Never Could Stop, page 7
part #7 of Tasting Never Series
“What happened to your parents?” I ask him suddenly, turning and letting our gazes click. Usually, I try to avoid his eyes. They do weird things to my insides, make me feel hot and sweaty and uncomfortable in my own skin.
“What makes you think something happened to them?” he returns quietly, sunshine sparkling on that crazy dye job of his. The electric blue tips dance in the breeze, darkening in an ombré wash to his black roots.
I tuck a knee-high leather boot up onto the bench, resting my chin on my knee as I stare at the water and listen to the random chatter of passersby on the sidewalk behind us. This is the first time since we've left New Orleans that we've actually stopped somewhere without a practical purpose, someplace that isn't a hotel, restaurant, or gas station. Hadley mentioned offhandedly yesterday that she wanted to see the river and we somehow ended up here.
“Um, because your fifteen year old sister isn't in school.”
Foster looks away from me and then leans his back against the wooden slats of the bench, staring up at the sky. I like the strong curve of his neck, the shape of his mouth silhouetted against the endless blue background above. The way he's sitting, I can see the frantic flutter of his pulse humming in his neck. I'm making him nervous.
“Are you her guardian or something?” I ask, but he just shakes his head slightly.
“My aunt is.”
His aunt. His cousin, Gianna. I start putting pieces together. I have to, because unlike most people, Foster Wallace doesn't seem at all interested in talking about himself. At first, I thought it was sort of … annoying. But now I think it's fucking refreshing. Instead of telling me what to think about him, or specifying the way he wants me to see him, Foster lets me make my own decisions.
“You're … what, twenty-three or so?” I ask, tossing out a random guess. Seriously, I have no fucking clue how old this guy is. I mean, he looks young but not young-young. Right. That's specific.
“Twenty-one,” he says and I smile.
“We're the same age.”
Foster doesn't smile, but that's okay. He rarely—if ever—does anyway.
“Are your parents dead?” I ask, knowing that's a rude fucking question to ask but deciding that if I want to get to know this guy at all, then I have to be more direct.
“No,” Foster says and pauses. My mind immediately starts working on a new question, but he surprises me and keeps talking. I decide his voice is actually less broken glass and more heavy raindrops. I also decide in that moment that it's actually got this mournful beauty to it, like a good book with a bittersweet ending or a black and white movie with no music. “They're in California teaching Hollywood superstars to dance the cha-cha.”
He says it so simply, so easily, that it takes me a really long time to process that that's a joke.
My mouth opens and closes several times with the glossy smack of my red lipstick.
Foster tilts one corner of his lip in a smile and then chuckles, this low rumbling sound that actually wakes Hadley up from her nap on the sun-soaked grass. She rolls onto her stomach and whips her head up to stare at her brother.
“Whoa. Okay, now I see why you dragged some strange girl all this way.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” he asks, a slight pink color coming into those high cheekbones of his. My heart bounces and skips around beneath the glistening white cage of my ribs. If it weren't for them, it'd probably leap out and escape.
“Hey, where are we right now?” Hadley asks, abruptly changing the subject.
“Memphis, Tennessee,” Foster tells her, taking a deep breath and picking at a hole near the hem of his black wifebeater, the nervous motion reminding me of, well, me. I like to poke and prod at my clothes, tease fibers, twist strands, widen holes. It's not a great habit to have, but there are worse vices.
“I thought this was the Mississippi River?”
“It is. Don't you know basic geography? It starts in Minnesota and goes all the way down through Louisiana.” Foster lets go of his poor shirt and puts his hands together behind his neck, closing his eyes against the golden shimmer of sunshine on his face.
Hadley makes a face that reminds me of my younger sister, Lettie, and I feel this tiny pang in my heart. The only two sisters I've ever spent more than a week away from are Never—she ran away—and Zella—when she went to college. I'm just not used to it, that's all. I just have to keep reminding myself that it'll get easier with time.
“Well, wherever it is, I like it.” She stands up and smacks her palms against her knees to knock away loose strands of grass. Crisscrossing red lines decorate her pale skin like the scars on her brother's hands. “Let's find a place and move in.”
Foster stays quiet for a long time, eyes still closed against the sunshine.
And then I think he surprises me and Hadley both.
“Okay.”
When his blue eyes open, they slide straight over to me.
“If we stay here, where are you gonna go?” he asks me, and I just shrug, trying to tell myself that I'm not lost and lonely but free and wandering. Still, the thought of breaking off from Foster and Hadley kind of freaks me out a little. Maybe I'm not ready to wander the world alone?
“I have some money,” I say, deciding that since Foster hasn't asked me to pay for any of the hotel rooms, that it's not likely he's out to rob me. Why pay for me to tag along and then try to steal what I've got? Doesn't make much sense. Or am I just being naïve again? “I could help with a security deposit or something.”
“You want to stay?” he asks, raising both his dark brows. I notice his voice gets a little brighter when it's colored with surprise, like a stray shaft of sunlight cutting through a black storm cloud. “With us?”
“Foster …” Hadley starts, like she's trying to warn him off. The two siblings share a long look. “We don't even know this girl.” She turns to me and purses her lips. “Sorry, Jade, but we don't know you or anything about you. Now who's the one who's trying to take risks?” She punctuates this last question with a seriously sharp flick of her braid.
My initial reaction is to get upset, but I clamp it down and shove it back.
New me, new me, new me. I want to be a different girl than the one stomping down the hall and shouting insults at her sisters, slamming doors, and running off to hang out with people she doesn't even like in a seedy downtown bar.
“Well,” I say, sitting up a little straighter and meeting Foster's eyes instead of Hadley's. Clearly, he's the one in charge here anyway. “What do you want to know?”
11
The first few nights we stay in Memphis, we crash at a hostel in the Cooper-Young neighborhood, this eclectic, artsy area that makes me feel less like a backwoods Mississippi reject and maybe like I could actually be the cool, apathetic jet-setter that I wish I were.
Our room has three bunks which, since we rented them all out, gives us a level of privacy that we wouldn't otherwise get for twenty bucks a night. Part of me kind of wishes I was in one of the other dorm rooms, laughing and chatting and telling my stories (aka lies according to Foster) to strangers. I want to make friends and meet people and go out dancing.
I tell all of this to Foster as we make our beds in the morning—an unfortunate requirement for staying at the hostel. The management actually bitches you out if you don't do it—and dings you an extra five bucks on your stay if they end up having to.
“You like to go dancing?” he asks, like that's the weirdest thing he's ever heard.
“Don't you? Dancing is like … I don't know, painting with your body or something. It's like singing with your arms and legs. It's like penning a novel with your hips.”
He gives me one of his rare smiles and I almost choke. There's something about the curve of his mouth, the strong but tense line of his jaw, and the almost-flash of teeth that makes me feel … like I want to kiss him or something. For a weirdo, he really does have a nice smile. Maybe because it's so rare it feels like it actually means something?
“Is that what you want to be when you grow up? A dancer?”
I shrug my shoulders and smooth out the wrinkles in the scratchy green blanket that covers my bunk. I'm on the bottom; Hadley's on the top. And Foster is in the single bed situated just a foot and a half away from mine. I notice that his bed looks perfect, hospital corners and everything.
“I don't think so. I mean, I doubt I could ever be a dancer. I've never had any formal training.” Unless, of course, you count my mom. She had me and my sisters dancing onstage at the fair when we were five. But I don't feel like talking about her just now. “I don't know if I really want to be anything yet. I think I'll just find a job wherever and start working. If I get tired of that, I'll move on.”
I step back and examine the flat, thin slab they dare to call a mattress. That'll have to do. Frankly, I'm surprised I even got it to look that good. At home, I don't think I ever once made my bed.
“What do you want to do with your life?” I ask, trying to see how Foster will wiggle his way out of such an open-ended question. It's hard to answer that one in less than five words without saying I don't know which would be a total cop-out.
“Criminal justice,” he says, which surprises me a little. Less than five words and he didn't avoid the question. Impressive. “It doesn't matter where: police, forensics, court. I don't care.” He stands up and glances out the window at the small courtyard to keep an eye on his sister. With the window open, I can hear Hadley plain as day without even trying; she's safe here. Although I'm still not entirely sure what exactly it is that she's safe from. I don't think I know anymore now about what happened in New Orleans than I did the first day I left home.
“I take it you want to catch bad guys,” I say, turning around at just about the exact moment that Foster moves to scoot past me. Like I said, there's not a lot of space between our beds so we end up in this really awkward position with my breasts scraping across the front of the loose gray tank he's wearing.
His sudden nearness overwhelms me, pebbling my nipples in a painfully obvious way that neither of us misses. And when my breath hitches and I let out a long exhale, it ruffles against the exposed skin above his neckline, making him shiver. Inhaling isn't much better because then I get Foster's musky, earthy scent filling my lungs, coating the back of my throat, making it so goddamn hard to breathe.
His palms lift and press into my biceps, fingers curling around my arm. I think at first he's intending to gently scoot me out of his way, but that's not what happens. When his bare skin makes contact with mine, vibrant heat swirls through me, tainting my blood with this strange fire that burns too hot to ignore.
I make the mistake of lifting my eyes and finding two rings of dark sapphire focused on my face. There's a lot of heavy intensity there, and it hits me like a brick to the face, doing that weird achy thing to my skin, making me feel like it's too small to contain all of me inside of it.
“I've been wondering what you taste like,” Foster says, and his voice rolls across my skin like a storm. His grip tightens and I swear, I can feel every single whorl of his fingerprints being branded into my flesh. “Ever since the bar.”
He leans down, close enough to kiss. Only … he doesn't. He hovers his mouth over mine the same way he did in New Orleans. This time though, it's different. Last time it was a desperate ploy, a last-ditch attempt to get rid of me.
This is real.
Without meaning to, I inhale his next breath and my own hitches in response. It's strangely intimate, sharing such a small space like this. We're not doing anything at all, but somehow it feels like everything is happening all at once.
Hadley's effervescent laughter breaks through our bubble and Foster lifts his head with a small curse.
Before I can think of something coy or clever to say to him, he's pushing me gently to the side and easing out of the small space between our beds. There's no smoking allowed inside the room, so he heads to the window, pushes it open a few more inches and then crawls out onto the roof to sit and have a cigarette.
I follow after him.
The gray roof tiles are warm under my bare legs as I tuck my little black dress underneath my thighs and try not to flash the entire neighborhood my underwear.
“That was totally weird,” I say with a small laugh, letting him light my smoke for me. I only took up the habit because Never did. I always wanted to be her, looking so goddamn cool with a long white cigarette in her hand. I wonder how cool we'll both look when we're hacking up our lungs and dying from cancer?
“It wasn't weird,” Foster says, rubbing at the side of his face with the heel of his left hand. Of course, he doesn't bother to tell me what it was if not weird. A hot flush of annoyance creeps over my skin as I stare at the coffee shop across the street and wonder if I can get a job there. I have experience being a barista anyway and it's not like it's hard. Mostly, the guys who come into the drive-through back home just want to ogle cute girls with their morning coffee.
“Why didn't you kiss me?” I ask instead, ashing my cigarette into the wind and watching it carry away the tiny particles.
“Did you want me to?” he responds, almost like that's surprising somehow.
“Well, after you told me you were wondering what I tasted like, I kind of expected it.”
Foster snorts a little and scrapes his cigarette out against the gravelly texture of the roof.
“Expecting and wanting are two totally different things,” he tells me.
And then he stands up and leaves me alone to contemplate that.
12
Coincidentally, the coffee shop is hiring.
I fill out an application and then spend a few minutes flirting with the manager, spinning some of my New Jade stories about what a crazy fabulous life I've lived. I laugh and play with the long copper strands of my hair, bite the red glaze of my lower lip.
The whole time, Foster sits outside at a table with Hadley and sips on a lemonade. He bought her an expensive blended drink and a scone and doesn't act all that concerned about the money. In the back of my mind, I wonder how much he has and where it came from, but the manager's next question distracts me.
After the 'interview', I step out and onto the brick patio with a smile—and a job.
“He hired me on the spot,” I say, glad that I decided to use the hostel's 'work station' (see: shitty old computer in the common area) to print up a résumé. The best part about it is that it's only partially fake. I really do know how to blend drinks and run a cash register; I've never actually worked at a café in France.
I flop down in the one remaining chair with the free drink I scored, sipping iced mocha through a big pink straw.
Hadley is busy with Foster's phone, taking selfies that he won't allow her to post on social media. She told him she doesn't care; she's saving them for later. She doesn't even bother to stop and look at me, adjusting a few loose strands of black hair on her forehead before she takes another shot. I think she's pissed that I'm still around.
“Congratulations.”
Very gruff, very succinct answer from Mr. Wallace. I look up at him from under my lashes and pretend like he's jealous that I was flirting with the manager. When I look a little closer, I start to wonder if maybe he really is. He's leaning back in the metal chair with an unbuttoned black shirt over his gray wifebeater, the wind teasing wild blue strands of hair around his face as he stares at me and then runs his tongue across his lower lip.
“Any luck with those places we looked at?” I ask, resisting the urge to lick my own lips in response. Over the last few days, we've dug up as many online listings as we could for places for rent that were listed by homeowners and not property management companies. There's usually no application fee, oftentimes no credit check, and less stringent sets of rules (all things that Foster taught me). We found several, made appointments to tour them, and filled out a few applications. We're just waiting to hear back now.
“I called a few of them to check in, but nobody's made a decision yet. The woman from Mayflower Avenue remembered you specifically. She said we made a cute couple.”
Hadley stops pouting for the camera and lowers the phone into her lap. Our cover story is that Foster and I are a newlywed couple that's recently had to take in his younger sister after their parents' untimely deaths (this was all my idea for New Jade). I could tell from moment one that Hadley was pissed off about it.
“Don't we though?” I ask, switching one of my mother's old rings from my middle finger to my ring finger. I changed it over for the benefit of the coffee shop manager, but decide to put it back in case one of the landlords calls us back. I don't want them to see me without my 'wedding ring' in place. I gave Foster one to wear, too, and wonder what Never would think if she knew the daughter of her dad's murderer stole his wedding band and gave it to a complete stranger.
Our eyes meet again—we seem to have trouble keeping them away from each other—and I feel the slight bump of his foot against mine beneath the table. I can't tell if it's accidental or on purpose, so I just decide not to react at all.
“Can we please go and enroll me at the high school? I'd like to have a life again, thank you very much,” Hadley says, probably with the sole purpose of distracting us from each other.
“We can't enroll you until we have a local address,” Foster says and his sister literally picks up her scone and throws it at him. Crumbs explode everywhere as it bumps harmlessly against the flat planes of his chest and then falls to the ground with a few loose cranberries popping off the top. He grits his teeth, but otherwise, he doesn't react at all.
“Go to hell, Foster,” she snaps, standing up and storming across the street to the hostel. He keeps his eye on her the whole time but lets her go stand in the courtyard to flirt with boys.
“She's worse than me,” I say, picking the scone back up and brushing it off. I pick away the pieces that touched the ground and then take a bite.
“In what way?” he asks, genuinely curious for once. That expression opens his face up, makes him look unbearably human. My chewing slows, stops. I think I might be sitting there with my crumb filled mouth hanging open.
