Sweetest Taboo (8 page)

I can’t wait to hold you in my arms again and kiss your perfect soft lips
.

Thinking of you
,

Tom

I sighed and held the letter to my chest. Although Tom expected me to destroy each letter he wrote me after I read it, I strayed from the protocol. How could I possibly destroy such priceless letters, coldly rip his precious words to shreds without having anything to show for it? He may not want a record of our relationship, but I wanted something to keep. I wanted something to look back on years from now, or even next week, when I needed a happy thought. My mind was a sponge but it could never absorb every detail, every sweet word he wrote to me.

I rose from my bed and checked the hallway. Empty. I listened closely, and heard my mom banging away in the kitchen, cooking up whatever we were having for dinner. My brother was in the living room watching TV. That meant that I had at least ten minutes to myself. I moved out of my room and snuck down the hall to my mom’s office, which sat right across from my parents’ bedroom. This was the tricky part; I had to make it into her office without being seen by anyone in the house, or they would ask me what I was doing. And I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing – making a photocopy of the newest letter from Tom. I had copies of each handwritten note, letter, and card he’d sent me, stuffed neatly into a shoebox in the back of my closet. The originals, of course, went back to Mr. Stevens. I didn’t know what he did with them, but I assumed that he destroyed them.

The photocopies – which he didn’t know about – were mine to keep.

I usually kept the letters to myself, though I let Liz read them when she was over. She adored them, and always kept me up late into the night asking me about the day’s events. Tonight Sarah was spending the night, and I’d decided to share the letters with her as well. I knew that she wouldn’t approve, but something in me thought that if she could only read how much he loved me, understand how much I meant to him …

I was very wrong, and her reaction was stunning. She finished the last letter, her face turning redder with each word, and finally threw it down on the ground.

“What the hell? Is he crazy?” she blurted out. “How can he be writing such letters to you? He’s married! I can’t believe you’re becoming all giddy and happy about this! It’s wrong!”

“Sarah, keep your voice down!” I shouted in a whisper. “I don’t want my whole family knowing about this! And I know this whole thing is wrong, Sarah, I get that!” I looked down at my hands. “I wish Mr. Stevens wasn’t married, I wish I were closer to his age, I wish things were different! But they’re not. You think it’s easy for him? Don’t you see how he’s struggling with all this? With the decisions he’s made?”

“Isabel, I won’t ever understand it,” Sarah replied quietly. “My dad was one of those guys. He left my mom and ran off with some other woman, did you know that? He was one of those men who made the ‘tough decision’ to leave us. So please don’t try to make me like Mr. Stevens or see where he’s coming from, because I don’t want to and I don’t think I ever will.”

I looked at Sarah and, for a long moment, didn’t know what to say. I heard what she was saying, but I didn’t want to lose her. I could see now that it had been a mistake to share the letters with her, and that I had to find a way to fix it. I finally decided that it was probably best to lie to her.

“Sarah,” I said, meeting her gaze, “I’m not a home-wrecker. I know I’m really into it right now, but you know me – these things never keep my attention. I’m not going to go any farther with it. I mean, I’m moving back to Chile anyway, and by the end of the summer I’ll be ten thousand miles away from here. Trust me, even if Mr. Stevens got it in his head that he wanted to leave his wife to be with me – which he’s never even hinted at, by the way – I would never let him do that to his family.” I swallowed, hoping that she believed me. I had tried not to think about the move to Chile, since it would mean an end to my relationship with Tom, but it was a convenient deadline. If it got her off my back, it would make me feel better.

She nodded, but frowned. “Izzy, you’re my friend. I don’t want to think badly of you. But you should never have told me about this. I think you’re playing with fire here, and sooner or later this will all come out in the open and you both will be in big trouble.”

***

The month of May flew by and soon it was the end of swim season, which meant an end to the silly antics and camaraderie of the girls, an end to the outings for the meets, and an end to the early dismissals from class. I was heartbroken. It would also be the end of my daily poolside interaction with Mr. Stevens. I assumed that I would still get to see him some afternoons, but I would no longer have an easy and believable excuse to see him every day as I had done since March.

A few days before the last swim meet of the season, in the privacy of his classroom, we spoke about the future.

“Isabel, what are we going to do when swim season ends? Are you going to skip out on me?”

I wasn’t expecting this question, and he must have seen the perplexed look on my face. I hadn’t thought about what we were going to do, and I had certainly never thought of an end to our relationship. I wanted things to continue just as they were, despite what I’d told Sarah.

He must have read the thoughts all over my face. “What? You haven’t thought of that? It hasn’t crossed your mind, that the end of the season might bring an end to … this?”

I shook my head slowly. “I don’t think our relationship revolves around the swimming pool, does it?” I asked. “I spend most of my time trying to ignore you at the pool, so why would swim season define our relationship?”

He looked at me with a new light of admiration in his eyes and stretched his arms toward me. My body had already found its way to his and we held each other in the murky gloom of the darkroom. The smell of the developing chemicals surrounded us; so distasteful to some, but I had learned to associate those strong scents with the man who stood before me. I sunk into our embrace, sighing with satisfaction.

“Promise me that you’ll still come around,” he whispered suddenly. “Even if it’s only a couple of times a week.”

“Of course I’ll come around,” I whispered back. “You know what? We’ll probably have more time to spend with each other once swim season is out of the way.”

He laughed then held me closer.

***

With the end of swim season, Tom and I did indeed find more time to spend together. Swim practice had always taken up at least two hours of our time after school, and with practice out of the way, we were free to enjoy these earlier hours together. We met in his classroom the first week, but I was becoming more and more nervous about people around us at school. I thought that they would soon start making the logical connections.

The after-school janitor hours were also unpredictable, and grew dangerous. Tom and I were kissing in the darkroom in his classroom one afternoon when a janitor unlocked the main door of the classroom and walked in. We were out of the janitor’s sight, but I jumped with panic and immediately let go of Tom. He put a finger to my lips and shook his head quietly, asking me to keep quiet. We both stilled, hoping that the janitor would just walk out of the classroom and leave us undiscovered. When it became apparent that he wasn’t leaving anytime soon, Tom shrugged and stepped out of the darkroom. I remained behind, pressed into one of the corners, and ready to dart under the counter if need be.

“Good afternoon,” Tom greeted the janitor, stepping from the darkroom.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the janitor said, surprised. “I didn’t think there was anyone around.”

“It’s all right,” Tom assured him. “I sometimes stick around until five or so, working in the darkroom. If you could come by after five in the future, I would really appreciate it. That way I don’t get in your way.”

I held my breath as the janitor paused, thinking. What if he refused? What if he insisted on cleaning the entire classroom right now? What if he pushed past Tom to enter the darkroom and empty the garbage in here?

Were we about to be exposed by the man who cleaned the premises?

The janitor finally agreed though, and said that he could rearrange his schedule. He apologized once again in his thickly Spanish-accented English, and I heard the sound of the heavy door shutting behind him. I breathed out slowly, trying to still my racing heart, and heard Tom’s steps as he entered the dark room again.

His eyes were large and frightened, and his shoulders were tense. “We need to start meeting off-campus,” he noted quietly, his voice strained. “This was too close.”

I nodded wordlessly then carefully walked out of the dark room with Tom closely behind me. “I’m going to go home, Tom. I don’t want to risk being here any longer.”

He nodded, and tenderly kissed me goodbye.

***

The next day, I met Tom in the school parking lot by his truck at three o’clock sharp. We weren’t planning on leaving together, since that would be obvious, but we wanted to check in with each other before we left school. It was early summer, and I was wearing the same thing most of the other California girls wore – short shorts and a light, fluttery summer top. I knew that I looked good. My legs were extraordinarily long – I had earned the nickname “Legs” from boys at school – and I never shied away from wearing short shorts or skirts that barely reached mid thigh. I knew that Tom was particularly fond of my legs, and liked it when I showed them off. He was never short on compliments.

I walked quickly toward the entry of the parking lot and turned left; we were planning to meet at a coffee shop several blocks down, where I could sit and do homework while he watched out for people we might know. I quickened my pace when I left school and nearly sprinted to the shop, to get there before he did. I wanted to get a chilled drink and cool down before we left.

Tom arrived in a matter of minutes, though, and took one look around the shop and the parking lot outside. I watched him through my sunglasses and rose when I saw him walk back out to the truck. That was the sign that we were in the clear; no one we knew had entered the shop yet, and the parking lot was empty. I sprinted to his truck, got in, and laid down on the seat until we were several blocks away. We didn’t want anyone to see us together in the truck, or near the campus, for obvious reasons.

“You can sit up now,” he muttered out of the side of his mouth. “We’re well away from anyone who would recognize us.”

I sat up with a sigh of relief, and looked around. “Thank goodness this is not a country town,” I replied, laughing. “This would be an impossible feat if we couldn’t rely on the anonymity a larger city affords us!”

Tom smiled in response and the tension seemed to dissipate from his fit body. Sitting in his truck was a more pleasant experience now; there were no other students to ride along with us, no excuses of being innocently dropped off at home, and less danger of exposing ourselves with a careless word or gesture. I didn’t have to look for excuses to sit close to Tom, as we could already touch each other as much as we wanted, so I sat on the other end of the bench seat, buckled in. He motioned for me to move closer to him and I shook my head, yanking on the seat belt across my chest.

“Safety first,” I smiled, teasing.

He shrugged in response and smiled back, his eyes relaxed and happy. “Where do you want to go?” he asked casually.

I shrugged. I had never needed a place to go for some privacy before, though I had heard of places to go, where mountain passes offered privacy and a nice view of rolling valleys. Liz’s boyfriend took her to these passes regularly, and I always heard the details. But I didn’t know the names of the roads – she just told me that they went up into the mountains.

“Well, there are always the mountains,” I suggested. “I’ve never been up there myself, but I’ve heard that people drive up there for some privacy.”

This made him chuckle slightly. “My thoughts exactly. You see that road up there?” He pointed to a dirt road up ahead and headed toward it. “If you make a left at the very end, the road takes you straight into the heart of these mountains. Don’t worry, I’ll find a place that’s so secluded no one will bother us, at least for a few hours.”

He turned onto the road and I saw that it wound up in front of us, switchback style, to achieve a higher elevation. After a few jagged turns, Tom found a small fork on the main road and decided to take it. The road he took was unpaved and quite bumpy, but it only made the adventure more exciting. Bright green, leafy tree branches hovered over the road, and soon the truck was hidden from the main road, under the shade of what seemed like dozens of thickly foliaged trees.

The scene was breathtaking: there were nothing but trees and leaves behind us, and the truck was completely hidden by the thick vegetation overhead. To our right I could see a sharp drop, with a view of the city and valleys below us. If I looked carefully enough, I could even make out the winding road we had taken on our way up. It looked like a slithering ant trail from this elevation.

Tom turned off the loud diesel engine. The silence it left was so pure that I thought I could hear the fluttering wings of butterflies among the trees.

“Oh Tom,” I sighed happily. “This place is perfect. Why didn’t we come here sooner? Why did we take the risk of staying in that classroom when we could have been out here?”

Instead of answering, Tom unbuckled his seat belt and moved toward me, taking me into his arms. The bench seat of the truck was long and wide enough for us to lay down comfortably, and we took advantage of the new horizontal position. As he lay on top of me, the pleasurable feeling of his weight on me sent tingles up and down my body.

We kissed fervently, without restraint, our kisses moist, deep, and intense. I was lost in the moment, lost in Tom, lost in the heat of our touching bodies. Before I knew it, my shorts were on the floor of the truck, as were my panties and bra. Next to my clothing lay Tom’s clothes, including his boxer shorts.