Tasting, Finding, Keeping: The Story of Never (4 page)

“I had one serious boyfriend in high school,” I tell Ty as we sit on the edge of a cliff and look down at the sea below. My coffee is clutched between my fingers, cold now but still good. Ty finishes his with one last sip and crushes the cup between his hands. “We dated right up until the day I ran away. I still think about him sometimes.”

“What was his name?” Ty asks as he sets the cup down in the grass beside him and wraps his arms around his knees. I watch the horizon and see that it's already tinted with a rosy blush, preparing itself for the sunrise that's only moments away. I can hardly wait. After what happened to the two of us last night, we could use a little light.

“Noah,” I say with a smile, thinking of one of the last times I saw him, waving goodbye to me from the parking lot near the high school. That was just days before junior prom. I wonder if he went with anyone else, or if he was still holding out for me. I guess I'll never know.

“Just Noah?” Ty asks as he leans back and puts his hands in the grass. “No last name? What is he, like Madonna or something?”

“Of course he has a last name,” I say as I finish my own coffee and go for another cigarette. I try to hand one to Ty, but he waves it away.

“What was it then?” he asks, feeling awfully bold in this early morning darkness.

“Scott.”

“Noah Scott, the long lost love of Never Ross. Why don't you call him? Look him up online?”

“I do way better than that,” I say as I copy Ty's pose and lean back. “I stalk him online.”

“Ah,” Ty says as he reaches over and plucks the cigarette from my mouth. “You're one of those.” He puts it in his mouth and smirks at me. Apparently, we're good enough friends now that he can do this. I guess we both did tackle a bunch of armed thugs, so I let it go. I'm a little uncomfortable, but I don't say anything, just pull out another cigarette and light it.

“He goes to school in the same town where we grew up, at the community college. I don't know why; he always had good grades. As far as I knew, he could've gone anywhere he wanted.” Ty doesn't say a word, just blows smoke into the cool air. “What about you?” I ask, and he turns his head slowly to look at me. “Any long lost loves?” Ty purses his lips, but I don't think the expression's for me. I'm pretty sure it's for his own thoughts. He doesn't look all that happy about what's going though his head.

“Not a single one,” he says, and I can see that he's being honest. In fact, he looks kind of pissed off about it.

“It's not as glamorous as it sounds,” I promise, feeling the rush of pain and loneliness that had swept over me as I'd driven out of town and never looked back. Suddenly, it gets hard for me to breathe, and I sit up, leaning over my legs like I'm trying to touch my bare toes. They're like blocks of ice, and they hurt like hell, but I'm not ready to go back to the dorms, not yet.

“It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, right?” I scoff at Ty's words.

“So says the prick who's never been in love.” He stares at me, and I realize how badly that came out. “Not you,” I sputter and Ty smiles.

“You meant Alfred Lord Tennyson, right?” he asks as I sit back up, trying to forget about Noah again. Whenever I think about him, I feel sick and start to regret all the decisions I've made. If I start doing that, I might as well curl up and die because I'll never recover.

“Who?”

“I hold it true, whate'er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; 'Tis better to have loved and lost; Than never to have loved at all.”

I raise my eyebrows.

“You're quoting me poetry?” I ask, and Ty shrugs.

“Why not? Does it bother you or something?”

“I don't know,” I say, and we both go silent for awhile. I've had a lot of guys try to quote poetry to me. It always just sounds lazy, like they can't be bothered to come up with words of their own. I don't think that was Ty's intention, but I just don't feel comfortable with it, so I say nothing.

“So do you go to the U?” he asks me, and I nod as I press my cigarette into the ground and toss it into my empty cup.

“Yeah. You?” Ty laughs.

“Me? Hell no. If I stepped on campus, I'd burst into flames.”

“It's a Christian school in name only. You'd never know otherwise.” He shrugs again and sits up, stretching his arms above his head. I watch his body carefully, feeling that gentle tug in my lower belly that proves I'm still interested. He has perfectly sculpted arms, rounded with muscles but not bulging, and a wide chest that tapers into a thin waist. My body still wants me to fuck him, but my mind's no longer willing to let me. These bad boys that I like so much don't serve my purposes when they're laid out on the table for me to see. Ty's already told me too much. Knowing that someone is wounded and wanting is one thing, but knowing why and seeing it firsthand is another altogether. Ty McCabe is no longer on my radar, not like that anyway. I tell myself this is a good thing because I don't have any fucking friends. It would be nice to have one, especially one that I've been completely honest with. There are no lies floating between us yet. It's kind of refreshing.

“I work at a friggin' grocery store. My life goals lie somewhere between shift leader and assistant manager.” I don't know what to say to that, so I lick my lips and listen to the sound of the ocean below us. It's calm today, much calmer than usual, and so peaceful. I close my eyes and absorb the gentle whisper of the waves on the rocks. After awhile, I hear Ty sigh, but I keep my eyes shut and don't say a word. He shifts beside me, and I think I hear him stand. Still, I don't look at him. Footsteps sound beside me, and when I open my eyes, Ty is gone.

I watch the sun come up alone.

“Does anyone know what the bloody knife in this poem symbolizes?” the professor asks, voice tinny over the microphone she's got strapped to her face. She walks back and forth across the stage with a small clicker in her hand and smiles like she knows something that we don't.
God, I hate lecture halls.
Even if I was inclined to participate in the discussion (which I'm not), there's no opportunity to do so anyway. There are over two hundred people in this class and no time for personal thoughts. The professor moves to the next screen of her presentation. It's a poll with four options. She reads them aloud.

“Number one: the destruction of the narrator's innocence. It's been speculated that the knife represents a phallic object and that the blood represents either rape or the loss of virginity.” I roll my eyes and wish I had someone to send a text to. That's all Lacey's done the entire class. She's sending her girlfriend sappy messages with little hearts and smiley faces. If I had a friend, I'd ask them why a poem can't just be a poem. Maybe there is no alternative meaning to the bloody knife in the poem? Maybe that's all it is, a bloody, fucking knife?

“Number two: there are others in the literary world, myself included, who think that the knife is an extension of the narrator's power, that she's using a phallus shaped object to take back her destiny, to show that she won't allow her femininity to be crushed.” I open the polling app on my phone and select number two. It never hurts to agree with your professor, and besides, other than our midterm and final, this is the only way to earn credit in this class; we
have
to vote on these stupid ass polls.

“Number three: the knife can be seen as a symbol of past mistakes. For example, the narrator reflects on her poor experiences as a lover. Some might say that the knife represents her lovers' bodies and the blood, her shame.” My professor scoffs at this notion and the percentage of people voting for it drops from eight percent to two. “That's quite a misogynistic take on this piece, but of course, we must consider all the possible viewpoints,” she says with a smirk.

I lean my head back and stare up at the track lighting on the ceiling.

It's been four days since the attack at the convenience store. My cuts are healing, but my curiosity is piqued. I wonder what happened to Ty and wish that I'd given him my number or something. The time we spent hanging out, while short, was helpful. I haven't had sex with anyone in days, and even more impressive, the night after I came home from watching the sunset, I fell asleep without crying. I'm still trying to tell myself that it was because I was so worn out, but I think it's because I found a kindred spirit and talked to him rather than used him.

“Number four: the bloodied knife could be seen as a physical manifestation of the narrator's pain, a show of hurt and the consequences of that hurt. Line six which reads,
And from where I had my start, I had gone, and thus nothing was e'er the same again,
is often referenced in support of this theory. It is said that the knife could've been used to inflict some kind of wound, thus maiming or scarring the narrator.” I groan, letting the sound get lost in the murmur of the students around me. They're actually buying this crap, discussing it like it matters at all. I hate my fucking literature class. I'd much rather be in calculus. At least in that class, there's always a right answer. In this one, it's all up to the interpretation of a bunch of goons with degrees attached to their names.

“You sure do spend a fucking arm and a leg to listen to someone talk about penises,” a voice says from beside me. I lift my head up and open my eyes to see Ty standing in the aisle with a cup of coffee in either hand and an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth. “Get up,” he tells me. “You took my lighter, and I'm need of a light and someone to drink this with.” He hands me a cup of coffee and either doesn't notice the students around me grumbling in irritation or doesn't care. Professor Alma or Anna or Amy or whatever her name is keeps droning on about the symbolism of the collie dog in the poem and how its black fur represents a vagina.

I grab my backpack and haul ass out of there, pausing for just a moment to vote on the next poll that the professor's pulled up on her screen.

“How do you know so much about my tuition?” I ask as Ty drags me to a small stone wall in the center of the courtyard. It's just about knee high and surrounds a dry garden bed and an old tree. There's gum stuck all over it, but I sit down anyway, folding my tiny, black skirt under my thighs so that my bare skin doesn't touch any of it.

“I looked it up online,” he explains as he holds out his hand and passes me a cigarette. “Among other things.” I take the lighter out of the side pocket on my bag and light us both up.

“So you're stalking me now?” I ask, but I smile when I say it.

“You stalked Noah Scott,” Ty says as he takes a drag on his cigarette and sighs like he's in heaven. They'll make you feel that way, cigarettes will, like you're in paradise while they kill your insides. I wish I could quit, but I can't make myself care enough to go through that much effort. “Over twenty grand just to talk about penises?”

“I have a scholarship,” I say as I sip my coffee.
Mmm. Still warm.
“And financial aid.”

“How?” Ty asks casually, too casually. He's fishing for information. I take a moment to consider my answer as I sweep my gaze over him. He's still just as dark, as dangerous looking as he was at the club. Even in the harsh winter sunlight, Ty looks perfect. His dark hair is lying flat today, but it's clean and it shimmers like onyx, speckled with flecks of color from the breaks in the leaves above us. His sexy lips are smiling, but his dimples aren't showing, meaning that he's probably putting on a front for me. His piercings are all different today, all silver with white-blue crystals in them. They compliment the gray T-shirt he's wearing over his bootcut blue jeans. They're tucked into big, black work boots with the laces still undone.

I reconfirm my earlier assessment that while Ty is still hot, the ideal male specimen, that I'm not interested, not like that, not anymore. There's still a little quiver in my belly, an aching pulse down below that tells me that my body still wants him, but I don't feel that desperate frenzy to fuck like I do sometimes, that need to fill myself so that I won't be alone, even if it's just for a second. Maybe it's because Ty talks to me, treats me like a person instead of an opportunity?

“I filled out the FAFSA and trolled the Internet for scholarships, anything to do with … ” I almost don't say it.

“You can tell me what the hell a
FAFSA
is in a minute. To do with what?”

“Dance,” I say and my voice comes out like a whisper, swirls through the air with a cluster of dried leaves. “I had some videos of myself, so I posted them wherever I could.” Ty doesn't respond until he finishes his coffee. He wrinkles the cup up in his hand and makes an impressive toss across the bricks of the courtyard. The cup hits the rim of a garbage can and slides inside.

“Show me.”

I take Ty up to my dorm room which is weird because I've never had a guy in there, not once, not for any reason.

“Cozy,” he says, and I can't tell if he's being facetious or if he's telling the truth. I sit down at my desk which is at the end of Lacey's bed instead of at the end of mine. We switched spots because I like to stay up late and type things, not stories or poems though, just things. Lacey says the light of the screen from this angle isn't as bad as it is from the other side. Ty understandably mistakes her bed for mine and sits down on the pink and white comforter. “You know,” he says as he pulls open the drawer on the bedside table and peeks inside. Whatever it is that he sees in there causes him to smirk wickedly. “When I asked if you were legal, I was serious. How old are you anyway?”

“Close that,” I snap as his hand starts to venture inside. “That's my roommate's stuff.” Ty raises his dark brows and stands up, moving over to my rumpled black and red bedspread. Apparently, he thinks it's okay to look so long as the stuff is mine and opens my drawer next. There's not much in there, so I ignore him and search for one of the videos on my laptop.
Why are you showing him this?
I wonder as I search through old folders looking for the last performance I ever had filmed. My final performance, the one I did right before I packed up some clothes and left my costumes and my family behind, wasn't filmed. It was for one man's eyes only. “I'm twenty-one,” I respond absently as I find the video I'm looking for.

“Twenty-two,” Ty says as he stands up and stretches. “So that means you have, what, a year and a half of school left?”

“Supposedly,” I say as I click the video and open it to full screen. I lean back in my chair and watch a girl who was me, but isn't anymore. That girl, the one in the turquoise top and the hip scarf, she's long dead, and there's no way to bring her back. I wonder if my mom or my sisters ever watch this video and think of me? I think of them all the time, video or no.

Ty kneels down next to me and puts one hand on the arm of my chair and the other on my desk. His breath tickles my fingers and make them twitchy. Suddenly, I have this crazy urge to brush the hair from his forehead.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
I look back at the screen and try not to frown. In the recording, I'm doing my mother's homegrown version of tribal belly dance where one lead dancer cues the other girls in the group with subtle motions, telling them what move comes next. It's all improv; nothing is choreographed. It gives the dance a more organic look, like it's something from wilder times where women might've danced around campfires and worshipped goddesses whose names are like whispers on the wind.

I'm wearing a big, black skirt that hangs so low it touches the tops of my henna patterned feet, and a scarf with big, silver tassels that swing wide arcs around me as I spin. My hair is its natural copper color in the video, not black and red like it is now. I dyed it to match my bedspread. At the time, it seemed as good an inspiration as anything. At least my comforter was always there, night after night, holding me, cradling me tight. What else could I ask for?

“You're fucking beautiful,” Ty tells me honestly as he watches the video, brown eyes flickering across the screen, tracing my every movement. I don't blame him; I was prettier then, skinny and lithe and muscular with a flashy, blue zircon belly ring in the shape of a butterfly. Watching this video makes me remember why I don't dance anymore. I was perfect that day and even better the next. If I dance now and mess up those memories, I'll never forgive myself. I open my mouth to tell Ty this because for whatever reason, I want to spill my guts out to him, when Lacey walks in the room with a pink shopping bag on one shoulder and a blue one on the other. Her girlfriend is standing right behind her, giggling, but stops as soon as she sees Ty. Then she switches her attentions from Lacey to him.

It's hard to resist a man like Ty McCabe, even for someone as emotionally shallow as what's-her-name.

“Hey there,” she says, and Lacey goes from smiley to scowling, twisting her skinny lips into an angry frown. Ty doesn't respond to her right away. First, he reaches over me and wraps his big hand around mine, moving the mouse to the pause button. He clicks it and stands up suddenly.

“Hey there yourself,” he says with a naughty smirk that bugs the hell out of me for whatever reason. “The name's Ty,” he tells her as he moves aside so that Lacey can throw her bags on her bed. She's on the verge of having a temper tantrum, but nobody notices but me. “Mind if I grab yours?”

“Renee Foster,” she tells him with the very same smile she was using on Rick at the frat party only a few days prior. See, I told you girls like Renee want to marry guys like Rick and have kids and pretend to be happy, but they secretly want to fuck guys like Ty. I tap my fingers on my desk and feel irritated. Why, I can't guess, because he doesn't belong to me. I don't want him to belong to me. Maybe I just don't like Renee?

“Nice to meet you, Renee,” he says with a dimpled smile and the two of them shake hands. I'm happy to see that he doesn't touch her hair or let her kiss his jaw like he did with me. “You must be Lacey's girlfriend. I've only heard good things.” Renee's face turns pasty white and she whirls on Lacey with a glare that could kill. She says nothing, but her breath huffs in and out like a wild animal. Ty and I both seem to know when it's better to stick around and when it's best to leave because we both move towards the door and around Renee at the same time.

“That was totally uncalled for,” I hiss at him as soon as it closes behind us. Shouts echo out and down the hallways. Luckily, most people are in class right about now so there isn't a crowd around to hear.

“What was?” Ty asks, going for a cigarette even though there's a
No Smoking
sign just a few feet down from where we're standing. I stare at his perfect head, silhouetted against the white wall and for some reason, I just want to hit him. I don't know why, I just do.

“Go away,” I tell him as I snatch the cigarette from his hand. He looks at me for a long time, just stares at me. “Get out!”

Ty reaches out, takes the cigarette back and disappears down the hallway.

I don't see or hear from him for a week.