Tasting Never (5 page)

“
That's
okay,” he says, and before I can argue, he explains himself.
“Because I am one. Or I was.” I shake my head as we
pause at the street corner and wait for the light to change. There
are no cars, but we wait anyway.

“
I
sleep around a lot, too,” I admit, and have no idea why I'm
spilling my guts to this guy. Maybe it's because he reminds me so
much of myself. I reach into my coat and find the lighter and the
box of cigarettes. I light up again and pass one to Ty. He takes it
in his fingers but doesn't put it to his mouth.

“
No,
not like that,” he says as I tuck the lighter away, and we
start across the street. “I worked as a whore.” Ty puts
the cigarette between his lips but doesn't take a drag. It hangs
limply from his frown, and I can see in his eyes that he's tortured
by whatever it is that he's done. He looks as sick as I feel. “And
not a very good one,” he tells me as we pass by brick apartment
buildings that were once historic treasures but now just appear
rundown. Very few windows glow with light. “For a couple
hundred bucks, I would've given you what you wanted.” Ty
inhales and holds the smoke in his lungs for a long time before he
exhales in a cloud of white. “Or I would've. I don't do that
anymore.”

I
don't say anything to that. I don't know what to say. On one hand,
I'm disgusted with him. I think things like,
How could he sell
his body like that?
and
Doesn't he have any shame or dignity?,
but then I realize that we're just the same, me and him. I may
not have ever taken money for sex, but I abuse it just the same.

“
I
have six sisters which is just as shitty as it sounds,” I say
randomly, and Ty finally smiles again. He has a really nice smile.
It lights up the dark almost as well as the streetlamps above us.
“My mother is, like Lacey said, a belly dancer. She does shows
during the farmers' market and teaches classes.”

“
That's
cool,” Ty says, but I cut him off.

“
No,
it's not. She could've made more money working at
Mc-fucking-Donalds. I don't know how someone could be that selfish
and still pretend they care, you know?” Ty laughs, and it
sounds bitter and dry.

“
I
know what you mean,” he says as we pause outside a 24-hour
coffee shop. “Want something?” he asks me, and I nod as
this strange feeling takes over me. I'm hanging out with a guy with
butterfly tattoos who worked as a hooker and blew me off at our first
meeting. The same guy who tackled a person with a gun just to save
me and has a smile with dimples. I'm making a friend. I smile.

“
Coffee,
black,” I say and Ty grins.

“
Funny,”
he says. “That's just the way I like mine.”

5

“
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 the last time 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 and 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.

6

“
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.