Tasting Never (Never say Never)

by C. M. Stunich

  “For what?” I ask as I fold my arms over my chest and try not to shiver in the December cold.

  Ty says, “For disrespecting your friend,” just like that, and I forgive him with a sigh. I'm bouncing up and down on my toes, trying to stay warm. My dress is made of some cheap polyester blend stuff that I absolutely hate and does nothing to keep me warm. I'm also not wearing any panties; it's not the whole easy access bullshit that guys like to think. I just don't like wearing them.

  “Hey you.” A hand lands on my shoulder and I spin around to find Jason-or-whatever standing there with a beer in either hand.

  “Hey you?” Ty asks with raised brows and shakes his head as he sips his Alleycat Amber. I glance at him, but I don't think Jason-or-whatever can hear him over the heartbeat of the music.

  “Come dance with me,” he says as he practically thrusts the beer between my breasts. I wave it away and try to smile. I did just ask the guy off somewhere and then leave him, but now that Ty's here, I want to hang out a bit. Maybe I'll find Jason-or-whatever later and we can do it? I just don't know because if Ty asks me to the beach again, then I'll go because I suddenly want to tell him about my sisters. Not just what they look like, but what they do, where they are now, that kind of stuff.

  “I don't dance,” I say with a shivery shrug. I give the guy a type-lipped smile that tells him I'm done with this conversation and start to turn away. “Thanks but no thanks.”

  “Come on,” he says as he presses the cold bottle of beer between my shoulder blades. “You promised me a dance, remember?” I catch Ty looking at me and roll my eyes. He glances over his shoulder at Jason-or-whatever and gives him a look that says, Leave her the fuck alone, which is kind of cool but that I could've done myself. If I've learned anything in the past few years, it's how to protect myself. I want to know that should I ever say no to one of these guys, these bad boys that I pick up at these parties, that I can stop them from taking it further than I want to go.

  Suddenly, there's this cold liquid running down my back and I'm spinning around to find that the black sweater dude has just poured foamy beer down my dress. Ty spins around, too, and grabs the dude by his massive bicep. Ty's is bigger which is nice, and he looks awfully intimidating as he tugs the Jason guy towards him.

  “You better fucking watch yourself,” he says as he gets real close to this guy's face. I open my mouth to tell him that I'll take care of it when he surprises me by saying, “Because this girl is tough shit. She took down an armed gunman, so who the fuck do you think you are? Unless you're packing some serious heat then back the hell off because you're liable to get damaged, do you understand me?” Jason opens his mouth to argue when my hand comes out and socks him right in the face. His nose crumples beneath my knuckles, but it hurts and I hiss as I stumble back and nearly fall off the stoop.

  Ty releases Jason-or-whatever and grabs my wrist, saving me in the nick of time from overbalancing on my heels and falling to my back on the pavement.

  “Come on,” he says as he extracts me from a situation that could go from bad to worse real fast. Without saying goodbye to Lacey, I slip off my heels, tuck them under my arm and take off down the sidewalk with Ty at my side. My arm is tingling all the way up to the elbow, and my hand is throbbing, but I shake it off and pretend that it doesn't hurt

  “Thanks,” I say, but Ty waves my gratitude away with a jingle of his bracelets.

  “Sorry,” he tells me, and I can't figure out what he's apologizing for. I also have no idea where we're going, but I follow along anyway because there's nowhere else I'd rather be than with a potential friend. A real friend. My first, real friend since I left home. We may not be there yet, but the hope is there; the possibility is there. “About stalking you. I figured it was the only way we could hang out since you had no way to contact me.”

  “Makes sense,” I tell him as we continue down the street and turn a corner towards a rougher part of town, one that I wouldn't normally venture into. I'm still sticky with beer and I can make a pretty accurate assumption about the state of my dress. I bet my ass is visible from space through the cheap, wet, fabric. I make myself move faster, practically sprinting through the spots of light from the streetlamps and dragging my feet in the shadows between. Ty reaches down for my hand, and I let him take it, if only for appearances. I brush a strand of hair from my face with my other hand. “Do you maybe have a phone number?” I ask as I step carefully around a used needle that's sticking out of some tired, old bushes at the edge of the sidewalk. It may not have been the smartest idea to walk barefoot in this area, but I don't care. I need to feel the cold pavement against my skin today. It brings everything around me to life and though stark, it's all decrepit beauty to me. “Or an e-mail? I couldn't find you anywhere online.” Ty smiles, but there are no dimples. It doesn't even reach his brown eyes.

  “You won't. I don't go online much.”

  “Except to stalk me?” I ask, and his smile gets a little bigger, a little more real. Ty nods and reaches into his pocket. He emerges with his phone and we trade numbers. Finally, I think as I tuck my phone between my breasts. Ty doesn't even comment on my hiding place. He's probably seen it before. Any girl with C's or bigger knows she can store stuff there.

  “Here,” he says as we pause next to an iron gate. There's a security guard at the gatehouse, a computerized pin pad, and everything. I know this place: it's the gated community the city put here in the middle of all this squalor to try and 'revitalize the neighborhood'. It didn't work. All they got was a bunch of pretty apartments in a sea of crackheads and prostitutes that are worth half as much as they cost to build. The city turned them into subsidized housing and washed their hands of it, but the place still looks well kempt, a far cry from its dilapidated neighbors that tower above us on either side like drunken giants. “Come on in,” Ty tells me as we move across the pavement and pause next to the guard's window. The man barely looks up, sees that it's Ty and smiles. A nod is exchanged between the two men and the gate swings open.

  “Do you have a roommate?” I ask him as we walk slowly across the pavement turned blacktop. The arrows, the parking space markers, the handicapped symbols, are all perfectly outlined and painted in bright, neon colors below our feet. Ty gets out two cigarettes, lights them and hands one to me. If being around Ty is good for my soul then it's bad for lungs. I don't smoke even half this much when I'm alone.

  “Nope,” he says as he points up at a mustard yellow building with chocolate trim and rust colored accents. It looks better than it sounds, sophisticated, neat, clean, not really the place I expected Ty to be living. In my head I'd cooked up thoughts of abandoned train cars with velvet drapes or maybe a run down bus parked permanently in the RV spaces at the beach. This is all so … normal, and if I know anything at all about Ty yet, it's that he isn't exactly normal.

  “How did you ever find yourself here?” I ask as we continue across the parking lot and veer away from the buildings, towards a small park with a slide, a swing set, and some blue monkey bars. Ty is still holding my hand, but I don't pull away, even though we're now in the relative safety of the gated community. His skin is warm and the smooth metal of his rings is comforting against my palm.

  “When I stopped … ” Ty pauses and chews his lip ring. “When I quit the business,” he says as he slides his brown eyes over to me and I can see he's hoping like hell that I get it. I nod my chin slightly and smile as gently as I can. I'm surprised he's even telling me this, and I don't want him to get spooked and clam up. When I quit being a whore, he's saying. “I was living with a client at the time, and she kicked me out. I didn't know what to do, so I started jumping the wall at night and sleeping here.” Ty points up at the play structure. It's made of blue and red plastic with round windows that remind me of a submarine. I listen to his words and hope that there's nobody up there now. “Didn't last long though. Apparently, they were between security guards. As soon as they hired a new one, I got busted.”

  Ty and I walk
down the sidewalk that lines the wood chip filled play area and pause at the edge of a dew covered lawn. The grass is short and well manicured, but there are these tiny, white daisies that have sprouted everywhere in little clumps. With the moonlight highlighting their petals, they look like stars.

  “Anyway,” he says as he drops my hand and sits down on the edge of the cement. “The guy felt sorry for me, so he set me up in a vacated apartment. All I had to do for my first month's rent was clean it.” Ty smiles tightly as he pulls off his boots and sets them to the side. I stay standing, not quite sure what we're doing here but intrigued nonetheless. “Actually, it was pretty fucking disgusting, so I think I got the short end of the stick.” Ty laughs which makes me laugh, and stands up, rolling his pant legs to the knee. “Be spontaneous with me?” he asks, and holds out his hand again. I toss my heels to the ground and take it, stepping into the wet grass, careful to keep from crushing the tiny daisies.

  “You never finished watching my video,” I tell Ty, pulling my phone out and handing it to him. I've loaded it on there in preparation for this moment. I want him to watch it, the whole thing, all the way through my mom's speech until that final, heartbreaking moment when I know for sure that she doesn't love me as much as she loves herself.

  Ty takes the phone in his other hand and keeps walking. He wiggles it in the air and flashes me a perfect smile.

  “I've been thinking a lot about this, you know,” he says, and I smile back. Mine is just as real as his, and I'm surprised at how foreign it feels on my face. I haven't smiled like this in years. “I can't get this image of you out of my head,” Ty adds as he cues up the video and watches me sweep across the stage with finger cymbals on my henna patterned hands.

  “'Cause I'm so 'fucking beautiful'?” I joke, quoting Ty back to himself. He doesn't respond, but his dimples get deeper, just enough that I'm tempted to reach up and poke his cheek with my fingers. He has nice cheekbones for a man, defined but not gaunt. I look away from his face and up at the moon. She's shrouded with gentle clouds, obscuring her shape but not her light. It trickles down and feels cool and comforting against my face. I haven't taken the time to appreciate her beauty in a long while, and I miss it. This all feels good, maybe too good. I'm a bit worried about this new friendship with Ty because if it fails, if he blows me off or disappoints me somehow, I'll shrivel up and die. I've had enough people in my life betray me that I've run out of restarts. This is it. If I give Ty my last chance, then I'll be betting everything on him. I swallow hard and wait for the video to end. Once it does, then I'll have the chance to tell him the truth about what happened at home. That will be his test. If he fails it, I'm done. The cocoon I've built around myself will turn to steel, and I'll block it all out, I swear I will.

  My mother is speaking, telling the gathered crowd a secret that she's kept not from my other sisters but just from me. Only me. I was the one left out. The one that didn't deserve to hear her plan. I think it was because, deep down, she knew how wrong it was, but she was – is? – so fucking selfish.

  Am I making a rash decision? I wonder as I watch the light from the screen flicker across Ty's face. It's not too late to back out, to change my mind, to save this chance for someone else. The video ends with my mother's announcement about her engagement, and somehow, in some cruel trick of fate, Noah, who is holding the camera, zooms in on my face, catches me at my most vulnerable. Burned into the last frame of that recording is me with my eyes haunted and my mouth open in shock. All around me a crowd cheers and inside, I die just a little.

  Ty hands the phone back to me and stops smiling as we circle around the lawn and head back towards the playground.

  “What on earth did she do to you?” Ty asks, and my heart pauses for a moment, resets itself to overdrive and starts to pound. This is why I'm always attracted to tortured souls, to people with wounds like mine because once you have them, you can recognize them a mile away. But I've never gotten this close to one. It's terrifying. My hand starts to shake, and I untangle it from Ty's as we hit the pavement. I reach for my shoes but pause when Ty touches a hand to my shoulder. “Come on,” he says as he starts towards the swing set. “Tell me about it.”

  “I … ” I follow Ty to the black swings which are soaking wet from the dewy night and watch, almost mesmerized, as he takes off his shirt and wipes the moisture away. When he's finished, he tosses it over his shoulder and holds out a hand to indicate that I should sit. My eyes trace his perfect chest, his chiseled midsection, and all of a sudden, I feel sick. No, I tell myself. I won't sleep with him, not ever, so fuck off.

  “Come,” he tells me. “Take a load off.”

  “I can't,” I say as I take a step back. I've only said the thing I want to say twice before and both times, life did not work out well for me. My memories are jumbled and confusing, and I just can't find the heart to put it out there. Not yet. I need more time. “I'm sorry,” I say aloud as I take another step back and reach down for my shoes. Ty watches me with sad eyes and nods like he understands completely. I turn away, grab my heels and hold them against my chest. After a few careful breaths to steady myself, I turn back to him and toss a fake smile his way. I can tell that he knows it isn't real and watch as he returns it with a false smile of his own. “Don't be a stranger,” I say as I start back off towards the gate.

  “There's no way I'm letting you walk out of here alone,” he tells me as he moves around the swing set. “Let me walk you home.”

  “You're going to stop me?” I challenge, not because I think walking home alone is a good idea but because I don't like being told what to do. Ty holds up his hands like he doesn't know what to say and drops them to his sides.

  “I guess not,” he replies, but he looks kind of pissed off about it. He sits down on the swing and wraps his hands around the chains, rings and bracelets clinking softly against the metal.

  “Goodnight Ty McCabe.”

  “Goodnight Never Ross.”

  I walk out of the gate and call a cab.

  9

  “Bartleby, the Scrivener?” Lacey asks with a wrinkled nose. “What's a scrivener?” I ignore her and try to focus on my paper. It's not something I want to write, and it's taking every ounce of strength I have to sit still. I'm afraid that if I look at her, I'll be more interested in the butterfly clip she has in her hair than I am about A Story of Wall Street. I yawn and slump back in my chair as I scroll through page after page of cliff notes.

  “Hey Lacey,” I say as she moves away from me and sits down on the edge of her bed, a pair of nail clippers in one hand and a bottle of nail polish in the other. I try to keep my eyes on the computer, but they keep jumping around to the posters of half-naked girls that Lacey has put up on the wall behind her bed. “Have you ever had to write a paper that's longer than the story it's based on?”

  “I'm majoring in biochem,” she says as if that's explanation enough. I sigh and try not to imagine Lacey working in a laboratory of any kind. It's a scary thought. “Want to go to a movie with me tonight?” she asks randomly. I glance over at her and she smiles.

  “With your girlfriend?” I ask, and she shakes her head.

  “Nah,” she says as she carefully applies a coat of bubblegum pink to her big toe. “I'm tired of playing games with my heart. I could use a dedicated friends only night, you know what I mean?” I stare at her for a moment. Roommate. Friend. Which one is she? Is she both now? I realize that the answer is yes. When the hell did that happen? The transition was too quick for me to see apparently, which is a scary thought. The more people I'm close to, the more people have an open shot at my heart. A feeling of discomfort creeps up on me as I try to figure out what to say.

  “Uh, yeah, sure,” I say as I give up and close my computer.

  “Never?” Lacey asks, and I turn to find that she has tears in her eyes. They're dripping down her pretty face and landing on her bare feet. I stand up, but I'm not sure what to do; I don't even know what's wrong with her. When she looks up at me, I
see that she's smiling through her sadness. “I never did say this, but … thank you.”

  “For what?” I ask as I move over and sit down next to her.

  “For saving me,” she says, and I notice that her hands are trembling just a bit. I reach down and take the nail polish gently from her fingers. “At the convenience store. If you hadn't, I … ”

  “Shush,” I tell Lacey as I position her foot in my lap and take over the duty of painting her toenails. It's not something I do very often, so my careful strokes are about as neat as her shaking ones. Still, I think she appreciates it. As I paint, I start to cry, too, but not about the same thing. Lacey doesn't say anything which I appreciate, and we both shed our different feelings in the same way, taking quiet solace in one another's company.

  Watching that stupid video must've opened something up inside of me because I miss my sisters so suddenly and so fiercely that it hurts inside. I remember my sister, Beth, painting my nails before my big performance, just days before I left her and everything else behind.

  I know then that somehow, someway I'm going to have to open up the Pandora's box of my past soon. Sometimes, the only way to go forward, is to take a few, careful steps back.

  Damn you, Ty McCabe. Damn you.

  10

  Ty shows up in the middle of my art history class.

  The whole auditorium turns to look at him when he walks in and blinds us all with harsh, white winter sunshine. My professor stops talking and pauses between an image of Botticelli's Primavera and The Birth of Venus. Today's lecture is titled Famous Artists of the Italian Renaissance and as happy as I am to have a distraction from the admittedly dull lesson, I'm mortified when Ty waves at me and holds up his phone.