“Say what?” I whisper, but I'm too distracted by my sister's car to say or do much of anything. The white sedan winds its way towards us slowly, crawling towards a conclusion, holding the last living member of my family that I need to make up with to move forward with my life. This has been a slow journey but a worthwhile one.
“Fuck Noah Scott,” Ty whispers into my ear. “Say it now or I'll make you scream it tonight.” I punch him in the arm as Zella comes to a stop awfully close to the porch steps. I want to indulge him but I can't, not right now. I need my mind wholly and completely focused on Ty McCabe when I say it. Luckily, he's not as easily offended as some. He gets me, as always.
I start to step forward and find that I'm down the porch stairs before I even realize that I've moved. Snow is still falling lightly from the gray sky, resting on my scalp like a halo or something. I brush flakes from my eyelashes as Zella climbs out of the car with a head of dyed brunette curls and a face that's red and soaked in tears. I don't, of course, know why she's crying, but some part of me hopes it's because she's happy to see me.
For once, I'm right.
“Never,” she says and then she's running and we're throwing ourselves in one another's arms. She squeezes the life out of me and whispers in my ear, “You were right.” And that is all I need to hear. I don't know how she knows I needed that or if Beth told her or what, and I don't give a shit. All I want to do right now is hold my sister tight and know that things will be okay. I was afraid of seeing her, but only because I didn't want to lose the progress I'd already made. Looks like I didn't need to be. Things are looking up. They might not be for long, but they are right here, right now, and I'm starting to understand that that's all I can ever ask for. “Oh my God, Never,” Zella says as she steps back and looks down.
I'm not wearing shoes and my feet are freezing in the icy slush of the driveway, but I don't care. The relief I'm starting to feel spread through my chest is enough to keep me warm. For now.
“Let's go inside,” she says with a shiver, catching Ty with her eye as she passes. She tosses me a, You will tell me about this man or you will die, look and drags me inside. When she sees Noah, she squeals and the two of them hug tight, like the oldest of friends. “It's like the good ol' days,” she says to me as she looks at Noah and I standing next to each other. “I always thought you guys made the cutest couple.”
Ah. Noah and I exchange a look and then I exchange one with Ty who just smiles. He isn't worried. Things get awkward for a second, but luckily I find that I'm easily able to distract Zella by discussing her hair which she says is the worst dye job she's ever gotten, but seems quite proud of.
“I don't see why you two had to dye your hair,” Beth tells us as she motions for us all to cluster into the teeny little kitchen that was never meant for a gathering such as this, but which accommodates us all without complaint. Things are tight but cozy. It's a strange feeling but a pleasant one.
The four little girls get chairs and the rest of us stand. People are talking all around me, gesturing, firing off questions that hit the tip of their tongues and disappear into this mass of bodies and voices and feelings that swirl like leaves in the wind and just when I think it's all too overwhelming to take in, too much to absorb all at once, Ty is there and squeezing my hand with his. My anxiety dissipates in a blip and is gone in a flash, giving me a chance to look at Zella who's planning on becoming the 'world's best damn defense lawyer' and Beth who is such a mom now that it's almost comical; there's Jade who's sad but not lost, India who sings like a siren, and Lettie who sketches when she thinks nobody is looking. There's Lorri, the little girl with big dreams of Broadway, and Darla who will know me throughout her life without a single gap, who will be Maple's big sister instead of her aunt. And then there's me, Never Nicholas Ross who was once Never Fontaine Regali, who doesn't know what she wants to do, but who's in love with a guy named Tyson McCabe that has a past he won't speak of and hands that can play my body like an instrument.
Things are good. Almost, dare I say, perfect. I even smile when Beth hands me a bowl of hot, peeled potatoes and says, “Mash.”
“I hate mashed potatoes,” I tell her, but I do it anyway, if only because it feels good to participate in this group mentality we have going on. Zella smiles at me from across the kitchen and I know that as soon as we get time alone, I'm going to tell her my story, my whole story. I don't know why, but something about her makes me want to spill my secrets. She's going to be a damn good lawyer.
“Never and I are guests, we shouldn't have to prepare anything. We should be catching up on the couch with a couple of beers.”
“Not at nineteen you're not,” Beth says with a tight-lipped smile. “Not on my watch.”
“Alcohol Nazi,” Zella says affectionately. “You do know that I drink at school, right?”
“Sorry, Zella,” Beth says as she sets a plate of overcooked pasta on the table. “That's just the way it's going to be. Period.” I laugh, they all do, but then I get caught on a word, the one that means end of sentence and woman's menstrual cycle in three tiny syllables.
Period. Wait. Shit.
28
It is so official. I am fucked. I am up shit creek without a paddle. I am batshit friggin' crazy.
Ty and I arrived here on the seventh of December. It's now the twenty-first. We made love on the fourth. I always, always, get my period on the fifteenth. Well, where the fuck is it? I go on my phone under the table during dinner even though I get bitched at by Beth. I end up having to freaking ask Lacey to research it for me and get back to me. Maybe my period is just late? It's never been before, but it is now. It is fucking now. I text Lacey with a few, minor details and don't even bother to try and hide the fact that I'm worried. She sends me some stupid emoticon faces and says she'll call me later.
“You look like you've seen a ghost,” Ty tells me at one point, but I can't even look at his face. We had sex, a lot of sex, without condoms, and I'm seriously surprised by this? Wow. Good job, Never. Way to go on taking control of your sex life. I try to smile and laugh at my sisters' jokes, try to tell Zella something interesting about my life, but all I can think about is this.
I might be pregnant.
I try to tell myself that might is a very important word and that I can't worry about it yet. Then I start thinking about what I would do if I was pregnant and things don't seem so rosy anymore. Abortion? Adoption? Single parent? Family? Which option will I get? Some of them are choices; others are not. If I am pregnant and Ty finds out, he could take off. He doesn't look like the daddy type with his rings and his piercings and his fuck this and fuck that attitude.
“I don't think the Sharks have a chance,” Noah says in reference to hockey or basketball or some other stupid sport that I don't give a rat's ass about.
“Fuck the Sharks,” Ty says, and somehow that comment just makes me sick to my stomach. Or maybe it's just Beth's nasty wheat rolls. Or the baby. Or yeah, it could be that. I run to the bathroom and throw up, surprised as fuck to find that Ty has picked the door's lock and come in behind me. He holds my hair back and tries to be soothing. “Your sister is the world's worst cook,” he says. “I thought India was bad, but wow, Beth takes the cake.”
I don't answer him. Presently, I'm neck deep in toilet water and puke, so it's sort of not an option. I'm also afraid that I can't look at him without blurting it out. There's also the possibility that he'll see it in my eyes. Ty seems to be able to read me like a freaking book.
“Go away,” I moan, but he just sits on the counter and waits for me. Afterward, we pop out front for a cigarette. I vaguely realize that if I am pregnant, that smoking might not be the best thing in the world for me, but I do it anyway because otherwise, I don't know what I'll do. Run through the house screaming is more like it. Maybe I should fuck Ty, you know? Might as well, right? Can't hurt.
“Are you feeling any better?” Noah asks, coming out the door with a cup of clear soda in one hand and a straw in the other.
He tries to pass these to me, and I stare at him like he's a crazy person. If I was pregnant with his baby, things might be different. Noah has money and family ties and he's the perfect sort of dude for something as strange and foreign as fatherhood. I glance at Ty and watch him blow puffs of smoke into the air. Shit.
“Thanks,” I say, but I don't take the items. I still feel like shit. Can morning sickness hit this quick? I pull out my phone and text Lacy again. There's already a poorly written text waiting for me.
K nev internet says stress could cause late perid. I stare at her misspelled word and suddenly want to choke the life out of someone. Could be her, could be someone else. Preferably, it's me. I'm the dumb ass here. Me and Ty.
And? I type. Anything else?
Could also be preggers tho. Wow. How helpful is that? so glad to be a dyke 2day.
More info would be nice, Lacey. I am freaking the fuck out over here, and I can't get online without getting nagged and bombarded. Hurry, please.
“Girl talk?” Ty asks with his head tilted to the side. “Or can I be creepy and read it all?” I roll my eyes and ignore him. Noah, in an effort not to look awkward with the soda and straw, sticks the striped thing in the cup and drinks it.
morning scknss can strt as early as 2 wks but usually not. go get a test frm the stre. luv u grl and cant wait to c u. miss you.
I sigh and turn off my phone. She's kind of sweet but also kind of dumb. I slip my phone back in my pocket and start a fresh cig. I'm going to need a whole truckload of them to survive until I find out.
“Never,” Lorri says, opening the door and gesturing wildly. “Come back inside. We're playing charades!”
“The game of champions,” Ty says as Noah touches my arm lightly on his way inside. I try to follow, but Ty stops me. “Everything okay?” he asks, and there's this moment that changes everything because despite my better judgment, I lie.
“Yep, everything's fine.”
Then I spend the rest of the evening wallowing in how I've practically ruined everything that Ty and I have built together by not telling the truth. I try to explain to myself that I don't know for sure yet, but that as soon as I do, I will tell him. It doesn't make things any easier. Fortunately, with the help of a very small glass of wine, I manage to make it through the evening which, actually, is pretty amazing. I have friends and family and everything is so fucking festive and joyous that it sort of knocks me back a bit. It's been years since I've been a part of anything like this. And even longer since I was able to whoop Noah's ass at Twister.
Ty stays a bit more quiet than usual, watches me a bit more carefully, which in turn makes me want to avoid him. By the time everyone else is in bed and he and I are standing together in my room, he's ready to get all pissy about it.
“Are you avoiding me?” he asks which sucks because I was.
“Kind of,” I admit, refusing to poison the air between us with any more lies. Ty pulls off his shirt and throws it over the back of my chair. He's been so cool this whole time and now he's getting pissed. Not good. Not now.
“Why?” he asks me as I strip down to my bra and underwear. The fact that I'm getting naked isn't lost on him. “And don't try to distract me with sex,” he says as I drop to my knees and reach for the buttons on his jeans. When I glance up at him, he licks his lips and takes a massive breath.
“Why not?” I ask, all innocent like. I'm not trying to be deceitful or to hurt him, but I need more time and besides, even after all this time, I have yet to fulfill my promise of a blow job. Ty and I just can't seem to last with any other activity than full throttle fucking.
“You are such a tease,” he says as he wraps his ringed fingers in my hair and opens his pants with his other hand. “How am I supposed to say no to that?”
29
I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.
Ty is sleeping peacefully next to me, face blissful and quiet. I stare at him for a long, long time and try to figure out if I should wake him up and tell him. I could ask him to take me to the store and we could do this together, find out together. I trace his nose with my finger, brush my hand across his gently parted lips. He moans, but he doesn't stir. He lays still, wrapped in my yellow sheets with one hand curled above his head and the other resting on his belly just above his cock. His eyelashes lay across his cheeks, dark and perfect, and the sculpted perfection of his cheeks is even more beautiful than I thought possible, bathed in moonlight and the soft kiss of night.
I lean over and whisper words across his mouth, soft breathy words that I know he can't hear, but that I have to say.
“Forgive me, I lied to you.” I kiss his mouth lightly, so lightly that my presence is as noticeable as a butterfly, soft and gentle. “I want to tell you, but I have to know first. Once I do, no matter what, I'll say it. I will. I know I will.” I rub my thumb across one of Ty's eyebrows, the one with the ring in it, and smile down at him, praying that he doesn't wake up and find me missing.
When I stand up, I feel dizzy and lightheaded. I can't say if it really is because I'm pregnant or because I'm just nervous, but it isn't pleasant. I'm planning on going to Beth's room when I notice that there are lights on downstairs. I have to see who it is and what they're doing before I make any decisions. I don't want anyone else to know except her, except for the woman who's my mom but isn't.
Luckily, that's exactly who I find.
“Beth,” I say, feeling so small and miserable and helpless. I have fucked up again. I have fucked everything up. I sort of want to die in that moment. After all that's happened, I couldn't learn, couldn't do one, tiny little thing differently. My sister is reading a book on the couch, in the living room where we both lost the man who was our daddy. I see my father's face floating above the coffee table and have to close my eyes so tight they hurt. I hear the couch creak and soon Beth is up and by my side, taking me into her arms and holding me tightly.
“What's wrong, honey?” she asks, and I can't say what I have to say because it is so friggin' stupid. Beth strokes my hair back and sways back and forth with me in time to the wind outside the windows. It's comforting enough that after a few swallows, I can actually speak the words I hate to speak. As if I wasn't cliched enough, as if playing the drinking-smoking-fucking bad girl wasn't enough, I had to go ahead and layer on this, too.
“I think I might be pregnant,” I say and start to sob. After all this time, all these fucks, this particular problem has never happened to me, not ever. And now it has. With Ty, the one person in the world that it should happen with. Just not yet. Not now. “Help me.”
“Oh, Never,” Beth says, but she doesn't sound disappointed which is nice. I had sort of thought she would be. Then again, she's twenty-three with a two year old, so she really has no room to judge. “You sound just like me when I found out. Ty?”
“Of course,” I say because thankfully, it can only be his. There's no other possibility unless we're looking at the immaculate conception here. Thank God I haven't slept around lately. I imagine how I would've handled this back at the dorms, before I met Ty, when I didn't know the names of the men I was sleeping with. It might've killed me. “But I haven't told him because I might be wrong, so … ” Beth nods her head and kisses me on the forehead. I dash away my tears and vow that those are all I get. I made my bed and now I'll sleep in it. Besides, I am sick and fucking tired of crying.
“Grab your coat,” she says and then drives us to the store where we stock up on four different brands of tests, all of them in pretty, flowery packages that don't even begin to describe how I feel about this. I wish there was a black and red box, one that said Are you knocked up? on the side because that's the one I would get. It would be even better if the little plus sign was a middle finger. That, at least, would be somewhat funny. Nothing is funny right now.
The clerk rings up the four boxes with raised eyebrows which makes me absolutely, one hundred percent livid.
“You have a problem, you country bumpkin piece of sh
it?” I ask and have to leave the store to keep control of my temper. It's been quiet lately, much quieter than usual, and now this whole thing has revived it to angry dragon status. At least I don't feel the urge to go out and drown my pain. That feeling is almost completely gone now, and I don't think it had anything to do with SOG or my celibacy and that it has everything to do with Ty McCabe.
Beth and I drive home in silence. I think she knows that I don't want to discuss anything with anyone right now.
“If you need to talk,” she says when we pull up in front of the house, but I don't, so I remain quiet and retreat into the downstairs bathroom to piss on some plastic sticks.
Only when the double bars and the little plus signs come up on all eleven tests do I know how much trouble I'm really in.
30
I can't look at Ty the next morning. I know he knows that something is wrong, but I just can't tell him what that thing is. It's horrible, so horrible. I have a feeling that he's going to freak the fuck out when he finds out. What if he just runs away and leaves me like this? What am I going to do without him? Still, I promised I would tell him, so that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to clear the air between us and go back to being honest. He got one fuck up, so I should get one, too.
“Ty?” I ask as I come up behind him in the kitchen and see that he's in the process of making us some toast. It's always us. He never just makes food for himself. Even though he can barely boil an egg, I appreciate that from the bottom of my heart. It's just one of those gestures that you can never get enough of.
“Yeah?” he asks as I come in and sit down at the table behind him. My heart is racing like a herd of elephants, drowning out any logical or reasonable thoughts. I'm in a suspended state of panic right now, stuck somewhere between knowing what I'm going to do and having no fucking clue. I'm a twenty-one year old, unmarried college student with a poor family and a boyfriend who's just quit his job and is getting ready to move into the dorms.
Tasting, Finding, Keeping: The Story of Never Page 27
