Never Did Say

by C. M. Stunich

  “And you're going to enforce that how?” Angelica asks. I can't look at her right now, so I bury my face in my husband's chest and I let the tears flow free. I'm upset. I'm still upset. Yeah, I'm getting through this, but it's not like I'm a superhero, like I can put on a cape and wipe away the problems of the world. “I've had plenty of men hit me before, so go ahead, give me your best shot.”

  Ty stays right where he is, holding me, supporting me like I've never had anyone support me before.

  “Wouldn't give you the satisfaction if you begged me,” Ty says, raising his hand to stroke my hair back. I pull away from him just enough so that I can breathe, my eyes focused on the wet stain my tears have left on his hot pink T-shirt. It says, Real Men Give Feminist Rants on the front. It's one of my favorite designs, save for the little skeleton fetus shirt that Ty gave me. I wonder if I'll be able to wear it now, considering everything that happened. I still have a baby inside of me, but it's hard knowing there were two babies, twins. Ectopic pregnancies aren't viable at all, meaning that one baby was doomed from the start. Why is life so cruel? There was no choice there, no chance, just the ringing of doom from the moment of conception. That makes me sad, really sad.

  “Who the hell are you anyway? You're not a part of this family, just some freeloader. Never, sweetie, trust me on this one. Guys like this, they don't hang around long after the fun is over and the money's run dry.”

  I turn around then and look her in her hazel eyes, the ones that are so like mine I could scream. I wish I didn't have any part of her inside of me, not a single scrap of DNA, not a single good memory. If I could, I would just erase it all, like I did with my name. Never Fontaine Regali became Never Nicholas Ross, and it felt good. Too good. Perfect.

  “I want you to go,” I whisper, afraid that my voice will fail me. She ignores me, of course, and moves into the kitchen in a sway of skirts, like nothing at all has happened between us. I listen to the sound of clinking glass and know that even if I can't see her, she's pouring herself a drink. All around us, the room remains silent, my sisters' faces focused on me, waiting, wondering.

  Once again, I force myself to be the bigger person in the situation and plaster a smile on my face.

  “Is it almost time for presents?” I ask, moving away from Ty and feeling that sudden coldness, that achingly palpable sense of his absence. Even though I feel like shit, like my belly is tight and my insides are all scrambled up, I walk over to India and sit down, reaching out my arms for my son.

  When I hug him tight to my chest, I look up and meet Ty's eyes, see the softening around the edges. He must know what I'm just starting to realize: you don't have to have a good mom to know how to be one. Even though she doesn't love me, it doesn't matter, because I'll love my son enough to make up for all of it.

  10

  I sit outside by the pond, curled up on a wooden Adirondack chair, and watch snowflakes kiss the water's glossy black surface. It's dark enough now that I can't see the opposite shore, giving the impression that the pond stretches on for forever, delves even deeper into the infinite mystery of the unknown. It's as cold as my mother's heart out here, but only half as empty. I fight back the chill trying to work its way into my bones by running my fingers across the face of the photo album Beth gave me as a Christmas present.

  I feel the ghost of a smile kiss my lips as I flip open the cover and examine my father's face, a face I have not seen in so long that I'd forgotten what it looked like. And I feel bad for that, I do.

  “Papa, why do butterflies have such pretty wings?”

  “Because, sweet thing, my little Never say Never, they don't just want to fly; they want to soar.”

  “How ya feelin', babe?” Ty asks from his spot in the grass. He's laying on his back and looking up at the stars with an intensity that would make me blush if I were them. As if in response, I feel like some of the diamonds twinkle, just for him.

  I look down at Ty, clutching a cigarette tight in his ringed fingers. It's our last one, literally. Ty went through all of our stuff and tossed the rest out. Neither of us missed the memo about how smoking can quadruple your risk of having an ectopic pregnancy. Normally, I'm not so quick to jump on the anti-smoking bandwagon, but I still feel like I was kicked repeatedly in the stomach by Fezzik from The Princess Bride.

  “A little bit of good, a little bit of bad,” I admit, shrugging my shoulders and turning the pages in the album. The trauma of losing my father the way I did, of watching his murderer walk free, of seeing my mother's blank and bored face when she found us in the living room, it had all royally fucked up my memories. I hadn't remembered his hair so dark, his eyes so bright. “I guess it all equals out to a sort of numbness.”

  “Ah, kitten, no.” Ty sits up with a clenching of stomach muscles that makes my entire body flush from head to toe. Six weeks of no sex, huh? I've barely lasted four days. “Don't go back to that place. Don't let her shove you back into that hole.”

  “Did you seriously just call me kitten?” I ask and Ty grins, flashing me a dimpled smile. His mood improved ridiculously fast after our dog threw up on my mom's expensive hemp purse. Oh, and Noah's dog bit her and stole the organic wheat muffin she was eating. All in all, the day played out as I'd expected, but it wasn't all bad.

  “You mewl like one when we're in bed together, so I thought it was fitting.” I smack Ty on the top of his dark head with the album and then plop it back into my lap, carefully avoiding the soreness in my lower belly. “Mind if I take a look see with ya?”

  “If you keep talking like that, I'll send you back inside and you can drink kombucha with Angelica.” Ty wrinkles his nose and scoots close to me, resting his head on my arm as I pause on a picture of my dad with Beth, Zella, Jade, and me. We're standing in front of him with big grins on our faces, hands clasped together, copper hair shimmering in the sun. My dad has this sloppy smile on, half hidden by his goatee. His shoulder length hair is shaggy and unkempt, but he has this rugged handsomeness to him that I can see reflected in the promise of my baby's chubby face.

  “Can I poison her cum-what's-it-called instead?” Ty wrinkles up his beautiful face as I look over at him with a raised brow.

  “Kombucha. It's basically rotten tea with sugar,” I say with a shrug of my shoulders. Me, I'd rather have good old sweet tea any day. I wonder briefly why my mom was always so up in arms about me having moved to California. Honestly, she probably would've fit in much better there than in Mississippi.

  “Well, whatever it's called, I hope she chokes on it. Never,” Ty says, getting serious all of a sudden, “I know how hard it is to have a fucked up mom. You know that. And unfortunately for you, yours is still around to keep fucking up, but we've made it through way worse than this shit. I guess what I'm trying to say is: feel everything. Feel it, let it hurt, and then slap a Band-Aid on it. And if that Band-Aid just so happens to be my naked body inside of yours, all the better.”

  “Only five and a half weeks to go!” I say with false enthusiasm. Ty sits up and gets on his knees so that our faces are level. Even in the dark, he's beautiful. No, no, especially in the dark he's beautiful. His face is chiseled from starlight and his hair is one with the night. I literally pinch myself to make sure I'm not dreaming him up.

  “Until then, we'll find other ways to entertain ourselves,” he says, leaning forward to kiss me. Our lips meet in a rush of heat broken only by the tiny snowflakes that fall, punctuating all of that warmth with little bits of cold. Ty doesn't use his tongue, just the force of his mouth against mine, a slight pressure that builds up so quickly I feel like I'm falling over the edge.

  A voice being cleared behind us draws us both up and out of the spell that's been cast, wrapping both Ty and me in a web of tortured beauty that leaves me breathless.

  When I tear my gaze from my husband's smirk and glance over my shoulder, I see Zella waiting. She's wearing a white cable-knit sweater and has a quilt thrown over one arm.

  “Is it okay if I talk to you for a mi
nute?” she asks, her voice quivering with a thousand fears I wish I could've protected her from. It's too late to go back on all of that now, but I know I have to help my sister find the right path, before she stumbles down a million twisted crossroads like I did.

  “Sure thing, sis,” Ty says with a wink, rising to his black booted feet and looking down at me. He touches the side of my face affectionately before moving away, walking backwards towards the warm lights of the cabin. “Don't stay out here too long or I'll miss you so much it fucking hurts.” Ty presses his palm to his lips and then tosses me a kiss.

  I'm smiling when Zella comes over and sits beside me. I make sure to clear her a space, snuggling up to my sister like I haven't done in years.

  “Pictures of dad, huh? I can't tell if Beth was being cruel or what.” Zella touches the page with her fingers, fingers that are so similar to mine that it's almost eerie. “Why would she give this to you now, after everything?”

  “Because she wants me to remember,” I say, tilting my head to the side. “For years I've blocked these memories.” I pause and bite my lip. “And for years I blamed him instead of her, for leaving all the time, for not standing up to her more, even for dying.” Tears try desperately to claw their way out and at first, I think I'm succeeding. But then, just like the snowflakes hitting the surface of the lake, drops of liquid hit the page with a silence that seems suddenly loud. Raucous, earsplitting silence. Now I know I'm starting to lose it.

  Zella takes my hand under the blanket and warms my chilled fingers with her own.

  “I'm sorry for what I did, Never. Or rather, what I didn't do. If I had said something, stood up for you against Mom and Beth and … ” Zella wrinkles her nose. “Jade, then would you have stayed?”

  I don't know the answer to that question, so I just shake my head.

  “Do you think you could ever forgive me?” she asks instead.

  “Zella, I forgave you a long time ago.”

  “Not just for what happened with Mom and Luis, but for all the things I said on the driveway, for being so petty and cruel and self-centered when you needed me most. And for … for Noah.” Her voice comes out in a whisper, as soft and unique as the snowflake that alights on her lips as she turns to look at me. My sister's hazel eyes find mine, like a mimicry of the cold gray night that surrounds us.

  “If I've learned anything from being with Ty,” I say, feeling my lips twitch into a soft smile. See, just his name is enough to get me, to wrap around my heart and hold it tight in the world's most perfect embrace. “It's that honesty is one of the most important things there is. Without it, we might as well be living in a virtual reality, some sideways universe of our own making. Well, I spent enough years there and I don't want to be there anymore. You said what you needed to say, Zella, and I don't hold any of it against you.” She takes a deep breath, but I'm not done. “What I do hold against you, however, is the fact that you and Noah don't seem to be doing so well. What the hell is up with that?”

  “We … I … we had sex in the pond,” she whispers, her entire body going slack like the weight of her confession weighs as much as the whole world. “When Tobias was here, the night before you collapsed.”

  I glance over at the water with a raised brow. And I thought Ty and I were kinky. Huh.

  “But with everything that happened, I haven't had a chance to process it. I mean, Tobias and I broke up again, and I don't know what's happening with school and Beth won't talk about it with me right now – ”

  I cut her off by laying my head against her shoulder.

  “Stop processing, Zella, and start living.”

  My little sister sighs, but even she has nothing to say against that.

  11

  I head inside, leaving Zella alone with the album. Even if she doesn't realize it, she has some healing to do, too. Otherwise, she never would've ended up with a douche like Tobias Underwood. I try to sympathize with the guy, try to remind myself that my sister hit him just as many times as he hit her, but I don't care. I still hate the stupid fuck.

  Anyway, pain is relative. Zella might not have suffered through the same things as I have, but she could still be hurting just as much.

  I glance over my shoulder with a small smile, crunching across the frozen grass in my new black slippers. Lacey and Trini got me these, excited to show me their matching yellow and pink pairs respectively. Now we're shoe triplets! Pretty sure that's what she said to me. My mouth twitches a little and even though my stomach is killing me, swearing up and down that I must've done a thousand crunches or something, I smile a little, just a little.

  Feels good. I think I'd like to keep doing it.

  When I step inside, I find Ty sleeping on the couch with our son on his chest.

  I stop like I've been frozen in place, tears pricking my eyes, my heart thudding painfully in my chest.

  This might be the most beautiful sight I've ever seen – Ty with his hair wet from a shower, mussy and cute as hell, shirtless, and our son, fast asleep with an armful of rings and bracelets wrapped around him. It does not escape my notice that Little Noah is dressed in a Dracula costume, complete with cape.

  I clamp my hands over my mouth and just stare. I could look at the two of them until my eyes rotted out of my head and I'd never miss my sight, not with this image burned into my brain.

  “It won't last,” my mother says softly, appearing in the flickering light from the kitchen's fireplace. She has a blue glass tumbler in one hand and a cigarette clutched in the other. I know Noah doesn't like anyone smoking in the cabin, know he's told her that. And I'm sure that even though I didn't say anything about the ectopic pregnancy and the cigarette smoke and all that, that Beth probably has. Add onto that the fact that my son is in the room, and I just can't help the scowl that twists my mouth.

  I drop my hands to my sides and fight against the surge of anger I feel towards Angelica. It doesn't help, never has helped.

  “It will last,” I assure her, stepping all the way inside the cabin and closing the French door behind me. “Ty McCabe is my soul mate.”

  My mother laughs, but I don't care. Her bitterness is all the punishment I could ever wish for. It hurts to hate yourself that much. Trust me, I know. I've been there.

  “Are you going to run from me forever? I mean, you're living at the house now. We can't exactly avoid each other, now can we?”

  I shrug.

  “You're never around. It's honestly not that hard to forget you even exist.”

  I move around the sectional sofa and pause, gazing down at my lover and my vampire clad child with a smile. When I reach over and move Ty's arm, his red and green Christmas bracelets jingle like bells and Noah coos. I lift my son into my arms with a small grunt of pain. Any movement that causes me to use my abs – which is actually pretty much fucking everything if you think about it – hurts. But I don't care. I'll hurt for my son, my Ty, my family.

  “Are you ever going to let me hold him?” she asks, her voice a little more gentle, a little less cynical. I know it's all a front, have known it for years, but I can't stop myself from feeling for her. Fuck. I grit my teeth and turn around.

  “Maybe if you put out your fucking cigarette?” It comes out as a question, and I can't help myself, looking down at Ty to see if he's awake. He's not. I look back at my mother, watch as she drops her cig into the kitchen sink and leaves it there for someone else to clean up. Hypocrite. She never let any of us smoke in her house, but I guess it doesn't matter if it's someone else's.

  She's wearing a bra today, which is a miracle, and a white tank with her loud yellow and blue striped skirt. Even though the outfit's a little weird, she's still pretty in it. That both bothers and excites me. I'm happy to know our strong Southern genes keep us youthful, but I also kind of wish that my mom's outside looked as bleak as her inside.

  When she holds out her arms for my son, I have to take a serious breath, think really hard about what I'm doing. I decide that it's time, that I should do this n
ot for her, but for me.

  “Finally,” she says, and I just close my eyes against the anger. You'll get none of that from me right now. “Even with a mongrel for a daddy, you're kind of cute.” I snap my eyes open and start to speak when I see my mother nuzzling my son's face. He smiles at her, doesn't even cry. I wonder if it's because she's wearing a bracelet of bells around her wrist. They jingle as she rocks him, like his papa's bracelets do.

  I bite my lower lip against tears. I suddenly want to say all of the things I'm thinking, tell her everything, give her another chance to apologize for Luis. But I can't. I can't because I know without even asking that she'll disappoint me.

  “But we all know that dads don't matter so much, right? I mean, look at your sisters. They all have deadbeat fathers and they still turned out okay.”

  I swallow hard.

  “You say my sisters, but what about my dad?”

  My mom says nothing, just spins in a slow lazy circle with my son in her arms. The glow of the Christmas tree makes her copper hair gleam like a fresh new penny in a beam of sunlight.

  “You didn't seem to care when he died, so … was he a deadbeat, too?”

  My mother pauses in her rocking to look right at me. I see the hint of a truth lingering in her eyes, like the tip of an iceberg buoyed on the salty sea.

  “Why did he die, Mom? Was it a custody thing? Were you going to take Jade from him?”

  Angelica says nothing, instead deciding she's had enough of her grandson. She hands him back to me and shakes out her arms, like being nice for twenty seconds was too much for her.

  “You were young, Never. You don't know what you saw. Besides, why would Luis care about Jade anyway? Even if your father wanted her, Luis didn't.”

  “I know what I saw,” I whisper back, but Angelica is already leaving, heading back into the kitchen for another drink. “Luis killed my father.”