Tasting Never (8 page)

My
mother is speaking, telling the gathered crowd a secret that she's
kept not from my other sisters but just from me. Only me. I was the
one left out. The one that didn't deserve to hear her plan. I think
it was because, deep down, she knew how wrong it was, but she was –
is? – so fucking selfish.

Am
I making a rash decision?
I wonder as I watch the light from the
screen flicker across Ty's face. It's not too late to back out, to
change my mind, to save this chance for someone else. The video ends
with my mother's announcement about her engagement, and somehow, in
some cruel trick of fate, Noah, who is holding the camera, zooms in
on my face, catches me at my most vulnerable. Burned into the last
frame of that recording is me with my eyes haunted and my mouth open
in shock. All around me a crowd cheers and inside, I die just a
little.

Ty
hands the phone back to me and stops smiling as we circle around the
lawn and head back towards the playground.

“
What
on earth did she do to you?” Ty asks, and my heart pauses for a
moment, resets itself to overdrive and starts to pound. This is why
I'm always attracted to tortured souls, to people with wounds like
mine because once you have them, you can recognize them a mile away.
But I've never gotten this close to one. It's terrifying. My hand
starts to shake, and I untangle it from Ty's as we hit the pavement.
I reach for my shoes but pause when Ty touches a hand to my shoulder.
“Come on,” he says as he starts towards the swing set.
“Tell me about it.”

“
I
… ” I follow Ty to the black swings which are soaking
wet from the dewy night and watch, almost mesmerized, as he takes off
his shirt and wipes the moisture away. When he's finished, he tosses
it over his shoulder and holds out a hand to indicate that I should
sit. My eyes trace his perfect chest, his chiseled midsection, and
all of a sudden, I feel sick.
No,
I tell myself.
I won't
sleep with him, not ever, so fuck off.

“
Come,”
he tells me. “Take a load off.”

“
I
can't,” I say as I take a step back. I've only said the thing
I want to say twice before and both times, life did not work out well
for me. My memories are jumbled and confusing, and I just can't find
the heart to put it out there. Not yet. I need more time. “I'm
sorry,” I say aloud as I take another step back and reach down
for my shoes. Ty watches me with sad eyes and nods like he
understands completely. I turn away, grab my heels and hold them
against my chest. After a few careful breaths to steady myself, I
turn back to him and toss a fake smile his way. I can tell that he
knows it isn't real and watch as he returns it with a false smile of
his own. “Don't be a stranger,” I say as I start back
off towards the gate.

“
There's
no way I'm letting you walk out of here alone,” he tells me as
he moves around the swing set. “Let me walk you home.”

“
You're
going to stop me?” I challenge, not because I think walking
home alone is a good idea but because I don't like being told what to
do. Ty holds up his hands like he doesn't know what to say and drops
them to his sides.

“
I
guess not,” he replies, but he looks kind of pissed off about
it. He sits down on the swing and wraps his hands around the chains,
rings and bracelets clinking softly against the metal.

“
Goodnight
Ty McCabe.”

“
Goodnight
Never Ross.”

I
walk out of the gate and call a cab.

9

“
Bartleby,
the Scrivener?
” Lacey asks with a wrinkled nose. “What's
a scrivener?” I ignore her and try to focus on my paper. It's
not something I want to write, and it's taking every ounce of
strength I have to sit still. I'm afraid that if I look at her, I'll
be more interested in the butterfly clip she has in her hair than I
am about
A Story of Wall Street.
I yawn and slump back in my
chair as I scroll through page after page of cliff notes.

“
Hey
Lacey,” I say as she moves away from me and sits down on the
edge of her bed, a pair of nail clippers in one hand and a bottle of
nail polish in the other. I try to keep my eyes on the computer, but
they keep jumping around to the posters of half-naked girls that
Lacey has put up on the wall behind her bed. “Have you ever
had to write a paper that's longer than the story it's based on?”

“
I'm
majoring in biochem,” she says as if that's explanation enough.
I sigh and try not to imagine Lacey working in a laboratory of any
kind. It's a scary thought. “Want to go to a movie with me
tonight?” she asks randomly. I glance over at her and she
smiles.

“
With
your girlfriend?” I ask, and she shakes her head.

“
Nah,”
she says as she carefully applies a coat of bubblegum pink to her big
toe. “I'm tired of playing games with my heart. I could use a
dedicated friends only night, you know what I mean?” I stare
at her for a moment. Roommate. Friend. Which one is she? Is she
both now? I realize that the answer is yes.
When the hell did
that happen?
The transition was too quick for me to see
apparently, which is a scary thought. The more people I'm close to,
the more people have an open shot at my heart. A feeling of
discomfort creeps up on me as I try to figure out what to say.

“
Uh,
yeah, sure,” I say as I give up and close my computer.

“
Never?”
Lacey asks, and I turn to find that she has tears in her eyes.
They're dripping down her pretty face and landing on her bare feet.
I stand up, but I'm not sure what to do; I don't even know what's
wrong with her. When she looks up at me, I see that she's smiling
through her sadness. “I never did say this, but … thank
you.”

“
For
what?” I ask as I move over and sit down next to her.

“
For
saving me,” she says, and I notice that her hands are trembling
just a bit. I reach down and take the nail polish gently from her
fingers. “At the convenience store. If you hadn't, I …
”

“
Shush,”
I tell Lacey as I position her foot in my lap and take over the duty
of painting her toenails. It's not something I do very often, so my
careful strokes are about as neat as her shaking ones. Still, I
think she appreciates it. As I paint, I start to cry, too, but not
about the same thing. Lacey doesn't say anything which I appreciate,
and we both shed our different feelings in the same way, taking quiet
solace in one another's company.

Watching
that stupid video must've opened something up inside of me because I
miss my sisters so suddenly and so fiercely that it hurts inside. I
remember my sister, Beth, painting my nails before my big
performance, just days before I left her and everything else behind.

I
know then that somehow, someway I'm going to have to open up the
Pandora's box of my past soon. Sometimes, the only way to go
forward, is to take a few, careful steps back.

Damn
you, Ty McCabe. Damn you.

10

Ty
shows up in the middle of my art history class.

The
whole auditorium turns to look at him when he walks in and blinds us
all with harsh, white winter sunshine. My professor stops talking
and pauses between an image of Botticelli's
Primavera
and
The
Birth of Venus.
Today's lecture is titled
Famous Artists of
the Italian Renaissance
and as happy as I am to have a
distraction from the admittedly dull lesson, I'm mortified when Ty
waves at me and holds up his phone.

“
Got
your text,” he says, like he's fucking oblivious that everyone
is staring at him. The door slams shut and the room goes dark again,
allowing the projector to once again display the slide show that all
two hundred plus students have been studying for the past half hour.
“You said it was urgent.”I stand up, grab my backpack,
and am grateful that I'm wearing boots today instead of heels, so
that I can run up the steps and grab Ty by the arm.

“
Let's
go,” I whisper as I open the door again and the class groans.
Once it's shut behind us, I pull out a cigarette and search around
for Ty's lighter. It's gone. He reaches into his own pocket and
retrieves it, wiggling it teasingly in the air between us.

“
I
stole it back when you weren't paying attention,” Ty says, and
I can't figure out when that might have been. We've been hanging out
on and off lately, always sporadically, never planned. We've gone
for ice cream, seen a movie, even went to
the
game,
which apparently means football. I've been going to the same
university since I turned eighteen and got my GED and yet, I had no
idea that we had a famous football team. Now all the sweatshirts I
see with beavers on them make sense.
We don't give a dam about
your team!
they say.

“
Thanks
for interrupting my lecture,” I say as he bums a cigarette off
me and puts it to his lips. “Now I'll probably fail the class.
The professor already dislikes me because I disagree with some of
his interpretations.”

“
Such
as?” Ty asks as he lights up.

“
The
stupid fucking van Eyck painting with the couple and the dog, you
know the one?” Ty raises his eyebrows and points at his own
chest.

“
Cashier,
remember? Past work experience: whore. I don't know shit about
paintings.”

“
Don't
belittle yourself like that,” I snap at him as I put the
cigarette in my mouth and wait for a light. Ty pockets the lighter
and leans forward, pressing the cherry of his cigarette against mine.
Our faces are so close that for a moment, I forget to be mad at him.
He has red and black piercings in his face today and a tight fitting
wife beater draped over his chest. I take a few, quick, sharp
inhales until the end of my Marlboro burns as orange as Ty's. “I
hate when people do that.”

“
Fine,”
he says as we move away from the doors to the auditorium and up a
steep slope towards the parking lot. “I won't say things like
that if you tell me what this is all about.” Ty holds out his
phone so I can see the text message I sent to him.

I
need to talk to you. Soon. It's important.

“
You're
the only person I know that uses correct grammar and punctuation in a
text,” he tells me as he puts his phone back in his pocket and
blows smoke into the cool, moist air.

“
And
you're the only idiot I know that walks into a full lecture hall in
the middle of class.” Ty shrugs and lets the cigarette hang
limply from his mouth.

“
Then
don't send me text messages like that. You had me worried.”

“
Worried?”
I ask, and Ty gets pissed off all of a sudden. Without warning, he
throws his cigarette to the ground and crushes it with his boot.

“
Yeah,
Never, worried. Is that such a fucking surprise to you?” I
stop walking and just stare at him like he's crazy. Ty runs his
fingers through his hair and holds out his hand like,
What the
fuck are you waiting for, let's go!
I take a step back and watch
as his dark eyes follow me.

“
Don't
talk to me like that,” I tell him in a voice that's as cold as
the breeze that ruffles my hair.
I was planning on telling you my
secret. You can't talk to me that way.
“I am sick and
fucking tired of people talking to me like that.” Ty drops his
hand and looks down, takes a deep breath and shakes his head.

“
I'm
sorry,” he tells me, but I'm done for the day. I can't go back
to class, so I turn away from Ty and head off in the direction of the
dorms. “What did you need to talk to me about?” he asks
as I stomp through pine needles and under the massive trees that help
make up the natural beauty that our school is known for.

“
Just
forget it,” I tell him as I pause at a crosswalk and adjust my
backpack from one shoulder to the other. “It doesn't even
matter. It's not important.”

“
Bullshit,”
Ty says, but his voice doesn't sound angry, it just sounds tired, and
if I'm reading him correctly,
shameful.
Whatever his internal
struggle is about, I don't want to know. This is why I don't get
close to wounded guys. Guys like this, like Ty, they're just built
to explode, to rain their burning past down on you and melt your
soul. I should've kept my date with Rick. “Never … ”
I look over at Ty and paste an angry frown on my face.

“
Go
home and cool off. When you do, come find me. For now, fuck off.”
I start off across the road and pause on the other side when I hear
Ty's voice sound out from behind me.