The Edge of Always

  She puts her finger on my lips. “No way,” she says. “Don’t even think about it.”

  We sit quietly for a moment, looking out at the nothingness that surrounds us. It feels like it’s getting hotter, but I think it’s more due to sitting directly in the sun on the hood of a black car that’s soaking up the heat like a sponge. Every now and then a nice breeze brushes our faces.

  “Andrew?” She takes her hat off and places it on my head, then lies down with her back against the windshield. She fixes her hands behind her head and draws her knees up. “Number five on our list of promises: if I die before you, make sure I’m buried in that dress we bought at the flea market and without shoes. Oh, and none of that eighties blue eye shadow stuff or drawn-on eyebrows.” Her head falls to the side and she looks at me.

  “But I thought that was the dress you wanted to marry me in.”

  She squints, turning her eyes away from the sun. “Yeah, it is, but I want to be buried in it, too. Some believe that when you die, your afterlife is reliving the happiest moments of your life. One of mine will be the day I marry you. Might as well take the dress with me.”

  I smile down at her.

  I take the hat off and lie next to her, pressing my head close enough to hers that I can prop the hat over both of our heads to help keep the sun off. After I get it balanced I say, “Number six: if I die before you, make sure they play “Dust in the Wind” at my funeral.”

  She glances over carefully so the hat doesn’t fall away. “Are we back to that again? You’re starting to make me hate a perfectly good classic, Andrew.”

  I laugh lightly. “I know, but I saw an episode of Highlander when his wife Tessa died. They played that song in the background. I’ve never been able to get it out of my head since.”

  She smiles and reaches up to wipe sweat from her brow.

  “I promise,” she says. “But since we’re on the topic, I’d like to add number seven. Have you ever seen Ghost?”

  I glance over briefly. “Well, yeah. I guess everybody’s seen that movie. Unless you’re sixteen. Shit, I’m surprised you’ve seen it.” I nudge her with my elbow.

  She laughs. “That was my mom’s doing,” she admits. “Ghost and Dirty Dancing I’ve seen about a hundred times. She had a thing for Patrick Swayze, and I was the only girl around growing up she could talk to about how handsome he was. Anyway, so you’ve seen it. Number seven: if anyone ever kills you, you better come back like Sam and help me find your killer.”

  I laugh and shake my head, accidently knocking the hat off momentarily. “What is it with you and movies? Never mind. Yeah, I promise I’ll come back and haunt your ass.”

  “You better!” she laughs out loud. “Besides, I know I’ll be like those people who think their loved ones are still around after they’ve died. Might as well give me more reason to believe it.”

  Not sure how I’ll pull that off, but whatever. Hell, I’ll try.

  “I’ll promise, if you will,” I say.

  “As always,” she says.

  “Number eight,” I go on, “don’t bury me where it’s cold.”

  “Fully agreed. Me either!”

  She wipes more sweat from her face and I lift away from the hood, reaching out my hand to her. “Let’s sit inside, out of the sun.”

  She takes my hand and I help her down.

  Two hours later, the tow truck still hasn’t showed up and it’s starting to get dark. Looks like we’ll get to watch the sunset together over the barren Texas landscape.

  “I knew it,” Camryn says. “What the hell is it with the tow trucks?”

  And just when she says that, a set of blinding headlights comes down the highway toward us. Overly relieved, we get out to meet him and the first thing I notice is the same thing Camryn notices. The guy could be Billy Frank’s doppelgänger. She and I glance at each other, but we don’t comment out loud.

  “You need a tow or a tire?” he asks, thumbing the straps of his denim overalls.

  “Just the tire,” I say as I follow him around to the back of his truck.

  “Well, I don’ have much time to stay here while ya change it,” he says and then spits chewing tobacco on the road. “You two’ll be all right?”

  “Yeah, we’ll be fine,” I say. “But wait one second.” I hold up my finger and lean into the car to turn the key. When the engine starts without a problem, I shut it off and walk back over to him. “Just wanted to make sure it started.”

  I pay the doppelgänger and watch his truck’s brake lights fade into the darkening horizon as he drives away. When I walk back to the car where I left the tire, I’m shocked as hell to see Camryn already lifting the car up with the jack.

  “Hell yeah, that’s my girl!”

  She smiles up at me, but keeps on working at it, that blonde braid draped over one shoulder.

  “It’s not so difficult,” she says, now rolling the new tire over after managing to get the lug nuts off the old one by herself. I think I’m getting a hard-on. No, wait, I’ve definitely got a hard-on.

  “No, it really isn’t,” I finally reply, my smile getting bigger.

  Several minutes later, she’s letting the car back down and tossing the jack into the trunk. I lift the old tire for her and throw it back there, too.

  We get inside and just sit here.

  It’s so quiet. Enormous streaks of pinkish-purple and blue cirrus clouds are cluttered together in the sky, stretching far over the horizon. As the heat of the day wears off, the mild breeze of approaching nightfall funnels through the opened car windows. The sunset is beautiful. Honestly, I’ve never paid much attention to one before. Maybe it’s the company.

  And I’m not sure what’s happening right now between us, but whatever it is, we’re so synced with each other that we both share it. I look at her. She looks at me.

  “Are you ready to go back?” I ask.

  “Yeah.” She pauses, looking toward the windshield, lost in thought. Then she turns back to me, more sure now than she was just seconds ago. “Yeah, I think I’m ready to go home.” She smiles.

  And for the first time since I left Galveston on my own that day, or when Camryn boarded that bus in Raleigh that night, we finally feel… fulfilled.

  Camryn

  32

  I guess we really did come full circle. But I have to say, now that we’re finally back in Galveston after seven months, it feels different this time. I’m not worried about being here, or afraid that mine and Andrew’s time together is going to end. I’m not waiting for a medical tragedy to rear its ugly head at any given moment. It feels good to be here. And as we pull into the parking area of his apartment complex, I feel a sense of satisfaction. I can even picture myself living here. But then again, I can also picture myself living in Raleigh, too. I guess what this means is that maybe we are ready to settle down. Just for a little while. Never forever, like I told Andrew before, but long enough that we can recuperate from being on the road.

  Andrew agrees. “Yeah,” he says grabbing our bags from the backseat. “Y’know what?” He drops the bags back in the same place and looks over the top of the roof at me.

  “What?” I ask curiously.

  His eyes are smiling. “You’re right about not wanting to be on the road so long that we get tired of it, or staying fixed in one place for too long for the same reason.” He pauses and stretches his arms over the roof of the car. “Maybe if we only travel in the spring or summer, leave the fall and winter for living at home and doing the family thing during the holidays—my mom was pretty upset that we didn’t spend Christmas or Thanksgiving with her.”

  I nod. “That’s a good idea. And since it sucks traveling when it’s cold, that makes total sense.”

  We just stare at each other over the roof of the car for a long moment until I interrupt all of the gear-churning inside our heads and say, “Well, get the bags. We can talk about it inside. You need to check on Georgia.”

  “Ah, Georgia’s fine,” he says, leaning over in
side the backseat again. “My mom’s been watering her.”

  I grab the guitars and my purse. When we enter Andrew’s apartment, it smells exactly like it did the first time I ever came here: vacant. And just like Andrew said, Georgia is alive and well.

  I practically fall onto the couch, exhausted, hanging my legs over the arm at the knees.

  “But the next place we go,” Andrew says as he passes the back of the couch, “will be far away from here.” I hear his keys hit the top of the counter in the kitchen.

  I rise up and call out, “How far?”

  “Europe, South America,” he says with a big grin as he reenters the living room. “You said you’d like to see Italy and Brazil and all of those places. I say we pick one and go there next.”

  A shot of energy zips through my body. I stand up and look at him, so excited right now about the prospect that I can hardly contain it. “Seriously?”

  He nods with a giant, close-lipped smile. “Hell, staying true to tradition, we could even write down all of the places we want to see on little strips of paper, drop them in a hat and pick one at random.”

  I squeal. I actually squeal! My hands come up vertically against my chest. “That’s perfect, Andrew!”

  He sits down on the couch now, propping both feet up on the coffee table, his knees bent. I can’t sit down. I stay right where I’m at and just stare down at his smiling face.

  “Of course, we’ve got to keep the money flowing,” he says. “We’ve still got plenty in the bank, but traveling out of the country will definitely drain it quicker.”

  “I can’t wait to get a job,” I say, and that comment stimulates my memory. “Andrew, you told me before to be completely honest with you about where I’d rather live.”

  That gets his attention. “Where do you want to live?”

  I contemplate it for a moment and answer, “For now, I think Raleigh, but only because I’d like to be where Natalie and my mom are, and because I know I can easily get a job where Natalie works. Her boss really seemed to like me and told me to fill out an application and—”

  Andrew stops me. “You don’t have to explain your reasons.” He reaches out for me and I sit on his lap, facing him. I didn’t realize I was babbling nervously. I just don’t want him to feel obligated.

  He smiles at me and locks his fingers together behind my waist. “My question,” he says, “is what exactly do you mean by ‘for now’?”

  “Well… that’s the hard part,” I say.

  He tilts his head slightly to one side, looking at me curiously, his dimples barely visible in his cheeks.

  Eventually, I just come out with it, “I don’t think we should spend all of the money on a house because I don’t want to stay there forever. And besides, if we do that, we won’t have as much money to fall back on when we want to go to Europe or wherever, and working minimum-wage jobs won’t help us save much.”

  He gives me a sidelong glance. “Wait. I hope you don’t want us to live in your mom’s house. We need our privacy. I want to be able to bend your sweet little ass over the coffee table whenever I want.”

  I laugh and squeeze my thighs around his playfully. “You are so bad!” I say. “But no, I definitely don’t want to live with my mom.”

  “Well, if you don’t want to buy a house and you don’t want to live with your mom, the only thing left is renting, and that drains a lot of money, too.”

  I feel embarrassed, because it’s to the point where I have to talk about Andrew’s money as though it’s mine also, which I doubt I’ll ever get used to.

  I look away from his eyes. “Remember when you said we could get a little house somewhere?”

  “Yeah,” he says, and his eyes are getting brighter, as though he knows what I’m going to say already.

  “Well, we could maybe pay cash for a very small house or a condo, just big enough for us… I don’t know, something cheap but decent, and still have a lot left over to keep in the bank for our trips. We won’t have rent, and all we’ll have to pay every month are utilities and things like that, which we can do from working and from playing gigs but never take from our savings.”

  Why is he smiling like the Cheshire cat?!

  I feel my head fall in between my shoulders, my face getting hot. “What’s so funny?!” I ask, pressing my palms against his chest and trying not to laugh.

  “Nothing’s funny. I just like it that you’ve finally realized that what’s mine is yours.” He tightens his fingers around my waist.

  “Whatever,” I say, trying to conceal the blush in my cheeks, pretending to be offended.

  “Hey,” he says, shaking my hips, “don’t do that—just finish what you were saying.”

  After a long pause, I say, “And when we leave to go wherever that piece of paper in the hat tells us to, we can get Natalie to housesit. Or!” I point upward. “When we finally find that peaceful place on the beach that you dreamed about and want to live there, we can either sell our house in Raleigh or rent it out to draw in extra income. Maybe even rent it to Natalie and Blake!”

  I can tell there’s something going on inside his mind. His smile is still soft and he never takes his eyes off me. But he’s so quiet until finally he breaks the silence and says, “It sounds like you’ve put a lot of thought into this. How long did it take you to figure all of that out?”

  Only right now do I realize that it’s been long enough. I think back to the day when I started trying to piece together our future, when I officially had it in my head that I did want to settle down and that I was tired of being on the road.

  Andrew waits patiently for me to answer, always with soft and thoughtful eyes, his way of constantly reminding me that nothing I can say to him is going to create any negativity between us.

  “It was on the highway after we left Mobile,” I say. “When I first told you that I wanted to see Italy and France and Brazil one day. When I said I never wanted to settle down forever. From that night on, I was determined to figure it out. How we would pull everything off.” My gaze strays. “I broke the rules and planned it all out.”

  He leans forward and kisses my lips.

  “Sometimes planning is necessary,” he says. “You did a good job. I think the whole plan is perfect.” And then he crushes me against him, kissing me passionately.

  When the kiss breaks, I gaze at him for a moment, his face in my hands. “But I want to marry you here,” I say, and his eyes brighten. “I don’t want your mom to feel left out, y’know? She’s really the only reason I feel bad about wanting to move to Raleigh. And I feel even worse that she was planning that baby shower and we never got—”

  “She’ll like that,” he says, stopping me before I start babbling again. “I definitely do.”

  He kisses me again.

  Andrew

  33

  I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day. The weather is perfect. The plans to get married that we didn’t make all fell perfectly into place. I called my mom up yesterday and told her meet us on the beach on Galveston Island. She made it on time, without having any idea why we asked her to be here.

  I raise my hand above me when I see her, waving her toward us, and the second she sees us, she knows. Her face breaks out into the biggest smile, and it’s easily contagious.

  “Oh, you two,” my mom says, stepping up to us, “I can’t believe you’re finally doing this. I’m just… I’m so…” Tears roll down her face and she reaches up to wipe them away, laughing and crying at the same time.

  Camryn, barefoot and dressed in that ivory vintage gown she found at the flea market, wraps her arms around my mom and hugs her.

  “Oh, Marna, please don’t cry,” she says, though I think it’s more of a plea because seeing my mom cry is choking Camryn up.

  “Is anyone else coming?” my mom asks when she pulls away.

  “You’re our exclusive guest of honor,” I say proudly.

  “Yeah,” Camryn adds, “it’s just you and the reverend here.”
r />   My mom moves around us to give Reverend Reed a hug, too. She has been attending his church for nine years—tried to get me to go a hundred times, but I’m just not the church type. But I thought who better to ask to marry us?

  And while Reverend Reed is standing in front of us on the beach, holding his worn Bible in his hands and saying a few words, all I can see or hear is Camryn standing in front of me with her hands in mine. The breeze combs through her loose strands of hair, free from that golden braid over her shoulder that I love so much. I love her smile, her blue eyes, and her soft skin. I want to kiss her now and get it over with. I press my fingers gently against the tops of her hands and pull her a little closer. The wind whips through the long fabric of her dress, pushing it against her hourglass form. I hold in my smile when I notice a piece of hair fly into her mouth. She tries to covertly work it out with her tongue without drawing attention to herself.

  Knowing she doesn’t want to create any kind of interruption, even for something as simple as this, I reach up and move the hair away for her.

  I feel like we’re the only two people in the world.

  When it’s time to say our vows, I know that neither one of us wrote anything down or had much time to think about what we wanted to say. And so pretty much the same way we tend to do everything, we just do it.

  I grip her hands tighter between us and say, “Camryn, you are the other half of my soul, and I will love you today and every day for the rest of our lives. I promise that if you ever forget me, I’ll read to you like Noah read to Allie. I promise that when we get old and our bones hurt, that we’ll never sleep in separate rooms, and that if you die before me, I’ll make sure you’re buried in that dress. I promise to haunt you like Sam haunted Molly.” Her eyes are beginning to water. I caress the insides of her palms with my thumbs. “I promise that we’ll never wake up one day years from now wondering why we wasted our lives away by doing nothing, and that no matter what hardships befall us, I’ll always, always, be right here with you. I promise to be spontaneous, to always turn down the music when you’re asleep, and to sing about raisins when you’re sad. I promise to always love you no matter where we are in the world, or in our lives. Because you’re the other half of me that I know I can never live without.”