Tasting Never (Never say Never)

by C. M. Stunich

  “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.

  14

  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.

  15

  There's a zombie cupcake sitting on my bedside table. It has a purple wrapper and white frosting with a green face piped onto the middle
of it, tongue lolling out to the side, red gel icing dripping like blood from its empty eye socket.

  “What the hell is this?” I ask Lacey who's sitting up in bed, working her comb through her pretty, blonde hair. She isn't very careful about it and I cringe as I hear strands snapping with each stroke. With one last yank, she sets the blue brush down on the bed next to her and curls her hands over her knees.

  “That's for you,” she says, grinning and flashing me the skinny gap between her two front teeth. I knock the cupcake to the floor and roll over with a groan. Lacey's there in an instant, grabbing my shoulder and shaking me like she's not a hundred percent certain that I'm still alive.

  “Come on, Never! You've been a zombie for days. What the hell is wrong with you?” I ignore her and stare at the wall beside my bed. There are black marks there that I drew with eyeliner. One for each day since I kicked Ty out, seven in total. I reach out a hand and smear them across the textured wall so that they look like soot. Lacey sighs and bends down, presumably to grab the cupcake. “And here I was, thinking that you were on your way to being cured.”

  “Cured?” I ask as I look over my shoulder at her. She's adjusting her pearly pink sweater with her long, yellow nails, positioning it just right so that it frames the small swell of cleavage she's managed to dredge up with a push up bra. Unfortunately, the sweater is a perfect match to her lipstick. It's too pale and makes her look washed out, but I don't say anything about it. I'm too curious about her previous statement.

  “Yeah,” she says, not getting how important her words are to me. They might not mean anything, but they might mean everything, too. I have to hear someone else say it. I just have to. “Ever since you started hanging out with Ty, you've been … I don't know, thawed out or something.”

  “Are you calling me frigid?” I ask, voice stiff and kind of scary. Lacey stops fidgeting with her outfit and meets my eyes. She looks tentative now, though, like she might retract her previous statement. I admit, I can be kind of scary sometimes. “Sorry, I know you didn't mean that.” Lacey sighs again and hands me the cupcake. Miraculously, even though it's taken a fall, it looks, for the most part, unscathed. My breath catches in my throat.

  “I just meant that when we first met, you were kind of … I don't know … cold? Like you didn't care about anything.” Lacey shrugs her shoulders. “Lately you've been … normal?” she asks this like a question. I stare at her for a long moment that stretches uncomfortably between us while Lacey fidgets and looks at anything and everything but me.

  “Normal?” I ask her and she jumps in surprise.

  “God, Nev,” she says, giving me a nickname. It's something I haven't had in years. Despite everything, I smile. “Don't scare me like that,” she says, noticing my smile and relaxing a bit. Lacey stands up and pulls my blankets off of me. “Yes, normal. You know, I didn't even know you had sisters let alone their names. Then all of a sudden, you've got these pictures and this smile, and you're just a different person. I wasn't sure what it was at first, but when I saw you at the game with him, I figured it out.”

  “Figured what out?” I ask, sitting up and watching Lacey move across the room to my dresser. She opens the top drawer, extracts a lacy, black bra and tosses it to me. I take it and clutch it to my chest while I wait for her to answer me.

  “That you're good for each other,” she replies as she nibbles at her lip and picks through my shirts with her fingernails. When she finds one she likes, she pulls it out and throws it over the back of my computer chair.

  “We're not a couple,” I protest as I swing my feet out of bed. I stand up and check my phone, but there aren't any messages. Rather than discouraging me, it puts this fire under my ass, this itch to get out, to get going. I don't quite understand it, but I want to roll with it, see where it takes me. Isn't it amazing how one, nice comment can change your outlook on something? Or maybe I'm just tired of being depressed. Seven days is a long time to lay comatose and feel sorry for oneself.

  “You don't have to be a couple,” says Lacey as she hands me a pair of dark wash jeans to go with my red tank top. “You get each other, isn't that enough?”

  I grab the pants, dress in record time, and ask one, final question.

  “Can you drive me?”

  16

  Lacey drops me off next to the gatehouse at Ty's apartment complex.

  The guy working the morning shift is sympathetic, but tells me he can't let me in without permission from one of the residents.

  “I could give him a call?” the man asks as I run my hand through my hair and try not to pace. I don't know why I'm so nervous. Ty might not even be home. Besides, I should've called fist. I don't even know why I'm here. Suddenly, I get this panicked feeling in my chest; my heart's fluttering like a butterfly, battering my insides and making me feel sick.

  “Yeah, sure, okay, call him,” I say as I sit down on the edge of the curb and put my face in my hands. What if he tells the guy to tell me to fuck off? What will I do then? I look up suddenly and glance over my shoulder. The guard has just started to dial the numbers. It's not too late to stop him. “Wait!” I say as I stand up. The man pauses and looks at me strangely through the pass-through window. “Um, I bet he's not even home. Don't worry about it. I'll call him later.” I start to turn away when a familiar voice sends chills down my spine.

  “Liar,” Ty says from behind me. I spin around to see him coming through a small gate next to the security office. He smiles at the guard and pauses just a few feet in front of me. He looks really … good. I find myself tongue-tied as I try to figure out what to say. Actually caring about someone I've slept with is a new thing for me. I'm not used to having to deal with the feelings that sex can bring out in a person because I don't stick around long enough to have them. I swallow hard and take in Ty's ripped jeans, his brown boots, the black T-shirt that only emphasizes the flatness of his chest and belly.

  “Liar?” I ask because I don't know what else to say. Ty licks his lip and plays with his lip ring, a sign that he's thinking really hard about what to say next. I don't like that; I don't like that at all. He has a red jacket tossed over his shoulder and his hair is perfectly arranged. It kind of looks like he's getting ready for a date. I blurt out my thoughts and cringe. “Got a hot date?”

  Ty laughs, but it's a little bitter, a tad cynical.

  “You never call,” he tells me as I cross my arms over my chest and shiver at the icy breeze. Tank tops in winter; I must be a true California girl. “That's why I called you a liar.”

  “It goes both ways, McCabe,” I say as I shift back and forth between my feet and pretend that I don't notice that the guard is eavesdropping on us. “You could've called me, too.” Ty looks down at the cement for a moment, and I get this terrible feeling that he's going to tell me to get lost. Neither of us asked for this relationship, whatever it might be. Maybe neither of us was ready for this?

  Then he looks up and tosses me his coat.

  “Here, put this on,” Ty says as he pulls a cigarette out of his pants and lights up. “You're going to need it. We have a long walk ahead of us.” He smiles and gives me a once over with one eyebrow raised in amusement. “Hope you didn't walk all the way down here in that top?” he asks this as a question as I slip my arms into his fleece lined coat and bum a cigarette out of the front pocket. Ty hands me the lighter as I put it between my lips.

  “Lacey drove me,” I say as he steps forward and my heart skips a beat. Are we even going to talk about what happened? I wonder as Ty reaches out and grabs the zipper on the coat. He pulls it up all the way up to my chin and smiles. I kind of hope he just ignores what happened between us, that he and I can just pretend that we never slept together. Apparently, he feels the same way, but he's got a whole different set of torture ready for me. While I've been wasting away in bed and watching daytime television, Ty's been picking up the pieces of his life and arranging them together just so.

  “Good. I'd feel awfully guilty if I knew you'd frozen
your ass off for this, but I'm glad you're here because honestly, I was on my way over to get you.” Now it's my turn to raise my eyebrows.

  “Huh?” I ask as I pocket the lighter and fall into step beside Ty. He's heading in the direction of the university and walking briskly enough that I can make an educated guess about where he's going. “You have an appointment?” I ask, and he nods. There's this little, pesky smile on his face that I'm not sure about. “Job interview?” But then, why would he have been on his way to get me for a job interview? That doesn't make any sense.

  “Nope,” Ty says as he lets the cigarette hang from his mouth while he fishes in his back pocket for something. “Better. Keep guessing and maybe I'll tell you.”

  “This is stupid,” I tell him, but I watch his hand emerge with a brochure and find that my curiosity is piqued. He holds it out to the side with one hand and pulls his cigarette from his mouth with the other.

  “Guess,” he says again as he blows smoke into the wind. It catches in the air and swirls around me, enhancing the smell of the coat which already stinks like tobacco. Maybe it would bother some people but for whatever reason, I find it comforting. I roll my eyes like Lacey.

  “Um, we're going to another game?” Ty wrinkles his nose.

  “No, do you really want to?” I can't help but laugh, but as soon as the amusement dies down, I'm glaring at him.

  “I fucking hate surprises,” I say and Ty hands me the brochure with a sigh.

  Student Health Services, it says.

  “Um, okay?” I say as I hand it back to him. He takes it and turns it over. In blue pen, there's a simple schedule written out. Noon-thirty: Me. One: Never. He shows me this, too. “You do know that SHS is for students only.” Ty nods and tucks the brochure into the front pocket of my coat.

  “I know,” he says, and this time, the smile on his face is so genuine that it highlights his dimples and his perfect cheeks and makes his eyes look a million times brighter. His spine is straight and he's walking with a pep in his step.