The Edge of Always

1

Natalie has been twirling that same lock of hair for the past ten minutes and it’s starting to drive me nuts. I shake my head and pull my iced latte toward me, strategically placing my lips on the straw. Natalie sits across from me with her elbows propped on the little round table, chin in one hand.

“He’s gorgeous,” she says staring off toward the guy who just got in line. “Seriously, Cam, would you look at him?”

I roll my eyes and take another sip. “Nat,” I say, placing my drink back on the table, “you have a boyfriend—do I need to constantly remind you?”

Natalie sneers playfully at me. “What are you, my mother?” But she can’t keep her eyes on me for long, not while that walking wall of sexy is standing at the register ordering coffee and scones. “Besides, Damon doesn’t care if I look—as long as I’m bending over for him every night, he’s good with it.”

I let out a spat of air, blushing.

“See! Uh huh,” she says, smiling hugely. “I got a laugh out of you.” She reaches over and thrusts her hand into her little purple purse. “I have to make note of that,” and she pulls out her phone and opens her digital notebook. “Saturday. June 15th.” She moves her finger across the screen. “1:54 p.m.—Camryn Bennett laughed at one of my sexual jokes.” Then she shoves the phone back inside her purse and looks at me with that thoughtful sort of look she always has when she’s about to go into therapy-mode. “Just look once,” she says, all joking aside.

Just to appease her, I turn my chin carefully at an angle so that I can get a quick glimpse of the guy. He moves away from the register and toward the end of the counter where he slides his drink off the edge. Tall. Perfectly sculpted cheekbones. Mesmerizing model green eyes and spiked up brown hair.

“Yes,” I admit, looking back at Natalie, “he’s hot, but so what?”

Natalie has to watch him leave out the double glass doors and glide past the windows before she can look back at me to respond.

“Oh. My. God,” she says eyes wide and full of disbelief.

“He’s just a guy, Nat.” I place my lips on the straw again. “You might as well put a sign that says ‘obsessed’ on your forehead. You’re obsessed short of drooling.”

“Are you kidding me?” Her expression has twisted into pure shock. “Camryn, you have a serious problem. You know that, right?” She presses her back against her chair. “You need to up your medication. Seriously.”

“I stopped taking it in April.”

“What? Why?”

“Because it’s ridiculous,” I say matter-of-factly. “I’m not suicidal, so there’s no reason for me to be taking it.”

She shakes her head at me and crosses her arms over her chest. “You think they prescribe that stuff just for suicidal people? No. They don’t.” She points a finger at me briefly and hides it back in the fold of her arm. “It’s a chemical imbalance thing, or some shit like that.”

I smirk at her. “Oh, really? Since when did you become so educated in mental health issues and the medications they use to treat the hundreds of diagnoses?” My brow rises a little, just enough to let her see how much I know she has no idea what she’s talking about.

When she wrinkles her nose at me instead of answering, I say, “I’ll heal on my own time, and I don’t need a pill to fix it for me.” My explanation had started out kind, but unexpectedly turned bitter before I could get the last sentence out. That happens a lot.

Natalie sighs and the smile completely drops from her face.

“I’m sorry,” I say, feeling bad for snapping at her. “Look, I know you’re right. I can’t deny that I have some messed-up emotional issues and that I can be a bitch sometimes—.”

“Sometimes?” she mumbles under her breath, but is grinning again and has already forgiven me.

That happens a lot, too.

I half-smile back at her. “I just want to find answers on my own, y’know?”

“Find what answers?” She’s annoyed with me. “Cam,” she says, cocking her head to one side to appear thoughtful. “I hate to say it, but shit really does happen. You just have to get over it. Beat the hell out of it by doing things that make you happy.”

OK, so maybe she isn’t so horrible at the therapy thing after all.

“I know, you’re right,” I say, “but…”

Natalie raises a brow, waiting. “What? Come on, out with it!”

I gaze toward the wall briefly, thinking about it. So often I sit around and think about life and wonder about every possible aspect of it. I wonder what the hell I’m doing here. Even right now. In this coffee shop with this girl I’ve known practically all my life. Yesterday I thought about why I felt the need to get up at exactly the same time as the day before and do everything like I did the day before. Why? What compels any of us to do the things we do when deep down a part of us just wants to break free from it all?

I look away from the wall and right at my best friend who I know won’t understand what I’m about to say, but because of the need to get it out, I say it anyway.

“Have you ever wondered what it would be like to backpack across the world?”

Natalie’s face goes slack. “Uh, not really,” she says. “That might… suck.”

“Well, think about it for a second,” I say, leaning against the table and focusing all of my attention on her. “Just you and a backpack with a few necessities. No bills. No getting up at the same time every morning to go to a job you hate. Just you and the world out ahead of you. You never know what the next day is going to bring, who you’ll meet, what you’ll have for lunch or where you might sleep.” I realize I’ve become so lost in the imagery that I might’ve seemed a little obsessed for a second, myself.

“You’re starting to freak me out,” Natalie says, eyeing me across the small table with a look of uncertainty. Her arched brow settles down, and then she says, “And there’s also all the walking, the risk of getting raped, murdered, and tossed on the side of a freeway somewhere. Oh, and then there’s all the walking…”

Clearly, she thinks I’m borderline crazy.

“What brought this on, anyway?” she asks, taking a quick sip of her drink. “That sounds like some kind of midlife-crisis stuff—you’re only twenty.” She points again, as if to underline her next words: “And you’ve hardly paid a bill in your life.”

She takes another sip; an obnoxious slurping noise follows.

“Maybe not,” I say, thinking quietly to myself, “but I will be once I move in with you.”

“So true,” she says, tapping her fingertips on her cup. “Everything split down the middle—Wait, you’re not backing out on me, are you?” She sort of freezes, looking warily across at me.

“No, I’m still on. Next week I’ll be out of my mom’s house and living with a slut.”

“You bitch!” she laughs.

I half-smile and go back to my brooding, the stuff before that she wasn’t relating to, but I expected as much. Even before Ian died, I always kind of thought out of the box. Instead of sitting around dreaming up new sex positions, as Natalie often does about Damon, her boyfriend of five years, I dream about things that really matter. At least in my world, they matter. What the air in other countries feels like on my skin, how the ocean smells, why the sound of rain makes me gasp. “You’re one deep chick.” That’s what Damon said to me on more than one occasion.

“Geez!” Natalie says. “You’re a freakin’ downer, you know that right?” She shakes her head with the straw between her lips.

“Come on,” she says suddenly and stands up from the table. “I can’t take this philosophical stuff anymore, and quaint little places like this seem to make you worse—we’re going to the Underground tonight.”

“What?—No, I’m not going to that place.”

“Yes. You. Are.” She chucks her empty drink into the trash can a few feet away and grabs my wrist. “You’re going with me this time because you’re supposed to be my best friend and I won’t take no again for an answer.” Her close-lipped smile is spread across the entirety of her slightly tanned face.

I know she means business. She always means business when she has that look in her eyes: the one brimmed with excitement and determination. It’ll probably be easiest just to go this once and get it over with, or else she’ll never leave me alone about it. Such is a necessary evil when it comes to having a pushy best friend.

I get up and slip my purse strap over my shoulder. “It’s only two o’clock,” I say. I drink down the last of my latte and toss the empty cup away in the same trash can.

“Yeah, but first we’ve got to get you a new outfit.”

“Uh, no.” I say resolutely as she’s walking me out the glass doors and into the breezy summer air. “Going to the Underground with you is more than good deed enough. I refuse to go shopping. I’ve got plenty of clothes.”

Natalie slips her arm around mine as we walk down the sidewalk and past a long line of parking meters. She grins and glances over at me. “Fine. Then you’ll at least let me dress you from something out of my closet.”

“What’s wrong with my own wardrobe?”

She purses her lips at me and draws her chin in as if to quietly argue why I even asked a question so ridiculous. “It’s the Underground,” she says, as if there is no answer more obvious than that.

OK, she has a point. Natalie and me may be best friends, but with us it’s an opposites attract sort of thing. She’s a rocker chick who’s had a crush on Jared Leto since Fight Club. I’m more of a laid-back kind of girl who rarely wears dark-colored clothes unless I’m attending a funeral. Not that Natalie wears all black and has some kind of emo hair thing going on, but she would never be caught dead in anything from my closet because, she says, it’s all just too plain. I beg to differ. I know how to dress, and guys—when I used to pay attention to the way they eyed my ass in my favorite jeans—have never had a problem with the clothes I choose to wear.

But the Underground was made for people like Natalie, and so I guess I’ll have to endure dressing like her for one night just to fit in. I’m not a follower. I never have been. But I’ll definitely become someone I’m not for a few hours if it’ll make me blend in rather than make me a blatant eyesore and draw attention.

Natalie’s bedroom is the complete opposite of OCD clean. And this is yet another way she and I are so completely different. I hang my clothes up by color. She leaves hers in the basket at the foot of her bed for weeks before throwing them all back into the laundry to be washed again because of the wrinkles. I dust my room daily. I don’t think she has ever actually dusted her room, unless you count wiping off the two inches of dust from her laptop keyboard, cleaning.

“This will look perfect on you,” Natalie says holding up a thin, half-sleeve tight white shirt with Scars on Broadway written across the front. “It fits tight and your boobs are perfect.” She puts the shirt up against my chest and examines what I might look like in it.

I snarl at her, not satisfied with her first pick.

She rolls her eyes and her shoulders slump over. “Fine,” she says, tossing the shirt on the bed. She slides her hand in the closet and takes down another one, holding it up with a big smile that is at the same time a manipulation tactic of hers. Big toothy smiles equal me not wanting to crush her efforts.

“How about something that doesn’t have some random band plastered across the front?” I say.

“It’s Brandon Boyd,” she says, her eyes bugging out at me. “How can you not like Brandon Boyd?”

“He’s all right,” I say. “I’m just not into advertising him on my chest.”

“I’d like to actually have him on my chest,” she says, admiring the tight-fitting V-neck top made much like the first one she tried to show me.

“Well, then you wear it.”

She looks across at me, nodding as if contemplating the idea. “I think I will.” She takes off the top she’s already wearing and tosses it in the laundry basket next to the closet, then slips Brandon Boyd’s face down over her huge boobs.

“Looks good on you,” I say, watching her adjust herself and admiring what she sees in the mirror at several different angles.

“Damn right he does,” she says.

“How’s Jared Leto going to feel about this?” I joke.

Natalie spats out a laugh and she tosses her long dark hair back and reaches for the hairbrush. “He’ll always be my number one.”

“What about Damon, y’know, the nonimaginary boyfriend?”

“Stop it,” she says, looking at me through the reflection in the mirror. “If you keep raggin’ on me about Damon like you do—” She stops the brush midway in her hair and turns at the waist to face me. “Do you have a thing for Damon, or something?”

My head springs back and I feel my eyebrows knot thickly in my forehead.

“No, Nat! What the hell?”

Natalie laughs and goes back to brushing her hair. “We’re going to find you a guy tonight. That’s what you need. It’ll fix everything.”

My silence immediately tells her that she went too far. I hate it when she does this. Why does everybody have to be with somebody? It’s a stupid delusion and a really pathetic way of thinking.

She places the brush back on the dresser and turns around fully, letting the jest disappear from her face and she sighs heavily. “I know I shouldn’t say that—look I swear I won’t pull any match-making stuff, all right?” She puts both of her hands up in surrender.

“I believe you,” I say, giving in to her sincerity. Of course, I know too that a promise never stops her completely. She may not directly try to hook me up with somebody, but all she has to do is bat those dark eyelashes of hers at Damon about any guy in the place and Damon will know right away what she wants him to do.

But I don’t need their help. I don’t want to hook up with anyone.

“Oh!” Natalie says with her head in the closet. “This top is perfect!” She turns around dangling a loose-fitting black top with the fabric in the shoulders missing. Across the front it reads: SINNER.

“Got it at Hot Topic,” she says, sliding it off the hanger.

Not wanting to drag this shirt-choosing session out any longer, I slip off my own shirt and then take it from her hand.

“Black bra,” she says. “Good choice.”

I slip the top on and check myself out in the mirror.

“Yeah? Say it,” she says, coming up behind me with a big smile on her face. “You like it, dont’cha?”

I smile slimly back at her and turn to look at how the bottom of the shirt just barely covers the top of my hips.

And then I notice it says SAINT across the back.

“OK,” I say, “I do like it.” I turn around and point sternly at her. “But not enough to start raiding your closet, so don’t get your hopes up. I’m content with my cute button-up tops, thank you very much.”

“I never said your clothes weren’t cute, Cam.” She grins and reaches up and snaps my bra against my back. “You look frickin’ sexy on a daily basis, girl—I’d totally do you if I wasn’t with Damon.”

My mouth falls open. “You’re so damn sick, Nat!”

“I know,” she says as I turn back to the mirror and I hear the devilish grin in her voice. “But it’s the truth. I’ve told you before and I wasn’t joking.”

I just shake my head at her, smiling while picking her brush up from the dresser. Natalie had a girlfriend once, during a short breakup with Damon. But she claimed she was “way too cock-crazy” (her words, not mine) to spend her life with a girl. Natalie’s not a real slut—she’ll knock your face off if you ever call her one—but she is any boyfriend’s nympho dream, that’s for sure.

“Now let me do your makeup,” she says, stepping up to the vanity with me.

“No!”

Natalie thrusts her hands on her hourglass hips and looks at me wide-eyed, as if she was my mom and I just mouthed-off to her.

“Do you want it to be painful?” she asks, glaring at me.

I give in and plop down on the vanity chair.

“Whatever,” I say, holding up my chin to give her full access to my face, which has just become her blank canvas. “Just no raccoon-eye shit, all right?”

She cups my chin vigorously in her hand. “Now hush,” she demands, barely breaking a smile and trying to look all serious. “An arteest,” she says with a dramatic accent and the flourish of her free hand, “needs quiet to vork! Vut do you think these ees, a Deetroit beautee parlor?”

By the time she’s finished with me, I look exactly like her. Except for the giant boobs and silky brown hair. My hair is the kind of blonde some girls pay a salon a lot of money to have, and it stops just to the middle of my back. I admit I was lucky in the perfect hair department. Natalie said that my hair would look better if I wore it down and so I did. I had no choice. She was very intimidating…

And she didn’t make me look like a raccoon, but she didn’t go light on the dark eye shadow, either. “Dark eyes with blonde hair,” she had said as she went about applying the thick, black mascara. “It’s sexy hot.” And apparently my little open-toed sandals just weren’t going to do, because she made me toss them and wear a pair of her pointy-heeled boots, which fit snugly over the legs of my skinny jeans.

“You are one sexy bitch,” she says, looking me up and down.

“And you owe me big-time for doing this,” I say.

“Huh? I owe you?” She cocks her head to the side. “No, honey, I think not. You’ll owe me before this is over with because you’re going to have a great time and will be begging me to take you there more often.”

I sneer playfully at her with my arms crossed and my hip popped out. “I doubt that,” I say. “But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and hope that I have a good time, at least.”

“Good,” she says, slipping on her boots. “Now let’s get out of here; Damon’s waiting for us.”

2

We make it to the Underground just as night falls, but not before driving around in Damon’s souped-up truck to various houses. He would pull into the driveway, get out and stay inside no more than three or four minutes and never say a word when he came back out. At least, not about what he went inside for, or who he talked to—the usual stuff that would make these visits normal. But not much about Damon is usual or normal. I love him to death. I’ve known him almost as long as I’ve known Natalie, but I’ve never been able to accept his drug habits. He grows copious amounts of weed in his basement, but he’s not a pothead. In fact, no one but me and a few of his close friends would ever suspect that a hot piece of ass like Damon Winters would be a grower, because most growers look like white trash and often have hairdos that are stuck somewhere between the ’70s and ’90s. Damon is far from looking like white trash—he could be Alex Pettyfer’s younger brother. And Damon says weed just isn’t his thing. No, Damon’s drug of choice is cocaine, and he only grows and sells weed to pay for his cocaine habit.

Natalie pretends that what Damon does is perfectly harmless. She knows that he doesn’t smoke weed and says that weed really isn’t that bad and if other people want to smoke it to chill out and relax, that she sees no harm in Damon helping with that.

She refuses to believe, however, that cocaine has seen more action from his face than any part of her body has.

“OK, you’re going to have a good time, right?” Natalie bumps my backseat door shut with her butt after I get out and then she looks hopelessly at me. “Just don’t fight it and try to enjoy yourself.”

I roll my eyes. “Nat, I wouldn’t deliberately try to hate it,” I say. “I do want to enjoy myself.”

Damon comes around to our side of the truck and slips his arms around both of our waists. “I get to go in with two hot chicks on my arms.”

Natalie elbows him with a pretend resentful smirk. “Shut up, baby. You’ll make me jealous.” Already she’s grinning impishly up at him.

Damon lets his hand drop from her waist and he grabs a handful of her butt cheek. She makes a sickening moaning sound and reaches up on her toes to kiss him. I want to tell them to get a room, but I’d be wasting my breath.

The Underground is the hottest spot just outside of downtown North Carolina, but you won’t find it listed in the phone book. Only people like us know it exists. Some guy named Rob rented out an abandoned warehouse two years ago and spent about one million of his rich daddy’s money to convert it into a secret nightclub. Two years and going strong; the place has since become a spot where local rock sex gods can live the rock ’n’ roll dream with screaming fans and groupies. But it’s not a trashy joint. From the outside it might look like an abandoned building in a partial ghost town, but the inside is like any upscale hard-rock nightclub equipped with colorful strobe lights that shoot continuously across the space, slutty-looking waitresses, and a stage big enough for two bands to play at the same time.

To keep the Underground private, everybody who goes has to park elsewhere in the city and walk to it because a street lined with vehicles outside an “abandoned” warehouse is a dead giveaway.

We park in the back of a nearby Mickey D’s and walk about ten minutes through spooky town.

Natalie moves from Damon’s right side and gets in between us, but it’s just so she can torture me before we go inside.

“OK,” she says as if about to run down a list of dos and don’ts for me, “If anybody asks, you’re single, all right?” She waves her hand at me. “None of that stuff you pulled like with that guy who was hitting on you at Office Depot.”

“What was she doing at Office Depot?” Damon says, laughing.

“Damon, this guy was on her,” Natalie says, totally ignoring the fact that I’m right here. “I mean, like all she had to do was bat her eyes once and he would’ve bought her a car—you know what she said to him?”

I roll my eyes and pull my arm out of hers. “Nat, you’re so stupid. It wasn’t like that.”

“Yeah, babe,” Damon says. “If the guy works at Office Depot he’s not going to be buying anybody any cars.”

Natalie smacks him across the shoulder playfully. “I didn’t say he worked there—anyway, the guy looked like the lovechild of… Adam Levine and…,” she twirls her fingers around above her head to let another famous example materialize on her tongue, “… Jensen Ackles, and Miss Prudeness here told him she was a lesbian when he asked for her number.”

“Oh shut up, Nat!” I say, irritated at her serious over-exaggeration illness. “He did not look like either one of those guys. He was just a regular guy who didn’t happen to be fugly.”

She waves me away and turns back to Damon. “Whatever. The point is that she’ll lie to keep them away. I don’t doubt for a second that she’d go as far as to tell a guy she has Chlamydia and an out of control case of crabs.”

Damon laughs.

I stop on the dark sidewalk and cross my arms over my chest, chewing on the inside of my bottom lip in agitation.

Natalie, realizing I’m not walking beside her anymore runs back towards me. “OK! OK! Look, I just don’t want you to ruin it for yourself, that’s all. I’m just asking that if someone—who isn’t a total hunchback—hits on you that you not immediately push him away. Nothing wrong with talking and getting to know one another. I’m not asking you to go home with him.”

I’m already hating her for this. She swore!

Damon comes up behind her and wraps his hands around her waist, nuzzling his mouth into her squirming neck.

“Maybe you should just let her do what she wants, babe. Stop being so pushy.”

“Thank you, Damon,” I say with a quick nod.

He winks at me.

Natalie purses her lips and says, “You’re right,” and then puts up her hands, “I won’t say anything else. I swear.”

Yeah, I have heard that before…

“Good,” I say and we all start walking again. Already these boots are killing my feet.

The ogre at the warehouse entrance inspects us at the door with his huge arms crossed in front.

He holds out his hand.

Natalie’s face twists into an offended knot. “What? Is Rob charging now?”

Damon reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his wallet, fingering the bills inside.

“Twenty bucks a pop,” the ogre says with a grunt.

“Twenty? Are you fucking kidding me?!” Natalie shrieks.

Damon gently pushes her aside and slaps three twenty-dollar bills into the ogre’s hand. The ogre shoves the money into his pocket and moves to let us pass. I go first and Damon puts his hand on Natalie’s lower back to guide her in front of him.

She sneers at the ogre as she passes by. “Probably going to keep it for himself,” she says. “I’m going to ask Rob about this.”

“Come on,” Damon says, and we slip past the door and down one lengthy, dreary hallway with a single flickering fluorescent light until we make it to the industrial elevator at the end.

The metal jolts as the cage door closes and we’re rather noisily riding to the basement floor many feet below. It’s just one floor down, but the elevator rattles so much I feel like it’s going to snap any second and send us plunging to our deaths. Loud, booming drums and the shouting of drunk college students and probably a lot of drop-outs funnels through the basement floor and into the cage elevator, louder every inch we descend into the bowels of the Underground. The elevator rumbles to a halt, and another ogre opens the cage door to let us out.

Natalie stumbles into me from behind. “Hurry up!” she says, pushing me playfully in the back. “I think that’s Four Collision playing!” Her voice rises over the music as we make our way into the main room.

Natalie takes Damon by the hand and then tries to grab mine, but I know what she has in store, and I’m not going into a throng of bouncing, sweaty bodies wearing these stupid boots.

“Oh, come on!” she urges, practically begging. Then an aggravated line deepens around her snarling nose and she thrusts my hand into hers and pulls me toward her. “Stop being a baby! If anybody knocks you over, I’ll personally kick their ass, all right?”

Damon is grinning at me from the side.

“Fine!” I say and head out with them, Natalie practically pulling my fingers out of the sockets.

We hit the dance floor, and after a while of Natalie doing what any best friend would do by grinding against me to make me feel included, she eases her way into Damon’s world only. She might as well be having sex with him right there in front of everybody, but no one notices. I only notice because I’m probably the only girl in the entire place without a date doing the same thing. I take advantage of the opportunity and slip my way off the dance floor and head to the bar.

“What can I get’cha?” the tall blond guy behind the bar says as I push myself up on my toes and take an empty barstool.

“Rum and Coke.”

He goes to make my drink. “Hard stuff, huh?” he says, filling the glass with ice. “Going to show me your ID?” He grins.

I purse my lips at him. “Yeah, I’ll show you my ID when you show me your liquor license.” I grin right back at him and he smiles.

He finishes mixing the drink and slides it over to me.

“I don’t really drink much anyway,” I say, taking a little sip from the straw.

“Much?”

“Yeah, well, tonight I think I’ll need a buzz.” I set the glass down and finger the lime on the rim.

“Why’s that?” he asks, wiping the bar top down with a paper towel.

“Wait a second.” I hold up one finger. “Before you get the wrong idea, I’m not here to spill my guts to you—bartender-customer therapy.” Natalie is all the therapy I can handle.

He laughs and tosses the paper towel somewhere behind the bar. “Well that’s good to know, because I’m not the advice type.”

I take another small sip, leaning over this time instead of lifting the glass from the bar; my loose hair falls all around my face. I rise back up and tuck one side behind my ear. I really hate wearing my hair down; it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

“Well, if you must know,” I say, looking right at him, “I was dragged here by my relentless best friend who would probably do something embarrassing to me in my sleep and take a blackmail pic if I didn’t come.”

“Ah, one of those,” he says, laying his arms across the bar top and folding his hands together. “I had a friend like that once. Six months after my fiancée skipped out on me, he dragged me to a nightclub just outside of Baltimore—I just wanted to sit at home and sulk in my misery, but turns out that night out was exactly what I needed.”

Oh great, this guy thinks he knows me already, or at least my “situation.” But he doesn’t know anything about my situation. Maybe he has the “bad ex” thing down, because we all have that, eventually, but the rest of it—my parents’ divorce; my older brother, Cole, going to jail; the death of the love of my life—I’m not about to tell this guy anything. The moment you tell someone else is the moment you become a whiner, and the world’s smallest violin starts to play. The truth is, we all have problems; we all go through hardships and pain, and my pain is paradise compared to a lot of people’s and I really have no right to whine at all.

“I thought you weren’t the advice type.” I smile sweetly.

He leans away from the bar and says, “I’m not, but if you’re getting something out of my story then be grateful.”

I smirk and take a fake sip this time. I don’t really want a buzz and I definitely don’t want to get drunk, especially since I have a feeling I’m going to be the one driving us home again.

Trying to take the spotlight off me, I prop one elbow on the bar and rest my chin on my knuckles and say, “So then what happened that night?”

The left side of his mouth lifts into a grin and he says, shaking his blond head, “I got laid for the first time since she left me, and I remembered how good it felt to be unchained from one person.”

I didn’t expect that kind of answer. Most guys I know would’ve lied about their relationship phobia, especially if they were hitting on me. I kind of like this guy. Just as a guy, of course; I’m not about to, as Natalie might say, bend over for him.

“I see,” I say, trying to hold in the true measure of my smile. “Well, at least you’re honest.”

“No other way to be,” he says as he reaches for an empty glass and starts to make a rum and Coke for himself. “I’ve found that most girls are as much afraid of commitment as guys are these days, and if you’re up front in the beginning, you’re more likely to come out of the one-nighter unscathed.”

I nod, fitting my fingertips around my straw. There’s no way I’d openly admit it to him, but I completely agree with him and even find it refreshing. I’ve never really given it that much thought before, but as much as I don’t want a relationship within one hundred feet of me, I am still human and I wouldn’t mind a one-night stand.

Just not with him. Or anyone in this place. OK, so maybe I’m too chicken for a one-night stand, and this drink has already started going straight to my head. Truth is, I’ve never done anything like that before, and even though the thought is kind of exciting, it still scares the shit out of me. I’ve only ever been with two guys: Ian Walsh, my first love, who took my virginity and died in a car accident three months later, and then Christian Deering, my Ian rebound guy and the jerk who cheated on me with some red-haired slut.

I’m just glad I never said that poisonous three-word phrase that begins with ‘I’ and ends with ‘you’, back to him because I had a feeling, deep down, that when he said it to me, he didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.

Then again, maybe he did and that’s why after five months of dating, he hooked up with someone else: because I never said it back.

I look up at the bartender to notice he’s smiling back at me, waiting patiently for me to say something. This guy’s good; either that, or he really is just trying to be friendly. I admit, he’s cute; can’t be older than twenty-five and has soft brown eyes that smile before his lips do. I notice how toned his biceps and chest are underneath that tight-fitting t-shirt. And he’s tanned; definitely a guy who has lived most of his life near an ocean somewhere.

I stop looking when I notice my mind wandering, thinking about how he looks in swim shorts and no shirt.

“I’m Blake,” he says. “I’m Rob’s brother.”

Rob? Oh yeah, the guy who owns The Underground.

I reach out my hand and Blake gently shakes it.

“Camryn.”

I hear Natalie’s voice over the music before I even see her. She makes her way through a cluster of people standing around near the dance floor and pushes her way past to get to me. Immediately, she takes note of Blake and her eyes start glistening, lighting up with her huge, blatant smile. Damon, following behind her with her hand still clasped in his, notices, too, but he just locks emotionless eyes with me. I get the strangest feeling from it, but I brush it off as Natalie presses her shoulder into mine.

“What are you doing over here?” she asks with obvious accusation in her voice. She’s grinning from ear to ear and glances between Blake and me several times before giving me all of her attention.

“Having a drink,” I say. “Did you come over here to get one for yourself, or to check up on me?”

“Both!” she says, letting Damon’s hand fall away from hers and she reaches up and taps hers fingers on the bar, smiling at Blake. “Anything with Vodka.”

Blake nods and looks at Damon.

“I’ll have rum and Coke,” Damon says.

Natalie presses her lips against the side of my head and I feel the heat of her breath on my ear when she whispers, “Holy shit, Cam! Do you know who that is?”

I notice Blake’s mouth spread subtly into a smile, having heard her.

Feeling my face get hot with embarrassment, I whisper back, “Yeah, his name is Blake.”

“That’s Rob’s brother!” she hisses; her gaze falls back on him.

I look up at Damon, hoping he’ll get the hint and drag her off somewhere, but this time he pretends not to ‘get it’. Where is the Damon I know, the one who used to have my back when it came to Natalie?

Uh oh, he must be pissed at her again. He only ever acts like this when Natalie has opened her big mouth, or done something that Damon just can’t get past. We’ve only been here for about thirty minutes. What could she have done in such a short time? And then I realize: this is Natalie and if anyone can piss a boyfriend off in under an under hour and without knowing it, it’s her.

I slip off the barstool and take her by the arm, pulling her away from the bar. Damon, probably knowing what my plan is, stays behind with Blake.

The music seems to have gotten louder as the live band ends one song and starts the next.

“What did you do?” I demand, turning her around to face me.

“What do you mean what did I do?” She’s hardly even paying attention to me; her body moves subtly with the music instead.

“Nat, I’m serious.”

Finally, she stops and looks right at me, searching my face for answers.

“To piss Damon off?” I say. “He was fine when we came in here.”

She looks across the space briefly at Damon standing by the bar, sipping his drink, and then back at me with a confused look on her face. “I didn’t do anything… I don’t think.” She looks up as if in thought, trying to recall what she might have said or done.

She puts her hands on her hips. “What makes you think he’s pissed?”

“He’s got that look,” I say, glancing back at him and Blake, “and I hate it when you two fight, especially when I’m stuck with you for the night and have to listen to you both go back and forth about stupid shit that happened a year ago.”

Natalie’s confused expression turns into a devious smile. “Well, I think you’re paranoid and maybe trying to distract me from saying anything about you and Blake.” She’s getting that playful look now and I hate it.

I roll my eyes. “There is no ‘me and Blake’, we’re just talking.”

“Talking is the first step. Smiling at him—(her grin deepens) which I totally saw you doing when I walked up—is the next step.” She crosses her arms and pops out her hip. “I bet you’ve already had a conversation with him without him having to pry the answers out of you—Hell, you already know his name.”

“For someone who wants me to have a good time and meet a guy, you don’t know how to shut up when things already appear to be going your way.”

Natalie lets the music dictate her movement again, raising her hands up a little above her and moving her hips around seductively. I just stand here.

“Nothing’s going to happen,” I say sternly. “You got what you wanted and I’m talking to someone and have no intention in telling him I have Chlamydia, so please, don’t make a scene.”

She gives in with a long, deep sigh and stops dancing long enough to say, “I guess you’re right. I’ll leave you to him, but if he takes you up to Rob’s floor, I want details.” She points her finger at me firmly, one eye slanted and her lips pursed.

“Fine,” I say, just to get her off my back, “but don’t hold your breath, because it’s not gonna happen.”

3

An hour and two drinks later, I’m on “Rob’s floor” of the building with Blake. I’m just a little buzzed, walking and seeing perfectly straight, so I know I’m not drunk. But I’m a little too happy, and that bothers me a bit. When Blake suggested we “get away from the noise for a while,” my warning sirens were going off like crazy inside my head: Don’t you go off by yourself at a nightclub after a couple of drinks with this guy you don’t know. Don’t do it, Cam. You’re not a stupid girl, so don’t let the alcohol make you stupid.

All of these things screamed at me. And I listened until at some point, Blake’s infectious smile and the way he made me feel completely at ease calmed the voices and the sirens down so much that I couldn’t hear them anymore.

“This is what they call Rob’s Floor?” I ask, looking out over the cityscape from the roof of the warehouse. All of the buildings in the city are lit up brilliantly with glowing blue and white and green lights. The streets appear bathed in an orangish hue pouring down from the hundreds of street lamps.

“What did you expect?” he says, taking my hand and I inwardly flinch at the gesture but accept it. “A posh sex room with mirrors on the ceiling?”

Wait a second… that’s exactly what I thought—well, in a roundabout way—but then why in the hell did I come up here with him?

OK, now I’m panicking a little.

I think maybe I am slightly drunk after all, otherwise my judgment would not be this far off. And it freaks me out and almost completely sobers me up to think that I would ever be up for any kind of “sex room,” even in a drunken state. Is the alcohol really just making me stupid, or is it bringing out something inside of me that I don’t want to believe is there?

I glance over at the metal door set in the brick wall and notice a light shining through it and the doorjamb. He left it open; that’s a good sign.

He walks with me to a wooden picnic table, and nervously I sit down next to him on the top of it. The wind brushes through my hair, pulling a few strands into my mouth. I reach up and tuck my finger behind them and pull the strands away.

“Good thing it was me,” he says, looking out at the city with his hands draped between his knees; his feet are propped on the bench seat below.

I pull my legs up and sit Indianstyle, folding my hands in my lap. I look over at him questioningly.

He smiles. “Good thing it was me who brought you up here,” he clarifies. “A beautiful girl like you down there with all of those guys.” He turns his head to look right at me; his brown eyes appear faintly luminescent in the dark. “If I had been someone else, you might’ve been the rape victim of your very own Lifetime movie.”

I’m completely sober now. Just like that, in two seconds flat, it’s as though I never drank a thing. My back shoots straight up rigidly and I suck in a deep, nervous breath.

What the fuck was I thinking?!

“It’s all right,” he says, smiling softly and putting up both hands, palms facing outward in front of him. “I would never do anything to a girl that she didn’t want, or anything to one who’s had a few drinks and just thinks it’s what she wants.”

I think I just dodged a very deadly bullet.

My shoulders relax somewhat, and I feel like I can breathe again. I mean, sure, he could just be filling my head full of more bullshit to make me trust him, but my instincts are telling me that he’s perfectly harmless. Keep my guard up and be careful while I’m alone up here with him, but at least I can relax. I think if he intended to take advantage of me, he wouldn’t have announced the danger of the possibility like that.

I laugh a little under my breath, thinking about something he said.

“What’s so funny?” He looks across at me, smiling and waiting.

“Your Lifetime movie reference,” I say, feeling my lips shape in a faint, embarrassed smile. “You watch that stuff?”

He looks away, sharing my embarrassment for him. “Nah,” he says, “I think it’s just common knowledge comparison.”

“Really?” I taunt him. “I don’t know; you’re the first guy I’ve ever heard use ‘Lifetime movie’ in a sentence.”

He’s blushing now and I’m kicking myself for being so happy to see it.

“Well, just don’t tell anybody, all right?” He gives me his best pouty face.

I smile back at him and then look out at the city lights, hoping to deter any hopeful expectations he might have developed over the course of our brief, playful exchange. I don’t care how nice or charming or sexy he is, I’m not caving to him. I’m just not ready for anything other than what we’re doing right now: having an innocent, friendly conversation with no sexual or relationship strings attached. It’s so damn hard to have that with any guy, because they always seem to think that a simple smile means something more than it is.

“So tell me,” he says, “why are you here alone?”

“Oh, no…,” I shake my smiling head and my finger at him, “… let’s not go there.”

“Come on, throw me a bone here. It’s just conversation.” He turns fully around at the waist to face me and rests one leg on the tabletop. “I genuinely want to know. It’s not a tactic.”

“A tactic?”

“Yeah, like digging around inside your problems to find something to pretend I care about just so I can get in your panties—if I wanted in your panties, I’d come out and tell you.”

“Oh, so you don’t want in my panties?” I look at him in a half-smiling sidelong glance.

A little defeated, but not deterred by it, he softens his face and says, “Eventually, yeah. I’d be fucking mental to not want to sleep with you, but if that’s all I wanted from you and that’s what I brought you up here for, I would’ve told you before you agreed to come up here.”

I appreciate the honesty and definitely have more respect for him, but my smile sort of locked up when he said something about ‘if that’s all’ he wanted from me. What else could he want from me? A date, which could lead to a relationship? Ummm, no.

“Look,” I say, backing off a little and letting him know it, “I’m not looking for either, just so you know.”

“Either of what?” And then he realizes ‘what’ a second later. He smiles and shakes his head. “It’s all right. I’m with you on that one—I really did just bring you up here for the conversation, as hard as that may be to believe.”

Something tells me that if I wanted either, sex or a date, or both, that Blake would give it to me, but he’s smoothly backing off without making himself look rejected.

“To answer your question,” I say, giving in to him for conversation’s sake, “I’m single because I had a few bad experiences and right now I’m just not looking for any do-overs.”

Blake nods. “I hear yah.” He looks away from my eyes and the breeze catches his blond hair, pushing his semi-long bangs away from his forehead. “Do-overs generally suck, at least in the beginning. The learning process in itself is a nightmare.” He looks back at me to elaborate. “When you’re with someone for so long you get used to them, y’know? It’s a comfort-zone thing. When we get settled in our comfort zone, trying to pull us out of it even if everything about it is hell and unhealthy, is like trying to pull a fat ass couch potato out of his living room long enough to get a life.” Maybe realizing he was getting too deep with me too soon, Blake lightens the mood by adding, “Took me three months with Jen before I was comfortable taking a shit with her in the house.”

I laugh out loud and when I’m brave enough to look back at him, I see that he’s smiling.

I’m starting to get the feeling he’s not over his ex-fiancée as much he’s trying to make himself believe. So, I try to do him a favor by steering the hurtful topic to myself before he has that eureka moment and his world comes falling down around him all over again.

“My boyfriend died,” I blurt out, mostly for his sake. “Car accident.”

Blake’s face falls and he looks right at me, his eyes full of remorse. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

I put up my hand. “No, it’s perfectly all right; you didn’t do anything.” After he nods subtly and waits for me to go on, I say, “It was a week before graduation.” He places his hand on my knee, but I know it’s not for anything other than to comfort me.

I start to tell him what happened when I hear a loud smack! and Blake falls off the tabletop and hits the roof floor. It happened so fast I never saw Damon rushing him from the side, or heard when he burst through the metal door several feet away.

“Damon!” I shriek as he tackles Blake before he can get up and starts pummeling his face with his fists. “Stop! Damon! Oh my God!”

Another series of punches rain down on Blake before the shock wears off me and I run over and try pulling Damon off of him. I lunge on Damon’s back, grabbing his flailing arms by the wrists, but he’s so focused on beating the shit out of Blake that I feel like I’m on the back of one of those mechanical bulls. I’m thrown off and land hard on the concrete on my butt and hands.

Blake finally gets up after serving one good punch at the side of Damon’s face.

“What the fuck is your problem, man?!” Blake says, stumbling to his feet. One hand never leaves his jaw where he continuously rubs it as if trying to pop it back into place. His nose is bleeding from both nostrils and his upper lip is busted and swollen. All of the blood looks black in the darkness.

“You know what the fuck!” Damon roars and goes to attack him again, but I rush over and do what I can to hold him back. I step around in front of him and shove the palms of my hands against his rock-hard chest.

“Just stop it, Damon! We were just talking! What the hell is wrong with you?” I’m yelling so loud already my voice feels strained.

I turn at the waist, keeping my hands firmly on Damon’s chest and I look right at Blake. “I’m so sorry, Blake, I-I—”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says with a hard, rebuffed expression. “I’m outta here.”

He turns and walks away through the metal door. A vociferous bang! resounds through the air as it slams behind him. I whirl back around at Damon with fire in my eyes and I push him as hard as I can in the chest. “You asshole! I can’t believe you did that!” I’m literally screaming three inches from his face.

Damon’s lip furrows and he’s still breathing hard from the fight. His dark eyes are wide and unfettered and sort of feral. A part of me feels suspicious of him, but the part of me that has known him for twelve years cancels the suspicion out.

“What are you doing leaving with some guy you just fucking met? I thought you were smarter than that, Cam, even buzzed out of your mind!”

I step back from him and cross my arms angrily over my stomach. “Are you calling me stupid? We were just talking!” I shriek and my blonde hair falls down around my eyes. “I’m perfectly capable of recognizing the assholes from the nice guys, and right about now I’m seeing a total fucking asshole!”

He appears to grit his teeth behind his tightly closed lips. “Call me what you want, but I was just protecting you.” He says it surprisingly calm.

“From what?” I shout. “Bad conversation? A guy who genuinely just wanted to talk?”

Damon smirks. “No guy just wants to talk,” he says as if he’s an expert. “No guy is going to lead a girl that looks like you out alone on the top of a goddamned warehouse building just to talk. Ten more minutes and he would’ve thrown your little ass on top of that table and had his way with you. No one can hear you scream out here, Cam.”

I swallow down a lump in my throat, but another one forms in its place. Maybe Damon’s right. Maybe I was so blinded by Blake’s sincere and privately wounded personality that I completely fell for a tactic I never contemplated. Sure, I’ve envisioned these kinds of situations before and have seen the typical ones on television, but maybe Blake was trying something else on me… No, I don’t believe it. He would’ve thrown me on the picnic table if I asked him to, but my heart tells me he wouldn’t have otherwise.

I turn my back on Damon, not wanting him to see anything left in my face that might give away that for a second I actually believed him. I’m pissed as hell for the way he handled it, but I can’t hate him forever because he really was just looking out for me. Overloaded on alpha male testosterone, no doubt, but looking out for me, nonetheless.

“Cam, look at me please.”

I wait a few defiant seconds before turning around with my arms still crossed.

Damon peers in at me with a softer gaze than before. “I’m sorry, I just…,” he sighs and looks off to the side now as though what he’s about to say he can’t while looking right at me, “… Camryn, I can’t stand the thought of you with some other guy.”

I feel like someone just punched me in the gut. I even let out a weird yelping sound from my throat and my eyes grow wide.

I glance nervously toward the metal door and then back at him. “Where’s Natalie?” I have to drive this topic completely off this roof. What the hell did he just say? No, he can’t mean what it sounded like. I must’ve heard him wrong. Yeah, my buzz is back and I’m not thinking straight.

He steps up closer to me and cups my elbows in his hands. Instantly, I feel the need to back away from him, but I’m frozen in the same spot, barely able to move anything other than my eyes.

“I mean it,” he says, lowering his voice to a desperate whisper. “I’ve wanted you since seventh grade.”

There’s that punch to the gut again.

Finally, I manage to back away from him. “No. No.” I shake my head back and forth, trying to make sense of this. “Are you drunk, Damon? Or strung out? Something’s wrong with you.” My arms come uncrossed and I put up my hands. “We need to go find Natalie. I won’t say anything to her about what you said because you won’t remember it in the morning, but we really do need to go. Now.”

I start to walk toward the now closed metal door, but feel Damon’s hand collapse around my bicep and he turns me around. My breath catches and that suspicious feeling I had about him earlier comes back full-force, completely reversing the years I’ve known him and have trusted him. He glares at me with eyes more feral than before, but manages to retain a sort of eerie softness in them, too.

“I’m not drunk and I haven’t done any coke since last week.”

The fact that he does coke at all is more than enough to make it impossible to ever be attracted to him, but he’s always been one of my closest friends and so I’ve always overlooked his drug use. But he’s telling the truth right now and being such a close friend for so long is what allows me to know this.

For the first time, I wish he was strung out because then we really could forget this ever happened.

I look down at his fingers clamped around my arm and finally notice how much pressure he’s applying and it scares me.

“Let go of my arm, Damon, please.”

Instead of loosening, I feel his fingers tighten and I try to pull away. He jerks me towards him and before I can react, he crushes his mouth over mine, his free hand wraps around the back of my neck forcing my head still. He tries to stick his tongue in my mouth, but I manage to rear my head back just enough to butt my forehead into his. It stuns him—and me—and instinctively he lets go of my body.

“Cam! Wait!” I hear him yelling out to me as I run away and throw open the metal door.

I hear his fierce footsteps moving after mine as he races down the loud metal stairs behind me, but I lose him once I make it back into the cage elevator, slam the fence gate closed and pound hard once on the Main button. The same ogre who let us in the club is standing at the door when I rush past him, having to partially shove him out of my way to get outside.

“Take it easy, babe!” he shouts as I run down the sidewalk and away from the warehouse.

I walk as far as the Shell station and call a cab to pick me up.