Tainted Love (Sweetest Taboo #2) (10 page)

“You mean like Marcus?” she teased. “I’ll say you’ve got other things going on!”

I nodded, blushing, and continued. “And it’s not only that. He kept getting these phone calls while we were together. Calls that he’d go into the bathroom or outside to take. And I woke up a couple of mornings to hear him in the bathroom, murmuring to someone about how he would see them soon.”

Now it was Susie’s turn to grow silent. “You think he’s with someone else?”

“I don’t know, but it’s possible, isn’t it? After all, I’ve been gone for a year, and there was nothing to keep him from seeing anyone else. He thought I had left for good, he said, and didn’t know if I’d ever come back. I’m sure he didn’t know if I’d ever talk to him again, so could I really blame him if he was seeing someone else while I was in college? And then there was that girl, Christine, I could swear that I saw something there, between them.”

Susie nodded. “Well, you know what they say – once a cheater, always a cheater. And if he was cheating on his wife with you, maybe that’s what he does. You know, keeps an older woman – not that you’re
older
, but you know what I mean – and then has a younger girl on the side.” She paused to focus on changing lanes and to think. “But, you will never really know, no matter how much you think about it or ask. You either trust him or you don’t. It’s that simple.”

“But how can I possibly trust him?” I asked, uttering for the first time what I’d been thinking for weeks. It hadn’t been real until now, but as soon as the words were out of my mouth I knew that this was what I’d been worrying about the entire time. I loved Tom. I wanted to trust him. I wanted everything to be okay. But how could I throw myself into this again, risking everything, if I didn’t trust him? And why was I so wrapped up with trusting him, when in fact I was the one who was having an affair?

Susie took a deep breath, her wavy red hair blowing in the breeze as we drove. “Wow, it was such a romantic story, until you mentioned that other girl.”

I laughed, shaking it off. “Well, that was my interesting summer, all four weeks of it. Now tell me about yours. What’d you do here all by yourself? Did you have any wild parties? You know I wouldn’t expect anything less! What’s the gossip? What’s happened?”

She paused for a moment, her blue eyes piercing, and I was sure she was going to tell me something terrible. Then she shook her head at herself and took the invitation I’d given her, launching into a play-by-play account of her last four weeks, telling me all the details that I didn’t really want to know. I listened faithfully, though, oohing at the right moments so she would know I was listening.

***

Getting back to the apartment made me feel better immediately. We’d decided to get a smaller apartment so that we could afford it with just the two of us. The new apartment was decorated just the way we liked it and very cozy, especially during the long and cold East Coast winters. There was color everywhere, with bright paintings on the walls, overstuffed chairs and couches, and plenty of blankets. Susie got cold easily, and had insisted that we keep blankets laying out for her in case she needed them on a moment’s notice. I’d shaken my head at the laziness this symbolized – couldn’t she get up and go to the cupboard if she got cold? – but compromised by making sure that the blankets matched the furniture and made interesting pieces on their own. The living room was a colorful, cozy snuggery, perfect for studying and reading, or drinking coffee or hot chocolate and staying up all night. It was small, but it was ours.

The kitchen, though, was my domain. I’d discovered a passion for cooking since I’d moved away from my mother, and regularly cooked meals. In reality, this was more like I’d taken on my mother’s role – she’d been teaching me to cook my entire life, through her delicious meals. I was just doing it by myself now. If our friends heard I was cooking, they invited themselves over, and brought friends, so we often ended up hosting impromptu dinner parties. I hadn’t enjoyed it at first, wanting to keep a low profile as a freshman at a big university, but soon I was inviting more people myself, experimenting on them with new dishes or taking votes on old Chilean favorites. If I wasn’t going to go into publishing, I often thought, maybe I should consider opening a small restaurant of my own. It would make my degree absolutely useless, but it would certainly be personally satisfying.

I swept through the small space when Susie and I got home, making sure that it was still in one piece, and lovingly touching a few of my favorite dishes. I had plans for a big Mexican meal tonight, as a welcome home party for myself, and I didn’t want to have to shop for any dishes before I started cooking. The grocery bill was already going to be large enough.

I was also making a list of the people I’d invite to dinner on this, my first night home. It had only been a few weeks, but I’d missed my friends – and my life – and had decided to turn over a new leaf with them. Instead of letting them come to me, I was going to start making more of an effort. Inviting them over on a regular basis, and actually entertaining. As long as I was going to build a life, I decided, I wanted it to be full of the people I enjoyed spending time with. And if the last four weeks had taught me anything, it was that there was no time like the present. I wanted to grab life by the horns and direct it where to go.

Of course I had to decide where I wanted to go before I could start directing. Inviting my closest friends to dinner seemed like as good a place to start as any.

As I was walking back toward my bedroom to unpack my bags – a process that consisted of taking my clothes from the suitcase and putting them directly into the laundry – my phone rang in my pocket. Glancing down, I saw that it was my mother. Probably just calling to check in, I thought. Nothing to worry about. I was nervous, though, when I hit the green button on the keypad. A part of me still wondered if my parents suspected I’d lied to them. Or if my brother had said anything to them.

My mom and I chatted for about five minutes about life and the fact that I was back in my apartment, and then I hung up the phone, relieved. Well that was extremely normal. She certainly didn’t act like she knew anything, and if I could count on anything in life, it was one truth: if I was in trouble, my mother wouldn’t make a secret of it. She didn’t believe in delaying punishments or keeping secrets. If I’d done something wrong, I knew about it immediately, and knew my punishment the moment after that. If she were even a tiny bit suspicious about anything, she would have told me.

I was collapsing on my bed in relief when Tony called. Now this was strange; he almost never called me, and the fact that he was calling right after my mom called made my stomach knot up. When I talked to him yesterday, he hadn’t seemed suspicious, and he certainly hadn’t said anything about seeing me with Tom. He evidently hadn’t called my mother and told her either, and I had to assume that he hadn’t called the police, who would have certainly contacted either me or Tom. But now he was calling me out of the blue. What could he possibly want?

“Hello?” I answered hesitantly, praying that he had a concrete reason for calling. Something other than to lecture me, or tell me that he was going to go to my parents about what I’d been doing. The days of Tony and I getting into trouble together, and then teaming up for each other, seemed suddenly distant. I wasn’t sure I could trust him.

“Hey Izzy, how’s it going?” he asked. I paused. He sounded friendly enough, and very casual.

“Hey, Tony. Things are good, just cleaning up around the apartment, still doing some unpacking from being away this summer. What’s up?”

He went on to ask me about how the internship had been, what I’d learned there, and even whether I thought there might be a future job with that publishing house. When I asked him why he was so interested, he claimed that he’d made a personal resolution to get more involved in his little sister’s life, show her more attention, and be more interested in what she was doing in college.

My mouth dropped. If there was ever an indication that he’d seen me walking hand-in-hand with Tom, this was it. Tony, getting involved in my life and caring about what I was doing? Please. He’d never been interested, not even a single day of his entire life, and I didn’t believe a word he said. Besides, now he was married and they were going to be starting a family of their own. Why would he care what I was up to, unless he was suspicious of me? Still, I thanked him for his concern and told him I was excited about sharing more with him, now that we were grown up. Somehow, I managed to get off the phone without giving a shred of evidence away.

This time I turned the phone on silent and tossed it across the room onto my comfy armchair. I didn’t want any more surprise phone calls. I needed some time to calm down and figure out what I was going to do about Tony, who was acting more suspicious by the minute. The last thing I needed was for Tony to start poking his nose about and meddling in my private business. I wondered if his newfound brotherly concern also meant that he’d told someone what he’d seen, or that he was doing research back home. If he figured out that I’d left around the same time when Tom disappeared for his ‘personal leave,’ there was going to be trouble. I didn’t think Tony would do anything to hurt me, but I knew my brother well enough to know that he’d try to protect me. And his idea of protection didn’t always match mine.

I’d unpacked half of my suitcase, my mind racing, when I heard the phone buzzing. Groaning, I walked to where I’d thrown it. I didn’t plan to answer it, but I wanted to at least know who I was ignoring. It was Vicky, which made me glad I hadn’t answered it. The last thing I needed right now was to hear more gossip about home, or Tom, or petite, perfect, pixie-like Christine. While Vicky was leaving about ten minutes’ worth of voicemail, another call came in. I was still standing there, and glanced down to see who was calling. I didn’t think I’d ever received so many calls in such a short space of time. Normally I would feel important or even popular, but with my mind in its current state, it just made me nervous. Why were so many people from home calling me? Was word already out about Tom and me? What was going on back there?

When I saw the number, though, I felt my lips curl into a satisfied, affectionate smile. I didn’t know how he’d already heard that I was back, but this was the call I’d been waiting for since landing in DC. I ducked down, scooped the phone up, and hit the green button.

“Professor Wellings,” I purred, “how did you know I was back? I was just thinking about having some friends over for dinner tonight, but I can put it off if you want to meet up.”

Chapter Eight - Give a Little Bit

I
glanced at the phone for the tenth time in the last five minutes and sighed. Izzy had promised that she’d call me when she landed in DC, to let me know that she’d arrived safely, but no matter how many times I refreshed the call screen, her number still didn’t magically appear. She’d probably forgotten, as I tried to convince myself, or got caught up in the rush of getting her luggage and getting home. I’d been on enough trips to know that calling people wasn’t the first thing you thought of when you landed – there was luggage to be found, friends to meet, shuttles to find, and then the inevitable traffic to get through. Even knowing this, I still felt like she was avoiding me, after all, what does it take to make a thirty second phone call to tell your loved one you are home. She should
know
I would be worried if I didn’t hear from her. But then I knew Isabel, and the other person never came first. Izzy was probably just on her way home, filling her roommates in on what had happened over the summer, and getting situated again.

That was the rational side of me thinking things through.

The emotional side was freaking out. Why hadn’t she called? What was she doing? I’d checked the flight on the Internet, and could see that it had landed without delays, so I wasn’t worried about that. The idea that she was back on the East Coast, though – so far away from me, and in the midst of a college campus – made me more nervous than I’d expected. I missed having her next to me, telling me what she was thinking. I’d automatically reached for her several times throughout the day, and felt empty every time I found her missing. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was thinking of me as much as I was thinking of her, she would have called by now. Clearly, she wasn’t thinking of me, which didn’t make me feel any better knowing this. I have never been one to worry, or to feel emotionally weak for that matter, but I guess I just had a hard time wondering where her mind was, where I stood in her life, and if she was playing me as she played with someone else on the East Coast.

I turned back to the paper I was reading and tried to focus on it. I’d taken on some history classes for the next semester, and I needed to be prepared. I’d already lost two weeks over the summer, and now I had some catching up to do. No matter how hard I tried to focus on it, though, that voice in the back of my head kept asking me what I thought Izzy was doing, and when she would call. I guess the bottom line was that I still harbored trust issues when it came to Izzy, and after that phone call she received while we were having breakfast a few days ago, I felt she was seeing someone as well.

I decided to call her later in the evening, after dinnertime to check on her, figuring with a three-hour time difference, she’d have to be home. Knowing that I would talk to her later helped to shut that nagging voice up, if only for a while.

***

I saw Marcus later that night – as I’d known I would – and it was just as wonderful as I’d hoped it would be. Marcus was a Philosophy professor at the university, and I’d had a class with him the year before. He was a relatively young professor, by all accounts, in his late 20s, having earned his PhD just two years prior. He had the stereotypical handsome professor profile with dark, unruly hair, glasses that he only wore when he read, and the serious face of an academic. He had the body of an athlete, though, and towered over most of the students in class.