Taboo (11 page)

Love you,

Fin

Flower printed curtains cover the window in the door and I push the fabric to the side. The last person I expect on my doorstep tonight leans against the railing.

Aqua-Man.

I drop the curtain and take a deep breath, staring at the door for a minute, completely unsure what to do.

“I know you’re in there
, Ruthie,” he says.

I unlock t
he door and open it and take in the sight of him.

“Can I come in?”

“Sure, I guess.” I swing the door open wider and say, “Is everything okay?”

He follows me in and everything becomes surreal. I never thought Carter Hightower would be in my house again. But he’s here.

If I thought he sucked the air out of the room before I was mistaken. He’s taller, wider and more beautiful than before.

“Nice shirt,” he says with a small laugh.

I want to laugh back but I’m too nervous and I wrap my arms around my middle and wait.

“
Can we talk?”

“Okay.” I point to the couch and he takes on
e 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 do
n’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 s
o 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 disappear
ing. “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 fai
rly 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 a
nother 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 toast. “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 direc
tion of his next class.

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