look over and her eyes are shut.