Tasting Never (15 page)

“
Sit
by me,” Ty says as he settles himself on a corner of the rug
and tugs me down next to him. Our knees touch and the air around me
feels hot. There's a storm brewing outside, sending cold gusts of
wind and water into the building and I'm
hot.
Wow.
I really do need this meeting.

“
So,”
Vanessa asks as she moves her finger across the screen of the silver
tablet. She smiles and her eyes crinkle at the corners. “I
know I spoke to you over the phone, Mr. McCabe, but do you have any
questions about the process?”

“
Uh,
no, I'll just go with the flow,” Ty replies, smiling without
his dimples.

“
How
about you, Miss Ross?” I shrug and light another cigarette.
Ty pulls it out of my mouth and sticks it in his with a wink. I get
out another.

“
I'm
okay,” I say, and Vanessa nods with a secretive, little smile
that tells me I might not be. I let my eyes drift to the side and
watch water drip down the wall and pool into a puddle on the floor.
Moments later, they start to trickle in, a sea of people so ordinary
that I wouldn't pick them out of a lineup. Ty and I are the
strangest looking ones there. Especially Ty. Most definitely Ty. I
notice that a few of the women notice him, let their eyes linger just
a bit. To my relief, Ty doesn't look at any of them. In fact, he
seems completely checked out. I touch his hand and he blinks like
he's coming to. Then he leans over and whispers into my ear, sending
chills down my spine.

“
Whatever
I say here, whatever I do, don't hold it against me.” I nod
and I know that I won't. How can I? Where's my high ground? That's
right, I don't have any.

“
Okay,”
Vanessa begins, lighting a series of small candles and sticking them
in the center of the rug. “Now that we're all here … ”
She lets her eyes trail around the twelve faces that are present,
pausing for just a moment longer on mine and Ty's. “I'd like
to introduce two new members to SOG. This fine gentleman here is Ty
McCabe.” Ty holds up a hand and gives a tight smile. I wonder
if he wonders about getting up and leaving, just walking out. That's
what I'm thinking about, even though I know I won't do it. The way I
felt at the clinic, like I was right where I was supposed to be,
that's how I feel here, too. “And the lovely, young woman next
to him is Never Ross.”

“
Printed
just like it sounds right across the top of my birth certificate,”
I say, use to getting stares and questions about my name. It is
strange. Admittedly, I've never met another person with it. At
least it makes it easy to tell me apart. The group claps and smiles,
but I can see that they're looking at us like we're outsiders. This
is not going to be easy.

“
What
we're going to do to start off the day is get to know Never and Ty,
learn some of their secrets.” Vanessa smiles, but I shift
uncomfortably. I don't like sharing secrets, especially with myself.
And there are a lot of them buried down inside, waiting for me to
take notice, to take control. I swallow hard and look at Ty. He's
staring right at me, through me maybe. God, we're the same, me and
him. “Why don't we go around the circle, introduce ourselves,
and say something that we feel represents the deepest part of us,
anything at all. Is there anyone that would like to start?”

“
I'll
go first,” Ty says, dark eyes still searching mine. It's
making me nervous, so I look away. “My name is Tyson by
birth,” Ty says as he takes a drag on his cigarette. I'm just
letting mine burn, watching the cherry crackle like fire. I don't
want to inhale; I can't. I want to block out all of Ty's words, put
him back in my dangerous boys category, forget about why he hurts and
who he is, go home and cry. I want to do this because like Ty, I'm
afraid, too. I'm terrified. I make myself sit still, prove to
myself that I'm as brave as I'd like to believe I am. “But if
you call me that, I won't answer. I lost my virginity at thirteen,
got roped into the sex trade, and worked as a whore for a good
portion of my adult life.” I don't look at him. I won't look
at him. I
can't
look
at him. “I had male and female clients and I rarely used
condoms. If I die tomorrow, it won't be a surprise.” Ty's
voice is so bitter that I have to squeeze my eyes shut to listen to
him.
You brought us here,
I
think at him frantically.
You opened up this Pandora's
box.
I want nothing more than
to slam it shut in that moment, let it fester and burn. What's so
wrong with being tortured anyway? My emotions are on a roller
coaster right now and it's making me sick. At least when I was
unhappy, I was always unhappy. I can't stand these fluctuations;
they sting too much.

“
You
sound pissed off, Ty,” Vanessa says, and I look back at her. I
won't look at anyone else, but I'll look at her. She's sitting up
straight with her tablet in her lap and her green eyes locked on
Ty's.

“
Damn
right I'm pissed off,” he says, and I can see from the corner
of my eye that he's running his hand through his dark hair. “I
can't … I don't … ” Ty tries to get me to look
at him by putting a hand on my knee, but I push it off and let it
fall to the rug. He's asking for my help.
Fuck.
When
I went to find him today, I didn't expect this. I guess I expected
some kind of fairytale crap, but this is the real world, the world
where Ty and I got ourselves into trouble and are just now realizing
that we need to get out. “I'm sorry,” Ty says as he
takes a massive breath. “I've been preparing myself for this
for the past few days. I had a speech planned, but I forgot all of
it. Honestly, I'm a little freaked out.” Vanessa nods.

“
Understandable,”
she says. “Would you like to continue?” Presumably Ty
shakes his head because Vanessa moves on, swinging her gaze to mine.
My spine stiffens and I feel my fingers curling around my knees. I
reach up suddenly and grab my cigarette, take a huge drag and try to
hold the smoke in my lungs. “What about you, Never? Would you
like to go next?” I blow out the smoke slowly, so very slowly.

“
My
name is Never, and I'm a sex addict. Can I go now?” There are
some nervous chuckles around the group, but Vanessa sees right
through me.

“
That's
great that you can admit that, Never, but we're not about twelve
steps or confessions or any of that bullshit here. We're real people
with real problems. Do you have a problem, Never?”

“
I
don't know,” I reply honestly. “Is being promiscuous a
problem? Men have been praised for centuries for doing exactly what
I'm doing. I go out, find guys I like, and fuck them. Maybe I'm
just a stud?”

“
Do
you feel like a stud, Never?” Vanessa asks. She knows that I'm
bullshitting her, and she doesn't like it. I
know
I have a problem. Looking for people to fill the holes inside of me
is not going to make me better. They get in there and they break me
up inside. They make me miss home and the possibilities that
might've happened had I stayed. I dream sometimes that I never left
that night, that I stayed with Noah Scott and got married. See, Noah
Scott is the kind of guy you can take home to your family, show off,
and know that at the end of the day, he'll be there for you. That's
who Noah Scott was. See, this guy next to me, this Ty McCabe, he's
one of the dangerous ones, the ones with pasts that burn like fire
and melt everything around them.

“
I
don't know, Vanessa,” I say feeling confrontational all of a
sudden. “I stopped counting at forty.” There's no
reaction from the group, no murmuring, nothing. If they're judging
me, they're doing it quietly.

“
What
do you love most about yourself?” Vanessa asks, and the most
horrible thing about that question is that I don't have any answer.
“Don't answer that yet,” she says suddenly, like she's a
fucking mind reader or something. “We'll come back to you.
Ben, would you like to go next?” I finish my cigarette, toss
it into the ashtray and start on another. And another. I start a
new cigarette for every person who speaks, all ten of them, and when
the circle finally returns to Vanessa, I feel sick. From the
nicotine, from the smoke, from the stories, I don't know. I hear the
words
empty, lonely, helpless, afraid.
They
repeat these over and over again as they share bits of themselves
with me. I smoke and stare out at them with tired eyes and a down
turned mouth.

“
My
name is Vanessa Pickett, and I have worked as a professional escort,
a stripper, and even a madam. I'm not proud of it, but I also can't
claim I was forced into it or driven to it through abuse. I had a
good life, and I was raised well, but there was something inside of
me that sought out more. I was always seeking it, but could never
find it.” She's looking straight at me, waiting for some kind
of reaction. I refuse to give her one.

“
When
my son passed away, I was forced to look at the world in a different
way. I realized that I had missed out on his life. Spending time
with people you love and who love you is the easiest path to
recovering that part of yourself that's missing. Whether it's a
lover or a friend or a child, the best place to find solace is in a
warm heart.”

“
Or
a warm bed,” I say because I'm getting pissed off. I might've
left my baggage at the clinic, but now I feel open and empty and
bare. I don't like that. Not at all. My fear makes me angry, and
right now, I want to rage.

“
Tell
me, Never,” Vanessa says, trying to distract me with the bag of
shiny coins that sits in front of her. “How many days has it
been since you last had sex.”

“
A
week.” I don't look at Ty.

“
And
you, Mr. McCabe?” I hear him swallow.

“
A
week.”

The
group claps and Vanessa retrieves two, shiny, red chips from her bag.
She passes them over to Ty who drops one in my palm.
Seven
Days
is etched into the top.
Great.

“
This
is the one thing we have adopted from the other addiction groups that
are out there. It's a good reminder, something to keep in your
pocket, a physical declaration of your commitment. We stop giving
the chips out at six months. After that, if you're ready to have sex
with someone, then that's your choice.”

“
Isn't
it always my choice?” I snap, but Ty steps in before I can make
an even bigger ass out of myself.

“
Is
it alright if Never and I act as each other's sponsors?”
Vanessa nods and touches a finger to her tablet.

“
Absolutely,”
she says as she glances at some of the other group members. “This
isn't about rules or punishments or meetings, this is about saying
what needs to be said, learning from others, and getting better.”

“
Thank
you,” Ty tells her honestly as I watch Vanessa pull out a blue
chip. It says
One Month
on
it, and all of a sudden, I am just so freaking pissed off that I
can't sit still. I watch as some of the other group members
celebrate milestones and feel this hot rage boiling inside of myself.
I keep a lid on this, hold it back while people make dinner plans to
celebrate being able to keep their dick in their pants, to keep their
fucking legs closed. Good for them. Great for them.

“
So,
Ty, I'd like to ask you about your turning point. We all have them,
something that changes our mind, that makes us aware of our problem.
What's yours?”

I
let my anger get the best of me once and for all and answer for him.

“
He
was afraid that I loved him, so he fucked somebody to forget about
me.”

“
Never,”
Vanessa begins but I cut her off.

“
Then
he came over and fucked me. That's his turning point. Want to hear
mine?”

“
Come
on, Never,” Ty says, reaching out and trying to take my hand.
I pull it away from him and rise to my feet. My breath is coming in
short, sharp bursts, and I can't sit still. I look around the group,
scan the faces that are raised to mine, and I don't see straight. I
need to get out of here. Now.

“
I
have to go,” I say, and then I turn and run away as fast as my
legs can carry me.

23

Ty
finds me a few hours later sitting on the swings outside his house.

I've
been here all day, waiting for him, wanting to apologize. When I
hear his footsteps and look up, he smiles at me.

“
I
went to your dorm, but you weren't there.”

“
Did
you fuck anybody?” I ask, ready to get up and leave. I didn't.
I wanted to, but I resisted the urge. I came here instead, ran all
the way here and sat on this swing for three and a half hours
waiting. For what, I don't know, but I did, and I want Ty to respect
that.