Keeping Never (Never say Never)

by C. M. Stunich

I vomit over the edge and into the dirt, feeling guilty as I add to the horrible smell but unable to stop myself. I dump everything I have in me out and then dry heave and retch until my throat is sore and my belly feels like I've taken a beating.

  “Shit,” I curse as a wave of dizziness takes over me and makes me sway. Given the choice, I would be laying down right now, sleeping away this fatigue with Ty by my side and Angelica the pit at my feet. I turn around and lean back against the railing, closing my eyes and taking deep, long breaths until I can finally open my eyes without getting this horrible sense of vertigo sweeping down on me.

  The sound of breaking glass has not stopped, so I force myself forward and into the house, pausing as I find out how difficult that simple action really is.

  The house is packed from floor to ceiling with piles of stuff – garbage, boxes, books, clothing. You name it, this place has it. In spades. I cover my mouth with the edge of the blanket and start picking my way across the cluttered floor, cringing when I step on questionable lumps that squeak and crinkle and crunch. I don't call out for Ty, afraid to even speak in this veritable hell hole. I still don't know why we're here, but it doesn't take me long to figure it out. As I move by the impassable staircase, I see some framed pictures that were once probably quite nice but are now coated with a fine layer of dust and sticky cobwebs. When I reach out to touch one, I see that there's a familiar face among the grime.

  Ty.

  I rip one of the pictures from the wall, revealing a square of beautiful, cream wallpaper that probably once looked divine in this home. In Ty's grandma's home, the original owner of the rings that I now wear on my finger. I use my skirt to wipe away the grease and dirt and find a pair of dark brown eyes and a face that is cute but not cutesy. It was always pretty obvious that Ty was going to become a very handsome, young man. In this particular photo, my bad boy McCabe is free of butterflies and jewelery and instead clutches a pink elephant to his chest. He smiles, but he is not happy. That's obvious to me, even from this far away, even from this point in the future where the past Ty is as much a mystery to me as the location of the present.

  More glass shatters and I know I can't wait any longer. Now that I know where I am and what this place is, I can make an educated guess about what's going on. I pause just long enough to pry Ty's picture from the frame and toss the dirty thing onto one of the nearby piles. I tuck the image into my shirt and forge onward, deeper into the dark, wondering why Ty hasn't turned on any lights. When I hit what I think was once the kitchen – based merely on my observation of dirty pots and pains, plates and cups, piles of dented cans, and a tower of white garbage bags that touches the ceiling and not on anything that you might expect like a stove or a fridge. I think there might be those things in here somewhere, but I will be damned if I can find them in this dark, dank disaster of a home. It's a shame really, a fucking pity. This house has history and charm and someone has just squatted and pissed all over it, taken expert craftsmanship and love and quality and destroyed it from the inside out. The people that lived here tried to poison Ty the same way they poisoned this home. Even in death, they are doing their best to ruin him.

  I fight through the room and head towards the backdoor which sits ajar just enough that I catch a glimpse of moonlight from out back. That's where the sound of shattering hearts and glass is coming from. I press onward and squeeze myself out, nearly kill myself by stumbling down the steps and onto freshly mowed, green grass. The backyard is just as nice as the front, just as fake as the front, a facade for the neighbors and nothing more.

  Ty stands in a small shaft of moonlight, like a spotlight, that peaks out of the clouds and highlights blue streaks in his ebony hair, shines along his cheekbones and turns his eyes to shadowy pits. He's throwing things at the fence – bottles, glasses, plates, picture frames. He has a small pile next to his feet, and he's picking them up one by one, pulling back his arm and letting them fly. His muscles flex and bulge with rage and pain and frustration as he lets loose his mother's clutter and watches it shatter into glittering sparkles that fall to the dirt below and disappear in the shadows of the fence.

  I watch him for awhile before I say anything, measuring his mood and his ire until I think he's come down enough that he won't take too much of it out on me.

  “Ty?”

  He jumps and spins suddenly, blinking like he can't believe what he's seeing.

  “Never?” he asks as if he hasn't seen me in years. Ty drops a white teacup to the grass and slumps to his knees. I go to him right away and pull his head against my belly, cradle him there and wait for him to speak.

  “Tell me about it, Ty,” I say, and when he tries to shake his head, I hold it still, lock him in place and make him face his fears. He has to if he wants to move on. The same way I confronted my father's murderer, Ty must face his fears and he has to conquer them with forgiveness and acceptance instead of anger and revenge. After all, anger and revenge are not healthy and even if I could condone them, Ty has no outlets. His demons are dead, and all that are left are their scars. “Tell me what happened to you.”

  19

  Once upon a time, there was a boy who slept with a knife under his pillow and fear in his heart. He was twelve years old at the time, and he'd recently lost his cousin. He had a stepdad with unnatural thoughts and a mom who didn't love him as much as she should. This boy … aw, fuck. This is no fucking fairytale. Let me give it to you straight. Might be hard though 'cause I feel so crooked right now, Nev, like I can't even think rational thoughts. There is all of this … this crap inside my heart and I don't know how to process it. Can you help me? If I really, really ask for your help, if I lean on you, will I break you? That's the last thing I want, truly. I'm having terrible thoughts, Never. I keep thinking that I should go out and find another girl, throw my pain into her and let her deal with it after I leave. I feel like I shouldn't be burdening you with this stuff, but then … I could never do that to you. Never, Never.

  You want to know what happened to me, but I'm afraid you can't handle the gory details and the hands and mouths and cunts and cocks that made up my life and burned me up from within, used me up, and left me a broken shell of hurt and pain and shame. Never, you think you know me and maybe you do, maybe you know my soul and my heart and my pain, but you don't know the terrible things I was a part of. If I told you, would you still love? How could you? How could you love the boy whose stepfather came into his room and touched him there while he shook in fear and thought of his cousin and wished he was braver? How could you love the coward who cried while things happened to him that he didn't understand? Who took that knife and plunged it into the arm of that man and got him to stop just short of truly and utterly fucking him up?

  That coward didn't finish what he started, didn't do the world a favor and take Satan's avatar out. Instead, he ran to his mother who didn't believe him, who punished him, who locked him in his room for days without food and water. And then he climbed out the window and disappeared into the arms of the street.

  If he was looking for a loving presence, he was looking in all the wrong places. The boy learned some hard lessons there and did some unforgivable things. Will you still love him if you know? Will you?

  20

  I touch Ty's face, run my fingers through his hair and hold my eyes up to the sky, letting warm tears run down my face. When Ty talks about his mother and his stepfather and the things that happened to him, his voice changes and he becomes somebody else entirely. He morphs from this rock hard, street smart, tough guy to this softhearted boy who just wants to be loved. So, I haven't heard all of Ty's story, though I know I will, but I think I already know what's wrong with him. Tyson McCabe wants to be loved. It's that simple, but it's not that easy. Lucky him though because he's found me and I love him so much it makes me question whether any of this is even real. The hoarded house, I can deal with, the baby and school and money, I can deal with those too, but I cannot stand to have Ty so sad.

  “Ty,” I
say, and my voice comes out so quiet and little. I tell myself that I'm not being selfish, that what I'm going to say next is all for him, but maybe it's for me, too. I cannot let the healing I've done be for naught. I grab hold of those stitches on my heart and press them down, staunch the bleeding with my own hand, something I have never, ever been able to do before. This time it's not just Ty, but me, too, and I'm proud of myself for it. “I'm pregnant.”

  Ty stops breathing for a moment. I know because his face is pressed into my belly and I can feel the warmth where his mouth is, right up against that spot where inside, something grows. Does he want it? Is he ready for it? Am I? Now that I've said what I need to say, maybe we can finally have a conversation about it. For the first time in my life, I feel like a grown-up.

  “I know,” he whispers finally, just as I'm about to step away and take a look at his face, try to judge the play of emotions there. Guys like Ty, these tortured hearts with bleeding souls who cannot make peace within themselves, are so easy to read. But then, Ty is changing, and he's becoming more complex. It's getting harder and harder to figure out what he's thinking. Maybe that's a good thing?

  Ty stands up and wipes grass from the knees of his jeans. He doesn't look at me. Instead, he looks away and stares at the fence like all the answers are written there.

  “I sort of figured that out when you stopped smoking … ” he whispers and then, what I knew was coming. “Why didn't you tell me right away, Nev? I wanted you to so bad, babe. I … I don't want you to think that I asked you to marry me just because of the baby, but I did want to make things easier for you. I wanted you to see that I was fucking here, that I … ”

  “I'm sorry,” I say, and I feel like a liar and a traitor with tears rolling down my face, fat and hot, and nausea roiling in my belly; my legs feel shaky and I collapse into Ty's arms where I try to fight, but where I can't because he's shushing me and hugging me so tight I feel like I might break.

  “Goddamn it, Never Ross,” he says, but his voice sounds better, more like Ty, more real. “You little bitch, don't you dare keep something like this from me ever again.”

  “Do you want me to get an abortion?” I ask him, sniffling and wishing that I wasn't relying on him so much. Surely, he'd like the chance to be vulnerable, too? But when I glance up and see him staring down at me with half-lidded eyes and a gentle smile, his dimples are deep and dark and happy. Ty wants to be strong for me.

  “Fuck no,” he says as he grabs my face and kisses me hot. “I want little Never babies with smart mouths and copper hair.” I laugh and try to wipe my arm across my face, but he pushes it down and kisses me again, tasting, finding, keeping me. Ty moves his mouth slowly over mine, runs his tongue across my teeth and pulls back, so that he can stare at me again. This time, I think I see the shine of tears in his eyes, too, but the ass that he is, he doesn't let them fall.

  “Guys don't cry, right?” I say and he wrinkles his nose at me, leaning forward and pressing his forehead into mine.

  “Who fed you that crap?” he asks me, and I can't help but laugh. “We're the biggest babies on the planet. We just walk off and hide ourselves in bathrooms, bedrooms … what do you think gentleman's club were for? Strippers, just therapists in disguise.”

  “I'm sorry,” I tell him, but already, he's shaking his head and his chest is swelling with a big ass breath.

  “Don't be. I could've asked you about it. And to be fair, you tried, but I turned you down. I was so busy thinking about my mother … ” Ty swallows and can't speak for several moments, moments where we stand and just hold one another in silence. “Never, I wanted this,” he touches my flat belly. “To be a special thing. I didn't want it tainted with all of this … this shit.” Ty flings his hand out at the house and shakes his head. “I just wanted to say goodbye to the bitch and forget her, but now … now that she's gone, I think I'm finally realizing that I wanted her to see me, too. Before she went, I wanted her to see that I was okay, that I'd survived, so that she'd be okay, too. I hated my mom, Never, but I know that deep down, there was a good person buried under all that insecurity and desperation. Wherever she is now, I hope she knows that I know that. I can see it in those photographs.”

  I touch Ty's rings, run my thumb across the metal and take them in. I hope he never stops wearing them. They've become more than just jewelry. Those rings are a piece of Tyson Monroe McCabe and I'm a greedy bitch; I want all of him that I can get.

  “You can't hold onto her,” I tell him though I feel harsh saying it granted that she only just passed away. Ty needs a heavy hand though. He isn't a guy that wants to be tiptoed around or lied to. “You have to cut her off and let her go. You can still love her and care about her and think about her, but you can't let her rule your life.”

  “I know, right?” he whispers as he pulls me against him again and hugs the bejesus out of me. “Now I have to think about diapers and shit.” I laugh, but I know that we've only just touched on that situation. Ty says he wants copper haired babies, but does he really?

  “What about school?” I ask him, unable to believe that my problems can be solved so quickly. I expected Ty to blow up, to walk out of this yard, drive away and fuck some hussy bitch. Why? Because that's what I would've done had our positions been reversed. Hell, that's why Ty would've done if he was the Ty from a few months ago. But he's not. And neither am I. We're changing and growing together, intertwining our branches so that from far away, it looks like we're one in the same. “We can't live in the dorms with a baby.” Ty pauses and looks over at the house.

  “Nope,” he says. “But then, I got us a damn pit anyhow, so I guess we need a house … ” Ty keeps his gaze on the yellow siding, the white trim, the shadowed windows. “Which is good because … ” He trails off and raises his hand, indicating the building with a jingle of his bracelets. “This piece of shit, this is mine.” Ty turns to me with an expression that is halfway between a grimace and a smile. “We might have to clean it up a bit.” He pauses. “Well a lot, but I'm used to that.” I look at Ty and then at the house, and I think about the story he told me about cleaning his apartment.

  “School?” I ask because I have to be the practical one if Ty is going to be the dreamer, if he's going to tell me that everything is okay just as I want him to. He grins nice and big and sweeps me up in his arms, spins me around and keeps me there with my feet lifted off the ground just so, just enough that it feels like I'm weightless.

  “This is a college town, babe. We can transfer, can't we?”

  “Maybe … ” I begin.

  “No,” Ty says, and his voice is firm. “No, not maybe. If we decide to this, we're going to do it, and babe, I know we can do it. With you around, man, I could do fucking anything.” And that is all the talking that Ty McCabe wants to do tonight. He kisses me again, pushing his tongue into my mouth and taking charge, squeezing me tight so that my hips are pressed against him and my back is arched. Even if I had the strength to fight him, to talk about the unpleasant tasks that no doubt lie before us, I just can't. Right now, I want to live in this fairytale. I want to fuck Ty in the backyard of this less than ideal house that was his grandma's, that, just like his rings, Ty will take and make beautiful. I hardly have any idea what town I'm in and yet, I'm sold. I'm sold because Ty is here. Home is where the fucking heart is, right? And in Ty's chest, I know mine beats a symphony of love that's pitched just right, so that only I can hear. My Ty. Mine.

  I kiss him back and wrap my arms around his neck, kiss him like the fairytale prince that every girl wants. His horse might be black instead of white and he isn't blonde haired and blue eyed, but damn it, he has butterflies inked into his skin and birds on his back, an eyebrow and a lip ring, and words of wisdom peppered with the foulest fucking language known to man. I would take Ty McCabe over a knight in shining armor any day.

  “Guess I can skip the condoms for awhile?” he whispers as I let him pull away for a split second, just one split second so that he can lay me on my back in gras
s of the backyard next to his discarded teacup. The house might be trashed but out here, it feels like we're the only two people in the world. I don't hear any traffic or barking dogs, children or late evening joggers. It's blissfully peaceful, and the night is shared simply with the moon and the clouds which promptly begin to rain on the two of us.

  Ty raises his eyebrow, the one with the ring, and without words, connects with my eyes and knows that I don't give a shit, that if he stops, he'll have a lot worse to worry about than a bit of rain.

  We kiss again and Ty tangles his fingers with mine, raises them over my head and presses them into the dewy grass which soaks into my shirt and skirt, teases my bare legs and neck. He holds me down with his warmth and I hardly notice the icy rain that splatters against my cheeks, against Ty's sable hair, his strong back. I am hot from the inside out, and I think I've even begun to sweat. Ty does that to me, makes me so hot I can barely stand it, like I'm standing too close to the sun.

  We have a lot to talk about, to figure out, but don't most couples? Wouldn't it be boring if there was nothing at all for us to discuss? Ty and I are engaged, engaged, so that makes us partners. This, this baby thing should be crushing me, scaring the shit out of me, snapping me back to reality, but I can't seem to shake this blessed feeling I have because Ty is by my side.

  Our mouths are communicating in a different way now, playing off one another with tongue and lips and teeth, exploring. We exchange breath and in doing so, we share a part of ourselves. Chills run up and down my arms, tease the fine hairs on the back of my neck and draw my legs apart, so I can welcome Ty into me, take him to a different place, heal him with the very thing that used to bleed him. Strange that something we both used as a weapon before has now become a balm during the best of times and a leisure activity at the worst. Pretty incredible. I wonder what Vanessa, our Sexual Obsession Group leader, would think if she knew how far we'd come. And to be honest with you, that's the last logical thought I have as Ty releases me and moves his wet hands under my soggy shirt, explores my flesh with his fingertips, reading me with his body as he explores and savors the moment in all its strange, fucking glory.