Tasting, Finding, Keeping: The Story of Never by C.M. Stunich

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