Tainted Love (Sweetest Taboo #2) (6 page)

The announcement was made over the school speaker system at the start of the month, letting returning swimmers and anyone else who was interested in joining the team know to meet after school by the pool for an introductory meeting. When I arrived, there was a very large crowd at the gate. It was nice to see the returning swimmers, who were eager to talk about the previous season and what we could have done to improve. Many of them had been swimming with private club teams during the summer, and were excited to show off their new skills. Judging by the crowd, we thought we’d have plenty of new swimmers this year – younger kids to fill the outer lanes and bolster the team. We didn’t often win swim meets simply because we couldn’t fill the lanes at every swim meet. When competing, winning an event was important, but so was getting second and third place. If you could only field one swimmer per event, and there were six lanes, then your odds of winning were greatly reduced, regardless of how good your swimmers were. Because of this, I’d put out the call for all returning swimmers to bring three friends to the first day of practice. It looked like they had come through on their promises.

We’d run the tryouts, but it hadn’t been much of a contest – some of the kids could swim, some of them couldn’t. If a student was capable of getting from one end of the pool to the other without drowning, they were on the team. If they weren’t, chances were they’d drop out on their own in any case. We’d filled the team, and I couldn’t be more excited. The first day of practice dawned sunny and cold – typical for a Southern California February afternoon – and we headed to the pool after school for our first practice. I was talking to my assistant coach, going over the first drills for practice, when I was interrupted by one of the star swimmers from last year’s team, Vicky.

“Hey Coach Stevens,” I heard her shout out from behind me. I grimaced; it was normal for high schoolers to think they could interrupt any adult conversation if they needed something, but I’d never grown accustomed to it.

I muttered for her to wait a second, and that I’d be with her in a minute. Then I turned back to the assistant coach and started going through the practice schedule again. 

“Misssterrr Steeeevens,” she insisted, “I couldn’t find three friends to join the swim team. I only found…well, her name is Isabel. She didn’t come to the tryout, but can she still join the team?”

I don’t really know what happened, or why I even felt the way I did. I hadn’t seen Isabel on campus for a couple of weeks, not that I’d been looking for her.

At the mention of her name, the entire world seemed to stop.

My heart started pounding, and I found it difficult to breathe. What was going on? Was the universe trying to tell me something? The girl I’d seen in passing weeks earlier had never left my mind, though I’d never talked to her, and now she was somehow here, ready to swim on my swim team? This couldn’t have been a simple coincidence.

And why on earth – how on earth – was the thought of a fifteen-year-old student affecting me this way? The thought of her standing there behind me made me catch my breath, and I paused, trying to regain control. Finally I nodded to the assistant coach that we were finished. I couldn’t ignore Vicky or Isabel any longer, so I slowly turned around.

“Hi Vicky!” I exclaimed, trying to sound both surprised and excited as I reached out to give her a quick hug. As I did, my eyes fell on Isabel, who was standing behind her, looking at me expectantly. She was staring into my eyes, focused, as if she were reading my thoughts. I felt her there, inside me, in my mind…probing for answers. Answers to what, I didn’t know, but that was how I felt. No person in my thirty-six years had ever affected me this way.

“Hi Isabel, I’m Coach Stevens,” I said as I held my hand out to her.

She took my hand in hers to shake it, and when she did, she looked straight into my eyes again, an alluring look taking me in, “It’s nice to meet you.” Then she turned and went to chat with some other students. I stood staring after her, my hand tingling with the electricity of her touch as I tried to cope with the sudden surge of adrenaline I felt in my body. I couldn’t tell whether she’d felt it or not, but her behavior seemed to indicate that she hadn’t.

I turned away, wondering if I was the only one who felt the connection, that incredible ZAP I felt the first time we looked into each other’s eyes. If that was true – and I was going to see her every day for months during swim practice – I was going to need to get better at controlling myself and my emotions.

We didn’t talk much for the first few weeks of practice, just exchanged some common pleasantries. She was a very good swimmer, gliding effortlessly through the water, but she was also a bit of a clown, and gave the assistant coach some trouble. As a first-year swimmer, we’d put her on the Junior Varsity team, which meant I didn’t interact with her much.

I did watch her out the corner of my eye, whenever I could. She looked so at home in the pool, moving through the water as if she was born to glide through it. She was also a big distraction, okay, scratch that, a huge distraction. As a teacher, and as an adult, I’d always done what was right. I was even taking care of my wife and her daughters, though I knew they weren’t actually mine, simply because it was the right thing to do. Looking at a student the way I was looking at Isabel was definitely not the right thing to do. But the simple fact was that I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her. I tried, boy did I try, but it was futile. And soon it grew into an obsession. I knew where she put her swim bag when she arrived at practice, where she laid her towel, and which lane she chose. I knew who her friends were and what she did after practice. I found myself moving closer to her when she spoke to her friends, to hear her voice and find out more about her. I still couldn’t shake the feeling that we knew each other in some way, or had been somehow destined to meet. When I looked at her, I was at peace, and yet I felt a tumultuousness inside of me that gave me butterflies in my stomach. There was a fire burning inside of me, and I wasn’t sure how, or even if that fire would or could be extinguished.

Time went by, and one afternoon during practice I noticed that Isabel was taking notice of me. She was around more than before, and going out of her way to talk to me and ask my advice about things like swim techniques and elective classes. I’d had female students use their female wiles on me before, subtly flirting and pouring on the charm to get what they wanted. I thought at first that she was trying to use me for something, as girls had done in the past, if I allowed it, which I never did. I wasn’t sure what Isabel really wanted, but it was clear that she wanted
something
.

For the moment, that was enough.

Professionally, of course, it presented significant challenges, but personally it was hugely rewarding. Before long I was including her in the group of students I ferried home after practice, and getting to know her as a person and not just a swimmer on my team. We got along very well. She had a wonderful sense of humor, and a mind that was wise beyond her years. To my fault, I never saw Isabel as a teenager, though I knew she was one. She was never an age to me; what I took in was that wonderful, shining personality that brightened up my afternoons and made me feel like I had found purpose in life. She was someone who seemed to be very much at ease with older people,, not that I considered myself old, and had a sense of humor beyond her years, and never really fit in well with peers of her own age.

She made it a point to sit next to me when I gave team members a ride home in my truck, and though I felt guilty about it, I enjoyed feeling the warmth radiate from her body next to me. We weren’t doing anything wrong – certainly there was nothing happening between us – but the thought that she was right there, so close to me, brought me a sense of elation that I’d never experienced. Then one day, she happened to be the last student I dropped off after practice. She was also sitting exceptionally close to me on the bench seat, though the truck was empty of other students. I could feel the heat from her leg as it rested close to my thigh, and it was almost more than I could bear. I don’t know why I did it, but I absolutely knew without a doubt that she wanted me to touch her. I knew that I shouldn’t, that it was wrong, that it was illegal, but something was calling out to me, leading me to do just that. Ultimately, I reached out and put my hand on her slim thigh, despite my pounding heart.

I felt that amazing shock again, and the thought came to me that someone might see us, and that this was so wrong, I quickly pulled my hand back, ashamed of myself and what I had just done, wishing I could take it back. To be honest, I felt sick. I don’t know if it was because of what I had just done, or because it was not only wrong but illegal as well, and I knew it, or maybe it was just the adrenaline coursing through my body.

She smiled at me, no doubt sensing my apprehension, while gently reaching for my hand, and setting it back on her thigh. “It’s okay,” she whispered, confirming my suspicions and her desires.

At that point, I knew I’d lost the battle. I was falling for her hard, despite the dangers. A big part of me knew that it was wrong, and that I should stop myself; try to do the adult thing; the thing that any responsible teacher would have done. I should have quit coaching the swim team, and distanced myself from Isabel as quickly as possible. But I didn’t.  To this day, I still have no idea what came over me.

This was an internal battle I didn’t actually want to win. I wanted to know her better, to know everything about her, and to find out what could actually happen between us.

Things progressed fairly quickly between us after that moment we shared in the truck. I don’t think either of us could believe what was going on, but neither of us wanted it to stop. We certainly didn’t talk about – or consider – the fact that what we were doing was wrong. We never talked about what other people might say or think. One day I asked her to write me a letter so that she could share her thoughts and feelings with me. And she did. As I read it, I was in awe of what she’d written. That she wanted me, had strong feelings for me, fantasized about kissing me, and wanted to be with me. Still, I was torn; was she falling in love with me, or was it just a teenage crush? And more importantly – was I willing to act on her confessions? What was it I felt for her? What the hell was I thinking? As I read her words neatly written on the college-ruled paper, my heart pounded in my chest, my knees went weak, and I wondered what I had gotten myself into.

Chapter Four - One

I
sabel returned to the table, frowning, though she made no mention of the phone call. She seemed distracted and distant, as if the call hadn’t gone the way she had hoped. Perhaps someone had called her with bad news. I frowned; I’d learned from past dealings with her that if she had something on her mind, she would clam up, and refuse to say anything, regardless of how many times I prodded her and asked. Unfortunately, this was one of those times.

I asked her what was wrong, wondering what she was thinking about. Of course, she said nothing was wrong, that it was nothing to worry about. I didn’t believe her, though. She had been sneaky in the past, and although I loved her, and thought I trusted her, I just wasn’t sure. After all, we’d been apart for nearly a year; she could have been up to so many things that I knew nothing about. My intuition told me that the phone call was from a man, someone she hadn’t told me about for whatever reason. The thing is, my intuition was rarely wrong, and honestly, I knew exactly why she hadn’t spoken a word of this man. It wouldn’t be the first time something like this happened. A few years ago I heard classroom gossip about Isabel making out with another student when she went on a trip with the French Club to Europe, and although it was confirmed and somewhat forgotten, the thought had stuck with me. I loved her, but I wasn’t always certain that I could trust her.

I had always asked her why she wanted to be with me, a man so much older and unavailable to her at the time, when she so easily could find someone her own age. I knew this question would hurt her, since she’d obviously fallen in love with me, but this was my feeble attempt to drive her away. To protect myself and to protect Isabel. I’d known I couldn’t offer her what she wanted at that time – someone that could commit to her fully – and in the end, she’d be hurt one way or another. Right from the start, I had known I would be hurt just as badly, and had made several small attempts to push her away. That kiss she shared with that guy during her trip to Europe was a consequence of my attempts. She’d tried to be with someone her own age, just as I’d asked her to do, and had a teenage version of an affair.

When I learned of the liaison between Isabel and that guy, it had hurt far more than anything I can remember; worse than my wife cheating on me for all those years, and even having children with her lover. Isabel had done nothing more than kiss another guy, held hands with him, and yet it felt like my world was crashing down on me when I found out about it. By that time, I had already fallen deeply in love with her. Part of me wanted her to move on; I loved her and didn’t want to hurt her by being perpetually unavailable to commit to her the way she deserved. But when I heard some students in my class gossiping about Isabel’s little love tryst with Ryan in France, my heart broke. Worse, when one of the girls that was on the trip told me about it straight out, I wondered fleetingly if Isabel had set it all up. If she was trying to teach me a lesson, or show me that I wasn’t the only one that was allowed to be with someone else.

 I felt betrayed by her actions and the motivations that might have driven them. I loved Isabel, and even though I couldn’t advertise the fact, it still hurt …a lot.

Then there was James, a guy she met through her work experience program. Isabel confessed later, in guilt, that she had gone to the canyon, our sacred place, and made out with him. He’d wanted to do more, but she’d refused. She said she didn’t know why she agreed to drive up there with him, and that it just happened. Still, it was another strike against her. Another blatant admission of her infidelity.