Tasting Never (17 page)

“
You're
getting a fucked up mess,” Ty says as he twirls his plastic
fork around in his food.

“
Good,
then it's an even trade.” Ty smiles and we both turn our heads
as a couple police cars flash past, brightening up the darkness on
this side of the city for just a moment before they disappear. From
here, Ty and I have a view of all the disturbing nightlife that calls
this place home. I see hookers on the corner and drug dealers in the
alleys, but above it all, I see the city stretching away, rising and
falling, old buildings mixing with new. It's pretty if you tilt your
head to the side and squint. It's all about perspective. “But
what's it about? How do I know I can trust you with mine?”

“
I
meant to tell you, before, about the phone, that I've never left a
picture on it that long.”

“
You're
changing the subject,” I tell him as I lean back and let the
cool breeze tease along my skin. Soon, it's going to be unbearably
cold out here, but for now, it's just right.

“
Even
after you called me a whore, I left it up. I've left it up this
whole time.”

“
Why?”

“
I
don't know.”

More
silence.

“
I
was born approximately twenty-one years ago in a dingy, little
hospital in some Midwest dump.” Ty grins and steals the
cigarette back from me. “My mother was young, eighteen I
think. She had my sister, Beth, when she was sixteen.” I
raise my hand up for him to see and he presses his palm against it,
rings and all. My heart flutters strangely and for a moment, I can't
breath. I curl my fingers around his and manually open my chest for
air. It isn't easy. I point to my thumb first and then to each
subsequent finger. “Beth, me, Jade, Zella, India.” I
pause and hold up my other hand. Ty takes this, too. I don't know
why he keeps touching me like this, but I might have to ask him to
stop. It's too confusing, too … I don't even know. Just too.
Too. Too. Too. “Lettie, Lorri,” I finish as I squeeze
his hand with mine. When I'm finished, we both pull away at the same
moment and focus our eyes on the parking lot. There's a couple with
a baby down there, trying to figure out how to get a car seat into
the back of their dinky, little sedan.

“
Seven
girls, five fathers.” Ty doesn't judge me which is nice. He
just sits there and listens, sipping his beer and smoking his
cigarette. I love the way the wind plays with his hair, teases his
face with it and curls it gently with its fingers. It's poetic
somehow. “My mom got married to my dad when she was pregnant
with Beth. Then they had me and then Jade and then Zella.” I
sigh. “But my mom cheated. A lot. Constantly.” I hold
out my hands, and I notice that they're shaking again. I grab my
beer and hold it so that I have something to do with at least one of
them. That way, maybe Ty won't notice. “I think my therapist
was dead wrong about everything,” I tell Ty with a small smile.
“Maybe because I didn't tell her the whole story?”

“
Or
maybe therapists just suck?” Ty adds. I laugh, but it sounds
hollow and empty. Recanting this story is not the easiest thing for
me, but it's part of the process, part of this whole healing binge
that Ty has just started me on, this path through thorns and rocks
and swamps, this path that isn't easy but that has to be traveled.
If not, I doubt I'll make it long enough to get my degree.

“
I
have 'mommy' issues, Ty. If there's anything that's wrong with me,
that's it.” I close my eyes and try to remember what it was
like to be at home, with Mom hating Dad and Dad despising Mom and all
of us in the middle of something we didn't understand. My mind
paints me a nice picture, depicts the events and the scenes and the
faces the way they should be, but I know it's not real. I don't
really
remember the way it all went down. “Jade was not
my father's daughter, not biologically, but he loved her anyway.”
I pause and a bit of something comes into my head.
Custody.
Was
that what it all boiled down to? Is that why my father died? I
swallow hard and Ty can tell that's something's wrong.

“
Are
you okay, Never.”

Tears
prick my eyes.

“
I
can't do this,” I say and Ty leans over, puts his hand on my
knee and just waits. That's the one plus side of hanging out with
other tortured souls. They know when to press, when to stay quiet,
and when to stop. Usually.

“
You
can,” Ty whispers, but I've kept my past locked away for so
long that opening it up has opened me up. It's burst out before I
was completely ready and torn me to shreds. I drop my beer to the
pavement of the patio where it crashes into a million pieces, just
like me. I'm breaking, cracking, splitting. I had thought, at
first, that Ty's voice could slither into my psyche and rip me apart,
but now that he's sitting there across from me and speaking so softly
that I can barely hear him, I know that that isn't true, not
entirely. He has that ability, sure. He has it because I'm
attracted to him, like there's this magnetic force between us pulling
us together and pushing us apart. He has it because I'm so sure that
he could break me if he wanted to. That's the part I was right
about. What I was wrong about was Rick. Rick could not have glued
me together like I'd imagined. He couldn't have because his pull
wasn't strong enough, not like Ty's. Ty's. Ty McCabe's.

I
gasp like I'm coming up for air, and suddenly, I'm just sitting there
with these big, fat tears rolling down my face. I think my nose is
running, too, and I'm hiccuping, finding it hard to stop my hands
from shaking so bad that they hurt.

“
Never,”
Ty says as he pulls me off my chair and onto his lap. He wraps his
arms around me and holds me while I cry. And cry. And cry.

I
cry into Ty's perfect shoulder and breathe in the scent of tobacco on
his shirt. I run my fingers through his soft, soft hair, and I wait
for the feelings to subside, to die down, to relax into me instead of
take over me. At first it doesn't seem as if they're going to.
Normally, in this situation, I would look for someone to have sex
with, but I know I can't do that anymore. If I want to deal with my
past instead of just bury it, I have to let shit sit with me for
awhile.

“
Tell
me about Noah,” Ty says and I laugh through my tears. “That's
better,” he says as I sit back and he runs his thumb under my
swollen eyelids. “That's the sound I want to hear.”

“
Scoping
out the competition?”

“
There
is no competition,” Ty says and the words, I think, are fiercer
than he meant them to be.
What the hell?
Ty smiles and moves
on as if he hadn't said that. “So. Noah Scott. Was he bigger
than me?”

“
Ty,”
I say, but it's funny enough that I laugh a little bit, that I pull
back from my fears enough that I can breathe, that I can speak
without hiccuping. “I don't remember,” I tell him
honestly. “What I do remember is that the first boy I ever
loved had blue eyes and blonde hair. He had a perfect smile and a
soft touch. He's studying business now,” I add as an
afterthought. I can look at Noah online, spy at him though rose
colored glasses, see what he wants me to see, but I can't really know
what's going on with him, if he missed me after I left, how he felt
when he woke up alone and found my note. “We started dating
freshman year of high school,” I tell Ty, wondering vaguely
what he was like in school. If we'd found each other then, would we
have suffered like this? Did we need all of this pain and hurt to
make us who we are or would we have fallen together like a fairytale
couple, gotten married, had kids? “We dated up until I left.
He used to write me poems.” Ty smiles.

“
Is
that why you hated it when I tried to quote you poetry?”

“
Noah
always had his own words. I guess I can't stop comparing everyone I
meet to him.”

“
Why
not just call him?” Ty asks as if the solution is that simple,
as if I can just pick a phone and call a boy I haven't seen in five
years.

“
That
didn't go over so well with Beth,” I say. I have over a
hundred missed calls on my phone now. I looked when I was in the
bathroom earlier. I've thrown my sister a line, and it's only a
matter of time until she finds me. “My last name isn't Ross by
the way.” I pause. “Well, it is now, legally. I was
born Never Regali.”

“
Ah,”
Ty says, still wrapped around me, chin resting on my shoulder. This
is a rare thing for me, snuggling a guy like this. I tell this to
Ty.

“
I
haven't had anyone hold me since Noah.”

“
Was
he your first?” Ty asks and, determined to tell him the truth,
I answer honestly.

“
Yes.”

“
Why
did you leave?” Ty asks, digging straight down through all the
bullshit to the root of the problem, to the core of my issues and my
pain, to the seed that started it all.

“
You
saw the video,” I tell Ty. “You heard her announce her
engagement?” He nods. “Well,” I say as I wait for
Ty to light a cigarette. It's a Djarum Black this time, and without
hesitation, I pluck it from his fingers. Smoke kills, but secrets
kill faster, and if I'm going to say this aloud, for the third time
in my life, I'm going to need it. “The man she was planning on
marrying was the one who killed my father.”

26

Ty
doesn't ask me to explain anymore after that, but I do anyway. I
tell him how my father was murdered, how he was strangled from behind
for eight long minutes. Six minutes where I sat and did nothing,
just watched as the man that loved me, that I loved back, died with
his eyes glassy and his face purple, choking on vomit and bile. I've
blocked a lot of it out, fortunately, or I might not just be a sex
addict. I might be a whole lot worse. I've forgotten the gurgling
sounds that he made as he died, and the way his body slumped to the
floor. I forgot the long hours where I sat there, still as a statue
with my arms wrapped around my knees.

What
I didn't forget was my mother's face when I told her what happened,
when she walked in with Beth and Jade and Zella and found me sitting
there. I remember how dry her face was, how she didn't cry at Dad's
funeral, how she called me a liar.

“
He
was Jade's biological father, you know,” I tell Ty whose eyes
are focused on the floor but whose ears are all mine. “He
disappeared for awhile after that, but when he came back into town,
my mom started dating him again behind my back. All my sisters knew
when she got engaged; she told them all, but she didn't tell me, Ty.”

“
So
you found out at the performance?”

“
I
confronted her,” I continue. I bet my eyes are glassy now,
glazed over with old memories. Now that I've started them, they
won't stop. If Ty taped my mouth and chained me up, my brain would
run through them again and again, never stopping until someone was
there to hear. Someone has to hear, and I couldn't be happier that
that person is Ty McCabe. “I told her again what I'd told her
before, that he'd killed my dad.” I shake my head here because
this is the hardest part to tell, the part where my sisters gang up
on me, where they belittle me and side with my mother. This is the
part where Beth slaps me,
hard
, cracks me right across the
face because she doesn't want to hear me say anymore. This is the
part where a piece of me dies, where I know they all care far more
about themselves then they do about me. “They didn't believe
me. Jade, especially, was angry.”

Her
eyes flash from hazel to black, filled with a rage that I,
alone,
can't possibly be responsible for. No single person could be
responsible for that much hate, but it can be targeted at one person
and that person is me.

“
I
hate you, Never,” she hisses at me. “From the bottom of
my heart, I hate every last inch of you.”

I
blink a couple of times to regain focus and grab Ty by the chin. His
dark eyes are sympathetic, understanding. One day, he'll give me his
story. I just have to be willing to wait for it.

“
They
said their worst, did their worst, and I ran out on them. I went to
Noah knowing that it was the last I'd ever see of him. I gave him
the best performance I could give, danced for him in a way I could
never have danced for anyone else. We slept together and I snuck out
before dawn. I left and I never went back.”

“
Wow,”
Ty says, and he tries to smile to lighten things up. “That's
quite a story.”

“
Isn't
it?” I ask as I inhale and watch a pair of teenage boys start a
fight on the street corner. Now that it's out there, now that I've
said it, made into words the thoughts that have been swimming in my
head all this time, I feel healed, just a little. This is only the
beginning, I know that now, but it's a good beginning, a start to
something beautiful. “Winter break's coming up, Ty. I think I
should go out there. I think I have to see them.”