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

cry, the woman who's asking the questions feels really bad and even gives me a hug and a cup of black coffee. I sip it down slowly, but it doesn't help. I just have to let the emotions wash over me and feel them, all of them. Hiding away from them doesn't work. Hiding away from them is what got me here.
    They poke my arm and draw blood, lots of it. When they first put the needle into my flesh, the pain is almost unbearable, like a laughable analogy of all the pricks I've used in myself to try and cover up my feelings. I bite my tongue and force myself to watch the nurse weave the metal into my flesh. She wiggles it around for a moment, and then tugs on the plunger at the end of the tube.
    “Okay, Never, try to sit still and we'll get this over with as quick as we can.” Crimson fills the tube, glistening bright under the fluorescent lights as it's pulled from my body, bit by painful bit. “We have to get a few samples since there are multiple tests. You did say you wanted a full workup, didn't you?”
    “Test me for all of it,” I tell her without any sort of inflection. The tears have finally dried on my face, salty and sticky. Now I feel a bit emotionless like I'm in shock or something. “I'm probably disease ridden.” The nurse laughs, but I can tell she's only doing it out of nervousness. Once the tube is full, she pulls it off the needle and slips it into a tray of rounded slots. There's at least a dozen of them, so I know I'm in for the long haul. I lean my head back against the chair and watch as she repeats the process.
    “I know it doesn't seem like much, but your boyfriend must care a lot about you,” she says, and I don't correct her assumption that Ty is my boyfriend. She knows that he was the last person I slept with and I'm guessing by his actions that I'm the same for him, so it makes sense. I wish it was that simple. Plunge, blood, twist, slot, repeat.
    “Because it's romantic to find out if your lover is as diseased as you are?” I ask, and am sorry that I even said it.
    “A lot of men refuse to come in here. We get more girls than we do boys, most of them saying that their lovers want them to get tested, but won't get tested themselves. It makes me sick.” The nurse smiles at me and searches my face for a moment before she looks back down at the bloody tube in her hand. “I understand that it's only been a week since your last sexual encounter, but did you want us to run a pregnancy test as well?”
    “Lay it all on me,” I tell her.
    Either she takes this literally or Ty signed me up in advance for this torture because their next course of action is to hand me a water bottle and a cup, assign me to a bathroom and force me to pee.
    I sit on the toilet with my pants around my ankles and just stare at the back of the door. I've left the lights off, but I can still see the poster. There's a girl who looks a lot like me with almond shaped eyes, curved brows, and a crooked smile. She even has a nose like mine. It's small and pointy, a feature of mine that I've always hated but that guys often tell me is cute. She's holding a sign that says, I Am Worth It.
    “I'll bet you are,” I say to her as I sigh and try to force myself to go into the stupid cup. If I ever get horny again after this, it'll be a miracle. I should've stuck with Rick's road to redemption because Ty's is rocky and filled with thorns. Ty. Ty McCabe. The mysterious man with the sexy smirk and the perfect abs and the bleeding heart. What a fucking nightmare. What am I going to do with him anyway? Why did I even go back to his apartment? To be friends again? Is that what I want to be? Do I have to define our relationship?
    You get each other, isn't that enough?
    I shake my head, down the water bottle, and do what I need to do. When I'm finished, I wash my hands and put the lid on the cup, taping it down just so as I've been instructed. When I come out of the bathroom, blinking my eyes at the bright light, the nurse takes it with a