Taboo (2 page)

“I’m Ruthie. That was Harper. I’m babysitting her this summer.”

“So you’ll be around?”

I nod and laugh. “Every day I imagine.”

“
Hey Carter, I need you to check the chemicals.” The other guard shouts over his shoulder from the chair.

“Sure.” He walks toward the small office near the
bathrooms. “See you later, Ruthie,” he says, disappearing through the door.

Chapter 3

“What color are his eyes?” Finley asks a couple days later. Aqua-Man, as we’ve started calling him, is chest deep in the water teaching swim lessons across the pool.

“I don’t know.
I couldn’t look at them.” I stretch back in my lounge chair, keeping one eye on him and one on the girls playing in the deep end.  “Blue, maybe?” His dark summer skin would look nice with blue eyes.

“No, I think they’re brown.”

“Really?” I look over at him, taking a swallow of water from my bottle. He’s sunk below the water line, nose to nose with his student. His goggles are pulled down over his eyes so confirmation is impossible.

“Well,” she says, “His nipples are brown.”

“Finley!” I choke on the water. “You did not just say that.”

“Well, they are!” We both start laughing and she says, “That’s why I don’t know what color they are. I can’t stop looking at his chest!”

“Shh…he’s not deaf.”

Finley grows serious. “Ruthie
, you’re young, hot, and single. Why not go for it?”

“Why? Are you kidding?”

“No, I’m not kidding. Why not?”

I start ticking off my fingers.
“One, because he’s eighteen. Two, because clearly he has a girlfriend, why wouldn’t he have a girlfriend? Three, because he’s eighteen and I’m much older than that, and four, because even though he’s only eighteen I’m pretty sure he’s out of my league.”

“Are you done?”

“No,” I hold up finger number five. “And he’s eighteen.
Barely
.”

I ignore my friend staring at me like I’m an idiot.
She’s
the idiot. “Jeez, you are such a fool sometimes, Ruthie Johnson. I’m not even sure why we’re friends.”

“Me either, since you’re so nice to me and everything.”
I stick out my tongue.

“I can make a list
, too,” she says and holds her own fingers up. “One, you’re a total hottie.”

“Shut up.”

“Two, I stalked him on Facebook. He’s single.”

I glance across the pool and try to im
agine him without a girlfriend. Impossible. He’s probably one of those guys who won’t commit publicly—keeping his options open.

“Three, you’
re not that much older, but you are wiser; think of the things you can teach him.”

My girly-places may have clenched at that one.

“Four, you are out of
his
league, which makes
you
the one with the power. God gave you that rack for a reason. Use it.”

I pull my eye
s from the water—and him. “Um, I think God gave me boobs to like, feed babies and stuff.”

“Well, one day, d
uh, but right now you need those boobs to catch a man to
have
babies with.”

The
thought of having babies with Aqua-Man is a mixed emotion. I mean, yes, I want to do that thing where I make babies with him, but really? He’s like, barely out of high school; I doubt he even has insurance.

“Ruthie
, stop over-thinking it,” she demanded.

“It’s not just that,” I say, but stop before I go further. I’ve only known Finley for a little over a week. I gave her the abridged version of my current life situation but nothing more.

“Then what?”

“You know how I’m starting grad school this fall?
At Duke? Well, that’s been the plan for a while, but there were other plans, too.”

“What kind of plans?”

“Like starting school with the name Mrs. Jamie Moorefield.”

Finley actually looks up at me this time—forcing her eyes away from Aqua-Man and his brown nipples. “You were getting married? You were engaged? What happened?”

“We broke up. Like two months ago.” Tears build in the corner of my eyes and I’m happy for my giant glasses. “It’s not a big deal. We just weren’t happy anymore.”

“How long were you together?”

“Since our senior year of college. So like, five years. We were going to get married this summer and I was going to finally get the chance to go physical therapy school while he started his residency. But we kept fighting and finally we just had to accept that our relationship was going nowhere.”

“Wow.”

“So right, that alone takes Aqua-Man off the table. I mean, not that he’s even
on
the table. Or that there even
is
a table, but I’m just saying, I don’t need to dump my emotional baggage on a kid who can’t even drink. Can you imagine?”

“Honestly,” she says, but stops abruptly, reaching for her magazine in a rush. “Oh crap, he’s looking at you.”

“He is not.” I
try my best to discretely peek over to the shallow end where he’s finishing up his lesson. He
is
looking at me and we have a brief stare off. “Jesus,” I mutter when he looks away.

“I wonder what his face looks like when he com
es.”

“
Finley!” He grabs his student under the legs and tosses him across the pool. His session is over and he lifts himself out of the water. Every muscle in his back is visible when he does so. I never tire of him doing that.  The woman from the diving board has him cornered; I think she’s the mother of his student. Like always, she’s wearing a too-tiny bikini and keeps trying to get chummy with him. Irrational jealousy flares in my chest.

Finley watches me watching him and says,
“Think about it. For real.”

“No.”
I say it in a firm, definitive, controlled voice.

But I am
.

Chapter 4

“Finish your lunch,” I tell Claire and Harper. “Adult swim is over in five minutes, and then you can get back in.”

I leave them to their sandwiches and chips, sitting
in my lounge chair next to Finley. I’m pretty sure my chair has an imprint from my ass being planted in it every day for the last two weeks. I glance over my shoulder to make sure no one is listening. Aqua-Man is on the other side of the pool scrubbing tiles. Have you ever seen a shirtless guy with an amazing back and sculpted biceps scrub tiles? It may be the best day ever.

We’re both watching him p
erform his job flawlessly. Finley glances at me and says, “Have you ever noticed that the birthmark on his back looks like Africa?”

“Uh, no.”

“It does, just look at it the next time you get close to him. Totally has the shape of Africa.”

“I doubt I’ll get that clo
se to him.” I lean closer and whisper. “I did have a dream about him last night.”

“Oh! Tell me.”

“
It was very PG but also very…erotic? Can something be PG and erotic?”

“Yes.
Absolutely.”

“Okay, well, w
e were at his house watching movies. He had on that blue shirt; you know the one that he looks amazing in?” She nods. “One minute we’re just hanging out—the next I’m straddling him and kissing. We just kissed and kissed and made out for hours.”

“Yum.”

“I could feel his beard on my chin and neck.” I shiver at the memory. God, it was hot. “His breath was warm and he tasted sweet. I could feel the warmth and weight of his body.”

“And then?” she prompts.

“And then his hands slipped under my shirt and I woke up. Stupid freaking alarm.”

“Ugh. Seriously, but that was a great dream.”

It was a great dream. I’d been replaying it in my head all day on a continuous loop. Ever since Finley suggested I go for it/him, my mind has been on over-drive. Like right now, I watched him climb out of the pool and duck under the shelter and I start to panic. He does this thing where he leaves without notice and I start to freak out when I can’t find him. Obsessive much? “Shit, do you think he’s leaving?” Finley shrugs. “I’m going to go look.”

“Knock him out, sister.”

I slip on my flip-flops and adjust my bikini bottoms to cover my ass, while shifting the top to accentuate my cleavage. I’m too chicken to approach him but I figure I may as well give him something to look at while I’m acting like a desperate loser. I cross the pool deck and realize Finley’s right; Aqua-Man is hot, but young. I suspect the things I can teach him would far outweigh any knowledge he would bring to the table on his own. Although, he’s pretty enough to make it worth my while.

If I gather the balls to do it.

I’m recreating my dream and the way his wide, hard shoulders felt under my hands when I turn the corner of the shelter. My thoughts become a fast reality when I slam into Carter, palms out.

“I’m so sorry,” I say in a rush. I pull
my hands away from his smooth, hard chest but his hands grip my shoulders, holding me in place.

“You okay?”

Yesssss.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” He lets go of my shoulders. His eyes drop to my chest befo
re flicking up to my eyes. Gray.

“Your eyes are gray
.”

“Uh, yeah.”
A little smile settles on his lips. “Yours are blue.”

I laugh stupidly because I’m stupid
. Completely, totally stupid. “True.”

Awkward silence and nerves
(is it hot in here?) fills the space between us and like a cartoon, a light bulb flashes in my brain and I say, “So, the girls’ mother wanted to see about swim lessons. Do you have any space?”

“Sure, yeah, hold on.” Carter
walks into the guard room and comes out with a piece of paper and a pen pressed between his lips. When he returns to my side I try to keep my eyes off the scattering of hair between his belly button and his red trunks. I try, but fail. He wears them low, nearly hanging off his hips, and when he bends or stretches his arms over his head I can see the pale, untanned skin below.

Happy trail indeed. Just seeing it makes me happy.
Did boys have hair like that when I was his age? Not sure I ever noticed.

He looks up from his paper.
“I can fit them in tomorrow at noon or at five. My shift is in between then.”

“Noon
would be great. I’ll tell their mom. She wants them to work on their strokes, for the meets and stuff.”

“Sure,” he says. “They’re both doing really well in practice, but the meets can be intimidating so a little extra help may be a good idea.”

“You’re on the swim team, right?”

I know he is.
Aqua-Man really should reconsider his privacy settings, because I can’t help but stalk his Facebook account. In just a few minutes, I found out he’s not only on the summer league swim team, but the high school one as well. His team just won the state championship, just like the soccer team he captained for. He’s a two-sport state champion. I shouldn’t be surprised. He looks like a two-sport state champion. He’s going to Duke in the fall and yes, his status is listed as ‘single’.

“I’ve been on the swim team here since I was four. This is the last year I’m eligible.” He folds the paper and shoves it in the pocket of his red shorts.

“So you know your stuff.” I roll my eyes at myself.

He laughs and stretches his hands to the edge of the door, giving me a peek of that white, virgin skin.
“Something like that.”

“
I’ll have them ready at noon, okay?”

“Great.
See you then.”

I turn and walk
off, only looking back once I rounded the edge of the pool. Yep, he’s watching me. The groundwork has been laid.

Chapter 5

The rest of the week I’m consumed
by two things: work and Aqua-Man. Lucky for me, they fall together. Except when they don’t. One morning, we arrived with a full day of supplies and he wasn’t there. I realized quickly enough it was his day off. Another afternoon we’d just unloaded our bags when a giant thunderstorm rolled in, keeping me from my favorite past time, Carter Watching.

“He’s staring at
you again,” Finley says. She squeezes a glob of white sunscreen into her palm and spreads it all over her legs.

“To be fair, he’s probably wat
ching you lube yourself up.”                                                                              

I
agree, though. I think he’s watching me also. I think he watches when I pull my car in the parking lot. And when I haul in the pool bag and both girls. I’m pretty sure he’s looking when I take off my sundress and reveal which suit I’m wearing. Today’s is black with tiny cherries scattered across the fabric.