Tasting Never (10 page)

I
open my mouth to tell her how incredible that sounds when there's a
knock at the door.

“
Just
a sec,” Lacey says as she touches my arm with her hand. “It's
probably just Trini.” She moves to the door and opens it
without bothering to ask who's there. Shame 'cause who's there is
Ty.

He's
standing in the hallway with a blue T-shirt, a face full of silver
piercings and a pair of black jeans tucked into his black boots. The
laces aren't just undone on these, they're missing entirely. His
hair is free of products and hangs softly around his dark eyes and
over his ears. His face looks strained, like maybe he hasn't had
such an easy couple of weeks.

Good,
I think as I grab my coat off
the back of my chair.

“
We're
kind of on our way out,” I say with a tight-lipped smile. I
search my pockets for gum and find some, stuffing it into my mouth,
so I don't have to talk anymore than is absolutely necessary. Lacey
looks between Ty and me, and with a grimace, steps aside to let him
in. I give her a look that asks,
What the fuck are you
doing?

She
cringes and grabs her own jacket off of a hook near the door,
mouthing
Sorry
to me
as she goes. When she gets back, I'm going to ring her neck.

I
throw my coat onto the bed and cross my arms over my chest.

Ty
is just standing there with his dark gaze trained on my face and a
gentle frown tracing the sexy curve of his lips.

“
What
do you want?”

“
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.