Tainted Love Read online

  Tainted Love

  A Totally ‘80s Romance 2

  Addison Moore

  Contents

  Copyright

  Books by Addison Moore

  1. Everybody Wants to Rule the World

  Russell

  2. Girls on Film

  Russell

  3. I Want You to Want Me

  Russell

  4. So in Love

  Russell

  5. Always on My Mind

  Russell

  6. Here Comes the Rain Again

  Russell

  7. Boys Don’t Cry

  Russell

  8. You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)

  Russell

  Epilogue

  A Note from the Author

  Books by Addison Moore

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Edited by Paige Maroney Smith

  Cover Design: Gaffey Media

  * * *

  Copyright © 2016 by Addison Moore

  http://addisonmoorewrites.blogspot.com/

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to peoples either living or deceased is purely coincidental. Names, places, and characters are figments of the author’s imagination. The author holds all rights to this work. It is illegal to reproduce this novel without written expressed consent from the author herself.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Smashwords License agreement

  This ebook is for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase any additional copies for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  * * *

  Copyright © 2016 by Addison Moore

  ISBN: 978-1-62430-038-7

  Books by Addison Moore

  Young Adult Romance

  Melt With You (A Totally ’80s Romance 1)

  Tainted Love (A Totally ’80s Romance 2)

  Hold Me Now (A Totally ’80s Romance 3)

  Ethereal (Celestra Series Book 1)

  Tremble (Celestra Series Book 2)

  Burn (Celestra Series Book 3)

  Wicked (Celestra Series Book 4)

  Vex (Celestra Series Book 5)

  Expel (Celestra Series Book 6)

  Toxic Part One (Celestra Series Book 7)

  Toxic Part Two (Celestra Series Book 7.5)

  Elysian (Celestra Series Book 8)

  * * *

  Ephemeral (The Countenance Trilogy 1)

  Evanescent (The Countenance Trilogy 2)

  Entropy (The Countenance Trilogy 3)

  * * *

  Ethereal Knights (Celestra Knights)

  Season of the Witch (A Celestra Companion)

  * * *

  Romance

  3:AM Kisses (3:AM Kisses 1)

  Winter Kisses (3:AM Kisses 2)

  Sugar Kisses (3:AM Kisses 3)

  Whiskey Kisses (3:AM Kisses 4)

  Rock Candy Kisses (3:AM Kisses 5)

  Velvet Kisses (3:AM Kisses 6)

  Wild Kisses (3:AM Kisses 7)

  * * *

  Burning Through Gravity (Burning Through Gravity 1)

  A Thousand Starry Nights (Burning Through Gravity 2)

  Fire in an Amber Sky (Burning Through Gravity 3)

  * * *

  Beautiful Oblivion (Beautiful Oblivion 1)

  Beautiful Illusions (Beautiful Oblivion 2)

  Beautiful Elixir (Beautiful Oblivion 3)

  * * *

  The Solitude of Passion

  * * *

  Someone to Love (Someone to Love 1)

  Someone Like You (Someone to Love 2)

  Someone For Me (Someone to Love 3)

  * * *

  Celestra Forever After (Celestra Forever After 1)

  The Dragon and the Rose (Celestra Forever After 2)

  The Serpentine Butterfly (Celestra Forever After 3)

  Perfect Love (A Celestra Novella)

  1

  Everybody Wants to Rule the World

  Heather

  September 1985

  * * *

  “I think Sun-In is really starting to dry out my hair.” I hold the product between Jen and me while squinting at the happy-go-lucky bleached blonde on the package. She has that look in her eye that screams everything goes my way! and for a second I wish I could be her.

  “Are you like kidding?” Jen snatches the box from me and shoves it into the cart. “There’s like no way it’s damaging your hair. It’s full of vitamins and other good shit. I’m pretty sure it says so right on the bottle.”

  “Yeah, but I swear it’s turning my hair orange.” I duck to check out that pouf of glorified Aqua Net sitting on my head in the display mirror. The scent of fake Poison permeates from across the aisle where a girl hoses herself down with the product tester.

  “Right.” Jen moves us along down the aisle. “It’s like turning your hair blonde, you ditz. A beautiful golden shade if you ask me.” Her nose wrinkles while inspecting my brassy roots as if that weren’t the case at all. Jennifer has been my own personal hairdresser for as long as I can remember, and thankfully so, because I could never really afford to step into an actual salon. Mostly I repay Jen with a hearty thank you and a hug.

  “You’re like coming over tonight and giving me a perm,” I insist while she peruses the L’Oréal lipstick selection. I’ll admit that I long to have one of those shiny gold tubes taking up valuable real estate in my cruddy old makeup bag. I’ve been in love with the smell of those golden little sticks since as far back as I can remember, but, since my budget for makeup these days is next to nil, I’ll be skimming through the Wet ’N Wild offerings in just a moment.

  “I Melt with You” kicks in over the speakers, and I’m suddenly moved to sway my hips right here in CVS. Melissa bops down the aisle pointing to the ceiling.

  “This is totally my song!” Her face pinches bright pink as she swings her ponytail to the rhythm. Melissa has been going out with Joel Miller for almost a year now. I’ll admit, they’re a couple of cute puppies together. I’m so happy that she found someone who treats her well. Not that I know what that feels like. I just love watching them together, with their arms constantly wrapped around one another, their mouths never straying too far from one another’s lips. They’re the picture of what true love should be, and it further exemplifies the fact that Slam, aka John Wilton, and I don’t belong in the same earthen hemisphere together. Slam is an asshole, plain and simple. All of the girls he cheated on me with can testify to that. But, thankfully, he’s in his second year at San Ramos Community College, so he won’t be anywhere near my senior year. We’ve been on-again, off-again for as long as I can remember, and with school starting next Monday, I’m more than glad to finally be rid of him. It’s time for a fresh start, at least as fresh as it can get in my world.

  “I can’t give you a perm tonight.” Jennifer hands me the gold tube of lipstick as if it were a peace offering. Jennifer, Melissa, and I have been friends forever, but we really bonded a few years back watching Square Pegs together every week while it was still on the air. Today, we’re bonding over the fact our senior year starts Monday. We’re pretty psyched. I can honestly say that we’ve never looked forward to a first day of school like in the history of ever.

  “Russian Red?” I pop open the lid to confirm its yummy cherry goodness before taking a quick sniff. “L’Oréal lipstick always smells like a dying rose to me.”

  “Like stop being so bleak.” Melissa shoots me a genuinely perturbed look before adding a tub of Noxzema to the cart.r />
  “It’s not bleak. A flower gives off its best scent right after it’s been crushed.”

  And that little bit of botanical knowledge stems from a bizarre pep talk my mother gave me after I cried myself to sleep over Slam’s womanizing antics for the very last time. I was the crushed rose in question. Only, contrary to Mom’s fuzzy little quasi-morbid chat, my life still smells more like a gallon of soured milk than it does a garden full of roses.

  I run a swath of the lipstick over the back of my hand, and it looks like a blood droplet, a fresh wound that’s appeared for all to see. Sometimes I think that’s how we should wear our broken hearts, right there in the open for all to see. If every person on the planet could see how broken and pained everyone else is, then the world might actually soften a bit.

  “I approve.” Jen smiles knowingly. Both Jennifer and Melissa are more into the frosted lip look, with Jennifer veering toward the pinks and Melissa the purples. But, as for me, I’ve been all about the bright reds, the dark reds bordering on black, and every now and again, I’ll bust out my neon blue lipstick just to mess with people.

  The little gold tube warms in my hand. I’m pretty sure Jen would encourage the splurge, but there’s no way I have it in me or my dwindling bank account to do this. Financially pillaging myself via the cosmetic aisle in CVS is never the best-laid plan—especially not when you consider the fact I’m saving every penny I earn to buy that rusty Gonorrhea Ghia I’m hoping to make mine. Karmann Ghia, actually, and it’s a pretty decent car.

  “I think it’ll look great on you, Jen.” I stuff it back in her hand. “It’s like about time to expand your pink horizons. Rumor has it Jessie Fox only Frenches girls who wear red lipstick.” I tap my tongue to my upper lip, and Melissa and I share a laugh at the dig. It’s a well-known fact Jen would rub her mouth down with just about anything if it led to a kiss from the STD-laden boy in question. Jessie Fox is Glen Heights’ own man whore and the crush of Jen’s life. She doesn’t seem to mind the teasing, so Melissa and I dish it out on a regular basis.

  “Not for me, for you. Consider it a gift.” Jen plops it inside the cart and strolls toward the home perm kits. “Toni or Rave?” She starts plucking at the boxes before I can properly protest the fact she’s about to blow some serious dough on my lips.

  “Look, I’m not letting you get that for me. If I really want it, I’ll get it myself.”

  “Like, too bad.” She rattles the Toni boxed perm in my face. “I’m getting this for you, too. I’m feeling generous. Besides, I owe you for the movie ticket you bought me a few weeks back.”

  It’s true. Jennifer forgot her wallet, and I had no problem covering for her when we went to see Weird Science, right here at the Glen Heights Galleria.

  “Okay, we’re even. No more gifts. You got it?” I shoot both Jen and Melissa a look, and they avert their eyes in tandem. It’s a well-known fact I’m perennially financially strapped. To further compound my poverty, I quit my job last week at the Orange Julius because I was sick and tired of Grant, the day manager, groping me from behind whenever I bent over. In fact, my recent unemployment status is the exact reason we’ve chartered into enemy territory today. I wanted to pick up a few applications here at the Galleria in hopes of renewing my gainfully employed status once again. I’ve already swept through the San Ramos mall in hopes of getting a few applications, but jobs are harder to come by there.

  It feels like forever I’ve been saving up to buy Dusty Bennett’s Ghia. It’s baby blue, and tiny, and cute, and I couldn’t care less about the cracked dashboard or the slashed-up seats and ceiling as if a homicidal maniac let loose in there. I wish it were mine. Dusty’s been nice enough to hold it for me until I’m ready to plunk down some serious cash, which at the rate I’m going will be well into the next century.

  “Oh, look. There’s Russell!” Melissa hops on her tiptoes and waves at him from across the store. Instantly, my body slaps with heat, and a hot bite of sweat erupts under my arms at the sight of the boy.

  Okay, like, confession. Before Melissa fell hard for Joel Miller, I might have had a tiny crush on him, too, but it’s only because he and Frankie Delacruz ruled the freaking school. And I swear on all that is holy that once Melissa claimed Joel for herself (which was totally heroic since he practically mowed her down with his truck, but that sort of ended well despite that whole broken leg debacle) anyway, like I totally saw him as a friend after that.

  But, then, something strange happened, and it’s as if all those ridiculous lusty feelings I had toward Joel automatically transposed to his lookalike next-door neighbor Russell James—who, by the way, I totally do not like. He’s a poser, a wannabe, a total preppy in the making who thinks he’s hot shit because he likes to blast Dio from his oversized boom box. You know what they say. The bigger the boom box, the smaller the—

  “What’s up?” Russell materializes in front of us, and my heart stops beating for a brief second. My entire body ignites with heat like a parched California hillside. Crap. I so hate the hormonal effect my body is subject to simply due to the fact I’m well out of the gate on my pubescent stage of life. I’m totally not attracted to this dweeb, and yet my ovaries are pumping out estrogen at a million miles an hour just hoping to reproduce with this godlike specimen. This is one of those instances where biology sucks big time.

  He and Melissa rattle on about Joel coming home this weekend and getting together to watch a movie, but the rest of the conversation melts into what sounds like Snoopy speak—wa, wa, wa—as my eyes scour over his features, memorizing them for later. Russell James is spellbinding, tall, hair dark as midnight, and, of course, handsome by textbook standards. He’s got the steel blue eyes, the dimples for days that make all the girls at Glen Heights High evaporate in a Russell-gasm as soon as he sheds his signature killer grin. He’s built—I’ll give him that. If you like sheetrock for a chest type, then Russ is your man. Now that Joel and Frankie have moved on to greener scholastic pastures, Russell and Jessie are the kings of the football team.

  Jennifer peers over his shoulder with an anticipatory glance of her own. All summer Russell has been hanging out with Jessie Fox, and it’s no secret that Jen has been looking to get an in with that aforementioned man whore. Jessie is just about the only guy at school who has actually amassed a reputation. His specialty? Hickey necklaces. Yes, it’s as disgusting as he sounds.

  “And I’ll beat your score on Frogger, too.” Melissa laughs into her Atari-based threat.

  “We’ll see about that.” He frowns a moment before breaking out into that designer grin of his, and my stomach pinches hard with heat. “See you around.” He glances at me, and for one wayward second his eyes sear into mine. I can feel the burn of those deep navy eyes, feel the sting penetrating all the way down to my sorry soul.

  Depeche Mode’s “Just Can’t Get Enough” streams through the speakers, and it’s as if in this one tiny microcosm of time there’s just Russell James, Depeche Mode, and me.

  “There you are!” a female voice shrills, and we turn to find a blonde decked out in an acid washed denim jacket with matching ripped jeans. Bright pink leg warmers are scrunched up to her knees, and she’s wearing a requisite pair of L.A. Gear tennis shoes with the pink and purple laces. I know for a fact that both Jen and Melissa are drooling over her look, her severe side ponytail with the triple scrunchies that make it look more like a neon handle than a tail. Her arm is laden with three different Swatch watches in a parfait of colors.

  If either Jennifer or Melissa were to wear that outfit, they would look a million times better. There’s something about this girl that screams pretentious snob more than it ever does down-to-earth girlfriend. But something tells me that’s what Russell James Yuppie-in-Training prefers.

  “I like thought I lost you.” A bright pink bubble expands from her lips before she pulls it out like a string with her fingers. Her arm falls over his shoulder as she eyes us each in turn with a death stare. She’s sending a message loud and clear
. It’s obvious she’s made her selection from the collar popping preppy pool, and Russell James is it. “Like, we’d better haul ass. The movie starts in half an hour, and I like my popcorn buttered, if you know what I mean.” She buries her lips in his ear a moment, and he retracts.

  “Got it.” He nods with a slight look of annoyance toward his newfound bubbly boobed, well-buttered bitch. “I’ll see you at Joel’s this Saturday.” He nods to me when he says it, and my stomach explodes in a ball of acid once again. Stupid, stupid hormones. I know for a fact it was a general statement, not that I wouldn’t want it to be. The Preppy Prince and I could never have anything in common.

  “So, who’s the skank?” I ask once they’re not quite out of earshot, and the girl shoots me a side-glance from the next aisle. She snaps up a copy of Young Miss magazine before whispering to Russell and sending him on a mission clear to the other end of the store while she heads to the register.

  Melissa growls at her. “That’s Amanda Prescott. A bona fide Valley Girl, an import from Encino. She’s a transfer student this year—a senior.”

  Jennifer leans in to get a better look at the girl. “Like, who the hell transfers as a senior? That must really suck.”

  “No kidding.” A brief pang of genuine misery rips through me for the girl. “You get all the way to the finish line with your friends and then you need to start all over again? Although, judging by the way her tongue was scooping out Russell’s earwax, she won’t be too lonely on the first day.” Or tonight for that matter.

  “She won’t be lonely at all.” Melissa leads us to the Wet ’N Wild display and starts picking through the eyeliner while I manically toss item after item into the cart myself. “She’s friends with Tess Nichols and Rachel Torres. I guess they know each other from some club or something.”