The Edge of Always
J A Redmerski

For anyone who has ever had a moment of weakness.

It won’t be painful forever, so don’t let it get the best of you.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

Forty-One

Epilogue

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About the Author

Also by J A Redmerski

Copyright

About the Publisher

Andrew

ONE

A few months ago, when I was laid up in that hospital bed, I didn’t think I’d be alive today much less be expecting a baby and engaged to an angel with a dirty mouth. But here I am. Here we are, Camryn and me, taking on the world … in a different way. Things didn’t quite turn out how we planned them, but then again, things rarely do. And neither of us would change the way they turned out even if we could.

I love this chair. It was my dad’s favorite chair, and the one thing he left behind that I wanted. Sure, I inherited a fat check that will set Camryn and me up for a while, and of course I got the Chevelle, but the chair was equally sentimental to me. She hates it, but she won’t say so out loud, because it was my dad’s. I can’t blame her; it’s old, it stinks, and there’s a hole in the cushion from my dad’s cigarette smoking days. I promised her I’d get someone in here to clean it, at least. And I will. As soon as she figures out whether we’re going to stay in Galveston or move to North Carolina. I’m fine with either, but something tells me she’s holding back on what she really wants, because of me.

I hear the water from the shower shut off, and seconds later a loud bang vibrates through the wall. I jump up from the chair, letting the remote control hit the floor as I rush toward the bathroom. The edge of the coffee table clips the shit outta my shin as I pass.

I swing open the bathroom door. “What happened?”

Camryn shakes her head at me and smiles as she leans over to pick the hair dryer up from the floor beside the toilet.

I breathe a sigh of relief.

“You’re more paranoid than I am,” she laughs.

She glances down at my leg as I rub it with my fingertips. She sets the hair dryer back on the counter, comes up to me, and kisses the side of my mouth. “Looks like I’m not the one of us who needs to worry about being accident-prone.” She smiles.

My hands cup her shoulders and I pull her closer, letting one hand fall down to touch her little rounded belly. I can barely tell she’s pregnant. At four months I thought she’d at least be emulating a baby hippo, but what do I know about this stuff?

“Maybe so,” I say, trying to hide the red in my face. “You probably did that on purpose just to see how fast I could get in here.”

She kisses the other side of my mouth and then goes in for the kill, kissing me fully and deeply while pressing her wet, naked body against mine. I moan against her mouth, wrapping my arms around her.

But then I pull away before I fall into her devious trap. “Dammit, woman, you’ve gotta stop that.”

She grins back at me. “You really want me to stop?” she asks with that up-to-no-good smile of hers.

It scares the shit out of me when she does that. Once after a conversation laced with that smile, she stopped having sex with me for three whole days. Worst three days of my life.

“Well, no,” I say nervously. “I just mean right now. We have exactly thirty minutes before we have to be at the doctor’s office.”

I just hope she’s this horny throughout her entire pregnancy. I’ve heard horror stories about how some women go from wanting it all the time until they get really big and then if you touch them they turn into fire-breathing banshees.

Thirty minutes. Damn. I could bend her over the counter real quick …

Camryn smiles sweetly and jerks the towel from the shower curtain rod and starts drying off. “I’ll be ready in ten,” she says as she waves me out. “Don’t forget to water Georgia. Did you find your phone?”

“Not yet,” I say as I start to ease my way out the door, but then I stop and add with a sexually suggestive grin, “Ummm, we could—”

She shuts the door in my face. I just walk off laughing.

I rush around the apartment, searching under cushions and in odd places for my keys and finally finding them hiding underneath a stack of junk mail on the kitchen counter. I stop for a moment and take a particular piece of mail into my fingers. Camryn won’t let me throw it away, because it was the one she looked at when giving the 911 operator my address the morning I had that seizure in front of her. I guess she feels like that piece of paper helped save my life, but really what it did was help her eventually understand what was going on with me. The seizure was harmless. I’ve had several. Hell, I had one when we were staying in the hotel in New Orleans before we started sharing a room. When I finally told her about that later, needless to say, she was not happy with me.

She worries all the time that the tumor will come back. I think she worries about it more than I do.

If it does, it does. We’ll get through it together. We’ll always get through everything together.

“Time to go, babe!” I yell from the living room.

She comes out of our room dressed in a rather tight pair of jeans and an equally tight T-shirt. And heels. Really? Heels?

“You’re going to squeeze her little head in those jeans,” I say.

“No, I’m not going to squeeze her or his head,” she counters as she grabs her purse from the couch and shoulders it. “You’re so sure of yourself, but we’ll see.” She takes my hand and I walk her out the door, flipping the lock on the knob before I close it hard behind us.

“I know it’s a girl,” I say confidently.

“Care to wager?” She looks over at me and grins.

We step out into the mild November air, and I open the car door for her, gesturing inside with my palm up. “What kind of bet?” I ask. “You know I’m all for betting.”

Camryn slides onto the seat, and I jog around to my side and get in. Resting my wrists on the top of the steering wheel, I look over at her and wait.

She smiles and chews gently on the inside of her bottom lip in thought for a moment. Her long blonde hair tumbles down over both shoulders, and her blue eyes shine with excitement.

“You’re the one who seems so sure,” she finally says. “So, you name the bet and I’ll either agree to it or I won’t.” She stops abruptly and points her finger sternly at me. “But nothing sexual. I think you pretty much have that area covered. Think of something …” she whirls her hand around in front of her “… I don’t know … daring or meaningful.”

Hmmm. I’m officially stumped. I slide the key in the ignition, but pause before turning it.

“OK, if it’s a girl, then I get to name her,” I say with a soft, proud smile.

Her eyebrows twitch a little and she turns her chin at an angle. “I don’t like that bet. That’s something both of us should take part in, don’t you think?”

“Well, yeah, but don’t you trust me?”

She hesitates. “Yes … I trust you, but—”

“—but not with a baby name.” I raise an eyebrow interrogatively at her, but really I’m just messing with her head.

She can’t look me in the eyes anymore, and she appears uncomfortable.

“Well?” I urge her.

Camryn crosses her arms and says, “What name did you have in mind, exactly?”

“What makes you think I already have one picked out?” I turn the key and the Chevelle purrs to life.

She smirks at me, cocking her head to one side. “Oh, please. You obviously have one picked out already, or you wouldn’t be so sure it’s a girl and making bets with me when we have an ultrasound to get to.”

I look away, grinning, and put the car into reverse.

“Lily,” I say and just barely catch Camryn’s eye as we back out of the parking space. “Lily Marybeth Parrish.”

A little smile tugs the corners of her lips.

“I actually like that,” she says, and her smile gets bigger and bigger. “I admit, I was slightly worried—why Lily?”

“No reason. I just like it.”

She doesn’t seem convinced. She playfully narrows her eyes at me.

“I’m serious!” I say, laughing gently. “I’ve been going over names in my head since the day after you told me.”

Camryn’s smile warms, and if I wasn’t such a guy, I’d cave to the moment and allow myself to blush like an idiot.

“You’ve been thinking of names all this time?” She seems happily surprised.

OK, so I blush anyway.

“Yeah,” I admit. “Haven’t thought of a good boy name yet, but we’ve got several months to think about it.”

Camryn is just looking at me, beaming. I don’t know what’s going on inside her head, but I realize my face is getting redder the longer she stares at me like that.

“What?” I ask and let out a laugh.

She leans across the seat and raises her hand to my face, her fingertips pulling my chin to the side. And then she kisses me.

“God, I love you,” she whispers.

It takes a second to realize I’m grinning so big my face feels stretched out. “I love you, too. Now get your seat belt on.” I point to it.

She slides back over onto her side and clicks the seat belt buckle into place.

As we ride toward the doctor’s office we both keep glancing at the clock in the dashboard. Eight more minutes. Five. Three. I think it hits her as hard as it does me when we pull into the building’s parking lot. In no time at all we may meet our son or daughter for the very first time.

Yeah, a few months ago, I didn’t think I’d be alive …

“The wait is killing me,” Camryn leans over and whispers to me.

This is so strange. Sitting in this doctor’s waiting room with pregnant chicks on all sides of us. I’m kind of scared to make eye contact. Some of them look pissed. All of the magazines for guys seem to have a man on the cover in a boat holding up a fish with his thumb in its mouth. I pretend to read an article.

“We’ve only been sitting here for about ten minutes,” I whisper back and run the palm of my hand across her thigh, letting the magazine rest on my lap.

“I know, I’m just nervous.”

As I take her hand, a nurse in pink scrubs steps out from a side door and calls Camryn’s name, and we follow her back.

I sit against the wall while Camryn undresses and then puts on one of those hospital gowns. I tease her about her butt being on display and she pretends to be offended, but the blush gives her away. And we sit here and wait. And wait some more until another nurse comes in and has our full attention. She washes her hands in the nearby sink.

“Did you drink enough water an hour before your appointment?” the nurse asks after the hellos.

“Yes ma’am,” Camryn says.

I can tell she’s afraid something might be wrong with the baby and the ultrasound will show it. I’ve tried to tell her that everything will be fine, but it doesn’t keep her from worrying.

She looks across the room at me, and I can’t help but get up and move over to her side. The nurse asks a series of questions and snaps on a pair of latex gloves. I help answer the questions that I can, because Camryn seems increasingly more worried every second that goes by and she doesn’t talk much. I squeeze her hand, trying to ease her mind.

After the nurse squirts that gel stuff on her belly, Camryn takes a deep breath.

“Wow, that’s some tattoo you’ve got there,” the nurse says. “It must’ve been pretty special to sit through one as large as that on the ribs.”

“Yeah, it’s definitely special,” Camryn says and smiles up at me. “It’s of Orpheus. Andrew has the other half. Eurydice. But it’s a long story.”

I proudly raise my shirt over my ribs to show the nurse my half.

“Stunning,” the nurse says, looking at both of our tattoos in turns. “You don’t see that in here every day.”

The nurse leaves it at that and moves the probe through the gel pointing out the baby’s head and elbow and other various parts. And I feel Camryn’s grip on my hand slowly ease the more the nurse talks and smiles while explaining how “everything is lookin’ good.” I watch Camryn’s face go from nervous and stiff to relieved and happy, and it makes me smile.

“So are you sure there’s nothing to worry about?” Camryn asks. “Are you positive?”

The nurse nods and glances at me briefly. “Yes. So far I don’t see anything of concern. Development is right where we want it to be. Movement and heartbeat are normal. I think you can relax.”

Camryn looks up at me, and I have a feeling we’re thinking the same thing.

She confirms it when the nurse says, “So, I understand you’re curious about the gender?” And the two of us just pause, looking at one another. She’s so damn beautiful. I can’t believe she’s mine. I can’t believe she’s carrying my baby.

“I’ll take that bet,” Camryn finally agrees, catching me off guard. She smiles brightly and tugs on my hand, and we both look at the nurse.

“Yes,” Camryn answers. “If that’s possible now.”

The nurse moves the probe back to a specific area and appears to be giving her findings one last check before she announces it.

“Well, it’s still kind of early, but … looks like a girl to me so far,” the nurse finally says. “At about twenty weeks during your next ultrasound, we’ll be able to determine the sex officially.”

Camryn

TWO

I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen Andrew smile like that before. Maybe that night I sang with him the first time in New Orleans and he was so proud of me, but even still I’m not so sure anything can match his face right now. My heart is pounding against my ribs with excitement, especially over Andrew’s reaction. I can tell how much he wanted a little girl, and I swear he’s doing everything in his power to keep from tearing up in front of the nurse. Or me, for that matter.

It never mattered to me whether it was a boy or girl. I’m like just about every other expecting mom out there who just wants it to be healthy. Not that our baby’s health doesn’t take precedence over gender in Andrew’s mind, though. I know better than that.

He leans over and kisses me lightly on the lips, his bright green eyes lit up with everything good.

“Lily it is,” I say with complete agreement, and I kiss him once more before he pulls away, running my fingers through his short brown hair.

“Pretty name,” the nurse says. “But keep a boy name handy, too, just in case.” She pulls the probe back and gives us a moment.

Andrew says to the nurse suddenly, “Well, if you don’t see a little package of junk already on my kid, it’s definitely a girl.”

I choke out a small laugh and vaguely roll my eyes as I look at the nurse. What’s even funnier is that Andrew was being serious. He cocks his head to one side when he notices the amused look on my face.

We spend the rest of the day shopping. Neither of us could resist it. We’ve spent some time looking at baby stuff before but never bought much, because we didn’t know if it should be pink or blue and we didn’t want to end up with a room full of yellow. And even though there’s still a chance it could be a boy, I think Andrew is more convinced than before that it’s a girl, so I go along with it and let myself believe it, too. But he still won’t let me buy much!

“Just wait,” he insists when I go for the next girlie outfit in the newborn section. “You know my mom’s planning a baby shower, right?”

“Yeah, but we can get a few more things now.” I put the outfit in the cart anyway.

Andrew looks into the cart and then back at me with his lips pursed in contemplation. “I think you’ve surpassed a few, babe.”

He’s right. I’ve tossed about ninety dollars’ worth of clothes in the basket already. Oh well, if anything, if it turns out to be a boy I can exchange it all later.

And that’s how the rest of the day goes until we stop by his mother’s house to give her the news.

“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Marna says, pulling me into a hug. “I thought for sure it’d be a boy!”

My hands slide away from Marna’s arms, and I sit at the kitchen table with Andrew while Marna heads to the fridge. She pulls out a tea pitcher and starts preparing us a glass.

“Baby shower will be in February,” Marna says from the bar. “I’ve already got everything planned out. All you have to do is show up.” She beams at me and puts the tea pitcher away.

“Thank you,” I say.

She sets a glass down in front of each of us and then pulls out the empty chair.

I really do miss home. But I love it here, too, and Marna is like another mom to me. I haven’t been able to bring myself to tell Andrew yet about how much I miss my mom and Natalie, just having a friend to talk to. You can be in love with the greatest guy on the planet—and in fact, I am—but it doesn’t mean it won’t be somewhat difficult not having other friends. I’ve met one girl my age here, Alana, who lives upstairs with her husband, but I just haven’t been able to click with her on any kind of level. I think if I’m already making up lies to keep from going somewhere with her when she calls, then clicking with her at all might never happen.

But I really think my secret sadness and missing home and all that is because of the pregnancy. My hormones are all out of whack. And I think it also has a lot to do with worrying. I worry about everything now. I mean, I did a lot of that before I met Andrew, but now that I’m pregnant, my worries have multiplied: Will the baby be healthy? Will I be a good mother? Did I screw up my life by … I’m doing it again. Fuck. I’m a horrible person. Every time that thought crosses my mind it makes me feel so guilty. I love our baby and I wouldn’t change the way things are if I could, but I can’t help but wonder if I … if we messed up by getting pregnant too soon.

“Camryn?” I hear Andrew’s voice and I snap out of my deep thoughts. “Are you all right?”

I force a believable smile. “Yeah, I’m good. Was just daydreaming—y’know, I prefer purple over pink.”

“I got to name her,” Andrew says, “so you can choose whatever colors you want.” He encloses my hand underneath his on the table. It makes me smile just to know that he cares about any of this stuff at all.

Marna pulls her glass away from her lips and sets it on the table in front of her.

“Oh?” she asks intrigued. “You’ve already picked out a name?”

Andrew nods. “Lily Marybeth. Camryn’s middle name is Marybeth. She should be named after her mom.”

Oh my God, he just melted my heart. I don’t deserve him.

Marna smiles over at me, her face full of happiness and every other emotion imaginable that someone like Andrew’s mother could possess. Not only did her son beat his illness and come back strong from the brink of death, but now she has a granddaughter on the way.

“Well, it’s a beautiful name,” she says. “I thought Aidan and Michelle would be first, but life’s full of surprises.” Something about the way she said that seemed to have a hidden meaning and Andrew notices.

“Something going on with Aidan and Michelle?” Andrew asks, taking a quick sip of his tea.

“Just part of being married,” she answers. “I’ve never seen a marriage without some kind of struggles, and they’ve been together for a long time.”

“How long?” I ask.

“Married only five years,” Marna says. “But they’ve been together for about nine, I believe.” She nods as she thinks about it further, satisfied with her memory.

“It’s probably just Aidan,” Andrew says. “I wouldn’t wanna be married to him.” He laughs.

“Yeah, that would be weird,” I say, wrinkling my nose at him.

“Well, Michelle won’t be able to make the baby shower,” Marna says. “She has a few conferences she has to attend in December, and it just doesn’t fit with her schedule, especially since she’s so far away. But she’ll probably send the best gifts out of everyone.” She smiles sweetly over at me.

I acknowledge her and take another sip, but my mind is wandering again and I can’t stop it. All I can think about is what she said a few comments back, about never knowing of a marriage without struggles. And I slip right back into worry mode.

“Your birthday is December the eighth, right, Camryn?”

I blink back into the moment. “Oh … yes. The big twenty-one.”

“Well, looks like I have a birthday party to plan, too, then.”

“Oh, no, you don’t need to do that.”

She waves away my plea as if it’s ridiculous, and Andrew just sits back with that dopey grin on his face.

I give in because I know with Marna there’s no use trying.

We head home after an hour, and it’s already dark out. I’m so tired from running around all day and from the Lily excitement.

Lily. I can’t believe I’m going to be a mom. A smile spreads across my face as I step into the living room. I drop my purse on the coffee table and plop down on the center cushion of the couch, kicking my shoes off. But before too long, Andrew is sitting down next to me with that knowing look on his beautiful face.

I could fool Marna, but I should’ve known better than to think I could fool him.

Andrew

THREE

I lift Camryn into my arms and pull her onto my lap. We sit here together, my arms wrapped around her and my chin nestled into the crook of her neck. I know something’s bothering her. I can feel it, but a part of me is afraid to ask.

“What is it?” I ask anyway and hold my breath.

She turns to look me in the eyes, and they’re consumed with worry. “I’m just afraid.”

“What are you afraid of?”

She pauses, letting her gaze fall about the room until resting directly out in front of her. “Everything,” she says.

I reach up and turn her chin back toward me. “You can tell me anything, Camryn. You know that, right?”

Her blue eyes fill with tears, but she doesn’t let them fall.

“I … well I don’t want us to end up like … well like a lot of people.”

Oh, I know where this is going. I grab her by the waist and turn her body around so that she’s facing me, straddling my lap.

“Look at me,” I say, taking both of her hands. “We’re not going to end up like everybody else. You want to know how I know?”

She doesn’t respond, but she doesn’t need to. I know she wants me to go on. A tear escapes one eye, and I reach up and wipe it away with the pad of my thumb.

“We won’t because we’re both conscious of it,” I begin. “Because it was fate that we met on that bus in Kansas, and because we both know what we want out of life. We may not have the details mapped out—and we don’t need to—but we both know which direction we don’t want to go.”

I stop and then say, “We can still travel the world. We just have to put it off for a while longer. And in the meantime, we live our lives the way we want to. None of that daily monotonous bullshit.”

I get a tiny smile out of her.

“Well, how do we avoid that exactly?” she asks, crossing her arms and smirking down at me.

Now there’s the playful smartass Camryn I know and love.

I rub my hands up and down her thighs briskly and then say, “If you want to work, you can work. I don’t care if you want to flip burgers or shovel shit at the zoo, do whatever you want. But the second you get tired of it or feel like it’s becoming your life, walk the fuck away. And if you’d rather sit back and do nothing, you can do that too, like I’ve told you before. You know I’ll take care of you no matter what.”

I know what’s coming next, so I brace for it. And sure enough Camryn snarls at me and argues, “No way in hell will I sit back on my ass and let you take care of me.”

She’s so hot when she’s bein’ all independent.

“Well that’s fine. Whatever,” I say, raising my hands up in surrender. “But I want you to understand that I don’t care what you do as long as you’re happy doing it.”

“And what about you, Andrew? You can’t just tell me not to worry about ‘the monotony of life’ while you take it on headfirst just because we have a baby to support. That’s not fair.”

“That’s sort of what you said that first night I buried my head between your thighs. Did I have a problem with it then?”

She blushes hard. Even after all this time and all that we’ve been through together, I still manage to make her blush.

I lean up and cup her face within my hands and pull her into a kiss.

“As long as I have you, Lily, and my music, I don’t need anything else.”

Another tear streams down her soft cheek, but this time she’s smiling underneath it. “You promise?” she asks.

“Yes, I promise,” I say with determination, squeezing her hands within mine. I let the seriousness fade from my face and smile at her again.

“I’m sorry,” she says, letting out a defeated breath. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately. One day I’m all smiles and perfectly fine and then it’s like, out of nowhere, I’m doom-and-gloom pathetic.”

I laugh a little under my breath. “Bitch-slapped by mood swings. Get used to it.”

Her mouth falls open slightly, and she laughs too. “Well, I guess that’s one way of putting it.”

She stops abruptly. “Do you hear that?” Her eyes narrow as she pushes her ear toward the source of the sound. I hear but pretend not to.

“Oh great,” I say. “Don’t tell me that pregnancy causes schizophrenia, too.”

She smacks me gently on the chest and climbs off my lap. “No, it’s your cell phone,” she says, walking around to the back of the couch. “I thought the battery was dead.”

No … I just turned the ringer off and hid it to make you think that. At least I thought I turned it off.

“I think you’re sitting on your phone,” she says.

I stand up and play stupid, rummaging around underneath the cushion. Finally, I pull it out to see Natalie’s picture (technically, it’s a picture of a hyena that I thought represented her best) looking back at us from the screen. Dammit. This is going to be awkward.

Camryn reaches out for it when she notices Natalie’s name.

“Since when did Natalie start calling you?” she asks, snatching it from my hand.

Yes, definitely awkward because she doesn’t look the slightest bit jealous. She’s grinning!

I reach up and nervously scratch the back of my head, avoiding eye contact, but then I try to take it back from her.

“Oh, no way in hell,” she laughs, stepping away from the couch.

“Come on, give me the phone.”

She taunts me with it as I leap over the back of the couch to go after her.

She thrusts her empty hand out at me. “Be careful! I’m pregnant and you might hurt me!” She smirks.

Oh now she plays the I’m-too-fragile card. So evil.

She runs her finger over the Answer bar and puts the phone to her ear, grinning the whole time.

I just give up. I suck at this stuff.

“Well, hello Natalie,” Camryn says, her playful gaze never moving from me. “Have you been seeing my man behind my back?”

She shakes her head at whatever Natalie’s answer is. It’s obvious Camryn knows what’s going on, or at least has a pretty good idea, because she knows I’d never cheat on her, especially not with her best friend. The girl is pretty but, yeah, she’s like a reality TV train wreck.

Camryn puts her on speakerphone. “Out with it, both of you,” she demands.

“Ummm … uhhh …,” Natalie manages on the other end.

“For the first time ever, Natalie has nothing to say. I’m shocked!” Camryn looks to me for the answers.

“Sorry, Andrew!” Natalie shouts.

“Not your fault,” I say. “I left the ringer on.”

Camryn clears her throat impatiently.

“It was going to be a surprise,” I say, frowning.

“Yeah! I swear he’s not doing me!”

I outwardly cringe at Natalie’s comment and Camryn tries her damnedest to hold back her laughter. But being Camryn, she won’t pass up any opportunity to torture those she loves, though with the most innocent of intentions.

“I don’t believe you, Nat,” she says gravely.

“Huh?” Natalie sounds completely stunned.

“How long has it been going on?” Camryn continues, putting on a convincing show. She walks around and sets the phone down on the coffee table and then crosses her arms.

“Cam … I swear to God it’s nothing like that. Oh my God, I would never, ever, ever do something like that to you. I mean Andrew is smokin’ hot, yeah, I totally admit that, and I would probably be on him like sexy on Joseph Morgan if you two weren’t together, but—”

“I get it, Nat.” Camryn stops her—thankfully—before she goes off on what Camryn calls a Natalie Tangent.

“You do?” Natalie asks carefully, still confused, which doesn’t surprise me.

Camryn picks the phone up again and holds the screen up to me and mouths the words: Seriously? Apparently about the picture of the hyena.

I shrug.

“So, what’s really going on?” Camryn says to both of us, setting the jokes aside.

“Camryn,” I say, walking toward her, “I know you’re missing home. I’ve known for a while, so a couple weeks ago I got Natalie’s number from your phone and decided to give her a call.”

Camryn narrows her eyes. I guide her to sit back down on the couch with me.

“Yeah, he called me up and told me your ultrasound date and thought I might want to …” Natalie’s voice trails, waiting on me to be the one to spill the surprise.

“I figured she would want to organize a baby shower for you when we found out if it was a boy or a girl—I tried calling your mom first, but she must’ve still been in Cozumel.”

Camryn nods. “Yeah, she likely was around that time.”

“But your mom is totally onboard now,” Natalie’s voice streams through the tiny speaker. “She and I were kind of planning it together behind your back. I couldn’t wait any longer for your boy toy to call me with the news today, so I called him and now you know everything and the surprise is ruined!”

“No, no, Nat, it’s not ruined at all,” Camryn says, picking the phone up and holding it closer to her mouth as she leans her back into the couch. “It’s actually better that I know now, because I can be excited from now until then knowing I’m heading back to North Carolina soon.”

“Well you won’t have to wait long,” I say beside her, “because we’re leaving Friday afternoon.”

Camryn’s eyes widen and so does her smile.

I think this is just what she needed. It’s like a happy girl just crawled her way to the surface of a homesick one in two seconds flat. I love to see her like this. I should’ve done it sooner.

“Four months is kind of early for a baby shower, though,” Camryn says. “Not that I’m complaining!”

“Maybe so,” Natalie says. “But who cares? You’re coming home!”

I say, “Yeah, we figured why not knock out two birds with one stone?”

“Well, I’m excited. Thank you both,” Camryn says, beaming.

“So … what’s the big news?” Natalie asks.

Camryn holds it in for a few long, torturous seconds, knowing it’s driving Natalie batshit, and then she says, “It’s a girl!”

Natalie squeals so loud through the phone I wince and recoil.

“I knew it!” she shrieks.

Normally this would be reason enough for me to remove myself from the slumber party atmosphere and go make a sandwich or take a shower or something, but I can’t get myself off the hook so soon on this one. I was part of the “big secret,” and so I guess I should stick out the rest of the conversation.

“I’m so excited, Cam. Really, you have no idea.”

“Actually, uhh, yeah she has a pretty good idea,” I say.

Camryn looks at me warningly.

“Thank you, Nat. I’m excited, too. And we’ve already decided on a name. Well, technically Andrew chose the name.”

“What?” Natalie says in a deadpanned tone. “You mean like he actually … picked it out?” She says this as if it’s something very dangerous.

What, do all women think guys suck at names, or some shit?

“Lily Marybeth Parrish,” Camryn says proudly.

It makes me feel that much better that my girl really seems to love the name as much as I do and isn’t just pretending to keep from hurting my feelings.

“Oh my God, I actually like that, Cam. Andrew, you did good!”

Not that I needed the Natalie stamp of approval, but it still makes me grin like a little boy that even she likes it.

Camryn

FOUR

Yesterday was an exhausting day. In a good way. Good news seemed to come from everywhere, and I’m still reeling about it all. It’ll only make tonight at our favorite bar in Houston that much more exciting.

Andrew and I started playing a few bars here and there a little over a month ago, and I love it. Before Andrew, I never in my life imagined playing live in bars. Playing live anywhere, for that matter. It’s not something that crossed my mind even once. But the taste I got for it back in New Orleans opened up a new world to me. Of course, Andrew being there with me played a huge part in my enjoyment of it and that still holds true today. I doubt I could keep doing this if it weren’t for him.

Performing isn’t what I enjoy the most; performing with him is what makes me love it.

I talk to my mom for a while about coming home in a couple of days, and she’s so excited to see me. She and Roger got hitched in Mexico! It kind of ticked me off because I didn’t get to be there, but now that I think about it more it doesn’t bother me. They were being spontaneous. They did what they felt they wanted to do in their hearts and just went for it. I’ve learned during my time with Andrew that being spontaneous and breaking free from the mold is often a good thing. After all, we wouldn’t be together today if I myself didn’t have some firsthand experience with being spontaneous.

As far as our own wedding date, well, we haven’t set one. We talked about it one night and agreed that we will get married when and wherever it feels right. No dates. No planning. No five-thousand-dollar dress that I’ll only wear once. No matching the flowers with the décor. No best man or maids of honor. All of that stuff stresses both of us out just thinking about it.

We’ll get married when we’re ready, and we both know that the wait has nothing to do with not being sure. It’s what we both want, there’s no mistaking that.

I hear Andrew rustling the keys in the apartment door and I meet him there. I jump up, wrapping my legs tight around his waist, and kiss him fully on the mouth. He slams the door shut with his foot and wraps his arms around me, keeping his lips locked with mine.

“What was that for?” he asks, pulling away.

“I’m just excited.”

His dimples deepen.

I hold on to him with my arms draped around his neck as he carries me through the living room and into the kitchen.

“I wish I would’ve taken you home sooner,” he says, setting me on top of the bar. He stands between my suspended legs and tosses his keys on the counter.

“None of that guilty stuff,” I say, pecking him once on the lips. “I’ll miss Texas if I stay in North Carolina too long, I’m sure.”

He smiles but doesn’t seem convinced of that.

“You don’t have to make a decision now,” he says, “but I do want you to decide where we’re going to live, and I don’t want you picking Texas because of me. I love my mom, but I won’t be as homesick as you.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because I’ve lived on my own for a while,” he says. “You never got the chance to do that before you left Raleigh.”

He grins, stepping back subtly, and adds, “Besides, you’re all hormonal and crazy and shit, so I’ll gladly do whatever you say and you won’t get any arguments from me.”

I playfully kick my leg out at him, but miss him on purpose.

He leans in between my legs, lifts the end of my shirt, and then presses his warm lips against my belly.

“What about Billy Frank?” I ask as he lifts upright. “If you leave him again he might never hire you back.”

Andrew laughs and makes his way around the bar and toward the cabinets. I swing around on the top of the bar to face him, hanging my legs over the opposite side.

“Billy Frank has been my boss off and on since I was sixteen,” he says, taking down a box of cereal. “We’re more like family, so it’s not your average mechanic job. I need him more than he needs me.”

“Why do you still do it?” I ask.

“What, work under a hood?”

I nod.

He pours milk over the cereal he just made and puts it back in the fridge. “I like working on cars,” he says and then takes a monstrous bite. With his mouth full, he goes on, “Kind of like a hobby, I guess. And besides, I like to keep the money flowing in the bank.”

I feel a little small, not having a job yet. He senses it, like he seems to sense just about everything. He swallows the food and points his spoon at me. “Don’t do that.”

I just look at him curiously, pretending not to know about how easily he caught on.

He sits on the barstool next to me, propping his shoes on the spindles below.

“You do realize you work, right?” he asks, looking at me in a sidelong manner. “Last week we raked in four hundred bucks the night we played at Levy’s. Four hundred in one night ain’t too shabby.”

“I know,” I say. “It just doesn’t feel like a job.”

He laughs lightly, shaking his head. “It doesn’t feel like a job because you happen to enjoy it. And because you’re not punching a clock.”

He has a point, but I wasn’t quite finished explaining. “If we were constantly on the road, didn’t have rent and utilities and a baby on the way, it would be different.” I take a sharp breath and just get to the point. “I want to get a hobby job. Like you.”

He nods. “Awesome,” he says and takes another bite, all the while sitting casually with his arms resting on the bar around his bowl. “What would you like to do?” He points at me. “Note the important keyword in that question: like.”

I think on it a moment, pursing my lips in contemplation.

“Well, I like to clean, so maybe I could get a job at a hotel,” I begin. “Or it might be nice to work at Starbucks or something.”

He shakes his head. “I doubt you’ll like cleaning rooms,” he says. “My mom used to do that before my dad started his business. People leave nasty shit in those rooms.”

I cringe. “Well, I’ll figure something out. As soon as we get to Raleigh, I’ll look for a job.”

Andrew’s spoon pauses just above his bowl. “So your decision is to move back home, then?”

Andrew

FIVE

I didn’t mean to cause her face to go all stiff like that. I move my bowl out of the way and pull her toward me, sliding her across the bar top. I rest my arms across the tops of her bare legs and look at her with the most sincere smile.

“I’m really OK with it, babe.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Definitely.” I lean over and kiss the top of her left thigh and then the other. “We’ll go for the baby shower this weekend, come back here and start packing.”

She grabs my hands. “But after we move, we’ll definitely have to come back here in February for the shower your mom is planning.”

My smile widens. “Sounds like a plan,” I say, not surprised, though, that she’s taking my mom’s feelings into consideration, too. “So then it’s settled. Raleigh will be our new home. At least until we get tired of it.”

Camryn, happier now than she was when she first greeted me at the door, reaches out and grabs me around the neck. I stand up and lift her back into my arms, her cute butt propped in my hands.

“Sorry about the cereal,” she says.

“Huh?”

She lowers her eyes. “I bet when you dreamed about being married you pictured your wife cooking man-meals that’d make Gordon Ramsay’s toes curl.”

I throw my head back and laugh.

“No, I never really thought about stuff like that,” I say, our faces just inches apart. “Now the toe-curling stuff, trust me, you’ve got that down pat.”

She squeezes her thighs around my waist, her face getting redder. I kiss her on the nose and then look into her beautiful blue eyes. I close my eyes and feel the minty warmth of her breath close in on me. Her tongue gently touches my bottom lip, urging my mouth to part for hers. I give in so easily, touching the edge of her tongue to mine before I kiss her forcefully, squeezing her body in my arms. I carry her off to our bedroom, never breaking the kiss, and I have my way with her for the next hour before we head out to Houston to play.

We arrive at the airport in North Carolina midday Friday, and already I see the spark in Camryn’s eyes. It’s only her second time back here in four months. We get our bags and head outside in the sunshine to find Natalie and Blake waiting to pick us up. And just like the first time I met her, I brace myself to stand face-to-face with Camryn’s hyena of a best friend.

“I missed you so much, Cam!” Natalie engulfs her in a hug.

Blake—I might start calling him Blondie for the hell of it—stands tall behind Natalie with his hands buried deep in his pockets, his shoulders slumped over, and a big goofy smile on his tanned face. I can tell which one of those two is the master of their domain. That guy is whipped hardcore. I laugh it off inside. More power to him. Hell, I can’t say anything …

“Andrew!” Natalie moves toward me next, and I put up my invisible crazy shield as I return her unsolicited hug.

OK, the truth is I don’t like Natalie much. I don’t hate her, but she’s the kind of girl I wouldn’t think twice about talking to without Camryn being in the mix. And what she did to Camryn before Camryn got on that bus left a bad fucking taste in my mouth. I’m all for forgiveness, but just that Natalie could do something like that to begin with is cause for caution around her all of the time. It was hard for me to take it upon myself to call her up that day two weeks ago and tell her about Camryn’s ultrasound date and all that. But I was doing it for Camryn, and that’s all that matters to me.

“Good to see you again, Blake,” Camryn says, pulling him into a friendly hug.

I know everything about Blake, too, about how he was interested in Camryn first before later hooking up with Natalie. And regardless of his attraction to Camryn before we met, he’s all right in my book.

He and I shake hands.

“Oh my God, let me see!” Natalie says. She lifts up Camryn’s shirt, places both hands carefully over her stomach, and beams up at her. A tiny squeal-like sound reverberates through Natalie’s throat, and I find myself wondering how a human body can make such noises.

“I can be Aunt Natalie, or Godmother Natalie!”

Ummm, how about no?

Camryn’s smiling head nods rapidly, and I just make sure I’m not putting off any negative energy that she can detect. The last thing I want to do is ruin this homecoming for her by letting her know I tolerate her best friend only for her sake.

Camryn

SIX

North Carolina

The baby shower my mom and Natalie threw turned out great. I ended up with a brand-new baby bed, a walker, a swing, a high chair, two baby bathtubs—one pink and one blue, just in case—about 984 diapers—well, it seems like a lot of diapers—multiple bottles of baby shampoo and powder, and something called Anti Monkey Butt and Butt Paste, which is really disturbing, and … I can’t remember all of this stuff and some of it I have absolutely no idea what it is.

After a while of sitting in the room surrounded by everyone, I start to feel overwhelmed, but I’m ready to tone this get-together down and soak in a long, hot bath.

Two more hours drag by and everyone has left except for Natalie, who finds me soaking in that much-needed bath, surrounded by frothy bubbles.

“Cam?” I hear Natalie’s voice on the other side of the bathroom door. She knocks softly a few times.

“Come on in,” I say.

The door creeps open and Natalie peeks around the side. Wouldn’t be the first time she saw me naked.

She sits on the closed toilet lid.

“Well, it’s official,” she says, grinning down at me, “pregnancy does make the boobs bigger.”

As always, she’s exaggerating.

I raise my hand from the water and flick droplets at her.

“Are you feeling all right?” she asks, toning down the jokes. “You look exhausted.”

“I’m pregnant,” I say flatly.

“True, but Cam, you look like shit.”

“Thanks.” I reach back, readjust the clip I put in my hair to keep it from getting wet, then relax my arm along the side of the tub.

“Well, aren’t you supposed to be glowing? That’s what they say pregnant women do.”

I shrug and shake my head against the back of the tub.

A dull wave of pain moves through my lower back and passes as quickly as it came. I grimace and readjust my body.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” She looks more concerned than she needs to.

“Aches and pains. Nothing to worry about. It’s only going to get worse from here on out, I imagine. Aches and pains, that is.” I don’t know why I felt compelled to clear that last part up, except that I wanted to make sure she knew I didn’t mean it any other way.

“Still no morning sickness?” she asks. “I’d take a little back pain over puking my guts up, any day.”

“Nope,” I say. “But let’s not jinx it, Nat.”

I admit, if it were actually a choice, I’d choose pain over puke, too. And so far it looks like that’s what I’m getting. I guess I’ve been one of the lucky ones who the morning sickness passes right over. And I don’t have any weird cravings, either. So, either I’m a freak of nature, or all that talk about pickles and ice cream is just a load of crap.

I get out of the tub and wrap a towel around my body before hugging Natalie good-bye.

Then I lie across my bed, remembering how comfortable it was. But I don’t miss this room so much, or feel any sense of longing to get back into my old life. No. The “old life” I still want to avoid, and this is the number one reason I’ve been so divided about whether to come home or not. I’ve missed my mom and Natalie, and I admit that I’ve just missed North Carolina in general. But I don’t miss it in the way that makes me want to end right back up here doing the same things I was doing before. I ran away from that lifestyle for a reason, and I’m not about to run right back to it.

Instead of going out with Natalie and Blake later in the evening, I decide to stay here and go to bed early. I feel overly exhausted, as if my body is being drained of energy faster than normal, and the back pain hasn’t really subsided at all, either. It has been coming and going for the past few hours.

Andrew crawls into the bed with me and lies on his side, his head propped on his knuckles. “I feel like I’m doing something I shouldn’t, being up here in your childhood room with you like this.” He grins.

I smile slimly and bury my body deeper underneath the blanket. It’s only a little chilly outside, but I’m freezing. I pull the blanket up to my chin, curling my fingers tight around the fuzzy fabric.

“If my dad was here,” I say, chuckling, “you’d be in Cole’s room.”

He moves closer to me and drapes his arm over my waist. At first it seems like he’s about to take full advantage of the fact that we’re finally alone, but his expression hardens and he moves his arm from my waist and runs his fingers through the top of my hair.

“OK, you’re starting to worry me,” he says. “You’ve been acting strange since I got back here with Blake. What’s going on?”

I pull my body closer toward his and say, “You and Natalie both, I swear.” I gaze at him across the few inches of space between our faces.

“Oh, so then she noticed, too?” he asks.

I nod. “Just some back pain and generally feeling like shit, but you two fail to remember my predicament.”

He barely smiles back at me. “Maybe you should go to the doctor and get checked out.”

I shake my head gently. “I’m not going to be one of those paranoid people who run to the hospital for every little thing. I was at the doctor’s office just last week. Everything’s fine. Even she said so.” I lean toward him and kiss him softly on the lips and smile a little more, hoping to ease his mind.

He smiles back and moves the blanket from around my body so he can curl up next to me. I lift up and lie on my other side so that my back is facing him, and he presses his warm body against mine, wrapping his arm around me from behind. He’s so warm that I melt into him, knowing it’ll only be minutes before I’m fast asleep. I feel his breath on my neck as he kisses me there. I close my eyes and take him in, his natural scent that I always crave, the hardness of his arms and legs, the heat coming from his skin. I honestly doubt I’ll ever be able to fall asleep without him next to me again.

“If it gets worse,” he says in a quiet voice behind me, “you better tell me. I don’t want you to also be one of those stubborn people who doesn’t get checked out when they know something could be wrong.”

I turn my head slightly in his direction, looking faintly amused.

“Oh, you mean like someone I know who refused to see a doctor for eight months because he was so sure his brain tumor was inoperable?”

He sighs and I feel the heat from his breath on my shoulder. My intention was to get a laugh out of him, but apparently he doesn’t find it funny.

“Just promise me,” he says and squeezes me gently with his arm. “Any more pain or anything weird, you’ll tell me and we’ll go to the hospital.”

I give in, not because I want to appease him but because he’s right. I’ve never been pregnant before, so I know as much about what is normal and what isn’t as any other first-time mom-to-be.

SEVEN

It’s Sunday afternoon, and I think all I needed yesterday was a good sleep. I feel a little better today, and the back pain is gone. I get dressed and go ahead and pack my things so everything will be ready when Andrew and I leave later tonight to catch our plane back to Texas. But before we head back, I have a girls’ day out to spend with Natalie, and I’m looking forward to it.

“Are you sure you don’t mind hanging out with Blake?” I ask as Andrew slips a navy T-shirt down over his abs. He’s standing in front of the mirror fixing his hair, if you can call running his fingers through it once fixing it. He never has cared much what it looks like as long as it’s not sticking up in places it shouldn’t be.

He turns around to face me. “I don’t mind. Blake’s a pretty cool guy. We’re going to head over to some pool hall and shoot a few games for a while.” He wraps his arms around my waist. “Don’t worry about me. Just have a good time with Natalie.”

I laugh lightly. “Y’know, if she finds out about that picture you used for her on your phone, she’s going to kill you.”

Andrew’s grin deepens. “You’re very brave, Camryn Bennett.” He cups my shoulders within his hands and shakes his head at me dramatically. “I would die under the weight of that girl’s personality if I had to spend more than an hour in the same room with her. Either that or I’d jab my eardrums with a pencil, whichever came first.”

I choke out a laugh and press my hands hard against his chest. “You’re so mean!”

“Why yes, yes, I am,” he says, grinning hugely.

He leans in and presses his lips against my forehead. I do one better and gently grab the front of his shirt and pull him toward me, locking lips with his.

“It’s not too late to get it on in here, just so you know.” His hooded green eyes scan my face and then my lips before he kisses me again, tugging my bottom lip with his teeth.

“Oh hell yeah it is,” I hear Natalie say from the door of my room.

The kiss breaks and we both turn around at the same time to see her standing there with her arms crossed and wearing a lopsided smirk. Her long, dark hair rests over both shoulders. First thing I do is wonder just how much she overheard.

Andrew covertly rolls his eyes at the intrusion. Poor guy. The things he does for me.

Natalie saunters into the room and plops down on the end of my bed. Obviously she didn’t hear anything incriminating or else we’d know it by now. She slaps her hands together sharply and says, “Chop! Chop! We’re going to get pedicures and manicures and all kinds of cures today.”

By the look on Andrew’s face, I know he wants so damn bad to call her on that foot-in-her-mouth moment. I glare at him sharply to warn him not to say a word and he just smiles, zipped lips and all.

“Feelin’ any better today?” Natalie asks.

I slip my feet down into my Rocket Dog loafers—or as Andrew calls them, the ugliest shoes he’s ever seen—and then start brushing out my hair.

“Yeah, actually I do feel better,” I say, looking at her through the reflection in the mirror. “Still a little off, but better than yesterday.”

“Do me a favor and keep an eye on her,” Andrew says to Natalie. “If she starts complaining of pains or whatever, give me a call, all right?”

Natalie nods. “Sure thing. I mean it wouldn’t be the first time the girl ignored a health problem. Last year she lay around for two days moaning and groaning about a toothache—it was so annoying—before she finally went to the dentist.”

“I’m standing right here,” I say, pausing with the brush against my hair.

Natalie waves me off and goes back to Andrew. “I’ll call you if she sneezes more than four times in a row.”

“Good,” Andrew says and then turns back around to me. “You hear that?” he asks sternly. “I’ve got backup now.”

Since when did Andrew become part of the Natalie clique? Just a few seconds ago he was one hundred percent anti-Natalie. I shake my head and go back to my hair, twirling it through my fingers into a braid and snapping a rubber band on the end.

Andrew kisses me and Lily good-bye and heads out to wherever with Blake. And I’m heading out the door with Natalie shortly after, hoping I can get through this day without back pains or anything else that might trigger Natalie to call Andrew and haul my ass off to the nearest emergency room.

We spend some time in our usual Starbucks first and then hit the mall to swing by Bath and Body Works, where Natalie has been working for a month. She introduces me to her manager and the two girls who work with her. I forget their names right after they tell me. Her manager is nice, even told me to come back and fill out an application if I wanted. Natalie jumped right in to explain that I would be heading back to Texas soon, and when I didn’t confirm her statement fast enough, Natalie knew I was holding something in and she could hardly stand it. I smiled and thanked her manager, and the next thing I know, Natalie is practically dragging me out of the store and is in my face.

“Spill it!” she says, her eyes bugged out of her head.

I step over to the balcony railing and lean against it. She follows, dropping her purse and one store bag on the floor next to her feet.

I contemplate my answer, because really I’m not sure what to say. I can’t say that yes, I’m moving back to Raleigh, because to Natalie that will translate as: I’m moving back here and everything is going to be exactly the way it was before. What it really means is that I miss Natalie and my mom, and because Texas and I just weren’t right for each other.

The truth suddenly dawns on me as I stare out intently across the mall. All those days I lay around in bed staring up at the ceiling while Andrew was working at the shop with Billy Frank, I kept trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with me, why I’ve been feeling so homesick yet at the same time not really wanting to come back home. I remember when I first arrived in Texas with Andrew. Hell, I remember while we were on the road together shortly before we drove over the Texas state line. I didn’t want to go there. I was afraid that everything would end in Texas, that the exciting life I was living with Andrew on the road would become nothing more than a memory once we made it to our final destination.

And in a way … it has …

I swallow a huge lump in my throat and mentally catch my breath.

It’s not because of Lily. I love her so much and could never blame her. Because the truth is that life doesn’t end with a pregnancy. A lot of people seem to think that, but I believe in my heart that it’s all in the way you choose to live it. Sure, having a baby is one of the most difficult things to do, but it’s not the end of the world. It doesn’t have to be the shattering of a person’s dreams. What Andrew and I have been slowly doing without realizing it is what shatters dreams: we’ve been getting too comfortable. The kind of comfortable that sneaks up on you years later, hits you in the back of the head, and says: Hey dumbass! Do you realize you’ve been doing this shit every day for the past ten years?

I keep my eyes trained out ahead. “I’m not sure what we’re doing, Nat,” I say and then finally look over at her. “I mean, yes, I’m moving back home, but …”

Her dark eyebrows draw inward with a questioning look. “But what?”

I look away, and when I don’t answer her fast enough she says, “Oh, no, don’t tell me Andrew’s not coming with you. Girl, is something going on with you two?”

I swing back around. “No, Nat, it’s nothing like that, and yes, he’s definitely coming with me—I don’t know. It’s just hard to explain.”

She purses her lips, lifting one side of her mouth, and takes a hold of my elbow. “We’ve got all afternoon for you to figure it out, so let’s get to the salon and you can be thinking really hard about it on the way.” She bends over and takes up her purse and bag, dangling them on her free wrist while walking with me toward the closest mall exit.

We’re at the salon in minutes and it’s a packed house, which is exactly how I remembered it being on weekends. Natalie and I are perched high in the pedicure chairs with two girls tending to our bare feet. It’s been a long time since my last pedicure, so I hope my toes aren’t too hideous.

“You know, Cam, you never did tell me why you left.” Natalie looks over at me. “Please tell me it wasn’t my fault.”

“It wasn’t anyone’s fault in particular,” I say. “I just needed to get away for a while. I couldn’t breathe.”

“Well, I’d never do something that reckless, but I admit, the way things turned out was nothing short of amazing.”

That makes me smile. “They did, didn’t they?”

“Absolutely,” she says beaming, her brown eyes lit up. “You ended up with sex on legs”—the girl doing her pedicure glances up briefly—“an engagement ring, and a cute-ass baby on the way.” Natalie laughs. “I’m fuckin’ jealous!”

I laugh too, though not as loud. “First off, why be jealous of me when you’ve got Blake? And second, how do you know what our baby will look like?”

Natalie purses her lips and looks over at me like I’m stupid. “Seriously? The two of you couldn’t produce an ugly baby.” The girl doing my toes rolls her eyes at the other girl. “And I’m not jealous of you because of Andrew, I’m jealous because I’ll probably end up like my mom, never seeing much outside of North Carolina. I’m OK with that. I’m not like Miss Greyhound, and I feel claustrophobic when someone breathes on me too closely, but in a way I do envy you.”

I think to myself about what she said, but I don’t elaborate on it.

My back is starting to hurt again, and I try readjusting myself on the seat without being able to move my feet much. My side hurts a little, too, but I’m sure it’s from all of the walking around today.

“So have you figured it out?” Natalie asks.

“What?”

She blinks, surprised at how easily it seems I forgot our conversation at the mall. I didn’t forget at all; I’ve just been trying to avoid it.

“The truth is,” I begin, looking away from her and picturing Andrew in my mind, “I don’t want to move back home or stay in Texas. I mean I do want to be here, but I’m terrified I’ll end up like your mom, too.” I never would’ve used her mom as an example, but it really was the easiest way to make Natalie understand, especially since she just used the same comparison moments ago, so it was a no-brainer.

“Yeah, I totally get you,” Natalie says, nodding. “But what else would you do? There’s really not much you can do otherwise, especially with a baby on the way.”

God, why did she have to say that? I sigh quietly and try not to look at her so she doesn’t see the disappointment in my face. Natalie is my best friend, but I’ve always known she’ll be one of those people who live out their entire lives in a colorless bubble and only wake up to regret it when it’s too late to change it. She just proved it with her comment about how having a baby pretty much means the end of line as far as a fun, fulfilling kind of life is concerned. And because she’ll never understand, I don’t respond to that, either.

“Cam? You sure you’re OK?”

I catch my breath and look over at her. Another sharp pain moves through my side and suddenly I feel like I’m starting to break out in a mild sweat. Without regard to the girl doing my pedicure, I pull my foot away from her hands and grab the arms of the chair to lift myself out of it.

“I need to go the restroom.”

“Camryn?”

“I’m alright, Nat,” I say, stepping down from the chair. “Sorry,” I say to the girl, and I make my way past her and head toward the short hallway underneath the restroom sign. I try not to look like I’m in pain on the way because I don’t want Natalie following me, but knowing her she will, anyway.

Placing my hand on the stall door, I swing it open and lock myself inside, finally able to show my true level of discomfort. Tiny beads of sweat cover my forehead and the area underneath my nostrils. Something’s definitely not right. This may be my first time ever experiencing a pregnancy, but I can still tell that what I’m feeling right now isn’t normal. I use the restroom quickly, head out of the tiny stall that’s only adding to the discomfort, and move over to the elongated sink.

This can’t be happening …

My hands are shaking uncontrollably. No, my whole body is shaking. I raise my hand to the automatic soap dispenser and wash my hands but I never get the chance to dry them off before what is going on hits me full force. I break down in a blubbering mess, pressing my hands against the edge of the counter. The physical pain is gone for now, but … maybe I’m just being paranoid. Yeah, that’s all it is. Paranoia. The pain is gone, so surely I’m all right.

I take a deep breath and then several more before raising my head from between my slouching shoulders and look at myself in the mirror. I lift one wet hand and wipe the sweat from my face and the leftover tears from my cheeks. I even feel better long enough to be grossed out when I realize I’m standing in a public restroom with bare feet.

The entrance door swings open and Natalie marches inside.

“Seriously, are you OK? No, I take that back, obviously you’re not, so what’s going on? I’m calling Andrew. Right now.” She starts to leave the restroom and go back into the front where her phone is, but I stop her.

“Nat, no, just wait.”

“Screw that,” she says. “I’m calling him in exactly sixty seconds, so you have less than that now to explain.”

I give in because as much as I wanted to let myself believe I’m OK, deep down I know I’m not. Especially after what I saw before I left the stall.

“I’ve been having back and side pain and I’m spotting.”

“Spotting? You mean like … blood?” She looks at me in a suspicious sidelong glance and then holds it there until I answer.

“Yes.”

Without another word, the bathroom door swings shut behind her and she’s gone.

Now, there comes a time in a person’s life when you have to face something so horrible that you feel like you’ll never be the same person again. It’s like something dark swoops down from somewhere above and steals every shred of happiness you have ever felt and all you can do is watch it, feel it go, knowing that no matter what you do in your life that you’ll never be able to get it back. Everybody goes through this at least once. No one is immune. But what I fail to understand is how one person can go through it enough for five people and in such a short time.

I’m lying in an emergency room hospital bed curled up within a blanket. Natalie sits on the chair to my left. I can’t speak. I’m too scared.

“What the fuck is taking them so long?” Natalie says about the doctors. She stands up and begins to pace the room, her tall heels clicking softly against the bright white tile floor.

Then she changes her tune.

She stops and looks at me and says with a hopeful face, “Maybe since they’re taking their sweet time about checking you out, they don’t think it’s anything to worry about.”

I don’t believe that, but I can’t bring myself to say it out loud. This is only the second time I’ve ever been to an ER. My first time, when I nearly drowned after jumping off bluffs into the lake, it seemed I was in there for six hours. And that was mostly just to stitch up the gash I got on my hip from when I hit the rocks.

I roll over and lie on my side and stare at the wall. Just seconds after, the sliding glass door opens. I think it’s finally a doctor, but my heart skips a few beats when Andrew comes into the room. He and Natalie exchange a few low words that I pretend not to hear.

“They haven’t even been in here yet except to ask her a few questions and to give her a blanket.”

Andrew’s eyes fall on mine briefly, and I see the worry in his face even though he’s trying really hard not to be so obvious. He knows what’s happening as much as I do, but also like me, he’s not going to say it or let himself believe it until a doctor confirms it first.

They talk for a few seconds more and then Natalie comes over to the side of the bed and leans over to hug me.

“Only one person allowed in here with you at a time,” she says as she pulls away. “I’m going to sit out in the waiting area with Blake.” She forces a smile at me. “You’ll be alright. And if they don’t hurry up and do something, I’m going to raise some hell up in this bitch.”

I smile a little, too, thankful for Natalie’s ability to make that happen even in my darkest hour.

She stops at the door and whispers to Andrew, “Please let me know as soon as you do,” and then she slips out of the room, closing the glass door behind her.

My heart sinks when Andrew looks at me again, because this time I have his full attention. He pulls the empty chair over and sets it down next to my bed. He takes my hand and squeezes it gently.

“I know you feel like shit,” he says, “so I’m not going to ask.”

I try to smile, but I can’t.

We just look at each other for a while. It’s like we know what the doctor will say. Neither one of us are allowing ourselves to believe that maybe, just maybe, things will be OK. Because they won’t be. But Andrew, doing everything he can to comfort me, won’t allow himself to cry or to appear too concerned. But I know that he’s wearing a mask for my sake. I know his heart is hurting.

Before long, a doctor comes in with a nurse and in some strange, dreamlike state I eventually hear him say that there is no heartbeat. I think the world has come out from underneath me, but I’m not sure. I see Andrew’s eyes, glazed over by a thin layer of moisture as he stares at the doctor while the doctor speaks words that have faded into the background of my mind.

Lily’s heart is no longer beating.

And I think … yeah, neither is mine …

Andrew

EIGHT

We’ve been in Raleigh for two weeks now. I won’t even go into all the shit we—Camryn—has gone through in that time. I refuse to talk about the details. Lily is gone, and Camryn and I are devastated. There’s nothing I can do to bring her back, and I’m trying to cope any way I can, but Camryn hasn’t been herself since that day and I’m starting to wonder if she ever will be again. She won’t talk to anyone. Not to me or her mom or Natalie. She talks, just not about what happened. I can’t stand to see her this way because it’s obvious, under that I’m-perfectly-fine façade, that she’s in so much pain. And I feel powerless to help her.

Camryn has been in the shower for a long time while I’ve lain here in her bedroom staring up at the ceiling. My phone rings next to me on the nightstand.

“Hello?” I ask.

It’s Natalie. “I need to talk to you. Are you alone?”

Caught off guard, it takes me a second to reply. “What for? And yes, Camryn’s in the shower.”

I glance toward the door to make sure no one is listening. The water is still running in the shower, so I know Camryn is still in there.

“Has her mom said anything to you about … anything?” Natalie asks suspiciously, and I get the strangest feeling from it.

“You need to elaborate a little more than that,” I say. Already this conversation is annoying the piss out of me.

She sighs heavily into the phone and I’m growing impatient.

“OK, listen; Cam is obviously not herself,” she begins (yeah, no shit), “and you need to try to talk her into going back to her psychiatrist. Soon.”

Her psychiatrist?

I hear the water shut off, and I glance toward the closed door again.

“What are you talking about, her psychiatrist?” I ask in a lowered voice.

“Yeah, she used to see one and—”

“Wait,” I whisper harshly.

The bathroom door opens, and I hear Camryn shuffling back toward the room.

“She’s coming back,” I say really fast. “I’ll call you back in a few.”

I hang up and set the phone on the nightstand seconds before Camryn opens the door wearing a pink bathrobe and a towel wrapped around her head.

“Hey,” I say as I pull my hands behind the back of my head and lock my fingers.

All I really want to do is call Natalie back and find out everything she was going to tell me, but instead I do one better and just go to the source. Besides, I’m not about keeping secrets from her. Been there, done that once, and I won’t do it again.

She smiles across the room at me, then tosses her hair over and works the towel in it with her hands.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” she says, rising back up and letting her wet blonde hair fall behind her.

“Did you used to see a psychiatrist?”

The smile disappears from her face and is instantly replaced by a deadpanned expression. She walks over to the closet and opens it. “Why do you ask?”

“Because Natalie just called and suggested that I try to get you to go back.”

She shakes her head with her back to me and starts sifting through the clothes hanging in front of her. “Leave it to Natalie to make me out to be a crazy person.”

Still in my boxers, I get out of the bed, letting the sheet fall away from my body and I walk over to her, placing my hands on her hips from behind.

“Seeing a psychiatrist doesn’t make anyone crazy,” I say. “Maybe you should go. Just to talk to someone.”

It does bother me that I can’t be that someone, but that’s not the important issue.

“Andrew, I’ll be fine.” She turns around and smiles sweetly at me, placing her fingertips on the edge of my jawline. Then she kisses my lips. “I promise. I know you and Nat and my mom are really worried about me and I don’t fault you for that, but I’m not going to a psychiatrist. It’s ridiculous.” She turns back around and pulls a shirt from a hanger. “Besides, what those people really want to do is write a prescription and send me on my way. I’m not taking any mental drugs.”

“Well, you don’t have to take any ‘mental’ drugs, but I think if you had someone else to talk to it would help make what happened easier.”

She stops with her back still turned to me and lets her arm drop to her side, the shirt clenched in her hand. She sighs, and her shoulders finally relax amid the silence. Then she turns around and looks me dead in the eyes.

“The best way for me to cope with what happened is to forget it,” she says, and it tears a gash in my heart. “I’ll be OK as long as I’m not forced to be reminded of it every day. The more you all try to get me to ‘talk about it’”—she quotes with her fingers—“and the longer you all keep looking at me with those quiet, sad expressions every time I walk into the room, the longer it’s going to take me to forget.”

This isn’t something you can just forget, but I don’t have the heart to say this to her.

“OK, so …” I step away and move absently back toward the bed “… how long are we staying here? Not that I’m eager to get back.” It’s only one of several questions I want to ask her, but I’m equally leery about all of them. I’ve felt like I’ve been walking on eggshells around her with everything I’ve said in the past two weeks.

“I’m not going back to Texas,” she says casually and goes to slip on a pair of jeans.

Eggshells. They’re everydamnwhere.

I reach up and rub my palm over the back of my head.

“That’s fine,” I say. “I’ll go back by myself and pack and if you want to, while I’m gone you can go out with Natalie and look at apartments for us. Your pick. Whatever you want.” I smile carefully across the room at her. I want her to be happy, and I’ll do anything I can to make that happen.

Her face lights up, and I think I’m genuinely tricked by it. Either that or she’s genuinely smiling. At this point, I can’t tell much anymore.

She walks over to me and backs me up toward the foot of her bed, pressing her palms against my chest. Then she pushes me down against it. I look up at her. Normally I would be on her by now, but it feels wrong. I know she wants it. At least, I think she does … but I’m scared to touch her and have been since the miscarriage.

She sits on me, straddling my waist, and despite being afraid to touch her it’s instinct to press myself against her. She drapes her hands over my shoulders and gazes down into my eyes. I bite down on the inside of my mouth and shut my eyes when she leans in to kiss me. I kiss her back, tasting the sweetness of her lips and taking her breath deep into my lungs. But then I pull away and hold her by the waist to keep her from trying to force herself on me.

“Babe, I don’t think …”

She looks stunned, cocking her head to one side.

“You don’t think what?”

I’m not sure how to word this, but I just say the first version that comes to mind.

“It’s only been two weeks. Aren’t you still—”

“—bleeding?” she asks. “No. Sore? No. I told you, I’m fine.”

She’s anything but fine. But I have a feeling that if I try to convince her, it’ll backfire on me somehow.

Damn … maybe I do need to brave the wild and talk to Natalie, after all.

Camryn slides off my lap, but I stand up with her and wrap my arms around her back, pulling her into my bare chest. I press the side of my face against the top of her wet hair.

“You’re right,” she says, pulling away to see my eyes. “I should, ummm … get back on my birth control pills. We’d be stupid to risk this again.”

She walks away from me.

That’s not exactly what I was getting at. Sure, it’s probably for the better that we were more careful this time around because of what she just went through. But to be completely honest, I would lay her down right now with the sole intention of getting her pregnant again if that was what she wanted. If she asked me to. I don’t regret the first time at all and would do it all over again. But it would need to be what she wants, and I’m afraid if I was ever the one to bring it up that she might take it as my suggestion, that she might feel guilty about losing my Lily, and she’ll want to get pregnant again because she thinks it’s what I need to feel better.

Camryn takes the robe off and tosses it on the end of the bed and then starts to get dressed.

“If that’s what you want to do,” I say about the birth control pills, “then I’m with you on that.”

“Is that what you want?” she asks, pausing to look me in the eyes.

Feels like a trick question. Be careful, Andrew.

I nod slowly. “I want whatever you want. And right now I think for your sake, it’s the best thing to do.”

There’s absolutely no readable emotion in her eyes, and it’s making me nervous.

Finally she nods, too, and her gaze falls away from mine. She slips on her jeans and then rummages through her dresser drawer for a pair of socks.

“I’ll go to my doctor today if they can squeeze me in.”

“All right,” I say.

And as if we didn’t just have a somewhat depressing, serious conversation, Camryn comes over and smiles at me just before pecking me on the lips.

“And then you can be yourself again,” she says.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh come on,” she says, “you’ve not tried to have sex with me once since this happened.” She grins and then her eyes scan my naked chest slowly. “I have to say, I miss my sex-crazed Andrew Parrish. For the past three days, I’ve been taking care of myself a lot.” She leans in toward my lips and then moves toward my ear, tugging my earlobe carefully with her teeth, and whispers, “I did it in the shower just minutes ago. You should’ve been there.”

Shivers run down my back and all the way into my feet. Shit, why didn’t she just ask me to get her off? I’d happily do it for her. Surely she knows that by now.

I grab her face and kiss her hard while she grabs a handful of my cock. The next thing I know, I’m lying across her bed and she’s crawling on top of me. Her fingers linger around the elastic of my boxers while she looks across my body with devilishly hooded eyes.

Oh God, if she’s about to put me in her mouth …

I didn’t even realize my eyes had shut until I feel her fingers wedge between my boxers and my skin. Then she starts to slip them off, and all I see is the back of my eyelids.

My conscience rears its ugly head and I stop her, lifting halfway from the bed, my upper body held up by my elbows. “Baby, not right now.”

She pouts. She actually pouts, and it’s the perfect equivalent of puppy-dog eyes, and I sort of want to give in to her because it absolutely melts me.

“I want you to. Trust me … I really want you to.” I laugh a little with those words. “But let’s wait. Your mom will be back anytime, and I—”

She cocks her head to the side and beams at me. “It’s OK,” she says and kisses me one more time before hopping off the bed. “You’re right. The last thing I want is my mom to catch me giving you a blow job.”

Did I just refuse a blow job? This girl really has no idea how firmly she has my nuts in a sling. I better not tell her or she might abuse her power. Hell, what am I saying? I want her to abuse it. I fucking love her.

Camryn leaves with her mom later in the morning after they managed to get a last-minute appointment with her gynecologist. I had this urge to pull her mom off to the side at some point to ask about the things Natalie tried to tell me, but I never got the opportunity. They had to leave within the hour to make that appointment, and it would’ve been weird if I slipped into a room with her mom. She’d know right away that we were talking about her.

NINE

Camryn left me with her car. I briefly asked her why she didn’t just drive her car instead of taking the bus that day last July, and she responded with: “Why didn’t you take yours?” It took everything in me to put myself in the driver’s seat of a little red Toyota Prius, but I sucked it up and drove to Starbucks, where I agreed to meet Natalie.

Everything about this feels dangerous and dirty. And I don’t mean dirty in a good way. I mean that I will want to shower with Lava soap once this is over with. Natalie walks in without Blake and moves her way through the room toward me, her long, dark hair pulled into a ponytail. I made sure to get a table farthest away from the tall glass windows for fear of someone seeing me with her. It doesn’t matter that no one around here knows me; that’s beside the point. I tried to get her to just tell me whatever it was she needed to tell me, over the phone, but she insisted we meet.

She sits down on the empty chair, and her purse hits the tabletop at the same time.

“I don’t bite,” she says, smirking.

Maybe not, but I bet your—

“You don’t have to pretend to like me,” she interrupts my thoughts. “Cam’s not here. And I’m not as dense as you think I am.”

I admit she surprised me. I really thought she had no clue about my dislike of her. She may be my fiancée’s best friend, but she really hurt Camryn when she shut Camryn out months ago and didn’t believe her when Natalie’s ex, Damon, confessed that he had fallen for her. That’s bullshit.

I lean away from the table and cross my arms over my chest. “Well, since we’re being honest, tell me, what the hell is your problem?”

That caught her off guard. Her eyes grow wide with surprise and then narrow. It looks like she’s chewing on the inside of her mouth out of frustration.

“What do you mean by that?” She crosses her arms now and cocks her head to one side, her ponytail falling to one side.

“I think you know what I mean,” I say. “And if not, then maybe you are as dense as I thought.”

I can’t help being such an asshole toward her. I could’ve gone on forever just tolerating her and never saying a negative word to her, but she was the one who put it all out on the table when she sat down. It’s her own damn fault.

A little lightbulb just flickered in her head and the glint in her brown eyes darken with comprehension. She knows exactly what I’m referring to.

“I know, I deserve that,” she says and looks away from me. “I’ll regret what I did to Camryn probably forever, but she forgave me, so I don’t know why you have to be such an ass about it. You didn’t even know me then. You still don’t know me.”

No, I don’t, I’ll give her that much, but I know enough and that’s all I need. At least I can confront Natalie. Damon, or whatever the hell his name is, is another story. I sure would like to have him sitting in front of me instead of her. I’d like nothing more than to bury his lip between his front teeth.

“But this isn’t about me,” she says, again with that smirk of hers, “so let me just get on with why I asked you to meet me here.”

I nod and leave it at that.

“Cam and I have been best friends for a really long time. I was there for her when her grandma died, when Ian died, when her brother Cole killed that man and went to prison. Not to mention when her dad cheated on her mom and they got divorced.” She leans over the small table. “All of that happened just within the last three years.” She shakes her head and presses her back against the seat and crosses her arms again. “And those were just the major things to turn her life upside down, Andrew. Honestly, I think that girl was dealt a really shitty hand.” She raises her hands up in front of her and says dramatically, “Oooh, but no way can I tell Cam that. She bit my head off the last time I tried to give her some credit. I’m tellin’ yah, she doesn’t like pity. She hates it. She has this screwed-up mind-set where no matter what bad falls in her lap that there are too many people out there who have it worse.” She rolls her eyes.

I know exactly what Natalie is referring to. Camryn tried to avoid her problems while on the road with me, so I know firsthand, but what Natalie doesn’t know is that I helped pull Camryn out of that shell somewhat. It makes me smile inside to know that I could succeed in under two weeks where Natalie, her so-called best friend, couldn’t in the years they’ve known each other.

“So, she just accepts it,” she goes on. “She always has. I’m telling you, she has a lot of pent-up hurt and anger and disappointment—you name it—that she’s never been able to properly deal with. And now with what happened with the baby …” she swallows and her brown eyes grow heavy with unease “… I’m really afraid for her, Andrew.”

I did not expect that my meeting with Natalie would result in the deep worry over Camryn’s health and state of mind that it has. I was worried about her before, but the more she talks, the worse it gets.

“Tell me about this psychiatrist thing,” I say. “I asked her about it earlier, but she wouldn’t really go into it with me.”

Natalie crosses one leg over the other and sighs heavily. “Well, her dad talked her into seeing one shortly after Ian died. Cam went every week, and she seemed to be getting something out of it, but I think she had us all fooled. You don’t leave without telling anyone and board a bus like she did, if you’re ‘getting better.’”

“Her dad was the one who talked her into it?”

Natalie nods. “Yep. She’s always been closer to her dad than her mom—Nancy’s great, but she’s kind of ditzy sometimes. When her dad packed up after the divorce and moved to New York with his new girlfriend, I think that messed her up even more. But of course, she would never admit it.”

I take a deep breath and run both hands over the top of my head. I feel guilty hearing all of this from Natalie of all people, but I’ll take it where I can get it, because apparently Camryn wasn’t ever going to tell me any of it herself.

“She mentioned something about pills,” I say. “Said she wasn’t going to go to any psychiatrist because they just—”

Natalie nods and interrupts, “Yeah, she was put on some antidepressants, took them for a while. Next thing I know, she’s admitting to being off of them for a few months. I had no idea.”

Finally, I just cut to the chase. “So what exactly did you bring me here for?” I ask. “Hopefully it wasn’t just to tell me all of her secrets.” I do appreciate knowing this information, but I have to wonder if Natalie is only telling me because she gets off on it. Probably not. I think she genuinely cares about Camryn, but Natalie is Natalie, after all, and that’s just not something I can overlook.

“I think you need to watch her,” she says and has my full attention again. “She really did fall into some depression after Ian died. I mean it was like I didn’t know her for a long time. She didn’t cry or act like I expect depressed people are supposed to act, no, Cam was …” She looks up in thought and then back at me again. “She was stoic, if that’s even the right word. She stopped going out with me. She stopped caring about school. Refused to go to college. We had our college plans all mapped out in our freshman year, but when she fell into that depression stuff, college was the last thing on her mind.”

“What was on her mind?”

Natalie shakes her head subtly. “Can’t really say, because she rarely talked about it. But she did talk sometimes about deep, weird shit: backpacking across the world, stuff like that. I don’t remember, exactly, but she definitely wasn’t on Cloud Reality, that’s for sure. Oh, and she did mention on occasion how she wished she could feel emotions again. Weird to me how anyone can not feel any emotions, but whatever.” She waves her hands in front of her dismissively. Then she smiles at me, and I’m not sure what to make of it until she speaks. “But then you came along and she was herself again. Except like a hundred times better. I could tell that night I talked to her while in New Orleans with you, that something had changed. Honestly, I’ve never seen her the way she is with you.” She pauses and says, “I think you’re the best thing ever to happen to Cam. Don’t shoot me for bringing it up, but if you would’ve died …”

I wait impatiently for her to go on, but she doesn’t. She looks away from my eyes and seems to be ready to retract everything she was about to say.

“If I would’ve died, what?”

“I don’t know,” she says, and I don’t believe her. “I just think you need to watch her. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that she needs you now more than ever.”

No, she didn’t need to tell me that, but with everything else she’s told me, I can’t help but feel like I need to be with Camryn right now and every minute of every day. I almost hate Natalie for telling me all of this stuff, but at the same time, I needed to know.

I stand up from the table and toss my arms inside my black jacket, then push my chair in.

“So, you’re leaving just like that?”

I stop and look down at her. “Yeah, I am,” I say, and she stands up. “I think I know enough.”

“Please don’t tell—”

I put up my hand. “Look, don’t get me wrong, I appreciate you telling me all of this, but if Camryn asks, I will tell her that I met you here privately and that you told me everything that I know. So don’t expect me to keep any of it from her.”

Her cheeks deflate with air. “Fair enough,” she says and grabs her purse from the table. “But I was only saying that because I’m worried how she might feel if she knew I came to you, not because I’m worried she’ll be pissed at me for doing it.”

I nod. I admit, I believe her this time.

I’m hanging out in the den watching TV when Camryn and her mom come home from the birth control appointment. I find myself sitting up straighter, feeling awkward being in her mom’s house and all. I set the TV remote down on the oak coffee table and get up to meet Camryn halfway.

“So, how’d everything go?” Awkward posture. Awkward filler questions. Awkward everything. I hate awkward. We need to get our own place soon. Or a hotel room.

Camryn’s eyes soften as she comes up to me.

“It went fine,” she answers and pecks me on the cheek. “I got what I needed. What did you do today? I bet you looked all sexy driving around in that New Age chick car all day, huh?” The left side of her mouth lifts into a grin.

My face feels a little flush.

Her mom smiles faintly at me behind Camryn’s back as she passes and heads into the kitchen area. It’s the same kind of “quiet smile” Camryn was talking about this morning, the one that screams She’s so fragile and I feel so bad for both of you. I’m starting to understand why Camryn hates it so much.

“Well, I didn’t do much, but I did endure a fifteen-minute face-to-face conversation with Shenzi at Starbucks.”

“Shenzi?”

I shake my head, smiling and say, “Never mind. Natalie. She wanted to meet me to talk about you. She’s just really worried.”

Camryn, annoyed, starts to walk toward the hallway leading to her bedroom. I follow.

“I can only imagine what she told you,” she says as she rounds the corner into her room. She sets her purse and a shopping bag on her bed. “And it pisses me off she’d call you behind my back.”

“I probably shouldn’t have met up with her,” I say, standing near the doorway. “But she was persistent and, honestly, I wanted to hear what she had to say.”

She turns to face me. “And what did you get out of it?”

The faint trace of discontent lacing her tone stings me a little.

“Just that you’ve been through a lot and—”

Camryn puts up her hand and shakes her head at me. “Andrew, seriously. Listen to me, OK?” She steps right up and takes my hands into hers. “Right now, the only thing that’s causing me any added misery is everybody worrying about me all the time. Think about it—we basically had this conversation just this morning. Now look at me.”

I look at her, not that I wasn’t already.

“Am I moping around?” No, you’re not. “How many times have you seen me smile in the past week?” Many times, actually. “Have you once heard me say anything to indicate I’m hurting more than I’m letting on?” No, not really, I guess.

She tilts her beautiful blonde head gently to the side and reaches up, brushing the side of my face with her soft fingertips. “I want you to promise me something.”

Normally I’d say “anything” without hesitation, but this time I hesitate.

She tilts her head to the other side, and her hand falls away from my face.

Finally, I say with reluctance, “It depends on what it is.”

She doesn’t fight it, but I see the disappointment in her expression.

“Promise me we’ll get back to normal. That’s all I ask, Andrew. I miss the way we were before. I miss our crazy times together and our crazy sex and your crazy dimples and your crazy, vibrant, life-loving attitude.”

“Do you miss the road?” I ask, and the light snaps out of her face as if I’ve said something horribly wrong.

Her eyes stray from mine and she seems lost in some deep, dark moment.

“Camryn … do you miss the road?” I need the answer to this question now more than I did seconds ago, because of her unexpected reaction to it.

After a long, silent moment she looks at me again and I feel lost in her eyes, though in an uncomfortable way.

She doesn’t answer. It’s like … she can’t.

Not knowing what’s going on inside of her head and eager to find out, I finally say, “We can do it now.” I place my hands on her upper arms. “Maybe that’s exactly what you … I mean, we need.” As the idea comes together on my tongue, I get more excited by the second just thinking about it. Camryn and me. On the open road. Living free and in the moment like we had planned to do. I realize I’m smiling hugely, my face lit up with excitement. Holy shit! Yes, this is what we need to do. Why didn’t I think of this before?

“No,” she says flatly, and her answer snaps me right out of that blissful, dreamlike state.

“No?” I can hardly believe it, or understand it.

“No.”

“But … why not?” I ask and she walks away from me casually. “There’s no reason we have to wait anymore.”

I understand in this very second the reason behind her answer. But I don’t have to be the one to bring it up because she does it for me.

“Andrew,” she says, her expression soft with regret, “if we did that it would always linger in the back of my mind that it was something we were putting off because of the baby. It wouldn’t feel right to do it now. Not for a while. A long while.”

“OK,” I say and step up to her. I nod and smile warmly, hoping to make her understand that no matter what she wants to do, or not do, I’m behind her all the way.

“So, what level of bipolar did Natalie make me out to be today?” She laughs under her breath and goes over to the shopping bag she brought with her and reaches inside.

I laugh too and lie horizontally across her bed, my legs hanging over one side, bent at the knees.

“Level yellow,” I say. “Lowest level possible. But she made herself out to be a level red.” I tilt my head sideways to see her. “But I’m sure you already knew that.”

She smiles back at me and pulls a stack of panties out of the bag and starts peeling the sticker labels from the fabric.

“Well, I’m sure she filled your head full of stuff about how I went through a depression phase and all about the ‘shitty hand’”—she quotes with her fingers—“I was dealt.” She points at me, squinting one eye. “But that’s just it. It was a phase. I got over it. And besides, who doesn’t go through deaths in the family, divorces, and bad breakups? It’s ridiculous that—”

“Babe, what did I tell you before? Back in New Orleans?”

“You told me a lot of things.” She tosses the sticker labels into the nearby wastebasket.

“About how pain isn’t a damn competition.”

“Yes, I remember,” she says. She starts to take the panties from the bed, but I reach over and snatch a few pairs off the top before she gets the chance. I hold up a pink lacy pair in front of me and set the other two pairs on my chest.

“Damn, I like these,” I say, and she snatches them from my fingers.

“Anyway,” she goes on, while I pick up the next two pairs and do the same thing, “I don’t want to talk about this stuff anymore, alright?” Then she snatches the last two pairs from my hands and makes her way to her top dresser drawer and stuffs them all inside.

She walks back over to me and crawls onto my lap, her knees buried in the blanket that covers the bed. I rub my hands back and forth over her thighs, on either side of me.

“I want to go out tonight,” she says. “What do you think?”

I curl my bottom lip between my teeth in thought and make a sucking sound just before I say, “Sounds like a plan. Where do you want to go?”

She smiles sweetly down at me as if she has been giving this plan a lot of thought today already. I love to see her smile like that. And it’s totally fucking real, so maybe Natalie is overacting, after all.

“Well, I thought we could go to the Underground with Natalie and Blake.”

“Wait, isn’t that the place that douchebag kissed you on the roof?”

“Yeah,” she says in a singsong voice. Damn, if she doesn’t stop moving around on my lap like that … “but that ‘douchebag’ is in jail for a year. And Natalie really wants us to go. She texted me about it just before I got here.”

“Sure she’s not trying to suck up to you because she’s got a guilty conscience?”

Camryn shrugs. “Maybe so, but it’ll be fun to go, regardless. And it’ll be nice to watch live bands play rather than be on the stage for a change.”

She lies across my chest, and I reach down and fit her perfectly shaped ass in the palms of my hands and squeeze. She kisses me, and I move my hands up and wrap my arms tight around her body.

“All right,” I say softly when the kiss breaks and her lips linger an inch from mine. I run my fingers through her hair and then hold her head in place with her cheeks in my hands. “The Underground it is. And then tomorrow I’m going to fly back to Texas and start packing.”

“I hope you’re OK with me not going,” she says.

“Yeah, I’m fine with it.” I kiss her forehead. “Y’know, you never did say whether or not you were going to have Natalie go with you to look for an apartment.”

She lifts up, straightening her back and then grabs my hands, interlocking our fingers.

“I’ll get around to it,” she says with a smile. “One step at a time, and right now the next step is getting ready to go out tonight.”

I nod, smiling back at her, and then I squeeze her hands and pull her down toward me again.

“You’re the world to me,” I whisper onto her lips. “I hope you never forget that.”

“I’ll never forget,” she whispers back and moves her hips very subtly on my lap. Then she nudges my lips with her own and says just before kissing me, “But if I ever do, for whatever reason, I hope you’ll always find a way to remind me.”

I study her mouth and then her cheeks resting underneath the pads of my thumbs.

“Always,” I say and kiss her ravenously.

TEN

It’s been a while since the last time I partied at a club like the Underground before. Hell, I’m only twenty-five, and that place made me feel old. I guess spending most of my bar and club nights in more laid-back places like Old Point made me forget that heavy metal exists. Hey, I like heavy metal, but give me the old stuff any day. Camryn and I spent the night with Blake and Natalie, listening to some band who calls themselves Sixty-Nine—how original—screech out fuck-up note after fuck-up note on the guitar while the lead singer growled into the mic like a moose during mating season.

But the crowd seemed to like it. Or maybe it was because most of them were drunk or high. Probably both.

I should be drunk, but I agreed to be the designated driver for the night. And I’m OK with that. I wanted Camryn to party her ass off and have a good time. She needed this. And I’m proud of her for trying, because I halfway expected her to refuse to do anything for a very long time. I’m hurting over the loss of Lily, too, but Camryn is still here and she’s what matters right now.

The cold November night air feels good after being cooped up inside that warm, smoky warehouse for the past three hours.

“Are you all right to walk?” I ask Camryn, walking alongside her with my arm firmly around her waist.

She lays her head on me and buries her hands inside her coat sleeves.

“I’m good,” she says. “You cut me off at the right hour this time, so you don’t have to worry about carrying me the rest of the way like you did that night back in New Orleans.” I feel her head shift to gaze up at me, and I glance down at her briefly, trying also to watch our steps along the dark sidewalk. “You remember that night, don’t you?”

“Of course I remember.” I squeeze my arm tighter around her waist. “It wasn’t that long ago and besides, even if it was, I could never forget that night, or any night with you, for that matter.”

She smiles up at me and then watches out ahead, too.

“You’re very unforgettable,” I add, grinning at her briefly.

“I woke up once that night,” she says, burrowing her head into the warmth of my arm. “I saw the toilet on one side of me and wondered how I got there. Then I felt your body behind me, your arm over my waist, and I didn’t want to get up. Not because I was still half drunk and my head felt like it had been run through a shredder, but because you were with me.”

“Yeah, I remember …” I lose myself in that memory for a moment.

We walk huddled together through the cold for ten minutes until we make it to the gas station where the car is parked in an abandoned lot nearby. I turn the heat on full blast and drive the chick car back to Camryn’s mom’s house, wishing we had just stayed in a hotel all this time when we pull into the driveway and I see her mom’s car parked out front. I like Nancy, but I also like being able to walk around the house in my boxers, or naked, without worrying about an audience.

I help Camryn out of the car and take her inside, my arm still around her waist just in case any of the liquor hasn’t caught up to her yet. But she’s fine. Buzzed pretty good, but fine. I lock the door behind us, and Camryn immediately slips out of her coat and tosses it on the coat rack in the corner of the foyer. I do the same.

The house is dead quiet, and the only lights are the dim orange glow from the nightlight plugged in the nearby hallway and the one over the kitchen counter, illuminating the bar.

Camryn surprises me when her hands slither up my chest and she presses hard with her fingers on my abs, pushing me against the foyer wall. She slips her tongue into my mouth and I bite gently down on it and her bottom lip before I kiss her. Her right hand moves down to the button on my jeans and she pops it right out with ease, sliding the zipper down afterward. I kiss her harder and groan against her mouth when she slides her hand into my boxers and grabs me.

God, it’s been so fucking long …

She presses harder against me, shoving my back against the wall.

I break the kiss just for seconds long enough to get out, “I want you so fucking bad, but let’s at least get to your room first.”

Her kiss turns more ravenous and then she says with her lips still on mine, “My mom’s not here.” She bites down hard on my lip, enough to make it sting, but it drives me absolutely mad for her. “She took Roger’s car to work tonight.”

I crush my mouth against hers and lift her into my arms to carry her through the hallway toward her room. We can’t get there fast enough, and she’s already got my shirt off before I carry her through the door and throw her back against the mattress. I strip the rest of her clothes off, leaving just her panties. She sits up on the edge of the bed and takes my jeans and boxers down the rest of the way. I crawl on top of her, holding the weight of my body up with one fist ground into the mattress on her side while I tease her with the other hand, rubbing my finger between her wet lips over the fabric of her panties. She squirms beneath me, shutting her eyes and tilting her head back on the mattress so that her breasts rise a little higher in front of me.

I move off the bed and slip her panties off with my middle fingers. I kiss her inner thighs and can’t stop myself from falling in between her legs so fast because I haven’t been able to do this for her in what feels like forever. I don’t tease her anymore. I don’t because I’m making myself crazy in the process.

I lick her furiously, and she tries to crawl her way across the bed and away from my mouth. She grips the sheets above her head until her head is hanging off the bed on the other side. I hold her firmly in place with my hands around her thighs, my fingers digging into her skin. I suck on her clit even harder until she can’t stand it anymore and her thighs try to close around my head.

I can tell she’s about to come when suddenly she grips my hair and forces my mouth away.

I look across the smooth geography of her body from between her legs to see her gazing down at me. She works her fingers through my hair. I wait, wondering what she’s thinking, wondering why she made me stop.

It’s like she’s waiting for something, but I’m not sure what. All I can think about right now is forcing myself on her. It takes everyfuckingthing in me to hold back, to keep from rolling her over and forcing her on her hands and knees, from gripping her hair so hard that it hurts her, from …

She cocks her head to one side and watches me, studies me as if she’s contemplating my next move. I’m mesmerized by her face. There’s something enigmatic and frail in it that I’ve never seen before. Then she guides me up away from the edge of the bed and on instinct I lay down on my back. She crawls across my body, kissing my stomach and my ribs and my chest as she makes her way up, positioning herself on top of me. A low moan rumbles uncontrolled through my chest just feeling the warmth and wetness of her. She smiles down at me, sweet, innocent, though I know it’s anything but. And then takes me into her hand, and I feel my eyes roll into the back of my fucking head when she places me inside of her and slides down on me so slowly that it’s torturous.

I let her fuck me for as long as she wants, but it takes everything in me to keep from getting off before she does. And in that last second, something happens that I never anticipated, and I’m panicking inside, hoping she doesn’t sense it when I have to make that vital split-second decision whether to pull out of her or not.

Camryn

My heart is beating so fast. I’m out of breath and sweat is beading off my forehead even amid the cool air lingering within the room. As I start to come, Andrew, in a confused panic of some sort, pulls out. It surprises me a little, but I don’t let him know that. Instead, I lean forward, just barely touching my chest to his and I slide him up and down within my hand.

Afterward I collapse on top of him fully, my cheek pressed against his chest, my knees still bent at his sides as I straddle his lap. I hear his heart beating rapidly in my ear. He splays his arms out on both sides across the bed and catches his breath before enveloping me within them. I feel his lips press against my hair.

I just lay here, thinking. I think about what just happened and what didn’t. I think about how good he smells and how warm his skin is against mine. I think about how tame he has become. All because he’s worried he’ll hurt me, physically, emotionally, probably even spiritually, if that were possible. And I love him for it. I love him for how much he loves me back, but I hope he doesn’t stay this protective of me forever.

For now, I’ll leave him alone about it. I guess I have to prove that I’m myself first before he can let his guard down from around me. And I respect that.

I lift my cheek from his chest and smile into his eyes.

I wonder if he’ll try to explain himself, tell me why he pulled out, maybe say he just wasn’t sure if he should, or not. But he never does. Maybe he’s waiting on me. But I never say anything about it, either.

To stir the silence between us and cut some of the uncertainty in the room, I playfully wriggle my hips on top of him and laugh a little.

“You gotta let me recuperate first, babe.” He smiles back at me and smacks my ass with both hands.

I let out an exaggerated yelp, pretending that it actually stung and then I wriggle on him some more.

“You better stop,” he warns me, his dimples deepening in his cheeks.

I do it again.

“You think I’m playin’? Do it again and you’ll regret it.”

Of course, I do it again and brace myself mentally for whatever he plans to do to teach me a lesson.

He reaches between us and grabs both of my nipples in his fingers and squeezes them just enough to make me freeze for fear of moving too abruptly and risking them getting ripped off.

“Oooowww!” I let out a peal of laughter and grab his hands, but he pinches a little harder when I try to pry them away.

“I told you,” he shakes his head at me, putting on such a serious face that I’m impressed at how convincing it actually is. “Should’ve listened.”

“Please, please, please, let gooooo!”

He licks the dryness from his lips and says so casually, “Are you going to be good?”

I nod fast about ten times.

He narrows those devilish green eyes at me, stringing me along. “You swear?”

“I swear on the grave of my long-lost dog, Beebop!”

He pinches my nipples one last time, making me wince and grit my teeth, before letting go. And then he raises himself upright on the bed and wraps my legs around his waist. He leans inward and traces each of my breasts lightly with the tip of his tongue, kissing them afterward.

“All better?” he asks, staring into my eyes.

“All better,” I whisper. Then he kisses my lips and makes love to me gently before we fall asleep, curled up with each other, sometime after three in the morning.

ELEVEN

I thought I’d have a much worse hangover than I do this morning. Last night was the first time I’ve had a drink in months, but I’m not complaining. I roll over on my side, and when I see the clock next to my face reading an hour and a half past the time Andrew was supposed to be at the airport, my eyes pop open and I shoot upright on the bed.

“Andrew!” I say, shaking him awake.

He groans and rolls over, barely opening his eyes a crack. He reaches out his arm and tries to bury me underneath it so he can go back to sleep, but I push it away.

“Get up. Missed your plane.”

The only part of his body that moves are his eyes popping open much like mine did, and when reality sinks in, the rest of his body follows suit.

“Shit! Shit! Shit!” He gets out of the bed and stands in the center of the room, naked.

I never get tired of looking at him—naked or clothed, it doesn’t matter. How I ended up with him still defies my comprehension to this day. He raises both hands to his face and runs them over the top of his hair, resting them on the back of his head, his arms hardened with well-defined muscles. And then a long, defeated sigh deflates his chest.

“I’ll have to catch a later flight.”

I climb out of the bed and grab my robe from the floor so I can get in the shower.

“Not that I mind staying here with you for a few more hours,” he says, coming up behind me.

“I don’t know, Andrew.” I slip the robe around my body and tie it at the front. “I was kind of looking forward to getting rid of you.” I’m totally smiling with my back facing him.

Silence bathes the room.

“Are you serious?”

His stunned voice makes it impossible not to laugh. I whirl around and kiss his lips.

“Hell no, I’m not serious. Maybe I was the one who turned the alarm off last night. Maybe I planned this all along.”

His smile widens and he kisses me back and then walks around to the side of the bed to find his boxers.

“Did you?” he asks, stepping into them.

“No, I didn’t. But it’s a good idea. I’ll remember it for next time. Want to shower with me?”

At that second, there’s a knock at my bedroom door. Knowing it’s probably my mom, Andrew’s posture stiffens a little and he sits down on the bed to cover his lower half with the blanket.

I open the door to see my mom in all her bleached-blonde glory standing there. She’s wearing a light pink button-up top and soft pink blush in her cheeks to match it.

“Are you up?” she asks.

No, Mom, I’m sleepwalking. She’s funny sometimes.

I notice her glance at Andrew once. She has already expressed her worry about me getting pregnant again, but surely she can’t expect us not to have sex. It’s what she wants, but yeah, not gonna happen.

She smiles weakly at me and asks, “Do you want to go with me to Brenda’s today?”

Definitely not. Love my aunt Brenda, but not so much being choked to death by her cigarette-smoke-filled house.

“No, I’ve got plans with Natalie.”

Really, I don’t have any plans at all, but whatever.

“Oh, all right. Well …” She glances at Andrew again and then back at me. “Thought he was going to Texas this morning?”

I tighten the rope around my robe and cross my arms.

“Yeah, well we overslept, but he’s going to take a later flight out.”

My mom nods and looks across the room at him one more time. She smiles slimly and he does the same. Awkward. She really likes Andrew, but she’s definitely not used to a guy sleeping with me in my room, even if he’s been here with me for two weeks. If I wasn’t almost twenty-one and engaged to him, he definitely wouldn’t be in here at all. At the same time, she knows we love each other and after what happened with the baby, she wants him here for me. But it’s still awkward. For all of us. Yeah, Andrew and I are seriously gonna have to get a place of our own.

A place of our own … here in Raleigh. My chest feels like there’s something heavy sitting on top of it all of a sudden.

My mom finally leaves us, and I gaze over at Andrew, who looks all uncomfortable with the sheet draped over his lap and a sort of nervous frown.

“Shower with me?” I ask again, but I can tell he’s not up for it anymore.

He flinches. “I think I’ll get one after you.”

I chuckle at his boyish awkwardness and then soften my face. “I’ll look for a place this weekend. I promise.”

He stands up. “If you want me to look with you, just tell me. I only suggested Natalie in case you wanted something to do while I’m gone. Y’know, get that girl opinion on drapes and color palettes ’n’ shit.”

I laugh out loud.

“I won’t be picking out any drapes,” I say. “Curtains maybe, but drapes are for interior designers and rich cougars.”

He shakes his head at me as I leave the room and head to the bathroom down the hall.

I feel like Jekyll and Hyde. All the time. When in front of Andrew I put on my happy face, but not as if I’m faking it. I am happy. I think. But the second I’m alone again, it’s like I become someone else. I feel like someone invisible is always standing behind me, flipping a fucking switch inside my brain. Off. On. Off. On. O—no, On.

I sit in the bottom of the tub with my knees drawn up against my chest, and I let the hot water stream down on me forever. I think about the inevitable apartment I’m bound to find, the good time I had at the Underground last night, the load of laundry I need to start, and how that logo is starting to fade from the top of the soap bar. When the water begins to cool, the change in temperature wakes me up enough from my strange daydreaming to take notice of how long I’ve actually been in here. I don’t even shave before I shut the water off and get out, purposely avoiding the bath rug because I hate the way it feels underneath my feet. I throw a clean towel over it and then I just stand here, gazing at myself in the mirror. Absently I begin to count the flecks of toothpaste staining the glass. I stop at fourteen.

Pulling open the medicine cabinet, I sift through the bottles and tubes of stuff in search of Advil. Thankfully, my so-called hangover only requires a couple of headache pills. When I find it, I go to pluck the bottle from behind a few brown-orange prescription bottles, and then I pause. I take down one of the prescription bottles instead and read the label. Percocet 7.5—Take one tablet every six hours as needed for pain—Nancy Lillard. No idea why my mom has a bottle of pain pills, which she obviously hasn’t taken, but she’s had back problems for a while, so maybe she finally saw a doctor about it. Or, maybe my mom, being an RN, is turning into a criminal on me and taking advantage of her easier-than-the-average-citizen’s access to prescription drugs.

Nah. That’s not likely, considering this bottle was purchased a month ago and is still full. She’s the same old mom I’ve known all my life who’s never been fond of taking anything for pain beyond the harmless over-the-counter stuff.

I start to put it back when I find myself stopping just before the bottle touches the tiny shelf. I guess it can’t hurt. I do have a headache and that qualifies as pain, right? Right. I push down and turn to twist the childproof cap off and shuffle a pill into my hand. I swallow it down with a handful of water from the sink, dry my body off, and wrap my hair in the towel afterwards. Slipping back inside my robe, I tie it closed and go back into my room to get dressed. I hear Andrew talking in the kitchen, but his laid-back tone tells me it’s not my mom he’s talking to. He’s probably on the phone. When I hear him mention his brother Asher’s name, I’m satisfied that my assumption was right, and I get dressed.

I was going to have to tear Natalie a new one if it had been her again. She’s got to stop with that worrying stuff and plotting against me behind my back with Andrew.

After combing out my wet hair, I head toward the kitchen to join him.

“I know, bro, but I don’t think it’s a good idea right now,” I hear Andrew say, and I fall back a little so I don’t intrude too soon. “Yeah. Yeah. No, she’s doing better. She’s definitely not as messed up as she was after the first week. Umm-hmm.” I look around the corner to see him standing at the bar with his cell phone pressed to one ear and his other hand resting on the bar top. He nods here and there, listening to whoever is on the other end, which I get the feeling is Aidan. I’m right again when he says, “Tell Michelle I said thanks for the offer. Maybe we’ll visit in a month or two after Camryn’s had time to—No, maybe in the spring. Chicago is way too fucking cold for my blood in the winter.” Andrew laughs and says, “Hell no, bro, why do you think I prefer Texas?” He laughs again. Finally I round the corner completely, and he sees me.

“I would like to go,” I announce.

Andrew just stares at me for a moment and then cuts Aidan off. “Hold up a second.” He covers the mic part of the phone with the palm of his hand. “You want to go to Chicago?” He seems mildly surprised.

“Sure,” I say, smiling. “I think it would be fun.”

At first, he seems to be working through something in his head. Maybe he doesn’t believe me, or maybe he’s just considering the idea and all he can see is wind and snow. But then his face lights up and slowly he begins to nod. “OK,” he says, hesitates, and puts the phone back against his ear. “Aidan, let me call you back in a few, all right? Yeah. OK. Talk to you soon. Later.”

He runs his finger over the phone and hangs up. Then he looks across the room at me again. “Are you sure? I thought you’d want to stay here for a while.”

I walk into the kitchen and get a bottle of orange juice from the fridge. “No, I’m sure,” I say, taking a sip. “Sounds like it was Michelle’s idea.”

He nods once. “Yeah, Aidan said she’s been worried about you. She offered to put us up for a few days if we wanted to visit.”

I take another sip and set the bottle on the bar top. “Worried about me? Well, that’s nice of her and all, but I hope we don’t go up there and I find myself in the same situation as I’m in with Natalie here.”

Andrew shakes his head. “Nah, Michelle’s not like that.” He backtracks that comment to put more emphasis on just how true it is. “Michelle is nothing like Natalie.”

“That’s not what I meant, Andrew.”

“I know, I know,” he says, “but really, she’s all right.”

Knowing Michelle enough myself, I know he’s right.

Then that pill hits me out of nowhere, and suddenly my head feels like it’s sort of loose on my shoulders. My whole body from my toes to the center of the top of my head is tingling, and it takes me a second to straighten my vision. My hand comes down on the edge of the bar instinctively to hold myself up.

“Whoa.” I swallow and blink my eyes a few times forcefully.

Andrew looks at me curiously. “You OK?”

A smile stretches so far across my face I feel the air from the room hit my teeth. “Yeah, I’m totally fine.”

He tilts his head to one side. “Well, I haven’t seen you grin like that since I slid that ring on your finger.” He’s vaguely smiling, too, but his curiosity dominates it.

I bring my finger up into view and admire my engagement ring, which cost under one hundred bucks and probably isn’t considered an engagement ring by brides-to-be all over the country. I saw it in a little shop in Texas one day and just briefly mentioned how pretty it was:

“I love this,” I said, holding it up to the sunlight at just the right angle. “It’s simple and there’s something special about it.”

I handed it back to the woman behind the makeshift booth, and she placed it back in the glass case between us.

“What, you’re not a diamonds-are-a-girl’s-best-friend type of girl?” Andrew asked. “No wedding rock so big you have to carry your ring hand around in a wheelbarrow?”

“No way,” I said and laughed. “Nothing meaningful about a ring like that. It’s usually about the price tag.” We walked out of the jewelry shop and along the sidewalk. “You said so yourself once, remember?”

“What did I say?”

I smiled and slipped my hand into his as we came to the street corner and took a left toward the café. “Simple is sexy.” I leaned my head against his shoulder. “That day in your dad’s house when you were preachin’ about why I shouldn’t spend an hour on makeup and hair, or whatever.”

I looked up to see him smiling, lost in the memory of that day, and then he pulled me closer.

“Yeah, I did say that, didn’t I? ‘Simple is sexy.’ Well, it is.”

“It’s also beautiful,” I said.

The day after that, Andrew came home with that same ring and held it out to me. Then in proper Andrew style, he got down on one knee and old-schooled it, except a little more dramatic than how it usually goes:

“Will you, Camryn Marybeth Bennett, the most beautiful woman on the planet Earth and the mother of my baby, do me the honor of being my wife?”

I grinned and looked at him in a suspicious, sidelong glance and replied, “Just planet Earth?”

He blinked and said, “Well, I haven’t seen the chicks from other planets yet.”

Neither of us could resist a laugh. And so we laughed together. But then he became very serious, and his mood shifting like that only made mine do the same.

“Will you marry me?” he asked.

The tears streaming down my face. The long, deep kiss I gave him, which caused us both to fall over onto the carpet, said yes a million times over.

Sure, he had asked me to marry him that day I told him I was pregnant, but on this day he did it right, and I’ll never forget it for as long as I live.

“Are you alive in there?”

Andrew waves his hand in front of my face.

I snap out of the past and wake up back in the present, high as a fucking kite from that pill. And I realize immediately how fast I need to gather my composure so he doesn’t know what’s going on.

Andrew

TWELVE

I guess the mood swings hang around even after … well, after pregnancy for a while. Camryn flip-flopped from average to frolicking in La La Land in under an hour. But she’s happy, it seems, and who am I to judge her on how she chooses to express it?

But the fact that she suddenly wants to leave Raleigh and go somewhere entirely different, even just for a weekend, is strange to me, and I just have to ask, “Why so soon? I mean I’m all for going if you want to, but I thought you wanted to be here, find an apartment and all that?”

“Well, I do …,” she says unconvincingly. She’s still vaguely smiling, which is so damn odd to me. “I just think we should go visit while we have the chance, because once I get a job here, finding free time on a weekend will be hit or miss.”

She brings her hands up near her stomach and folds them together, her fingers moving over the tops of her knuckles like she’s fidgeting.

“Are you—” I stop myself. I’m not going to do exactly what she said she wanted all of us to stop doing: worrying constantly about her and asking if she’s all right all the damn time. I smile instead and say, “I’ll call Aidan back and tell him and Michelle that we’ll be there this weekend.”

I wait for her to agree to the time frame, or not, and when she doesn’t say anything, I add, “So this means there’s no point in me going back to Texas for our stuff until after we get back from Chicago.” It was really more like a question. I have to admit, all of this uncertainty about where we’re going to be the next day is starting to make my head spin. It’s different from when we were on the road, living in the moment and defining the word spontaneous. At least then it was our goal to not know what the next day would bring. Right now, I’m not sure what’s going on.

She nods and pulls out a kitchen chair, where she never sits unless she’s eating breakfast. It just seemed like she needed to sit down.

“Wait,” I say suddenly. “Are you OK with getting an apartment? We can get a little house somewhere.” I guess this is my way of probing for answers as to what might be wrong with her without actually saying: What’s wrong with you?

She shakes her head. “No, Andrew, I don’t mind an apartment at all. That has nothing to do with anything. Besides, I’m not gonna let you spend your inheritance on a house in a state not of your choosing.”

I pull out the chair next to her and sit with my arms across the table in front of me. I look at her in that you-know-better-than-that way. “I go where you go. You know this. As long as you don’t want to buy an igloo in the Arctic or move to Detroit, I don’t care. And I’ll do what I want with my inheritance. What else would I do with it anyway, besides buy a house? That’s what people do. They buy the big stuff with the big stuff.”

We’re sitting on $550,000 that I inherited from my father when he died. My brothers got the same. That’s a lot of money, and I’m a simple guy. What the hell else would I do with money like that? If Camryn wasn’t in my life, I’d be living in a modest one-bedroom house somewhere in Galveston by myself, eating ramen noodles and TV dinners. The small bills I have would stay paid, and I’d still work for Billy Frank because I happen to like the smell of an engine. Camryn is a lot like me in this frugal sense, and that makes our relationship kind of perfect. But it does bug me sometimes how she just can’t seem to accept the fact that my money is her money, too. She wouldn’t even let me pay off the credit card she used on her bus trip when we met. Six hundred dollars on a card her dad gave her for emergencies. But she insisted—very stubbornly—that she pay it off herself. And she did with her half of our earnings from performing at Levy’s.

If anything at all bothers me about her, it’s this one issue. Taking care of her is what I’m gonna fucking do whether she likes it or not. And she’s gonna have to get over it.

“Let’s just enjoy a few days in Chicago, and when we get back, we’re going house shopping. Together.”

I stand up and push my chair in as if to say This isn’t up for debate.

She looks surprised, but not in a good way, and the weird smile has dropped from her face.

“No, if we’re going to buy a house then I’m going to save—”

I slash the air in front of me with both hands.

“Stop being so damn stubborn,” I say. “If you’re so worried about ‘your half’ of the money, you can always pay me back with sex and a striptease every now and then.”

Her mouth falls open and her eyes grow wide.

“What the hell?!” she laughs beneath her failed attempt at being offended. “I’m not a hooker!” She stands up and gently slaps the palm of her hand on the table, but I think it’s more to keep her balance than to protest.

I grin and start to walk away. “Hey, you brought that one on yourself.” I make it to the den entrance, and I glance back briefly over my shoulder to see that she hasn’t budged, probably still in shock. “And you’re whatever I want you to be!” I shout as I get farther away. “Nothing wrong with being my hooker!”

I catch a glimpse of her running toward me. I take off through the den, leaping over the back of the sofa like a goddamn ninja, and then out the back door of the house while she chases after me. Her shrill voice and laughter carries on the air as she tries to catch up.

Our plane lands at O’Hare late Friday afternoon. Thank God there’s not a mountain of snow on the ground. I take back one thing I said to Camryn, about moving to any place she wants to. I would definitely argue my case if she ever decided she wanted to live anywhere where snow and bitter cold is the norm in the winter. I hate it. With a passion. And I’m as freakishly giddy as Camryn seemed to be on Tuesday when I see a snowless landscape and feel the fifty-three-degree temperature on my face. A little warm for this time of year in Chicago, but I’m not complaining. Global warming? Hey, it’s not entirely a bad thing.

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