Tasting, Finding, Keeping: The Story of Never (7 page)

I leave Exclamation Point Guy passed out on a bed and walk out of that party with a smirk on my face, twirling the keys around my fingers like some kind of female Casanova. When I get outside and find Lacey making out with some girl that really should be wearing a bra but isn't, I retreat to her car and sit in the front seat with tears pouring down my face.

I sob and shake and scream. I grab the steering wheel with an iron grip and contract the muscles and tendons in my hand so hard that I feel like they're going to burst out of my skin and kill me.
I wish,
I think as I pull my phone out and dial Ty's number. I put it to my ear and sit in the dark silence of the car, trembling. I don't know what I'm going to say to him. What did he to do me anyway? Nothing. Nothing at all, and yet I'm so mad, I could spit.
Ty didn't make you fuck that guy, and he didn't break you. That wasn't him.

“I'm not broken,” I say aloud, but the only person I have to convince of that is me. Ty doesn't answer, and I don't leave a message because I don't know what to say to him. Suddenly, the loneliness of the car becomes stifling, and I have to climb out and walk back to the front yard where Lacey is lying on her back and looking up at the stars. She's holding hands with that girl, and they're both grinning like fools. “Let's go,” I say to her, wondering when I stopped enjoying being alone.

“You take the car, Never,” she says, eyes dewy and wide. “This is Trini's sorority house. She lives here.”

“I'm an Alpha Omega,” Trini says as the two girls turn towards one another and start to giggle. Lacey brushes Trini's dark hair away from her heart shaped face and they begin to kiss. I stare down at them for awhile, hoping they'll stop soon, but they don't. In fact, the longer I wait, the more intimate they get. Finally, I'm forced to retreat back to the little, green car by myself. It's a Fiesta, a gift from Lacey's dad. Wish I had a dad. Wish mine hadn't been murdered right in front of me. Wish I had someone to tell this secret to.

I realize that I'm having a small anxiety attack and climb into the back seat for awhile to rest. As soon as my head hits the upholstery, I start to cry. Hours later, I fall asleep and spend the rest of my night in the back of Lacey's Ford, dreaming of one thing and one thing only.

Ty McCabe.

It's been almost three weeks since I last saw Ty, and I miss him so much it hurts when I move, like my muscles are sore from wishing too much. Why, I don't have any fucking clue. When I tell this to Lacey, she just smiles and gets all quiet. She's been acting strange ever since she met that girl, Trini. They hang out every available second of the day and even have these obnoxious sleepovers that make me want to grab my blankets and go curl up in the hallway. At least they don't have sex with me in the room. At least there's that.

“If you miss him so much, then call him,” she tells me with a roll of her eyes, like this is a
duh
moment that I am just not getting. “I bet he'd be thrilled to hear from you.” Lacey grabs her hair and twists it into a bun on the back of her head. As she does this, she watches me tack pictures to my wall. There are hundreds of them, and I'm determined to hang them all up. I've been working on this for days, plastering the wall next to my bed and planning to continue until I get to the closet. Lacey hasn't asked about them, but I saw her looking when she thought I was sleeping last night, using her phone as a flashlight.

“These are my sisters,” I tell Lacey who raises her pale eyebrows. I've never told her about them. Not once. She only knows a little about my mom because she found my belly dancing costumes stuffed in the back of the closet. To assuage her curiosity, I had to tell her something. “Beth is the oldest.” I pause and am royally pissed at myself for having to calculate my sister's age in my head. This is just something I should know without thinking. “I guess now she'd be about twenty-three.” I point to a picture of a pretty girl with copper hair and a smile that could disarm even the toughest heart. Beth. God, it's hard to miss someone so much and hate them at the same time. It's a disconcerting feeling. “I'm next in the lineup.” I move my finger across the wall like a pointer until I find a picture of me at sixteen. Lacey stands up and squeals.

“You were so cute!” she says as picks at the edge of the photo with her nails. They're painted bright yellow this week and while I find them obnoxious, I keep catching Trini sucking on them and telling Lacey how sexy they are. They're so goofy together that I have a sneaking suspicion that they think they're in love. I can't judge if they are or not; I'm not qualified, but if it's true, then I hope I never fall into it because when they're together, they act like idiots.

“Then there's Jade who's … ” I count in my head again. “Twenty. Zella who's nineteen. India would be sixteen now, I guess.” I sigh and try not to imagine my little sisters too clearly. The younger they were when I left, the more I miss them, the less culpable I hold them for what happened. Beth, Jade, and Zella are at least half responsible for me leaving. “Lettie is thirteen and Lorri is ten.” I point them all out, a sea of girls with pretty lips, pale skin, and eyes that sparkle with blue and green flecks. We all look like our mother, like a sea of copper haired clones. Except for Beth, Zella, and me, nobody shares the same father. My mom's as big a whore as I am.

I drop the pictures to my bed and they flutter down to the red and black comforter like a swarm of butterflies.

Tears are falling again, and I don't know why. I don't know anything anymore. I thought I had things figured out, at least a little bit. Stay busy, find a reason to live in the morning, cry myself to sleep at night. I didn't have friends, and I brushed bodies with bruised souls. Now I can't even stomach the thought of sex and being alone makes me physically ill.

Ty has changed me; Lacey has changed me; I'm changing myself. Just everything's changing, and I don't know how to deal. It's happening fast, too fast for me to follow. I don't like it. I don't feel in control now. The world is spinning, and I can't stop it, no matter how hard I try.

“Hey,” Lacey says as she scoops the photos into a neat stack and sets them on the edge of her desk. “Why don't I blow off my date with Trini tonight, and we'll go out, just me and you. No boys, no girls, just a round of mini golf?”

I open my mouth to tell her how incredible that sounds when there's a knock at the door.

“Just a sec,” Lacey says as she touches my arm with her hand. “It's probably just Trini.” She moves to the door and opens it without bothering to ask who's there. Shame 'cause who's there is Ty.

He's standing in the hallway with a blue T-shirt, a face full of silver piercings and a pair of black jeans tucked into his black boots. The laces aren't just undone on these, they're missing entirely. His hair is free of products and hangs softly around his dark eyes and over his ears. His face looks strained, like maybe he hasn't had such an easy couple of weeks.

Good,
I think as I grab my coat off the back of my chair.

“We're kind of on our way out,” I say with a tight-lipped smile. I search my pockets for gum and find some, stuffing it into my mouth, so I don't have to talk anymore than is absolutely necessary. Lacey looks between Ty and me, and with a grimace, steps aside to let him in. I give her a look that asks,
What the fuck are you doing?

She cringes and grabs her own jacket off of a hook near the door, mouthing
Sorry
to me as she goes. When she gets back, I'm going to wring her neck.

I throw my coat onto the bed and cross my arms over my chest.

Ty is just standing there with his dark gaze trained on my face and a gentle frown tracing the sexy curve of his lips.

“What do you want?”

“Never … ”

“Don't stand there and sputter,” I say. “Cut to the fucking chase, Ty, or get out.” He doesn't seem taken aback my anger. In fact, he drops his chin a bit like he expected me to act this way.

“What did you want to talk to me about that day?” I roll my eyes to the ceiling and count to three.

“I don't know, Ty,” I lie. “I don't even remember anymore, what do you care? You don't even know me.” Ty shifts his feet slightly and looks up. The strain in his face is giving way to anger. We're both upset and neither of us knows why. We don't know how to read our own emotions, so reading each other's is virtually impossible.

“Are you pissed because I fucked some girl?” he asks as he glances over at the wall behind my bed, gets lost in the collage of my history. Ty takes a step forward, but I move in front of him, determined to keep him out of my past.

“Are you pissed because I fucked some boy?” I ask and Ty switches his gaze back to my face.

“Let's not go there, Never,” he says, but he sounds pissed. I like that. I feel disgusting because of it, but I do. I like that he's pissed. Let him be. Let him get raging fucking psychotically mad at me. I want to see that emotion from him right here, right now.

“That's right,” I tell him as I drop my hands to my sides and take a step closer. “I was in the middle of fucking someone when I got your message. I read it while his cock slid in and out of me, is that the place you don't want to go?”

“That's your business.” Ty says this, but he doesn't mean it. It's bothering him. I know because he starts to pace the room, running a hand through his hair and chewing on his lip ring. “I didn't seek someone out to have sex with, you know,” he tells me, like that's supposed to mean something.

“Okay,” I say as I watch him carefully. I don't want him to look at my photos; I don't want him to even glance that way. “They came to you, right? They must've paid nicely. How much? A hundred bucks? Two?” Ty stops walking and spins around, gets real close to my face and glares daggers at me.

“I'm lost, Never,” he says, and his voice is so soft that I almost break, almost give into him and forget this ever happened, but I can't. I feel betrayed. I wanted to tell him my secret and he wanted to do what he's always done and go bury his feelings between some girl's thighs. Obviously our friendship meant nothing to him or he wouldn't have done that. I didn't. Not until he practically forced me into a corner. “I just … I was afraid, Never.”

“Of what?” I ask. “Not being able to pay rent?”

“Having my heart broken,” he says, and I feel these walls come crashing down around me. Walls that I've spent years building back up. My breath gets caught in my throat, and tears prick my eyes like needles. I don't acknowledge his words or what they might mean. Instead, I pretend that I don't even hear him.

I stand there in silence while he waits for me to say something. I can see in his eyes that he's desperate to get past this darkness in his life, to step forward into the light and do things differently, but he needs help and I am in no place to give it.

“Get out,” I whisper as I realize my hands are shaking again. “Get out and leave me alone. My life is complicated enough without you around.” Ty makes a noise in his throat, just a soft, small noise, like a whimper. “Get out,” I say again, but my voice is trembling. “You're too broken for me to fix.” Ty looks up suddenly and his eyes burn hot. Without warning, he moves forward, and I have to crane my neck back to look up at him.

“Never,” Ty says, and we both lose a battle that was worth fighting, give into old habits and stay shrouded in blackness.

Ty and I brush our lips across one another, but we don't touch, instead we just breathe on each other's skin, basting our aching flesh with hot breath that comes out in short little bursts while we pant away and try not to press our bodies together. It's hard though for two people that have always relied on sex to solve their problems any other way. From loneliness to financial hardship to boredom, there it was, this easy thing that we could do to soothe our aches temporarily. Little did we know that each time we betrayed who we were inside, we were cutting ourselves, just a nick here, a nick there. Now we're both so covered in one another's blood that it's impossible to escape.

Ty doesn't kiss me, but he does drag his hands down my sides, getting his fingers caught in the fabric of my sweater, the pleats of my skirt. I groan and try to reach down to grab his wrists, to stop him, to push him away, but his arms come up instead, snatch mine and slam them over my head. A picture of Lacey's mother falls to the floor and the glass inside it shatters. Neither Ty or I notice.

“I'm done playing games with you,” Ty tells me, but I have no fucking clue what he's talking about. If anyone's playing games, it's him. “This is what you want, isn't it?” I don't know what to say with his mouth hovering over my lips. His hand squeezing my wrists so hard it's painful. His fingers dipping down, down, down, lower. No? Is that what I'm supposed to say? Yes? Yes? No?

Ty brushes my clit with his thumb but just barely, just enough that I can feel it, that I arch my hips forward for more, but not enough that I get any relief out of it. Instead, I sag against the wall, let him use all of the strength in that gently sweeping bicep to hold me there. He's got sweat on the tip of his nose, across his forehead, and down the sides of his neck. I wish I could take his shirt off, explore that hard plane of flesh, finally get a chance to explore a man's body like I never have before.

But I know Ty's type; I knew it the first moment I laid eyes on him.

Ty isn't the guy that takes you to bed and touches your clit with gentle fingers, that whispers sweet nothings in your ear, that lubes up his cock before he slides into you.

Rick was one of those guys maybe but not Ty. I've known it all along anyway.

“Fuck you,” I say, but the words are half spit because I can't enunciate properly, not with this need bubbling up so hot and strong inside of me. There's a misunderstanding here, a big one, and if we don't clear it up, we'll just be making the same mistake, over and over and over again.

Ty looks me right in the face with those dark eyes, smirks at me with those sexy lips, and runs his tongue across them as if he knows how to push every button on my body with a simple look. He unbuttons his pants and puts a hand under my ass. With considerable strength, Ty lifts me up and thrusts into me at the same time.

There's this vicious blending of bodies and strong wills and stubborn characters and for a split second, there's no
you
and no
me
, just
us.
It fades away as quickly as it came and soon we're back to just being human; two grunting, sweating, moaning souls grinding together for whatever reason is important
today
, filling whatever need has to be filled
now.
I don't think for awhile, and if Ty tells you that he does, he's lying. He keeps his hand on my wrists, keeps me pinned there while he slides into me with long, hard strokes, tries to bury whatever problems he has in me while I let him fill the empty hole inside of myself.

That's not to say that the sex isn't good. Oh god, it's good. It's explosive and wild and everything I've always craved. Ty is hot and sexy and perfect, but suddenly, I get this image in my head of him taking money from me. I think about handing him a wad of cash and getting this very same thing, feeling his hand squeezing the flesh on my ass, the movement of his cock inside of me.

“Stop it,” I say as I squeeze my eyes shut and try to push the thought from my head. Ty drops my hands suddenly, pulls away from me as my feet the hit the floor. I crumple to the ground with my hands over my head. Without knowing why, I'm sobbing. For me, for Ty, I'm not sure. When he tries to take a step towards me, I scream at him. “Get out!” I shout as I fly to my feet. I hit Ty in the chest with a fist. “Get out! Get out! Get out!” He fixes his pants, gives me one last terrified look and leaves the room, slamming the door behind him.