Tainted Love

by Michelle Betham

  “She thinks I’ve gone for a run. I can’t stay too long.”

  I drop my head, I don’t want him to see how disappointed I am. I want him to stay, I don’t want him to go. And I never meant for this to happen, for my feelings to develop like this – I never meant to have any feelings. That was never the plan, but it happened. Those feelings grew, and I can’t pretend they’re not there now.

  “Look, Summer, I need to ask you something.”

  I raise my gaze and my eyes meet his, and I feel guilty and sick and excited, Jesus! Excited? I want to steal my best friend’s husband and I’m fucking excited?

  “Are you absolutely, one hundred per cent sure that this baby – are you certain it’s mine?”

  His words sting, does he think I sleep around? I’ve never slept around, I have never done that. And despite the fact Savvi’s dad was nothing more than a one-time thing, there’d still been a connection between Stefan and me. Something that drew us together, to create our daughter. Something drew me and Sam together, too, I truly believe that now. We came together for a reason, we’re not going to destroy all these lives for nothing. There’s a reason. And I am so sorry to do this to Joss, but she’ll be fine. She’s beautiful and strong and men adore her. There’s something about that Scandinavian vibe she exudes, it draws men to her. I’m surprised Sam hasn’t noticed it more; the way other men look at his wife.

  “It’s yours, Sam. This baby is yours.”

  He stares at me, he says nothing for a few moments, he just looks into my eyes. He’s trying to see if I’m lying, but I’m not. I’m one hundred per cent certain that this baby is his, I haven’t slept with anyone else in a long time. Sex hasn’t always been something I enjoyed, or even wanted. Until Sam told me he’d wondered what it would be like to sleep with me. A throwaway comment, a stupid remark that he probably should’ve kept to himself. But he didn’t. I probably shouldn’t have asked the question, but I did, and he answered it, and that one, out-of-the-blue comment lit a fuse, and neither of us stood back from it. We let it go, felt it burn away – we acted on it. And then we tried to pretend that once had been enough, a stupid mistake, something we should never do again. But we did it, again. Two weak people who thought they were stronger than they really were. Two weak people who now have to deal with the consequences of their actions.

  His expression changes the longer he looks at me. I can see fear in his eyes, the realisation, it’s slowly dawning on him.

  You put the thought in both our heads, Sam. You lit that touch-paper, you made us both wonder. You put that thought in our heads.

  “Are you keeping it?”

  I laugh, turning my head away from him. “We’re not two naïve teenagers who made a mistake, Sam.”

  “This is a mistake, Summer. It’s one huge fucking mistake.”

  My head spins back around, my eyes blazing as I stare him down. “It’s a baby, Sam. Our baby. Your baby…”

  “This would kill Joss, and you know that. You know what this would do to her.”

  “What do you want me to do, Sam? Huh? Pretend I’m not pregnant? How exactly is that going to work?”

  “I don’t know, Summer. Okay?” He gets up, kicking his chair back under the table, raking a hand back and forth through his hair. Back and forth, a continuous motion as he paces the kitchen floor. “I don’t know what the fuck we do now.”

  I watch him for a while. Watch his body language, watch the panic slowly grow within him, he can’t hide it.

  “You need to work out what you’re going to tell Joss, Sam. You can’t avoid it forever.”

  He stops pacing. He stands still, he looks at me, an expression on his face that tells me he thought he could avoid it. He can’t.

  “Things are going to change, there’s nothing we can do about that now. So, you need to start dealing with it.”

  “I can’t tell her, Summer. I can’t, it’ll destroy her.”

  “You can’t keep it from her, Sam. And I’m not going to lie.”

  “She’s your fucking best friend!”

  “That’s why I’m not going to lie to her. And neither should you. You need to face up to what we did. You need to deal with the changes that are going to happen.”

  “I’ll lose her. I tell her about this, about us, and I’ll lose her.”

  Then you’ll be free to come to me, Sam.

  “Don’t you care about Joss at all? You two are like fucking sisters, and you want to hurt her, like this?”

  “We already hurt her the second you touched me, Sam. There’s no going back from that.” I get up, walk over to him. I reach out and cup his cheek, stroking his skin with my thumb. “You need to tell her the truth.”

  He grabs my wrist, yanks my hand away from his face. His eyes are full of anger now, it’s masking the fear, because he’ll still feel that, too. That’s going to be his overriding emotion now. Fear.

  “I’m not losing her, Summer. Not over this…”

  “Over this?”

  “We need to deal with it another way…”

  He starts pacing again, starts raking his hand back and forth through his hair, his agitation obvious, it floods every inch of him.

  “There is no other way, Sam.”

  He stops pacing and leans back against the wall, his hands still raking through his hair, his eyes raised to the ceiling. “Jesus Christ, what the fuck have we done?”

  I go over to the counter and pour myself a cup of coffee.

  “The sooner you tell her, the sooner she can start to accept it.” I turn around, take a sip of my coffee, my eyes fixed on him even though his are still looking upwards. “The sooner you can start to accept it.”

  His gaze drops, his eyes meet mine. He shakes his head, he doesn’t stop shaking it. “No. No, I’ll never accept this.”

  “You think you have a choice?” I bang the mug down on the counter, I’m angry now. He’s acting like this can all just be swept under the carpet, and it can’t. It’s real, and he caused it. He has no fucking choice.

  “I am not willing to lose Joss; do you hear me? She is my wife…”

  “And you betrayed her. I betrayed her, but I accept that we now have to deal with what we did. You need to accept it too, Sam.”

  “I can’t,” he whispers, shaking his head again. “I can’t.”

  I look over towards the French windows that lead out into my small, neat garden. A garden perfect for a child. Compact and safe. Private. Enough space to run around in but small enough for me to be able to keep an eye on them when they’re out there.

  “You have to, Sam.” I turn back to face him. “You have to tell her.”

  He throws his head back, his sigh loud and full of frustration. Regret. Fear. He’s frightened, so am I. I’m scared, because who I’ve started to become – the person I used to be, I don’t know her anymore. The second I let Sam Coburn into my bed I changed. I became someone else, I became this person here. The one who thought it was okay to sleep with her best friend’s husband. The one who thinks it’s okay to take him from her. The one who seems to have forgotten all about loyalty and friendship and how much all of this is going to hurt so many people. But I let Sam Coburn into my bed; I let him in. And I let myself fall for him, even though he never promised me anything. I let myself fall. And now I want him, all of him. And even though he doesn’t want me, not yet, he will. It’s just going to take some time. But Joss is going to leave him, when she hears the truth. She’ll walk away, he’ll lose her. I just need to be patient, and wait, for his pain to ease. I need to be there for him, reminding him that there is another life waiting for him. One with me, and his baby. Something he could never have with Joss. Her barren womb was never going to give him what I know he’s always wanted, deep down. A child. They both wanted a child. They both tried to accept the fact Joss could never give them a family. But now Sam can have that family, with me. And maybe that’s the reason why we were brought together. I’m the one who was always meant to give him his child.

&
nbsp; “I can’t do it today, Summer. I can’t do it yet, I can’t tell her, yet.”

  “It needs to be soon, Sam. You need to tell her soon. I don’t intend to keep this pregnancy a secret.”

  “And what about us?”

  “I don’t intend to keep that a secret, either.” I walk over to him, and once again I reach out to cup his cheek, my eyes burning into his. He needs to understand now, that this isn’t going away. “So, either you tell her, Sam – either you tell her, soon. Or I will.”

  36

  Joss

  I feel as if all eyes are on me as I walk along the corridor, towards the school canteen. I feel like everyone can tell I kissed Connor Sloane. It’s been like that all morning, my paranoia refusing to loosen its hold. But I really do have to let it go now, it’s over. What happened… it’s done. And it was wrong and stupid but I will never go there again. I will never do anything that could threaten my marriage, I love Sam too much. So much I kissed another man?

  “Hey, gorgeous.”

  I swing around to see Alex standing there, tall and gangly in a hot, Swedish kind of way. At least, that’s how I’ve heard some of the female students describe him. Connor Sloane doesn’t have the monopoly on student fan clubs. Alex has had one of his own for a long time now. Some of them have even gone to great lengths to learn Swedish words and phrases – not all of them appropriate – to shout at him as he walks past. Google Translate has a lot to answer for. If only some of them would put in half as much effort with the languages they’re supposed to be studying in school they’d be fluent in those by now.

  “You feeling better?” He smiles, and I smile back. I love my best friend. Always there, even when I don’t particularly want him to be.

  “You know I wasn’t really ill.”

  “Yeah, I knew. Listen, do you want to get out of here for an hour? Grab some lunch in the pub?”

  I can hear Connor’s voice coming from further down the corridor, and I turn my head slightly, he’s talking to Yasmin from the language department. She’s flicking her long dark hair back over her shoulder as he speaks to her, she’s not even bothering to hide her obvious flirting. He’s not even bothering to hide the fact he’s playing up to it, either, and I feel my stomach contract. Why? Why is it doing that?

  “You and Yasmin had a thing once, didn’t you?” I ask Alex, without looking at him. I’m still focused on Connor, on the way his eyes smile even when his mouth doesn’t.

  “For about five minutes. You coming to the pub, then?”

  Connor suddenly shifts his gaze away from Yasmin, his eyes briefly meeting mine before they’re back on her.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m coming.”

  37

  Alex

  She thinks I didn’t notice the way she looked at Connor. She thinks I didn’t see that brief but all too powerful glance that passed between them. She didn’t know I saw it because she never took her eyes off him.

  “So, how are things between you and Sam?”

  She lifts her head up from the remnants of the lasagna she’s been pushing around her plate for the past fifteen minutes. “Why do you keep asking about me and Sam? Me and Sam are fine.”

  I take a sip of my coffee. We’ve got the whole afternoon to get through before we teachers can even think about coming back in here for alcohol. And I don’t say anything, I just watch her as she drops her gaze again, continues to stab the lasagna with her fork. And I wait, because now I know for sure that something’s wrong. And I want to ask what. I want to know what’s going on in her head, but I think I’m actually scared of what the answer might be. Should she choose to tell me. But keeping things bottled up – that’s never really been Joss’s thing. She likes to talk, to clear the air. She doesn’t like secrets. But we all have them.

  She suddenly sits back in her chair, drops her fork onto the plate, her eyes following it as it clatters down onto the china; falls away onto the table.

  “Sam’s been acting a little…”

  She trails off. Her eyes are still down, her fingers now absent-mindedly fiddling with that stray fork.

  “A little, what, Joss?”

  She slowly raises her gaze, her blue eyes meeting mine. “A little weird. Strange. Like he’s distracted by something.”

  “And you haven’t been distracted?”

  She frowns slightly.

  “Joss, I can tell, okay? I can tell you’ve had something on your mind these past couple of days.”

  “I wasn’t talking about me. I was talking about Sam.”

  “Have you asked him? If something’s wrong?”

  She shakes her head, briefly dropping her gaze again, picking up that fork and placing it back on the plate next to the remains of the lasagna.

  “Well, maybe you should try talking to him. That’s what you usually do. You usually talk.”

  She looks back at me through narrowed eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You haven’t been yourself, Joss. Since the night of Summer’s book launch. You were preoccupied that night, with something, I don’t know what. And then throwing a sick day…”

  “If you’ve got something to say, Alex, just say it.”

  “You don’t bottle things up. You’d have talked to Sam by now, found out what – if anything – is distracting him, if you didn’t have distractions of your own.”

  She sighs quietly, throws her head back, her fist clenching on the table.

  “Joss, come on, you can talk to me.”

  “It’s nothing, Alex. I’m just… It’s nothing.”

  It’s my turn to frown. “You sure about that? You sure it’s nothing?”

  She drops her head, looks right at me, her ice-blue eyes cold. “It’s nothing. It was a stupid mistake, that’s all. And I’ve just been over-thinking it, making more of it than it was, so, it’s nothing.”

  “And you think I’m going to be okay with that explanation?”

  She sighs again. She knows she can’t leave it at that. She knows she’s going to talk to me, that’s why she came here. She wants to talk. And I’m the only one she comes to when she’s got something on her mind, something she can’t talk to Sam or Summer about. I’m the one she comes to.

  “The night of the party… I was late because – me and Connor, we kissed.”

  “You kissed Connor Sloane?”

  “He kissed me, I just let it happen. It was only a quick kiss, you know? His mouth barely touched mine, but it shouldn’t have happened, Alex. It shouldn’t have happened. I shouldn’t have let it happen.”

  “Are you and Sam okay?”

  “Yes, we’re fine. We’re fine, I just… When Connor offered me the Deputy Head position, he asked me how long I’d worked at the school. How long I’d been a part of Millers Bridge, and when I thought about it, added all those years up in my head, I realised my whole life has revolved around the school; the people who work in it. My husband. My best friend. It’s been my world for so long…”

  “And that made you want to kiss him?”

  She looks at me, and her eyes, they’re not cold anymore. They’re scared. She’s so full of regret it’s practically spilling out of her.

  “It was a stupid, rash action that I regret with every fibre of my being, Alex. For one unexplainable moment, I felt stifled by everything. By Sam. My life. The school. Everything felt like it was suffocating me, trapping me, and I know how crazy that sounds, but that’s what it felt like. And he was there, and we were alone…” She shakes her head, her eyes once more dropping to the table. “There’s no excuse, for what I did. It was wrong, and if Sam ever found out…” She leaves that sentence hanging too, her fingers quietly drumming the tabletop.

  “And what about Connor? How does he feel, about what happened?”

  She looks up, her eyes back on mine. “We talked. He’s fine.” She shrugs. “It’s forgotten.”

  “Yeah. Looks like it.”

  She starts twisting her wedding ring round and round her finger. I hate seeing her
like this, hate seeing her so sad.

  “I don’t understand why you would do something like that, Joss. Whatever you were feeling – you should’ve come to me. Talked to me.”

  She looks away again, like she’s almost ashamed to face me. Nothing she could do could make me ashamed of her. Nothing. Not even this. I don’t understand it, but it doesn’t make me think any less of her.

  “But I didn’t, did I? I didn’t come to you.”

  I reach out across the table and take her hand, stopping her from fiddling with her wedding ring. “Are you sure everything’s okay between you and Sam? I mean, you said he’d been distracted…”

  “Jesus, Alex, me and Sam are fine, all right? And he wasn’t distracted before… It was the night of Summer’s book launch. When I got there he’d been drinking, that’s when he’d seemed distracted, like he was trying to take his mind off something.”

  “The night of the book launch? The same night you and Connor…? Was there a fucking full moon or something?”

  She glares at me, not welcoming my flippancy. But I’m just trying to deal with something that’s come from right out of left field. She says it was only a kiss, but I think it runs deeper than that. I know my best friend.

  “Are you still taking the Deputy Head position?”

  “There’s no reason why I shouldn’t. Connor and me, we’re both grown-ups. We did something stupid, we agreed it was a mistake. We move on. We reset, carry on as before.”

  But even as she says those words, I can see she’s not sure she means them. And maybe her and Connor – maybe they can go back to normal, continue their working relationship, but Joss and Sam… I think that might be a different matter. I know her, and I know she struggles with guilt. With secrets.

  “Are you going to tell Sam?”

  She drops her gaze again, her shoulders sagging. “I don’t know, Alex.” She looks up, her eyes shining with tears. “I don’t know.”

  “Come on.” I squeeze her hand tighter, pull her up from her chair and we head out of the pub, out into the Spring sunshine. And once outside I pull her into my arms, I hug her tight. I rub her back, kiss the top of her head; I breathe her in. I let her know that I’m here for her, no matter what. My best friend. She made a wrong choice, a bad decision, but that doesn’t make her a bad person. We all make choices that others may not agree with. That some may find unsettling. Odd. It doesn’t make us bad people.