Tasting Never (7 page)

“
The
guy with the …. ” she flickers her fingers against her
arms, and I know instantly what she means.
The guy with the
butterfly tattoos.

“
Ty
is here?” I ask, not even bothering to correct her about the
boyfriend thing. I'll be lucky if she can even hear me with the rap
music drilling a hole in both our brains. She nods and points
towards the door. I don't even thank her, just push through the
bodies and the youthful euphoria that I'm surrounded by but not a
part of.

Ty
is standing on the front porch with a beer in one hand and a
cigarette in the other. He's wearing a red tank top that shows off
his muscular shoulders and highlights the tattoos on his upper back.
I see a raven, a bald eagle, a hummingbird. All of them have their
wings spread in flight and expressions of complete and utter bliss on
their faces. That is, if you can imagine a bird looking blissful.
Whoever did Ty's tats was skilled at it.

I
touch his shoulder as I step out beside him, and he turns to look at
me.

“
I'm
sorry,” he says as he tries to hand the beer to me. His gold
bracelets tinkle against the glass as I wave him away. I only drink
when I'm at rock bottom. I'm hovering close by, sure, but I'm not
there yet. If I drink, I'll only fall faster.

“
For
what?” I ask as I fold my arms over my chest and try not to
shiver in the December cold.

Ty
says, “For disrespecting your friend,” just like that,
and I forgive him with a sigh. I'm bouncing up and down on my toes,
trying to stay warm. My dress is made of some cheap polyester blend
stuff that I absolutely hate and does nothing to keep me warm. I'm
also not wearing any panties; it's not the whole
easy access
bullshit that guys like to think. I just don't like wearing
them.

“
Hey
you.” A hand lands on my shoulder and I spin around to find
Jason-or-whatever standing there with a beer in either hand.

“
Hey
you?” Ty asks with raised brows and shakes his head as he sips
his Alleycat Amber. I glance at him, but I don't think
Jason-or-whatever can hear him over the heartbeat of the music.

“
Come
dance with me,” he says as he practically thrusts the beer
between my breasts. I wave it away and try to smile. I did just ask
the guy off somewhere and then leave him, but now that Ty's here, I
want to hang out a bit. Maybe I'll find Jason-or-whatever later and
we can do it? I just don't know because if Ty asks me to the beach
again, then I'll go because I suddenly want to tell him about my
sisters. Not just what they look like, but what they do, where they
are now, that kind of stuff.

“
I
don't dance,” I say with a shivery shrug. I give the guy a
type-lipped smile that tells him I'm done with this conversation and
start to turn away. “Thanks but no thanks.”

“
Come
on,” he says as he presses the cold bottle of beer between my
shoulder blades. “You promised me a
dance
, remember?”
I catch Ty looking at me and roll my eyes. He glances over his
shoulder at Jason-or-whatever and gives him a
look
that says,
Leave her the fuck alone,
which is kind of cool but that I
could've done myself. If I've learned anything in the past few
years, it's how to protect myself. I want to know that should I ever
say
no
to one of these guys, these bad boys that I pick up at
these parties, that I can stop them from taking it further than I
want to go.

Suddenly,
there's this cold liquid running down my back and I'm spinning around
to find that the black sweater dude has just poured foamy beer down
my dress. Ty spins around, too, and grabs the dude by his massive
bicep. Ty's is bigger which is nice, and he looks awfully
intimidating as he tugs the Jason guy towards him.

“
You
better fucking watch yourself,” he says as he gets real close
to this guy's face. I open my mouth to tell him that I'll take care
of it when he surprises me by saying, “Because this girl is
tough shit. She took down an armed gunman, so who the fuck do you
think you are? Unless you're packing some serious heat then back the
hell off because you're liable to get damaged, do you understand me?”
Jason opens his mouth to argue when my hand comes out and socks him
right in the face. His nose crumples beneath my knuckles, but it
hurts
and I hiss as I stumble back and nearly fall off the
stoop.

Ty
releases Jason-or-whatever and grabs my wrist, saving me in the nick
of time from overbalancing on my heels and falling to my back on the
pavement.

“
Come
on,” he says as he extracts me from a situation that could go
from bad to worse real fast. Without saying goodbye to Lacey, I slip
off my heels, tuck them under my arm and take off down the sidewalk
with Ty at my side. My arm is tingling all the way up to the elbow,
and my hand is throbbing, but I shake it off and pretend that it
doesn't hurt

“
Thanks,”
I say, but Ty waves my gratitude away with a jingle of his bracelets.

“
Sorry,”
he tells me, and I can't figure out what he's apologizing for. I
also have no idea where we're going, but I follow along anyway
because there's nowhere else I'd rather be than with a potential
friend. A real friend. My
first
, real friend since I left
home. We may not be there yet, but the hope is there; the
possibility
is there. “About stalking you. I figured
it was the only way we could hang out since you had no way to contact
me.”

“
Makes
sense,” I tell him as we continue down the street and turn a
corner towards a rougher part of town, one that I wouldn't normally
venture into. I'm still sticky with beer and I can make a pretty
accurate assumption about the state of my dress. I bet my ass is
visible from space through the cheap, wet, fabric. I make myself
move faster, practically sprinting through the spots of light from
the streetlamps and dragging my feet in the shadows between. Ty
reaches down for my hand, and I let him take it, if only for
appearances. I brush a strand of hair from my face with my other
hand. “Do you maybe have a phone number?” I ask as I
step carefully around a used needle that's sticking out of some
tired, old bushes at the edge of the sidewalk. It may not have been
the smartest idea to walk barefoot in this area, but I don't care. I
need to feel the cold pavement against my skin today. It brings
everything around me to life and though stark, it's all decrepit
beauty to me. “Or an e-mail? I couldn't find you anywhere
online.” Ty smiles, but there are no dimples. It doesn't even
reach his brown eyes.

“
You
won't. I don't go online much.”

“
Except
to stalk me?” I ask, and his smile gets a little bigger, a
little more real. Ty nods and reaches into his pocket. He emerges
with his phone and we trade numbers.
Finally,
I think as I
tuck my phone between my breasts. Ty doesn't even comment on my
hiding place. He's probably seen it before. Any girl with
C'
s
or bigger knows she can store stuff there.

“
Here,”
he says as we pause next to an iron gate. There's a security guard
at the gatehouse, a computerized pin pad, and everything. I know
this place: it's the gated community the city put here in the middle
of all this squalor to try and 'revitalize the neighborhood'. It
didn't work. All they got was a bunch of pretty apartments in a sea
of crackheads and prostitutes that are worth half as much as they
cost to build. The city turned them into subsidized housing and
washed their hands of it, but the place still looks well kempt, a far
cry from its dilapidated neighbors that tower above us on either side
like drunken giants
. “Come
on in,” Ty tells me as we move across the pavement and pause
next to the guard's window. The man barely looks up, sees that it's
Ty and smiles. A nod is exchanged between the two men and the gate
swings open.

“
Do
you have a roommate?” I ask him as we walk slowly across the
pavement turned blacktop. The arrows, the parking space markers, the
handicapped symbols, are all perfectly outlined and painted in
bright, neon colors below our feet. Ty gets out two cigarettes,
lights them and hands one to me. If being around Ty is good for my
soul then it's bad for lungs. I don't smoke even half this much when
I'm alone.

“
Nope,”
he says as he points up at a mustard yellow building with chocolate
trim and rust colored accents. It looks better than it sounds,
sophisticated, neat, clean, not really the place I expected Ty to be
living. In my head I'd cooked up thoughts of abandoned train cars
with velvet drapes or maybe a run down bus parked permanently in the
RV spaces at the beach. This is all so … normal, and if I
know anything at all about Ty yet, it's that he isn't exactly normal.

“
How
did you ever find yourself here?” I ask as we continue across
the parking lot and veer away from the buildings, towards a small
park with a slide, a swing set, and some blue monkey bars. Ty is
still holding my hand, but I don't pull away, even though we're now
in the relative safety of the gated community. His skin is warm and
the smooth metal of his rings is comforting against my palm.

“
When
I stopped … ” Ty pauses and chews his lip ring. “When
I quit
the business
,” he says as he slides his brown
eyes over to me and I can see he's hoping like hell that I get it. I
nod my chin slightly and smile as gently as I can. I'm surprised
he's even telling me this, and I don't want him to get spooked and
clam up.
When I quit being a whore,
he's saying. “I
was living with a client at the time, and she kicked me out. I
didn't know what to do, so I started jumping the wall at night and
sleeping here.” Ty points up at the play structure. It's made
of blue and red plastic with round windows that remind me of a
submarine. I listen to his words and hope that there's nobody up
there now. “Didn't last long though. Apparently, they were
between security guards. As soon as they hired a new one, I got
busted.”

Ty
and I walk down the sidewalk that lines the wood chip filled play
area and pause at the edge of a dew covered lawn. The grass is short
and well manicured, but there are these tiny, white daisies that have
sprouted everywhere in little clumps. With the moonlight
highlighting their petals, they look like stars.

“
Anyway,”
he says as he drops my hand and sits down on the edge of the cement.
“The guy felt sorry for me, so he set me up in a vacated
apartment. All I had to do for my first month's rent was clean it.”
Ty smiles tightly as he pulls off his boots and sets them to the
side. I stay standing, not quite sure what we're doing here but
intrigued nonetheless. “Actually, it was pretty fucking
disgusting, so I think I got the short end of the stick.” Ty
laughs which makes me laugh, and stands up, rolling his pant legs to
the knee. “Be spontaneous with me?” he asks, and holds
out his hand again. I toss my heels to the ground and take it,
stepping into the wet grass, careful to keep from crushing the tiny
daisies.

“
You
never finished watching my video,” I tell Ty, pulling my phone
out and handing it to him. I've loaded it on there in preparation
for this moment. I want him to watch it, the whole thing, all the
way through my mom's speech until that final, heartbreaking moment
when I know for sure that she doesn't love me as much as she loves
herself.

Ty
takes the phone in his other hand and keeps walking. He wiggles it
in the air and flashes me a perfect smile.

“
I've
been thinking a lot about this, you know,” he says, and I smile
back. Mine is just as real as his, and I'm surprised at how foreign
it feels on my face. I haven't smiled like this in
years.
“I
can't get this image of you out of my head,” Ty adds as he cues
up the video and watches me sweep across the stage with finger
cymbals on my henna patterned hands.

“
'Cause
I'm so 'fucking beautiful'?” I joke, quoting Ty back to
himself. He doesn't respond, but his dimples get deeper, just enough
that I'm tempted to reach up and poke his cheek with my fingers. He
has nice cheekbones for a man, defined but not gaunt. I look away
from his face and up at the moon. She's shrouded with gentle clouds,
obscuring her shape but not her light. It trickles down and feels
cool and comforting against my face. I haven't taken the time to
appreciate her beauty in a long while, and I miss it. This all feels
good, maybe too good. I'm a bit worried about this new friendship
with Ty because if it fails, if he blows me off or disappoints me
somehow, I'll shrivel up and die. I've had enough people in my life
betray me that I've run out of restarts. This is it. If I give Ty
my last chance, then I'll be betting everything on him. I swallow
hard and wait for the video to end. Once it does, then I'll have the
chance to tell him the truth about what happened at home. That will
be his test. If he fails it, I'm done. The cocoon I've built around
myself will turn to steel, and I'll block it all out, I swear I will.