The Edge of Always

34

Raleigh, North Carolina—June

“Surprise!” several voices shout when I walk into my and Andrew’s new house.

Actually surprised, I gasp and my hand flies to my chest. Natalie is front and center, with Blake beside her. My friends from my favorite Starbucks and Blake’s sister, Sarah, who I met two weeks ago when Andrew and I arrived back in town, are all here.

“Wow, what’s the occasion?” I ask, still trying to catch my breath a little because they scared the crap out of me. I turn my head to look at Andrew. He’s grinning, so it’s obvious he had something to do with it.

Natalie, now with auburn highlights in her hair, pulls me into a hug. “It’s your official welcome-home party.” She smirks at me and glances at Andrew. “Why do you think I’ve been acting so who-the-hell-cares-she’s-back the past few days?”

“You haven’t been acting like that,” I say.

“OK, maybe not that noticeably,” she says, “but come on, Cam, couldn’t you tell I was holding something in?”

I guess she does have a point, now that I think about it. She has seemed happy that I’m home, but she hasn’t been overjoyed like she would normally be. I guess I’ve been assuming that maybe Blake had finally tamed her some.

I turn to Andrew again. “But we don’t even have any furniture.”

“Oh yes you do!” Natalie says, grabbing my wrist.

She drags me into the living room, where eight beanbag chairs are placed randomly on the floor. In the center of the room are four red milk crates pressed together with a flat piece of lumber on top, which I’m assuming is the coffee table. The electricity isn’t even on yet, but the “coffee table” holds three unlit candles sitting inside the lids from cookie tins, ready and waiting for when night falls several hours from now.

I just laugh. “I love this!” I say to Andrew. “I say we forget about the furniture altogether and stick with the retro beanbag theme!” I’m totally kidding, and Andrew knows it.

He plops down on the nearest beanbag and splays his legs out onto the floor, leaning back into the cushioning vinyl. “I can manage with these, but we’ll definitely need our bed.” I sit down in the one next to him and get comfortable. Everybody else follows suit as Natalie and Blake head into the kitchen area.

Andrew and I found this small house five days after we got here. Wanting out of my mom’s house as soon as humanly possible, he spent hours on the Internet and looked at real estate magazines even while I was slacking off and just relaxing after the long drive from Galveston. I pretty much just let Andrew take the house-hunting thing and run with it. He’d show me pictures, and I’d give my opinion. But this house was perfect. It was the third one we looked at physically (and I really don’t think his love for it had anything to do with accidently seeing my mom half-naked when she thought we’d left for the day). It was priced great because the sellers, who already moved out four months ago, wanted to sell it and get it over with. We ended up buying it for twenty thousand less than what it’s worth, and we agreed that the sellers didn’t need to make any repairs before closing. Since we were cash buyers, everything happened really fast.

Today is officially our first day as its new owners.

We brought a lot of things with us from Galveston, rented a small U-Haul trailer to tow behind us, which we stuffed full of whatever we could fit. But we’ll have to go back soon for the furniture. Unfortunately, Andrew is still adamant about keeping his dad’s old, smelly chair, but he promised to get it cleaned. And he’d better!

Natalie and Blake walk back into the room, each holding three beer bottles, which they start to pass out.

“Thanks, but none for me,” I say.

Natalie looks heartbroken, sticking out her bottom lip as she stares down at me. She’s wearing a tight white shirt that makes her boobs stand out.

“I’m played out on beer for at least a week, Nat,” I say.

She wrinkles her nose but then shrugs and says, “More for me!”

After Blake hands Andrew his beer, he goes to sit down on the only beanbag left, but Natalie races and beats him to it. So, he sits on top of her. While they’re playing around, Natalie lets out this weird peal of laughter, and I glance over to see the look on Andrew’s face.

“Shenzi,” he whispers and shakes his head with the beer bottle at his lips.

I laugh under my breath, knowing now what Andrew meant the first time he called her that. I googled the name shortly after and found out it refers to the mouthy hyena in The Lion King.

“Now, you promised to tell me about your road trip,” Natalie says, now sitting between Blake’s legs on the beanbag.

Everybody looks over at me and Andrew.

“I’ve told you stuff already, Nat.”

“Yeah, but you haven’t told us anything,” says Lea, my friend who works at Starbucks.

Alicia, who works with her, adds, “I went on a road trip with my mom and my brother once, but I’m sure it wasn’t anything like yours.”

“And you still haven’t filled me in on what happened in Florida,” Natalie says. She takes a drink of her beer and then sets it down beside her on the floor, afterward resting her arms over Blake’s legs. Blake kisses the side of her neck.

I cringe inside, just thinking about Florida, but I realize it’s because Andrew would really be the one of us who might be embarrassed about what happened. For a second, I can’t even make eye contact with him because I feel guilty for bringing it up to Natalie at all. I didn’t give her any details, just mentioned that something really messed up happened while we were there.

When I do meet Andrew’s eyes, I can tell he’s not mad at me. He winks and sets his beer on the floor beside him, too.

“Florida,” he says, to my surprise. “That was probably the worst part of our trip, if not also the strangest—and yet, somehow parts of it I didn’t mind so much.”

I have no idea where he’s going with this.

Everyone is looking right at Andrew now, especially Natalie, whose eyes are bugged out with anticipation.

“We met this group of people who offered us to drive out and party with them on a hard-to-find area of the beach. So we did. And we had a good time. But then shit got weird.”

“Weird how?” Natalie interrupts.

“Like LSD or who-the-hell-knows weird,” he says.

Natalie’s eyes get bigger and grow fierce as she looks back at me. “You did LSD? What the fuck is wrong with you, Cam?”

I shake my head. “No, no way did I do it willingly. They drugged us!”

Everyone’s eyes match Natalie’s now.

“Yeah,” Andrew goes on. “We’re not even sure what they gave us, but we were both trippin’ out of our minds.”

“I was roofied once,” Blake’s sister, Sarah, says.

She looks about eighteen.

Blake’s body jerks forward to sit straight up, causing Natalie to hit her front teeth on her beer bottle. “What?” he asks with fire shooting from his eyes.

“Oh, you didn’t know about that?” Sarah says sweetly, acting like she had simply forgotten to tell him at some point.

Obviously, it was better that he hadn’t known.

“Owww!” Natalie whines, holding her mouth.

“I’m sorry,” Blake says. He kisses her cheek and turns back to his sister. “Who the fuck roofied you, Sarah? Don’t shit me, either. You better tell me… Did anything happen?” There’s dread in his face.

Sarah rolls her eyes. “No. Nothing happened because Kayla was there and she drove me home. And no, I don’t know who did it, Blake, so please just chill out.” Then she turns back us. “You were saying?”

“I’ll go with you, man,” Andrew says to Blake. “You ever find out who did it, just let me know. That’s bullshit.”

I elbow Andrew softly. He takes the hint and says, “Anyway, Florida was an experience, I have to say, but I never wanna do it again.”

Andrew doesn’t tell them anything about that skanky bitch who tried giving him a blow job. I’m glad he doesn’t, because that would be an awkward conversation. Not to mention, Natalie would have a field day with information like that. We hang out in the beanbag chairs and talk to our friends for a few hours until around eight o’clock, when Blake has to drive Sarah home. Shortly after the three of them leave, everybody else follows, and Andrew and I are alone in our first official home together as newlyweds.

He comes back in from the kitchen with a candle in his hand after lighting it on the stove. The gas was turned on early. Then he uses that flame to light the others on the table.

“Are we going to sleep on the floor?” I ask, watching him.

“Nope,” he says as he moves away from the candles. He drags all the beanbags into the center of the room and fits them closely together, creating a makeshift bed, then pats one of them with the palm of his hand. “This’ll have to do for now. I’m not sleeping on the floor. Talk about waking up with a stiff back.”

I smile. “This is strange, isn’t it?” I say, looking around at the bare walls of our house, envisioning what kind of pictures or paintings might look good on them.

“What, having no furniture or electricity? You should be used to that by now.” He chuckles.

I get up from my beanbag by the wall and sit down on the bed he made. I reach out toward the table and poke my finger around in the hot wax of a candle, letting it sting and then cool and conform to the tip of my finger.

“No, I mean this house. Us. Everything, really.”

“Strange in a good way, I hope.”

“Of course,” I say, smiling up at him.

Silence fills the house. The light from the candles cast large dancing shadows on the walls. It smells like bleach and Pine-Sol and other various cleaners, although it’s faint.

“Andrew,” I say, “thank you for moving here.”

Finally, he sits down beside me and we both stare into the flames for a moment.

“Where else would I be other than wherever you are?” he says.

“You know what I mean,” I say. I reach out and move the palm of my hand over the top of one flame, just to feel the heat on my skin and to see how close I can get before it’s too much.

“I know,” he says, “but just the same.”

I pull my hand away and look at him; his face looks soft in the orangish glow of the candlelight, even with the stubble he’s started letting grow again.

“Camryn, I need to tell you something,” he says.

Instantly, my heart locks up in my chest at the way he said it.

“What… I mean, what do you mean you have to tell me something?” I’m so nervous. I don’t know why.

Andrew draws his knees upward and props his forearms on top of them. He looks back at the flame once, only for a few seconds, but even a few seconds is too long.

“Andrew?” I turn around fully to face him.

I notice his throat moves as he swallows. He looks me in the eyes.

“I’ve been having headaches,” he begins, and my heart falls into my stomach. I think I’m going to throw up. “Just since Monday, but I set up an appointment with a doctor here. Your mom recommended him.”

I hate her right now for keeping this from me. My hands are shaking.

“I asked your mom not to say anything because I wanted this house stuff to go smoothly—”

“You should’ve told me.”

He tries to reach out for my hand but I inadvertently push it away and rise to my feet. “Why’d you keep this from me?!” I feel dizzy.

Andrew stands up, too, but he keeps his distance. “I told you,” he says. “I didn’t want—”

“I don’t care! You should’ve told me!”

I fold my arms over my stomach and arch over forward a little. I’m surprised I haven’t already puked. My nerves are so frayed it feels like they’re really coming apart inside me. “This can’t be happening…” Finally, I bury my face in my hands and rupture into sobs. “Why the fuck is this happening?!”

Andrew is next to me in seconds. I feel his arms wrap around me. He pulls my trembling body into his chest and holds me. Tight.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” he says. “I honestly don’t feel like I did before, Camryn. I’m having headaches, yes, but they feel different.”

When I tame my sobs enough that I feel like I can speak without choking, I raise my head to see him.

He encloses my face in his hands and smiles faintly at me. “I knew you would react this way, baby,” he says in a quiet voice. “I don’t want you to stress out for the next four days until my appointment on Monday.” He holds my gaze still. “It doesn’t feel the same. Just focus on that, because I’m telling you the truth.”

“Are you?” I ask. “Or, are you saying that to keep me from worrying?” I already have it set in my mind that the latter is exactly what he’s doing. I pull away from him and start pacing the floor, my arms crossed, one hand resting on my lips. I can’t stop shaking.

“I’m not lying to you,” he says. “I’m going to be fine. I feel like I’m going to be fine, and you have to believe that.”

I whirl around to face him again. “I can’t do this anymore, Andrew. I won’t.”

He tilts his head slightly to one side; his gaze is thoughtful, curious, concerned.

I know he wants me to elaborate on what I said, but I can’t. I can’t because the things I want to say would only upset and hurt him. And they would just be words. Words born from pain and anger and a part of me that wants to look God, or whoever, or whatever, in the face and tell It to go to Hell.

I need to calm myself. I need to take a step back and breathe.

I do just that.

“Camryn?”

“You’re going to be fine,” I say to him matter-of-factly. “I know you’re going to be fine.”

He steps back up to me, kisses me on the forehead, and says, “I will be.”