Tasting, Finding, Keeping: The Story of Never (5 page)

I'm at a stupid, fucking party with Lacey again because I'm so mad at myself for kicking Ty out of my dorm that I can barely think about anything else. I don't have his number or e-mail or address, and he's been virtually impossible to find. I've searched
Ty McCabe
on just about every social networking site, plugged it into just about every search engine. All I can think is that I've driven my first and only real possibility at a friend away, and now the hunger is back, the gnawing loneliness that brings unbidden tears at night. It's whispering at me, telling me what I should do to ease that ache. If I don't obey it, sooner or later it'll turn into a scream. So I do what I do best and give into it.

I'm hitting on a guy in a black sweater with hair that looks uncannily similar to mine – black with a red streak in the front. He's talking about how much he loves motorcycles and I'm nodding and picking lint off his sweatshirt with a smile. Lacey's standing beside me fuming because Renee won't talk to her anymore. She told me that Renee called her a
damn dyke
and even had the audacity to slap her. I asked Lacey if they'd ever slept together, but she wouldn't give me a straight answer. Doesn't matter anyway, I suppose, because I'm in no place to help anyone else with their love life. I don't even have one of my own.

I slide my hands down the bright blue fabric of my dress, pleased at the way it frames my breasts but disappointed at how much it bunches around my midsection. I'm a lot curvier than I was in that belly dancing video, and it's starting to get to me. I've probably watched it a hundred times since Ty left, and I'll probably watch it a hundred more before I'm done. I feel somehow that it's not over until he sees the end, until he sees my mother make a fool of herself on the stage and set into motion the events that drove me away from my home and into the arms of the real world, emancipation, and a series of shitty jobs that almost killed me.
At least I was never a whore like Ty,
I think bitterly and then suddenly just feel sad for him. That empty, gaping, lonely spot in me is crying out for attention.

“Hey, want to go somewhere?” I ask the guy in the sweater. I think his name is Jason or something, but I don't say it aloud in case I'm wrong.

He raises his eyebrows and says, “Sure thing, beautiful.” I grit my teeth and pretend I don't hear that. I hate that term,
beautiful.
It's so condescending that it makes me sick.

“Hey Never,” says this girl who I know only briefly because we have a lab together. “Your boyfriend's here.”

“My boyfriend?” I ask as I drop Jason-or-whatever's hand and push through the pulsing, vibrating throng towards Shanay. She's pointing towards something, but it's hard to see because there are people everyone, just this big, massive, thrusting, sweating wall of them. Some of them are dancing, others are halfway to a home run, and some are just singing, voices heavy with liquor and pot. I kind of hate it here, but then, I had nothing else to do tonight. I finished all the books on my
to read
list and felt all the emptier because of it. One contemporary romance novel after another slid down my throat until I was convinced that something was wrong with my life. Those girls always get what they want in the end. I'm envious of them. I want an ending like that, too. “Boyfriend?” I ask Shanay. She doesn't really know me, not the true me anyway, but she's aware that I do not date. Not for real.

“The guy with the …. ” she flickers her fingers against her arms, and I know instantly what she means.
The guy with the butterfly tattoos.

“Ty is here?” I ask, not even bothering to correct her about the boyfriend thing. I'll be lucky if she can even hear me with the rap music drilling a hole in both our brains. She nods and points towards the door. I don't even thank her, just push through the bodies and the youthful euphoria that I'm surrounded by but not a part of.

Ty is standing on the front porch with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He's wearing a red tank top that shows off his muscular shoulders and highlights the tattoos on his upper back. I see a raven, a bald eagle, a hummingbird. All of them have their wings spread in flight and expressions of complete and utter bliss on their faces. That is, if you can imagine a bird looking blissful. Whoever did Ty's tats was skilled at it.

I touch his shoulder as I step out beside him, and he turns to look at me.

“I'm sorry,” he says as he tries to hand the beer to me. His gold bracelets tinkle against the glass as I wave him away. I only drink when I'm at rock bottom. I'm hovering close by, sure, but I'm not there yet. If I drink, I'll only fall faster.

“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 my 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.