Текст книги "The Edge of Always"

Автор книги: J. A. Redmerski

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Andrew

Camryn slept way past lunch. When I finally got her to wake up, she did so with a migraine and a bitchy attitude. Cute, but bitchy. She barely had two beers last night but you’d think she drank a fifth of rotgut the way she’s lying in the bed with her face buried underneath the pillow.

“I brought you some Advil,” I say sitting down next to her. “Maybe you have a brain tumor.”

She knees me in the thigh. “Not funny, Andrew,” she says with a little moan in her voice.

I thought it was funny.

“Well, take these,” I say, removing the pillow from her head. She protests for a second before giving in.

She raises enough from the bed to wash them down with water and then collapses back onto the mattress, squeezing her eyes closed and rubbing her temples with her fingertips. I give her the pillow back, and she hides underneath it.

“Y’know, people usually get accustomed to drinking the more they do it, not the other way around.”

“I only had two beers,” she says, her voice muffled by the pillow. “It’s just a headache, probably has nothing to do with the beer at all.”

I lean over and kiss her on the stomach, briefly recalling the last time I actually did that, when she was pregnant. It makes me sad for a second, but like I’ve been doing since it happened, I force that shit down and suck it up.

“I can stay here with you if you want,” I say.

“No, I’ll be all right,” she says, and her hand emerges from the confines of the pillow. She blindly places it on my crotch until she realizes what that is and moves it quickly to my knee instead. I would mess with her about it, but I’ll let her slide this time.

“Alright, I’ll be with Aidan for a couple of hours,” I say and stand up from the bed. “Hopefully you’ll be better before tonight. I really want us to play.”

“I do, too,” she says and reaches out her hand to me.

I grab it and lean over, kissing her knuckles before leaving to ride around with my brother while he takes care of some business.

By early evening, Camryn is dressed and her headache seems to be gone, so the four of us head to Aidan’s fine establishment of beer, peanuts, and live music.

*     *     *

Business at Aidan’s bar has been thriving, according to him, and when we walk in through the front door at barely seven o’clock, I see he wasn’t exaggerating. I’ve never seen it this packed before, and I’ve spent my fair share of Friday and Saturday nights here over the six years he’s owned it. Music funnels through the numerous speakers in the ceiling and walls, something folksy rock, much like Camryn and I have inadvertently made our trademark style. A couple of years ago, if someone were to ask me what kind of music I’d play if I ever had my own band, I never would’ve thought folksy rock. I’ve sung and performed classic rock like the Stones and Zeppelin in bars and clubs for a long time, but since meeting Camryn that has changed somewhat. We’ve adopted the Civil Wars’ style for the most part, just because it came so natural to us as a duo, but we still play a few classic rock greats when we perform, too.

One of our favorites: “Hotel California” by the Eagles, technically the very first song we ever sang together. It may have been in the car while on the road and all just for fun, but it stuck with us. And we’ve done “Laugh, I Nearly Died” by the Rolling Stones, which Camryn insisted on learning.

But Camryn still loves the newer stuff and the Civil Wars more than anything and so that’s usually what we play.

Tonight will be no different.

I kind of had a feeling she’d pick “Tip of My Tongue” and “Birds of a Feather,” because those are the two songs she has the most fun with. I love watching her perform them next to me up on stage because she becomes so vibrant and playful and sexy as hell. Not that she isn’t all of those things already, but it’s like another more daring and flirty side of her comes out when she’s singing. And she doesn’t just sing—she puts on a show. I think it’s that little actress she’s always had buried somewhere in herself. She told me she performed in plays at school, and I can definitely see she has the knack for it.

But singing alongside me also seems to make her happy, and that’s why tonight is so important. It’s the first time we’ll be performing together since she lost the baby, and I’m hoping it’ll be therapeutic.

We weave our way through the thick crowd of people and head to the stage where we take our time setting up. Not much to set up really with just a guitar—unfortunately not one of mine—and two microphones, but we’re not going on for another fifteen minutes.

“I’m so nervous,” Camryn says next to my ear, having to speak loudly over the music.

I make a pffft sound with my lips. “Oh, please. Since when do you get nervous anymore? We’ve done this dozens of times.”

“I know, but I’m singing in front of Aidan and Michelle this time.”

“He can’t sing for shit, so his opinion is hardly valid.”

She smiles. “Well, I’m not nervous to the point that I don’t want to do it. I guess it’s actually kind of exciting.”

“That’s my girl,” I say and lean in to kiss her lips.

“Those two girls,” Camryn yells to me without looking in their direction, “front table to your left, they’re having sex with you in their heads right now, I swear to God.”

I laugh lightly and shake my head.

“And that guy standing next to the woman in the purple shirt,” I say, nodding subtly in his direction, “has had your thighs wrapped around his head since you walked on this stage.”

“So it’ll be them tonight then, huh?” she asks.

I nod and say, “Uh-huh.”

“Make sure you give it to them good, baby,” she says, grinning wickedly at me.

“Oh, I will,” I say with the same amount of wicked on my face.

We started this back on our second night at Levy’s: we each pick a guy and a girl from the crowd who give off that I’d-love-to-fuck-you vibe and we make them feel “extra special” during one of our songs. But we always start giving our targets small bits of attention long before we go in for the kill. Just one look, a three-second-long meeting of the eyes to let her, or him in Camryn’s case, know that we’ve noticed them a little more than anyone else in the room. Camryn’s already working her magic. The guy has a dopey-ass grin plastered on his face now. She glances at me and winks. Slipping my guitar strap over my shoulder, I slowly look over at the two girls. They’re pretty hot, I have to say. I make eye contact with the brunette first, hold it for a few seconds, and then look at her friend for the same amount of time. The second I look away, I notice them giggling and talking to each other behind their hands. I just smile and move my fingers across the guitar strings to test out the tuning. Camryn taps her thumb on her mic and then walks over to the side to drag the two stools that we’ll end up only sitting on for maybe one song. She hops onto hers and crosses her legs; those sexy black mile-high heels are enough by themselves to make her look like she knows what’s she’s doing in this business. Little silver studs decorate them. God damn, some of the things she wears makes me crazy.

An announcer, young guy, comes out on the stage and introduces us. Many of the voices carrying through the vast space quiet down and then even more when I start to play the guitar. And when Camryn leads the first song, her voice is so sultry that she pretty much gets everyone else’s attention in no time.

We go through four songs to an awesome welcoming crowd who are dancing, getting drunk, and trying to sing along. The vibe in the bar is explosive, and I love it.

Camryn walks down the three steps from the stage with her mic in hand and makes her way toward her victim. Before the song is over he’s dancing with her, having one helluva time. When his hands get too close to parts only I’m allowed to touch, Camryn, like a professional, smiles and continues to sing to him while pushing him away.

Then we take a short break.

Camryn pulls me off toward the back of the stage as the voices rise up all around us again.

“I’ve gotta go to the bathroom,” she says.

I pull the guitar strap over my head and set the guitar against the back wall.

“You go and I’ll get us a drink,” I say. “Do you want anything?”

She smiles, nodding. “Yeah, just get me whatever, I don’t care.”

“Alcoholic?” I ask.

She nods again and kisses me, pretty eager to break away quickly probably so she doesn’t pee on herself.

“Oh, and why don’t you do the next song solo tonight?” she suggests.

“Really? Why?”

She comes up closer and rests her hands on my chest. “You do that song better by yourself, and I think I’m done for the night. I’d like to watch you.” She pecks my lips. She’s so much taller in those shoes that she’s looking me straight in the eyes.

If that’s what she wants, I’m good with it. I don’t want to push her.

“All right, I’ll sing it alone,” I say. “It’ll make it easier to seduce my two girls out there, anyway.”

She smiles and says with a little laughter in her voice, “Don’t overdo it, Andrew. Remember what happened the last time.”

“I know, I know,” I say, waving her on.

She turns around, and I smack her on the butt as she scurries off toward the restrooms.

Camryn

14

When I make it into the restroom, there’s a line of women waiting for empty stalls. The air is thick with liquor breath, perfume, and cigarette-smoke-laden clothes. A stall door will open and shut with an obnoxious bang every few seconds as people come and go. I go to wash my hands first, having to cram myself in between two drunk girls sitting on top of the counters on either side of me. Thankfully they’re the overly nice kind of drunk, because I can’t deal with a fight-ready rude one tonight. They apologize for being in the way and move over to give me some space.

“Thanks,” I say and reach out to turn on the water.

“Hey, you’re the singer chick,” the girl on my left says, pointing her finger at me and smiling. She glances at her friend on the other side and then back at me.

“Yeah, that’d be me, I guess.”

I’m so not in the mood for bathroom conversation. The longer I linger in public restrooms, the grosser I feel.

“You two are great,” she says, beaming.

“Yeah, seriously,” her friend says. “What the hell are you doing singing in bars, anyway?”

I just shrug and squirt more soap from the dispenser into my hand and try to avoid them as kindly as possible.

“Yeah, really,” the one on my left adds. “I’d pay to see you play.”

OK, so I’m not entirely immune to compliments. I smile and thank her again.

When two more stalls become free, they jump at the opportunity and shut themselves inside. Soon after, they wave good-bye and wish me good luck with my “music career.” When I’m almost the only one left, I turn to the mirror, but I don’t look at myself. Instead, I reach into my pocket and take a pill, washing it down with water from the sink.

It’s just to take the edge off.

Then I look at myself, pushing the pill and the guilty feeling I get every time I take one, far into the back of my mind. I make up excuses to justify taking them, and I almost fool myself. But I know that the guilt I always feel is there for a reason.

In less than eleven minutes, I don’t care about the guilt, the excuses, or the edge anymore, because that part of my brain has been numbed.

I run my fingertips underneath my eyes to wipe away any smudged mascara, then blot the oil from my face with toilet paper. I have to look good when I go back out there. I feel great, but I have to look as good as I feel.

Pushing myself through the crowd, I find Aidan and Michelle standing behind the enormous bar and join them. I then remember Andrew was getting me a drink, but I’m not walking back through all of those people just to get it.

“You two are fantastic!” Michelle shouts over the noisy crowd. She hugs me, and I return it, feeling my pill-induced smile stretching hugely across my face.

I turn to Aidan. “What did you think?”

“I agree with Michelle!” he says. “You should write your own music and play here more often. I get all kinds of talent scouts in here. And celebrities.” He points to the back wall, where a series of autographed photos of various musicians and movie stars hang in an even line. “Get a head start with your own material,” he goes on. “I bet you two would easily land a music contract within a year.”

I’m so high right now that he could tell me he thinks we suck and have no future in music at all, and I’d still smile like this, letting his words go through me like air.

I look out across the length of the room to see Andrew up on the stage with his guitar and the house band getting ready to sing his trademark song, “Laugh, I Nearly Died.” He likely can’t see me through the crowd, but he knows I’m watching. I love to watch him onstage, in his element. I know that as good as we are together musically, he’ll always own it more when he performs alone. Maybe it’s just me, but I like to think of him the way he was the first time I saw him perform. Because on that night in New Orleans he was singing for me, and I felt like the luckiest girl in the world.

I’d do anything to feel like that again. Anything…

Seconds into the song, Andrew, like always, has the attention of everyone in the room. The two girls at the table are standing up now, dancing with each other provocatively, but I know it’s all for Andrew. I’ve seen it before. They want him, and he lets them believe, just for one night, that he wants them, too. Perfectly harmless. Andrew and I both look at it as making other people feel good about themselves. A little flirting here and there, making some lucky girl or guy the center of attention just long enough to make them blush and smile. You never know what’s going on in people’s lives behind closed doors, and a little flirty, positive energy can never be a bad thing.

When we get back to Aidan and Michelle’s just after midnight, I head to bed before everyone else. I lay here for an hour, listening to their voices filter down the hallway and into the room. Andrew was going to come to bed with me, but I insisted he hang out with his brother. He worries about me way too much these days. We’ll be going back to Raleigh tomorrow, and I want him to spend as much time with Aidan as he can.

Another hour passes and I’m still awake.

Frustrated, I thrust my hand inside my purse, fishing for the bottle. Without even realizing it, I am now down to my last few pills.

I pass out on three this time.

Andrew

15

“Camryn? Baby, please wake up.” I shake her back and forth, my hand gripping her shoulder.

My dominant emotion right now is worry. My secondary emotions are anger and hurt. But strangely enough, the feeling of uncertainty is keeping all of the others at bay.

I shake her again. “Get up.”

I have no idea how many of these fucking pills she took, but judging by the nearly empty bottle, the prospect of it being enough to overdose sends a panic through my entire body. But she’s breathing steadily and her heartbeat seems normal. If she doesn’t wake up—

Her eyes creep open, and I suck in a fast breath of relieved air. “Camryn. Look at me.”

Finally she focuses enough to look me in the eyes. “What?” she moans softly and tries to shut her eyes again, but I grab her by both shoulders and force her to sit up.

“I said wake up. Keep your eyes open.”

She sits up sloppily, but it’s nothing too out of the ordinary from having been forced awake and upright like that.

“How many did you take?”

Michelle stands in the doorway behind me. “Do you want me to call an ambulance?”

Suddenly, Camryn becomes completely coherent. I don’t know if my question has finally caught up with her, or if the mention of an ambulance is what did it, but she looks at me with wide, frightened eyes.

“How many of these goddamn pills did you take?”

Her gaze drops from mine, and she looks over to see the prescription bottle on the nightstand. When I decided that sleeping past two in the afternoon was not at all like her and came in here to check on her, I found the bottle on the floor

“Camryn?” I shake her again and get her attention back.

She just looks at me. I see so much in her eyes right now that I can’t choose between humiliation, regret, hurt, anger, or surrender. And then her eyes begin to fill with tears. I feel her body shaking underneath the weight of my grip on her arms. She bursts into tears, falling into my arms, sobbing uncontrollably, and it rips me in half.

“Andrew?” Michelle says from the door.

Without looking back at her, I say, “No, she’ll be all right.” And I swallow down my own tears and anger, feeling my chest constrict.

The door shuts quietly behind me as Michelle leaves the room.

I hold Camryn for a long time, letting her cry into my shirt. I don’t say a word. Not yet. Partly because I know she needs this, just to be able to cry and get it all out. But the rest of me is so fucking pissed off and hurt that I feel like I need to take a step back and gather my composure so I don’t say the wrong things. I hold her tight, wrapping my arms around her trembling body. I kiss her hair and try not to cry myself. The pissed-off part of me helps with that.

“I’m so sorry!” she cries out, and in that fraction of a second when I hear the pain in her voice, it almost completely erases the angry part of me and I grip her even tighter.

“You’re apologizing to me?” I ask with disbelief. I pull her away with my hands firmly around her upper arms. Shaking my head furiously at her, I go back to a few minutes ago. “No, first I need you to tell me how many you took.” I look her dead in the eyes.

“Last night,” she says. “Only three.”

“How many were in this bottle originally?”

“I don’t know. Twenty, maybe.”

“Then how long have you been taking them?”

She pauses and answers, “Just since Tuesday. They’re my mom’s. I took one when I had a headache, but then I started taking them…” Her eyes well up with moisture again.

I reach out and wipe the tears from her face. “God damn it, Camryn,” I say, pulling her into my chest again for a brief moment. “What the hell were you thinking?!”

“I wasn’t!” she cries. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me!”

I grab her cheeks in the palms of my hands. “You know what’s wrong. You’re fucked up over losing Lily, and you don’t know how to deal with it. I just wish you would’ve talked to me.”

With her face still in my hands, her eyes stray from mine. The eerie silence between us strikes me in the strangest way.

“Camryn?” I try to get her to look at me again, but she won’t. “Talk to me. You have to talk to me. Listen, there’s nothing you did wrong, or could’ve done to prevent what happened. You have to know that. You have to under—”

Her head jerks away from my hands, her eyes boring into mine full of pain and… something else.

“It is my fault!” she says, backing away from me on the bed.

She stands up from the bed on the other side and crosses her arms, her back facing me.

“It’s not your fault, Camryn.” I walk toward her, but the second she feels me getting too close, she whirls around at me.

“No, it is my fault, Andrew!” she says with tears barreling from her eyes. “I couldn’t stop thinking about how being pregnant was going to mess everything up! I hated it that we were still living in Galveston after four months! I wondered how we were ever going to do the things we wanted to do with a baby! So yes, it’s my fault that we lost her and I fucking hate myself for it!” She buries her face in her hands.

I rush the short distance over to her, wrapping her up within my arms again. “God, Camryn, it wasn’t your fault!” I don’t think I’ve ever said anything to anyone with that much emotion before. My chest shudders uncontrollably against her.

“Look at me!” I say, pulling her away again. “That shit is so normal. And if you’re guilty, then so am I. I thought about things like that every now and then, but also like you, I wouldn’t have given her up willingly if I could have.”

She doesn’t really have to confirm that statement out loud because I know she wouldn’t have either. But she confirms it anyway:

“I didn’t regret her at all,” she says. “And I… I want her back!”

“I know. I know.” I hug her tight and walk her to the foot of the bed, guiding her to sit down. I crouch between her legs, propping my arms on her thighs and taking both of her hands into mine. I look up at her and say one more time, “It wasn’t your fault.”

She wipes away a few tears, and we just sit here like this for what feels like forever. I think she believes me—either that or she’s just avoiding it. Then she looks toward the wall behind my head and says in a quiet voice, “Does this make me a drug addict?”

I want to laugh, but I don’t. Instead, I just shake my head and smile softly up at her, pressing my fingertips around her hands gently.

“It was a moment of weakness, and even the strongest person isn’t immune to weakness, Camryn. Four days and one bottle of painkillers doesn’t make you a drug addict. Bad judgment call, but not an addict.”

She looks back down at me. “Michelle and Aidan are going to think so.”

I shake my head. “No, they won’t. And no one else will, either.” I stand up and sit down beside her. “Besides, it’s nobody’s fucking business. This is something only you and I have to know about and deal with.”

“I’ve never done anything like that before,” she says, looking out ahead of her. “I can’t believe—”

“You weren’t yourself,” I say. “You haven’t been since Lily died.”

The room gets strangely quiet again. I look at her from the side, but I give her this moment. She appears lost in deep thought.

And then she says, “Andrew, maybe we shouldn’t be together,” and her words hit me so fast and so hard that I feel like the air has been sucked out of my lungs.

I’m so stunned that it’s like her words have completely stolen all of mine. My heart is racing.

Finally, when she doesn’t elaborate, I manage to get out, “Why would you say that?” And I’m scared of her answer.

She continues to stare out ahead of her, tears rolling slowly down her cheeks. And then she does look at me and I see the same intense pain in her eyes that I know she sees in mine.

“Because everybody that I love tends to leave me, or die.”

Relief courses through me, but it’s overshadowed by her pain.

It’s in this very moment that I realize this is the first time Camryn has opened up about any of this to me, or to anyone else. I think about the things Natalie told me, and about the conversations that Camryn and I had while on the road, and I know that right now Camryn is admitting the depth of her pain not only to someone else, but more important, to herself.

“I feel so selfish saying it,” she goes on, and I absolutely let her without interruption. “My dad left us. My mom changed. My grandma, the only person that was the same and was always there when I needed her, died. Ian died. Cole went to prison. Natalie stabbed me in the back. Lily…” She looks at me finally, the pain intensified in her face. “And you.”

“Me?” I crouch in front of her again. “But I’m here, Camryn. I’ll always be here.” I take her hands into mine. “I don’t care what you do, or what happens between us. I’ll never leave you. I’ll always be with you.” I wrench her hands. “Remember when I said you were the world to me? You asked me to remind you if you ever forgot. Well, I’m reminding you now.”

Sobs shudder through her body.

“But you could’ve died,” she says, tears straining her voice. “Every single day I was at that hospital, I thought it was going to be your last. And then when it wasn’t and you pulled through, I still found myself reading it. Weeks, months later, because a part of me felt like I needed to get used to the idea of you being gone. Someday. Because I just knew you were going to leave in one way or another. Just like everybody else.”

“But I didn’t,” I say with desperation and smile a little with it. I sit on the floor and pull her down with me. “I didn’t die. I didn’t because I knew you were there with me the whole time. Because I knew we were meant to be together, and that if you were going to be alive then so was I.”

“But what if you do?” she asks.

I didn’t anticipate that.

“What if the tumor comes back?”

“It won’t,” I say. “And even if it does, I’ll beat it again. Hell, I went eight months without going to the doctor once and I still beat it. With you in my life, whipping my ass to make me go regularly for checkups, there’s no way it could kill me later.”

She doesn’t seem fully convinced of that, but I see a tiny ray of hope in her face and that’s what I wanted to see.

“I really am sorry,” she says, but instead of telling her not to be, I let her have this moment, too, because it feels more like allowing herself some closure. “I bet you never bargained for this kind of crazy baggage.” She wipes her fingers underneath her eyes.

Trying to lighten the mood some, I rub my hands across her bare knees and say, “I’d still love you if you were one of those chicks who runs to the bathroom to gag themselves after they eat, or if you had a secret clown sex fetish.”

She laughs lightly through her tears, and it makes me smile.

I raise her chin with the edge of my finger and get serious again, looking deep into her beautiful watery-blue eyes.

“Camryn,” I say, “Lily just wasn’t ready. I don’t know why, but you can’t blame yourself for her, or for anyone else. And you have to understand that we’re in it together. All of it. Do you believe that?”

She nods. “Yes.”

I lean in and kiss her first on the forehead and then on the lips.

Silence ensues and the atmosphere in the room feels different. Brighter. I know that Camryn isn’t going to be one hundred percent overnight, but I can see that she’s better already. I can tell just by looking at her that she feels less burdened now that she got a lot of that shit off her mind. She needed this. She needed someone to straighten her out. Not someone indifferent, or someone who will only give her the cookie-cutter answers to everything.

She needed me.

I stand up and take her hand. “Come here.”

She follows. I pick up the pill bottle from the table beside the bed and then pull her along with me to the bathroom inside the room. I lift the toilet lid and hand her the bottle. And before I even get a word out, Camryn turns the bottle upside down without hesitation and dumps the remaining four or so pills into the toilet.

“I still can’t believe I was that weak.” She stares at the water as the pills circle it and are sucked into the pipes. She looks over at me. “Andrew, I could’ve easily become addicted to them. I can’t imagine—”

“But you didn’t,” I interrupt before she drills it any further into her head. “And you’re entitled to a moment of weakness. Enough said.”

I walk out of the bathroom and pace the bedroom floor. She follows me out and stands in the center of the room, watching me.

“Andrew?”

I stop and turn to face her and say, “Give me one week.”

She looks slightly confused.

“One week for what?”

I smile faintly. “Just agree to it. Stay here with me for one week.”

Growing more confused by the second, she says, “Ummm, all right. I’ll stay here with you for one week,” though it’s clear in her face that she really has no idea what she’s agreeing to.

But she trusts me and that means everything to me. I’m going to give us what we both need, whether she wants it or not.