The Edge of Never
J.A. Redmerski

To lovers and dreamers and anyone who hasn’t truly experienced either.

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

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One

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

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

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

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

I let out a spat of air, blushing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I stopped taking it in April.”

“What? Why?”

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

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

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

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

Natalie sighs and the smile completely drops from her face.

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

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

That happens a lot, too.

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

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

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

“I know, you’re right,” I say, “but …”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clearly, she thinks I’m borderline crazy.

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

She takes another sip; an obnoxious slurping noise follows.

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

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

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

“You bitch!” she laughs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I get up and slip my purse strap over my shoulder.

“It’s only two o’clock,” I say.

I drink down the last of my latte and toss the empty cup away in the same trash can.

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

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

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

“What’s wrong with my own wardrobe?”

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

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

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

Two

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Damon laughs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

He winks at me.

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

Yeah, I have heard that before …

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

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

He holds out his hand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Damon is grinning at me from the side.

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

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

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

“Rum and Coke.”

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

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

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

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

“Much?”

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

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

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

He laughs. “Well that’s good to know because I’m not the advice type.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I reach out my hand and Blake gently shakes it.

“Camryn.”

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

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

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

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

Blake nods and looks at Damon.

“I’ll have Rum and Coke,” Damon says.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Nat, I’m serious.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three

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

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

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

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

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

OK, now I’m panicking a little.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What the fuck was I thinking?!

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

I think I just dodged a very deadly bullet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A tactic?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m starting to get the feeling he’s not over his ex-fiancée as much he’s trying to make himself believe.

“My boyfriend died,” I blurt out, suddenly. “Car accident.”

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

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

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

“Damon!” I shriek as he tackles Blake before he can get up and starts pummeling his face with his fists. “STOP! DAMON! OH MY GOD!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you calling me stupid? We were just talking! I’m perfectly capable of recognizing the assholes from the nice guys and right about now I’m seeing a total fucking asshole!”

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

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

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

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

I turn my back on Damon, not wanting him to see anything left in my face that might give away that for a second I actually believed him.

“Cam, look at me please.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

There’s that punch to the gut again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Let go of my arm, Damon, please.”

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

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

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

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

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

Four

My cell phone wakes me up the next morning. I hear it buzzing around on the nightstand beside my head. NATALIE reads in bold letters across the screen and her wide-eyed, toothy smiling face is staring back at me. Seeing her face wakes me the rest of the way up and I rise up stiffly from the bed and just hold the phone in my hand, letting it buzz against my palm for a few seconds more before finally getting the courage to hit the answer button.

“Where did you go?” her voice shrieks into my ear. “Oh my God, Cam, you just disappeared and I was freaking out and Damon was missing for a short while and then he showed back up and I saw Blake leaving at one point with blood all over his damn face and then I really started to see what you were talking about when you said that Damon was pissed—” She finally breathes. “And I kept asking him what I did or said or if it was because of last week at the restaurant, but he just ignored me and said it’s time to go and I—”

“Natalie,” I cut in, my head spinning with her run-on sentences, “just calm down for a second, alright?”

I toss the blanket off me and get out of the bed with the phone still pressed to my ear. I know that I have to do this, to tell her what Damon did. I have to. Not only would she never forgive me later when she found out, but I would never forgive myself. If the tables were turned I would want her to tell me.

But not over the phone. This is a mandatory face-to-face discussion.

“Can you meet me for coffee in an hour?”

Silence.

“Uhh, yeah, sure. Are you sure you’re alright? I was so worried. I thought you got kidnapped or something.”

“Natalie, yes, I’m …” I’m totally not fine. “Yes, I’m fine, OK. Just meet me in an hour and please come alone.”

“Damon’s passed out at his house,” she says and I detect the grin in her voice. “Girl, he did things to me last night I never knew he could do.”

I shudder at her words. They’re like screaming entities blaring at me on the other end of the phone but I have to pretend they’re just words.

“I mean I couldn’t even think about sex until I knew you were OK. You wouldn’t answer your cell so I called your mom at like three and she said you were asleep in your bed. I was still so worried because you just left and—”

“One hour,” I interrupt before she goes off on another tangent.

We hang up and the first thing I do is look at the missed calls on my phone. Six were from Natalie, but the other nine were from Damon. The only voicemails though were left by Natalie. I guess Damon didn’t want to leave any incriminating evidence behind.

Not that I need evidence. Natalie and I have been best friends since the bitch stole my Corduroy Cool Barbie Doll at a sleepover.

I’m fidgeting by the time she shows up and have drunk down over half of my latte. She plops down on the empty chair. I wish she wasn’t smiling so much; it’s only making it that much harder.

“You look like hell, Cam.”

“I know.”

She blinks, stunned.

“What? No sarcastic ‘thanks’ followed by your famous rolling eyes?”

Please stop smiling, Nat. Please, just take my strange UNsmiling behavior serious for once and look at me with a serious face.

Of course, she doesn’t.

“Look, I’m just going to cut right to it, OK?”

There it is: finally the smile starts to fade.

I swallow and take a deep breath. God, I can’t believe this happened!

“Cam, what’s going on?” She senses the severe measure of what I’m about to tell her and I can see in her brown eyes how already she’s trying to figure out if this is something she wants to hear, or not. I think she knows it has something to do with Damon.

I see the lump move down the center of her throat.

“Last night, I was out on the roof with Blake—”

Her worried face is suddenly assaulted by smiles. It’s as if she’s grabbing a hold of the opportunity to mask the inevitable news with something she can joke around about.

But I stop her before she has a chance to comment.

“Just listen to me for a minute, OK?”

Finally, I’ve reached her. The natural playful spirit that always exudes from her face drains right out of her.

I go on:

“Damon thought Blake took me out on the roof to have his way with me. He stormed out and blew up on Blake; beat the shit out of him. Blake left understandably pissed off and then it was just me and Damon. Alone.”

Natalie’s eyes are already giving away her fears. It’s like she knows what I’m going to say and she’s starting to quietly hate me for it.

“Damon forced himself on me, Nat.”

Her eyes grow narrower.

“He kissed me and tried to tell me he’s had a thing for me since seventh grade.”

I can tell her heartbeat has sped up just by how heavy her short breaths have become.

“I wanted to tell you—”

“You’re a lying bitch.”

I feel punched in the gut again, except this time it completely knocks the breath out of me.

Natalie shoots up from the chair, shoulders her purse and glares down at me through ravenous dark eyes framed by equally dark hair.

I still can’t move, stunned by what she said to me.

“You’ve wanted Damon since I started dating him,” she hisses down at me. “You don’t think I’ve seen it all these years, the way you look at him?” Her mouth stretches into a hard line. “Shit, Camryn, you’re always taking up for him, bitchin’ at me when I joke around about other guys.” She starts motioning her hands out in front of her and imitating me in an exaggerated, nasally voice: “You’ve got a boyfriend, Nat—Don’t forget about Damon, Nat—You should think about Damon.” She slams her palms down on the table, causing the table to sway precariously side to side on its base before becoming still again. “Stay away from me and away from Damon.” She points her finger in my face. “Or I swear to God, I will beat you senseless.”

She walks away and right out the tall double glass doors, the ringing of the little bell at the top of the door echoes around the space.

Once I finally snap out of the shock, I notice about three customers watching me from their tables. Even the barista behind the counter looks away when my eyes fall on her. I just look down at the table, letting the patterns in the wood grain move around in my unfocused vision. I rest my head in my hands and sit here for the longest time.

Twice I go to call her, but force myself to stop and just set the phone back on the table.

How did this happen? Years of inseparable friendship—I cleaned up after the girl’s stomach bug for Christ’s sake!—and she tosses me out like moldy leftovers. She’s just hurting, I try to tell myself. She’s just in denial right now and I need to give her time to let the truth sink in. She’ll come around, she’ll dump his ass and she’ll apologize to me and drag me back to The Underground looking to find both of us new guys. But I don’t really believe anything I’m saying, or rather, the less rational, wounded part of me won’t let me see past the angry red.

A customer walks by, a tall older man in a wrinkled suit, and sneaks a glance at me before walking out. I’m totally humiliated. I look up again and catch the same pairs of eyes as before looking, only to look away. I feel like I’m being pitied. And I hate being pitied.

I grab my purse from the floor, stand up and throw the strap sloppily over my shoulder and storm out almost as indignantly as Natalie had.

It’s been a week and I haven’t heard a word from Natalie. I did eventually break down and try to call her—several times—but her voicemail always picked up. And the last time I called, she had changed her greeting to: Hi, this is Nat. If you’re a friend—a real friend—then leave me a message and I’ll call you back, otherwise, don’t bother. I wanted to reach through the phone then and punch her in the face, but I settled with chucking it across the room.

So, I stopped calling. I purposely avoided our favorite coffee shop and settled with the crap at the closest convenience store and I went two miles out of my way to go into my job interview at Dillard’s, just so I didn’t have to drive past Natalie’s apartment.

I got the job. An assistant manager’s position—my mom put in a good word for me; she’s good friends with Mrs. Phillips, the lady who hired me—but I’m as excited about working at a department store as I am about drinking this craptastic coffee every morning.

And it hits me as I sit at the kitchen table and watch my bleach-blonde mom sift her way through the refrigerator: I’m no longer moving out on my own and in with my best friend. I’m going to either have to find an apartment and live by myself, or be stuck here for a while longer with my mother until Natalie comes to her senses. Which might be never. Or, it might take so long that I become unforgiving and tell her to screw off when she does.

The room feels like it’s swaying.

“I’m going out with Roger tonight,” my mom says behind the refrigerator door. She lifts up from leaning inside and looks across at me, wearing too much eye shadow. “You met Roger, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I met Roger.” Really I didn’t, or maybe I did, but I’m getting his name mixed up with the last five guys she’s gone out on a date with in the past month. She signed up to one of those weird speed-dating things. And she sure speeds right through these guys, so I guess the term is literal in her case.

“He’s a nice guy. It’s my third date with him.”

I squeeze out a smile. I want my mom to be happy even if it means getting remarried, which is something that scares me to death. I love my dad—I’m Daddy’s little girl—but what he did to my mom is unforgivable. Ever since the divorce four months ago, my mom has been this strange woman who I only know halfway anymore. It’s like she reached inside a drawer that has been locked for thirty years and pulled out the personality she used to wear before she met my dad and had me and my brother, Cole. Except that it doesn’t really fit anymore, but she tries her damnedest every day to wear it.

“He’s already talking about taking me on a cruise.” Her face lights up just thinking about it.

I close the lid on my laptop. “Don’t you think three dates is a little soon for a cruise?”

She purses her lips and waves the notion away. “No baby, it’s just right. He has plenty of money so to him it’s as casual as taking me to dinner.”

I just look away and nibble on the edge of the sandwich I made, though I’m not at all hungry.

“Don’t forget about Saturday,” she says as she starts to load the dishwasher, which is a surprise.

“Yeah, I know, Mom.” I sigh and shake my head. “Though I might take a rain check this time.”

Her back straightens up and she looks right at me.

“Baby, you promised you’d go,” she says desperately, tapping her nails nervously on the countertop. “You know I don’t like going inside that jail by myself.”

“It’s prison, Mom.” I casually pick off a few pieces of bread crust and drop them on the plate. “And they can’t get to you; they’re all locked up, just like Cole. And it’s their own damn faults.”

My mom lowers her eyes and a huge ball of burning hot guilt knots up in my stomach.

I sigh deeply. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.”

I totally meant what I said, just not out loud and to her because it hurts her whenever I talk about my older brother, Cole, and his five-year sentence in prison for killing a man in a drunk-driving accident. This happened just six months after Ian died in the car accident.

I feel like I’m losing everybody …

I get up from the table and stand in front of the bar and she goes back to loading the dishwasher.

“I’ll go with you, OK?”

She pushes out a smile still masked by a thin layer of hurt, and she nods. “Thanks, baby.”

I feel sorry for her. It breaks my heart that my dad cheated on her after twenty-two years of marriage.

But we all saw it coming.

And to think, my parents tried to keep Ian and me away from each other when I confided in my mom at sixteen, telling her that we were in love.

Parents have this twisted belief that anyone under the age of about twenty simply can’t know what love is, like the age to love is assessed in the same way the law assesses the legal age to drink. They think that the ‘emotional growth’ of a teenager’s mind is too underdeveloped to understand love, to know if it’s ‘real’ or not.

That’s completely asinine.

The truth is that adults love in different ways, not the only way. I loved Ian in the now, the way he looked at me, how he made my stomach swim, how he held my hair when I was puking my guts up after eating a bad enchilada.

That’s love.

I adore my parents, but long before their divorce the last time my mom was sick, the most my dad did for her was bring up the Pepto-Bismol and ask where the remote control was on his way out.

Whatever.

I guess my parents really screwed me up somewhere along the line because as good as they are to me, as much as they do for me and as much as I love them, I still managed to grow up terrified I would end up just like them. Unhappy and only pretending to live out this wonderful life with two kids, a dog and a white picket fence. But in reality, I knew they slept with their backs facing each other. I knew my mom often thought about what life would’ve been like if only she had given that boy in high school who she secretly ‘loved’ another chance. (I read her old diary. I know all about him.) I know that my dad—before he cheated on Mom with her—thought a lot about Rosanne Hartman, his prom date (and first love), who still lives over on Wiltshire.

If anyone’s delusional about how love works, what real love feels like, it’s the majority of the adult population.

Ian and I didn’t have sex that night he took my virginity; we made love that night. I never thought I’d say those two words together: ‘make love’, because they always sounded corny, like it was an adult-only phrase. I winced when I heard someone else say it, or when that guy sang Feel Like Makin’ Love from my dad’s car stereo every morning on the classic rock station.

But I can say it because that’s exactly what happened.

And it was magical and wonderful and awesome and nothing will ever compare to it. Ever.

I started my job as assistant manager the following Monday. I’m grateful to have a job because I don’t want to live off my dad’s money the rest of my life, but as I stood there dressed in a cute black pants suit and white button-up shirt and heels, I felt completely out of place. Not necessarily because of the clothes, but … I just don’t belong there. I can’t put my finger on it, but that Monday and the rest of that week when I woke up, got dressed and walked into that store, something was itching the back part of my consciousness. I couldn’t hear the actual words, but it felt like: This is your life, Camryn Bennett. This is your life.

And I would look up at the customers walking by and all I could see was the negative: snooty noses in the air, carrying expensive purses, buying pointless products.

That was when I realized that everything I did from that point on produced the same results:

This is your life, Camryn Bennett. This is your life.

Five

The day when everything changed was yesterday.

That itch in my brain compelled me to get up. And so I did. It told me to put on my shoes, pack a small bag with a few necessities and grab my purse. And so I did.

There was no logic or any sense of purpose except that I knew I had to do something other than what I was doing, or I might not make it through this. Or, I might end up like my parents.

I always thought that depression was so overrated, the way people toss the word around (a lot like the L-word that I will never say to a guy again for as long as I live). I never like to see someone hurting, but I admit whenever I heard someone play the depression card, I’d roll my eyes and go about my business.

Little did I know that depression is a serious disease.

It’s not only about sadness. In truth, sadness really has little to do with it. Depression is pain in its purest form and I would do anything to be able to feel an emotion again. Any emotion at all. Pain hurts, but pain that’s so powerful that you can’t feel anything anymore, that’s when you start to feel like you’re going crazy.

It bothers me immensely to realize that the last time I actually cried was that day at school when I found out that Ian was killed in that crash. It was in Damon’s arms that I cried. Damon, of all people.

But that was the last time I ever shed a tear and that was a little over a year ago.

After that, I just couldn’t anymore. Not over my parents’ divorce, or when Cole got sentenced, or when Damon showed his true colors, or when Natalie stabbed me in the back. I keep thinking that any day now I’m going to break down and bawl my eyes out with my face buried in my pillow. I should be puking from crying so much.

But it never comes and I still feel nothing, except this sense of breaking free from it all. That itch, although vague and stingy, compels me to obey it. I don’t know why, I can’t explain it, but it’s there and I can’t stop myself from listening to it.

I spent most of the night at the bus station, sitting there waiting for that itch to tell me what to do.

And then I walked up to the counter.

“Can I help you?” the woman said blankly.

I thought about it for a second and said, “I’m going to see my sister in Idaho because she just had a baby.”

She looked at me awkwardly, and I admit, it felt awkward. I don’t have a sister and I’ve never been to Idaho, but it was the first lie that popped into my head. And she had been eating a baked potato. It was sitting behind the counter in a buttery bowl of foil and sour cream. So, naturally Idaho was the first state I thought of. It doesn’t matter where I choose to go really, because I just don’t care.

I thought, once I get to Idaho I’ll just buy another ticket to somewhere else. Maybe I’ll go to California. Or Washington. Or, maybe I’ll just head south and see what Texas is like. I always imagined it a giant landscape of dirt and roadside bars and cowboy hats. And people in Texas are supposed to be some kind of badasses, or something. Maybe they’ll stomp the crap out of me with their cowboy boots.

I won’t feel it. I don’t feel anything anymore, remember?

That was yesterday, when I decided to just get up and go, to break free from everything. I had always wanted to do it, to break free, but I never imagined it happening like this. Ian and I, before he died, planned our life in an unconventional way. We wanted to steer clear of anything predictable, anything that made us the same drones of society that get up at the same time every morning and duplicate yesterday. We wanted to backpack across the world—it’s why I brought it up to Natalie that day in the coffee shop. Maybe a part of me hoped she’d share the passion for the idea that Ian and I had and she’d do it with me, but like everything else, it didn’t exactly turn out like I hoped.

Tennessee slips by my window in a blur. Night falls and I eventually fall asleep, too. I don’t have any dreams; haven’t had a single dream since Ian died, but it’s probably better that way. If I have dreams they might provoke emotion and I’m done with emotion. I’m starting to get used to this feeling of not caring about anything. Aside from a few shady bus station dwellers, I’m really not afraid of anything anymore. I guess when you just don’t care it kind of makes fear your bitch.

I never used to curse this much, either.

I ride all the way to Kansas with the double-seats to myself, finally getting to lay more horizontally across the seats instead of upright with my face pressed against the window.

Everything looks the same. Between home and Missouri, it seems the only things that change are the license plates. There’s always a hitchhiker and a guy wearing a wife-beater carrying a gas can from his truck to the nearest exit where all the gas stations and fast food restaurants congregate. And there’s always, always a single shoe on the shoulder somewhere.

The two hours drag by endlessly and when my next bus finally pulls into the station, I’m among the first small group of people to get up and stand in line. At least the seats on the bus have padding and I’ll be able to get somewhat comfortable again.

The bus driver reaches out for my ticket and tears off his portion, handing the rest back to me. I tuck it safely down into my bag and board the bus, searching both rows of seats to find the one that feels like the one. I take a window seat near the back and instantly feel better once my body hits the comfort of the padding beneath me. I sigh and hold my bag close against my stomach, crossing my arms over it. It takes ten minutes or so for the bus driver to be satisfied that he has all of the passengers he’s supposed to have for this round.

The driver goes to close the doors but then pulls back on the lever and they squeal open again. A guy gets on carrying a black duffle bag on his shoulder. Tall, stylish short brown hair and he’s wearing a tight-fitting navy tee and a sort of crooked smile that could either be genuinely kind, or something more confident. “Thanks,” he says to the driver in that laid-back way.

Even though there are plenty of empty seats for him to choose from, I still make it a point to slide my bag over onto the one next to me, just in case he decides it’s the one for him. It’s not likely, I know, but I’m a just-in-case kind of girl. The doors squeal shut again as the guy walks down the aisle toward me. I look down into the magazine that I’d found inside the terminal and start reading an article about Brangelina.

I sigh with relief when he passes me up and takes the pair of empty seats behind me.

I doze off after staring out the window next to me for an hour.

Muffled headphone music blaring right behind me wakes me up sometime after dark.

At first, I just sit here, hoping maybe he’ll notice the top of my now fully awake head bobbing over the seat and decide to turn the music down.

But he doesn’t.

I lean up, reaching back to rub a crooked muscle in my neck from sleeping on my arm and then I turn around to look at him. Is he asleep? How can anyone actually sleep with music blasting in their ears like that? The bus is pitch dark except for a couple of dim reading lights shining down onto books and magazines from above the passengers’ seats and the little green and blue lights at the front of the bus in the driver’s dashboard. The guy sitting behind me is covered by darkness but I can see one side of his face lit up by the moonlight.

I contemplate it for a second and then push myself up with my knees on the seat and I lean over the back of it, reaching out and tapping him on the leg.

He doesn’t move. I tap him harder. He stirs and slowly opens his eyes, looking up at me hanging over the top of the seat.

He reaches up and pulls the earbuds from out of his ears, letting the music funnel from the tiny speakers.

“Mind turning it down a little?”

“You could hear that?” he says.

I raise a brow and say, “Uhhh, yeah, it’s pretty loud.”

He shrugs and thumbs the MP3 player for the volume button and the music fades.

“Thanks,” I say and slide back down in my seat.

I don’t lie down across the seats in the fetal position this time, but lean against the bus and press my head back against the window. I cross my arms and close my eyes.

“Hey.”

My eyes pop open, but I don’t move my head.

“Are you asleep yet?”

I raise my head from the window and look up to see the guy hovering over me.

“I literally just closed my eyes,” I say. “How can I already be asleep?”

“Well, I don’t know,” he whispers. “My granddad could fall asleep in two seconds flat after closing his eyes.”

“Was your granddad narcoleptic?”

There’s a pause. “Not that I know of.”

Wow, this is awkward.

“What do you want?” I ask as quietly as he had.

“Nothing,” he says grinning down at me. “Just wanted to know if you were asleep yet.”

“Why?”

“So I can turn the music back up.”

I think about it for a second, uncross my arms and lift the rest of the way from the seat, turning at the waist so that I can see him.

“You want to wait until I’m asleep to turn the music back up so that you can wake me up again?” I’m having a hard time getting this.

He smiles a crooked smile.

“You slept for three hours without it waking you up,” he says. “So, I’m guessing it wasn’t my music that did it, must’ve been something else.”

My eyebrows draw together. “No, I’m pretty sure I know it was the music that did it.”

“OK,” he says, slipping away from the seat and out of sight.

I wait for a few seconds before closing my eyes in case this might get weirder and when it doesn’t, I drift back into the Land of No Dreams.

Six

The sunlight beaming in through the bus windows wakes me the next morning. I lift up to get a better view, wondering if the scenery has changed any yet, but it hasn’t. And then I notice the music blasting from the earbuds behind me. I creep up over the top of the seat, expecting to see him sound asleep, but he looks back at me with an I-told-you-so smile.

I roll my eyes and sink back down, pulling my bag onto my lap and sifting through it. I’m starting to wish I’d brought something to keep my mind busy. A book. A crossword puzzle. Something. I sigh heavily and literally start fiddling my thumbs. I wonder where we are in the United States, if I’m even still in Kansas and decide that we must be because every car that passes by the bus has Kansas license plates.

When I can’t find anything interesting to look at, I pay more attention to the music behind me.

Is that …? You’ve got to be kidding me.

Feel Like Makin’ Love comes from the guy’s earbuds; I can tell at first by the distinctive guitar riff in the solo that everyone knows even if Bad Company isn’t their kind of music. I don’t hate classic rock, but I much prefer newer stuff. Give me Muse, Pink or The Civil Wars and I’m happy.

The earbuds dangling over the back of the seat and practically on my shoulder scare the crap out of me. My body jerks up and my hand flies over as if to slap away a bug that at first I think just landed on me.

“What the hell?” I say, looking up at the guy as he hovers over me again.

“You look bored,” he says. “You can borrow them if you want. Might not be your type of music, but hey, it’ll grow on you. I promise.”

I’m looking up at him with an awfully twisted face. Is this guy serious?

“Thanks, but no,” I say and go to turn around again.

“Why not?”

“Well, for one,” I say, “you’ve had those things stuck in your ears for the past several hours. Gross.”

“And?”

“What do you mean, and?” I think my face is just getting more twisted. “That’s not enough?”

He smiles that crooked smile again, which in the daylight I notice produces two tiny dimples near the corners of his lips.

“Well,” he says, reeling the earbuds back in, “you said ‘for one’; I just thought there might be another reason.”

“Wow,” I say, flabbergasted, “you are unbelievable.”

“Thanks.” He smiles and I can see all of his straight, white teeth.

I definitely didn’t mean that as a compliment, but something tells me he knows as much.

I go back to digging in my bag already knowing I’m not going to find anything but clothes, but it’s better than dealing with this weirdo.

He plops down on the empty seat next to me, just before another passenger walks past toward the restroom.

I just kind of freeze here, one hand buried inside my bag, unmoving. I may be looking right at him, but I have to let the shock wear off before I can actually figure out what kind of lecture I want to give him.

The guy reaches into his own bag and pulls out a little packet containing an antibacterial wipe, rips off the top half and unfolds the towelette. He wipes each earbud down thoroughly and then reaches over to me. “Like new,” he says, waiting for me to take them.

Seeing as how it actually seems like he’s trying to be nice, I let my defenses down just a little. “Really, I’m good. But thanks.” It surprises me at how fast I got over the whole sit-next-to-me-without-asking thing.

“You’re probably better off anyway,” he says, putting the MP3 player in his bag. “I don’t listen to Justin Bieber or that crazy meat-wearin’ bitch, so I guess you’ll just have to do without.”

OK, defenses are back up. Bring it on.

I snarl over at him, crossing my arms. “First off, I don’t listen to Justin Bieber. And second, Gaga isn’t so bad. Playing the shock-value card a little too long, I admit, but I like some of her stuff.”

“That’s shit music and you know it,” he replies and shakes his head.

I blink twice, just because I’m at a loss and don’t know what to say.

He puts his bag on the floor and leans back on the seat, propping one booted foot up on the back of the seat in front of him, but his legs are so long it looks uncomfortable to me. He’s wearing those stylish work-boot-looking things. Dr. Martens, I think. Dammit. Ian always wore those. I look away, not really in any mood to further this very strange conversation with this very strange person.

He looks over at me, his head pressed comfortably against the itchy fabric behind him. “Classic rock is where it’s at,” he says matter-of-factly and then gazes out ahead. “Zeppelin, the Stones, Journey, Foreigner.” He lets his head fall to the side to look over at me again. “Any of that ringing any bells?”

I scoff and roll my eyes again. “I’m not stupid,” I say, but then change my tune when I realize I can’t think of many classic rock bands and I don’t want to make myself look stupid after so eloquently saying that I’m not. “I like … Bad Company.”

A little grin lifts one side of his mouth. “Name one song by Bad Company and I’ll leave you alone about it.”

I’m nervous as hell now, trying to think of any song by Bad Company other than the one he had been listening to. I’m not going to look this guy in the face and say the words: I Feel Like Makin’ Love.

He waits patiently, that grin of his still in-tact.

“Ready For Love,” I say because it’s the only other one I can think of.

“Are you?” he asks.

“Huh?”

A smile etches deeper into his face. “Nothing,” he says, looking away.

I blush. I don’t know why and I don’t want to know why.

“Look,” I say, “do you mind? I was sort of using both seats.”

He smiles, this time without the smirk hiding behind his eyes. “Sure,” he says getting up. “But if you want to borrow my MP3 player, you know where it’s at.”

I smile thinly, relieved more than anything that he’s going to move back to his seat without a fight. “Thanks,” I say, appreciative, nonetheless.

Just before he makes it all the way back, he leans around the outside seat and says, “Where are you going, anyway?”

“Idaho.”

His bright green eyes seem to light up when he smiles. “Well, I’m heading to Wyoming, so looks like we’ll be sharing a few buses.” And then his smiling face disappears somewhere behind me.

I won’t deny that he’s attractive. The short, tousled haircut, the toned arms and sculpted cheekbones, the dimples and how that stupid fucking grin of his makes me more willing to look at him even though I don’t want to. But the reality is that it’s not like I’m into him, or anything—he’s a random stranger on a road-to-nowhere bus. No way in hell would I ever entertain something like that. And even if he wasn’t, even if I knew him for six months, I wouldn’t go there. Not ever. Not anymore.

The endless ride through Kansas seems to take longer than it should. Another hour and a half and my back and butt feel like stiff, hard pieces of meat. I’m constantly shifting on the seat, hoping to find some way to sit to relieve the tenderness, but I just end up making other parts of my body sore.

I’m only starting to regret this because the bus ride sucks.

I hear the bus intercom squeal once and then the driver’s voice:

“We’ll be stopping for a break in five minutes,” he says. “You will have fifteen minutes to grab a bite to eat before we get back on the road. Fifteen minutes. I will not wait longer, so if you’re not back in that time the bus will leave without you.” The speaker goes dead.

The announcement causes everyone to stir in their seats and gather their purses and such—nothing like talk of getting to stretch your legs after hours on a bus to wake everyone up.

We pull into a spacious lot where several semis are parked, and in between a convenience store, a car wash and a fast food restaurant. Passengers are standing up in the center of the aisle before the bus even comes to a stop. I’m one of them. My back hurts so bad.

We file out of the bus one by one, and the second I step off I cherish the feel of concrete underfoot and the mild breeze on my face. I don’t care that this area is hick-in-the-sticks remote, or that the convenience store gas pumps are so outdated that I know the restrooms will probably be scary; I’m just glad to be anywhere but cooped-up inside that bus. I practically glide (like an ungraceful, wounded gazelle) across the blacktop parking lot and toward the restaurant. I take advantage of the restroom first and when I come back out there are several people in line in front of me. I stare up at the menu, trying to decide between a large fry or vanilla shake—never was a big eater of fast food. And finally when I walk out of the restaurant with a vanilla shake, I see the guy from the bus sitting on the grass that separates the parking lots. His knees are bent and he’s eating a burger. I don’t look at him when I start to walk past, but apparently it’s not enough to keep him from bothering me.

“Eight more minutes before you have to crawl back into that tin can,” he says. “You’re really going to spend that precious time in there?”

I stop next to a little tree still being held up by a stick in the ground and tied with pink fabric.

“It’s just eight minutes,” I say. “Won’t make that much of a difference.”

He takes a huge bite of his burger, chews and swallows it down.

“Imagine if you were buried alive,” he says and takes a drink of soda. “You wouldn’t have much time before you suffocated to death. If only they’d gotten to you eight minutes earlier, hell, even one minute, you’d still be alive.”

“OK, I get it,” I say.

“I’m not contagious,” he says and then takes another bite.

I guess I have been sort of a bitch. I mean, in a way he kind of deserved it, but he’s really not being obnoxious or anything, so there’s no reason to keep the defenses all the way up. I’d rather not make any enemies on this trip if I can help it.

“Whatever,” I say and take a seat on the grass a couple of feet in front of him.

“So why Idaho?” he asks, though he looks at his food and all around him more than he looks directly at me.

“Going to see my sister,” I lie. “She just had a baby.”

He nods and swallows.

“Why Wyoming?” I ask, hoping to divert the topic from myself.

“Going to visit my dad,” he says. “He’s dying. Inoperable brain tumor.” He takes another bite. It doesn’t seem like what he just told me bothers him too much.

“Oh …”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, looking right at me this time for a brief moment. “We all gotta go sometime. My old man isn’t worried about it and told us not to be, either.” He smiles and looks at me again. “Actually, he told us if we do any of that cryin’ bullshit, that he’d write us out of his will.”

I suck on my vanilla shake for a moment, only to be doing something to keep my mouth from having to respond to the stuff he’s saying. I’m not sure if I could anyway, really.

He takes another sip.

“What’s your name?” he asks, setting his drink on the grass.

I wonder if I should give him my real name. “Cam,” I say, settling on the short version.

“Short for what?”

I didn’t expect that.

I hesitate, my eyes trailing. “Camryn,” I admit. I figure with all the lies I’m going to have to keep track of, I might as well be truthful about my first name at least. It’s one less-significant piece of information I don’t have to remember to keep under wraps.

“I’m Andrew. Andrew Parrish.”

I nod and smile slimly, not about to tell him my last name is Bennett. He’ll have to make do with the first-name-basis only.

As he finishes the last of his burger and scarfs down a few fries, I secretly study him and notice the bottom of a tattoo poking out from underneath both sleeves of his t-shirt. He can’t be older than mid-twenties, if even that.

“So, how old are you?” It still felt too personal of a question. I hope he doesn’t read something in it that’s not there.

“Twenty-five,” he says. “What about you?”

“Twenty.”

He glances at me ponderingly, pauses and then subtly purses his lips.

“Well, it’s good to meet you, twenty-year-old Cam short for Camryn heading to Idaho to see her sister who just had a baby.”

My lips smile, but my face doesn’t. It’ll take a while before any of my smiles directed at him can be genuine. Genuine smiles can sometimes give the wrong impression. At least this way, I can be civil and kind, but not the civil kind who after a few big smiles ends up in a trunk with their throat slit.

“So, are you from Wyoming?” I ask and take another sip of my shake.

He nods once. “Yeah, was born there, but parents divorced when I was six and we moved to Texas.”

Texas. How funny. Maybe all of my crap-talk about their cowboy boots and reputation is finally catching up to me. And he doesn’t look like he’s from Texas, at least, not the stereotypical way that most people assume everyone from Texas looks like.

“That’s where I’ll be headin’ back to after visiting my dad—what about you?”

OK, to lie or not to lie? Oh screw it. It’s not like he’s a private investigator sent by my dad to get information. As long as I steer clear of #1, my last name, and #2, any addresses or phone numbers that might lead him back to my house in the event that I ever go back home, and then end up in his trunk with my throat slit. I think telling mostly the truth will be a lot easier than trying to conjure up a fitting lie for just about every question that he asks me and then having to remember all of them later. This is going to be a long bus ride, after all, and just like he said, we’ve got several buses to share before we part ways.

“North Carolina,” I say.

He looks me over. “Well, you don’t look like you’re from North Carolina.”

Huh? OK, that was really weird.

“Well, what’s a girl from North Carolina supposed to look like?”

“You’re very literal,” he says, grinning.

“And you’re sort of confusing.”

“Nah,” he says with a harmless, humorous snarl, “just outspoken and sometimes people can’t deal with that kind of shit. It’s like, you ask that guy over there if your ass looks big in those jeans and he’ll tell you, no. You ask me, and I’ll tell you the truth—anything out of people’s usual expectations throws them off track.”

“Really?” I’m not any closer to understanding this guy’s personality than I was before I knew his name. I just continue to look at him like he’s sort of nuts and I’m sort of intrigued by it.

“Really,” he answers matter-of-factly.

I wait for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t.

“You are very strange,” I say.

“Well, aren’t you going to ask?”

“Ask what?”

He laughs. “If I think your ass looks big in those jeans.”

I feel my face crinkle.

“I’d really rather not … I uhhh—” Screw this times two. If he’s going to play games, I’m not going to sit back and let him win all the hands. I smirk at him and say, “I know my ass doesn’t look big in these jeans, so I don’t really need your opinion.”

A devilishly handsome grin sneaks up at the corners of his mouth. He takes another drink from his soda and goes to his feet, offering his hand. “Looks like our eight minutes are up.”

Maybe it’s because I’m still completely confused by this entire exchange, but I accept his hand and he pulls me to my feet.

“See,” he says looking over at me once and letting my hand go, “look how much we learned about each other in just eight minutes, Camryn.”

I walk beside him, but still keep a little distance. I’m not sure yet if his crafty comebacks and that confident air about him annoys me, or if I’m finding it more refreshing than my brain wants to admit.

Everyone on the bus gets their usual seats. I had left the magazine I took from the last terminal sitting on mine, hoping no one would come behind me and claim it. Andrew also got his usual pair of seats behind me. I’m glad he didn’t take my willingness to actually hold a conversation with him as the OK to plop himself back on the seat next to me.

Hours pass and we don’t talk. I think a lot about Natalie and Ian.

“Goodnight, Camryn,” I hear Andrew say from his seat behind me. “Maybe tomorrow you’ll tell me who Nat is.”

I rise up quickly and lean over the top of the seat. “What are you talking about?”

“Calm down, girl,” he says, lifting his head from his bag he pushed up against the bus to use as a pillow. “You talk in your sleep.” He laughs quietly. “Heard you bitchin’ at someone named Nat last night—something about Biosilk, or some shit like that.” I notice his shoulders shrug even though he’s lying down with his legs stretched across the empty seat, his arms crossed over his chest.

Great. I talk in my sleep. Just perfect. I wonder why my mom never told me.

Briefly, I think about what I could’ve been dreaming about and realize that maybe I have been dreaming after all, and I just don’t remember anymore.

“Goodnight, Andrew,” I say and slip back down into my own attempt at a comfortable position. I give a quick moment’s thought to the way I just saw Andrew, who actually looked pretty comfortable and I decide to try laying down the way he is. I thought about trying to sleep like that a few times, but I never wanted to be rude by letting my feet stick out into the aisle. No one’s going to care, I guess, and so I ball my bag packed with clothes up and position it behind my head, laying my body out over both seats just like Andrew. I’m already comfortable. I wish I’d done this a long time ago.

The bus driver announcing that we’ll be arriving in Garden City in ten minutes wakes me up the next morning.

“Be sure to gather all of your belongings,” the driver says through his intercom, “and don’t leave trash on the seats. Thank you for riding through the great state of Kansas and I hope to see you again sometime.”

It sounded totally scripted and deadpan, but then I guess I probably would sound like that too, having to say the same thing to passengers every single day.

I lift up the rest of the way, pulling my bag from the seat and unzipping it to fish around for my bus ticket. I find it crumpled between a pair of jeans and my vintage-style Smurfs babydoll tee, unfold it and peer down into my next stop. Looks like Denver is about six and a half hours away, with two rest stops in between. Damn, why did I choose Idaho? Really. Of all the places on the map, I chose mine based on a baked potato. I’m riding all this way and don’t even have anything to look forward to once I get there. Except more riding. Hell, I may just go ahead and use my credit card and buy a plane ticket home. No, I’m not ready for that yet. I don’t know why, but I know I can’t go back there yet.

I just can’t.

Surprised that Andrew has been so quiet, I find myself trying to see if I can glimpse him through the tiny space between my seats, but I can’t see anything at all.

“Are you up?” I ask, lifting my chin so maybe he’ll hear me back there.

He doesn’t answer and I lift up to see. Of course, he’s plugged in at the moment. I’m a little shocked I can’t hear the music funneling from the earbuds this time.

Andrew notices me and smiles, raising his hand and shaking his index finger as if to say good morning. I motion a finger too, toward the front of the bus to let him know there’s been an announcement. He pulls the buds from his ears and looks up at me, waiting for me to put words to the gesture.

Andrew

Seven

I got a call from my brother in Wyoming today. He said our old man wasn’t going to be around much longer. He’d already spent the last six months in and out of the hospital.

“If you’re gonna see him,” Aidan said on the other end of the phone, “you better come now.”

I do hear Aidan. I do. But all I can really comprehend right about now is that my dad is about to fucking die. “Don’t you ever dare cry for me,” he’d said to my brothers and me last year when they diagnosed him with a rare form of brain cancer. “I’ll cut you right out of my will, boy.”

I hated him for that, for telling me in so many words that if I cried for him, the one man in my life that I would die for, that I’d be a pussy for it. I don’t care about the will. Whatever he leaves me I’ll just let it sit. Maybe I’ll give it to Mom.

Dad was always a hardass growing up. He drilled the shit outta me and my brothers, but I like to think we turned out decent (and that was probably the plan behind the drilling). Aidan, the oldest, owns a successful bar and restaurant in Chicago and is married to a pediatrician. Asher, the youngest, is in college and has his sights set on a career at Google.

Me? I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve secretly done a few modeling gigs for several high profile agencies, but I only did it because I fell on hard times last year. Right after I found out about my dad. I couldn’t cry, so I let it all out on my 1969 Chevy Camaro. Destroyed it with a baseball bat. Dad and I rebuilt that car from the ground up together. It was our ‘father-son’ project that began just before I graduated. I figured if he isn’t going to be around, then neither should the car.

So yeah, modeling.

Hell no, I never went looking for a gig. I don’t care about that kind of shit. I just happened to be at Aidan’s bar when a couple of scouts found me getting shitfaced. I guess it didn’t matter that I was … well, shitfaced, because they slipped me their card, offered me a generous sum of money just to show up at their building in New York and after three weeks of staring at that Camaro and regretting what I’d done to it, I decided, why not? That one check just for showing up could cover some of the body work. And I did show up. And despite the money I made from the few ads I shot being enough to fix the car, I turned down the fifty-thousand-dollar contract I’d been offered by LL Elite because, like I said, prancing around in my underwear for a living just isn’t my thing. Hell, I felt dirty for accepting the few gigs I did accept. So, I did what any red-meat-eating, beer-drinking guy would do and I tried to make myself look more man and less pansy by getting a few tattoos and a job as a mechanic.

Not the kind of future my old man wanted for me, but unlike my brothers, I learned a long time ago that it’s my future and my life and I can’t make myself live the way someone else wants me to live. I dropped out of college after I realized that I was studying something I didn’t give a shit about.

What is it with people and their willingness to follow?

Not me. I want one thing in life. It’s not money or fame or a Photoshopped dick on a billboard in Times Square or a college education that may or may not benefit me later. I’m not sure what it is that I want, but I feel it deep in the pit of my stomach. It’s there sitting dormant. I’ll know it when I see it.

“A bus?” Aidan says, unbelieving.

“Yes,” I say. “I’ll take a bus there. I need to think.”

“Andrew, Dad might not make it,” he says and I can hear the restraint in his voice. “Seriously, bro.”

“I’ll be there when I get there.”

I run my thumb over the end call button.

I think a small part of me hopes that he dies before I make it. Because I know I’ll lose my shit if he dies while I’m there. This is my father, the man who raised me and who I look up to. And he tells me not to cry. I’ve always done everything he’s ever told me and like the good son I’ve always tried to be, I know I’ll force back the tears because he told me to. But I also know that by doing it, it’ll create something in me more destructive.

I don’t want to end up like my car.

A single duffle bag packed with a clean pair of clothes, toothbrush, cell phone and MP3 player with my favorite classic rock songs—another mark that Dad left on me: “That new stuff kids listen to these days is shit music, son,” he said at least once a year. “Get the Led out, boy!” I’ll admit I didn’t completely shun newer music just because my dad did. I have my own damn mind, remember? But I did grow up on a healthy dose of the classics and I’m very proud of that.

“Mom, I don’t need those.”

She’s stuffing a Ziploc bag with about a dozen little packets of hand-sanitizing wipes for me to take. She’s always been a germaphobe.

I’ve lived back and forth between Texas and Wyoming since I was six-years-old. Ultimately, I realized that I fit better in Texas because I like the Gulf and the heat. I’ve had my own apartment in Galveston for four years now, but last night my mom insisted I stay at her place. She knows how I feel about my dad and she knows that sometimes I can be explosive when I’m hurting, or when I’m pissed off. Spent a night in jail last year for beating the fuck out of Darren Ebbs after he punched his girlfriend in front of me. And when I had to have my best friend, Maximus, put to sleep because of congestive heart failure, I busted my hands up pretty good taking my emotions out on the tree behind my apartment.

I’m not violent in general, only to douchebags and occasionally, myself.

“Those buses are nasty,” she says, tucking the baggie down into my bag. “I rode on one back before I met your father and I was sick for a week afterwards. I still don’t understand why you won’t take a plane. You can get there in a fraction of the time.”

“Mom,” I say, kissing her cheek, “it’s just something I need to do—like it was meant to be, or something.” I don’t really believe that second part, but I thought I’d humor her with something meaningful, even though she knows I’m full of shit. I walk over and open the kitchen cabinet, taking two brown sugar and cinnamon Pop-Tarts from the box and dropping them in my bag. “Maybe the plane is supposed to crash.”

“That’s not funny, Andrew.” She glances over at me sternly.

I smile and squeeze her. “I’ll be alright, and I’ll make it in time to see Dad before …” my voice trails.

Mom hugs me back tighter than I did her.

By the time I make it to Kansas, I’m starting to wonder if my mom was right. I thought I could use the long ride to think, to clear my head and maybe figure out what I’m doing and what I’m going to do after my dad dies. Because things will be different. Things always change when someone you love dies. You just can’t prepare yourself for those changes no matter what you do in advance.

The only thing that’s a certainty is always wondering who’s going to be next.

I know I’ll never be able to look at my mom the same again …

I think the bus ride has been more of a taunt than a time for meaningful contemplation. I should’ve known that time alone with my thoughts would be unhealthy. Already I’ve decided that my life has been pretty much wasted and I’m going through all the eye-opening emotions: What am I here for? What’s the point in life? What the hell am I doing? I sure as hell haven’t had any epiphanies, or stared out the bus window, lost in some dramatic movie-moment when suddenly life becomes clear to me. The only music playing in the background of this movie is Alice in Chains’ Would?, and that’s not exactly an epiphany-moment kind of song.

The driver is just about to close the doors on the bus when I step up and he notices me.

Thank God, a bus I might actually get to sleep on; plenty of empty seats.

I head toward the back, my sights set on two empty seats right behind the cute blonde who I’m pretty sure is jailbait. My dad said it right once: “Can’t tell twelve from twenty these days, son. It must be something the government has been puttin’ in the water—be damn careful when you need to knock some boots.”

As I near the girl on the bus, I notice her move her bag over onto the aisle seat so that I won’t sit there.

That’s funny. I mean yeah, she’s cute and all but there are about ten or so empty seats on this bus, which means I’m going to get two to myself so I can sprawl my ass out however I want and get some much-needed shuteye.

Things don’t go as planned and several hours later, just after dark and I’m still wide awake, staring out the tall window beside me with music blasting in my ears. The girl in front of me has been passed out for about an hour and I got tired of hearing her talk in her sleep; though I could hardly make out anything she was saying, I didn’t really want to know. Kind of feels like spying, hearing someone’s thoughts when they have no idea what they’re doing. I’d much rather hear my playlist.

After I finally fall asleep, my eyes crawl open when I feel something tapping against my leg. Wow, she’s kind of beautiful even with her hair all smashed on one side of her face and the darkness covering the rest of her. Jailbait, Andrew. I don’t have to remind myself that she’s probably jailbait to keep myself from doing anything I know I shouldn’t; no, I remind myself because I don’t want to be disappointed when I find out that I’m right.

After a quick back-and-forth about the possibility of my music being what woke her up, I turn it down and she slips back down into her little bus-seat-cubicle.

When I lean up over the top of her seat to look down at her, I’m wondering to myself what possessed me to do it. But I’ve always been one for a challenge and her spunky attitude towards me in a conversation that lasted less than forty-five seconds was enough to shake her hand in this metaphorical bet.

I’ve always been a sucker for spunky attitudes.

And I never back down from a challenge.

The next morning, I offer to let her borrow my MP3 player, but apparently she’s as much of a germaphobe as my mother.

A man, probably in his early forties, has been sitting on the other side of the bus, three seats up from the girl. I saw the way he was looking at her when I first got on. She had no clue he had been watching her and it’s disturbing to think about how long he’s been watching her since before I got on, or what he’s been doing to himself sitting up there all alone in the dark.

I’ve been sort of keeping my eyes on him ever since. He’s so enamored by her that I doubt he knows I’ve been watching.

His eyes keep glancing between her and down the center of the aisle towards the matchbox restroom. I can almost hear the gears churning in his head.

I wonder when he’s going to try to make his move.

Just then, he gets up.

I slide out of my seat and into the one beside her. I just play it off like it’s nothing. I can feel her eyes on me, looking at me wondering what the fuck I think I’m doing.

The man walks past, but I don’t let him see my eyes because then that would give away that I’m onto him. Right now, he probably thinks I’m just playing my own game with the girl; that I’m making my own move and for now, he’ll get over it and probably try again later.

And later is when I’ll cave his face in with my fist.

I reach into my bag and fish for the baggie of antibacterial wipes my mom packed. Ripping one from the packet, I wipe the earbuds down and then reach over to her. “Like new,” I say, waiting for her to take them, but I know she won’t.

“Really, I’m good. But thanks.”

“You’re probably better off anyway,” I say, putting the MP3 player in my bag. “I don’t listen to Justin Bieber or that crazy meat-wearin’ bitch, so I guess you’ll just have to do without.”

Judging by that irritated look on her face, I pissed her off. I laugh quietly to myself, turning my head at an angle so she doesn’t catch me grinning.

“First off, I don’t listen to Justin Bieber.”

Thank God.

“And second, Gaga isn’t so bad. Playing the shock-value card a little too long, I admit, but I like some of her stuff.”

“That’s shit music and you know it,” I quote my father, shaking my head.

I put my bag on the floor and lean back on the seat, propping up one foot on the seat in front of me. I wonder why she hasn’t told me to leave yet. And this also worries me. Would she have been ‘too nice’ to tell that man to leave right away if he had made it here before me? There’s no way someone like her would be in to someone like him, but face it, sometimes girls let that overly sympathetic gene get the best of them. And that few seconds is really all it takes.

I look over at her again, letting my head fall sideways against the seat. “Classic rock is where it’s at,” I say. “Zeppelin, the Stones, Journey, Foreigner—any of that ringing any bells?”

She rolls her eyes at me. “I’m not stupid,” she says and a grin lifts one side of my mouth because there’s that spunky attitude again.

“Name one song by Bad Company and I’ll leave you alone about it,” I challenge her.

I can tell she’s nervous, how she gently bites down on her bottom lip, and like talking in her sleep and being watched by bad men, she probably doesn’t even know it.

I wait patiently, unable to peel the grin from my face because it’s amusing watching her squirm, trying to sort through all of the times she was in the car with her folks listening to this stuff, searching for some memory that will help her in this critical moment.

“Ready For Love,” she finally answers and I’m impressed.

“Are you?” I ask and something hits me in this moment. I don’t know what the hell ‘it’ is, but it’s there, waving at me from behind a wall, like when you know someone’s watching you, yet you don’t see anybody.

“Huh?” she says, as caught off-guard by my question as I was afterwards.

A smile creeps up on my face. “Nothing,” I say, looking away.

The pervert from the restroom comes quietly back down the dark aisle and goes back to his seat, no doubt pissed off that I’m sitting where he wants to be sitting. I’m just glad she waited for him to pass by before finally asking me to move so she can have both of her seats back.

After I crawl back behind her, I lean around the edge of her seat and say, “Where are you going, anyway?”

She tells me Idaho, but I think there’s more to her answer than that. I can’t put my finger on it, but I get the feeling she’s either lying, which is probably a good thing because I’m a total stranger, or she’s hiding something else.

I let it go for now and tell her where I’m heading and then duck back in my seat behind her.

The man three seats up just looked at her again. I’m about ready to bash his fucking brains in right now, just for looking.

Hours later, the bus pulls into a rest stop and the driver gives us all fifteen minutes to get out, stretch our legs and get something to eat. I watch the girl head inside toward the restrooms and I’m the first in line to order food. I get my food and head back outside, taking a seat on the grass next to the parking lot. The pervert walks past me, stepping back inside the bus by himself.

I manage to talk her into sitting with me. She’s hesitant at first, but apparently I’m charming enough. My mom always told me I was her charming middle-child. I guess she was right all along.

We talk for a minute or two about why I’m going to Wyoming and why she’s going to Idaho. I’m still trying to figure her out, what it is about her that I can’t quite place, but at the same time trying to force myself not to be attracted to her because it’s like I just know she’s jailbait, or she’s going to lie about it.

But she looks close to my age, younger than me, but we can’t be too far apart.

Goddammit! Why am I even considering an attraction to her? My dad is dying right now as I sit here on the grass next to her. I shouldn’t be thinking about anything other than my dad and what I’m going to say to him if I do manage to get to Wyoming before he passes.

“What’s your name?” I ask, setting my drink on the grass and trying to push thoughts of my dad’s death somewhere else in my mind.

She thinks about it for a minute, probably wondering whether she should tell me the truth, or not. “Cam,” she finally answers.

“Short for what?”

“Camryn.”

“I’m Andrew. Andrew Parrish.”

She seems a little shy.

“So, how old are you?” she asks and it completely surprises me. Maybe she’s not jailbait, after all, because underage girls, when they want to lie about their age, usually steer clear of this topic at all costs.

I’m hopeful now that maybe she’s legal. Yeah, I really want her to be …

“Twenty-five,” I say. “What about you?” I can’t breathe all of a sudden.

“Twenty,” she says.

I think about her answer for a moment, pursing my lips. I’m still not sure if she’s lying, but maybe after more time with her on this journey that seems to have brought us together, I will find out the truth eventually.

“Well, it’s good to meet you, twenty-year-old Cam short for Camryn heading to Idaho to see her sister who just had a baby.”

I smile. We talk for a few minutes more—eight minutes to be exact—about this and that and I screw with her head some more because that spunky mouth of hers deserves it.

Actually, I think she likes it, the way I treat her. I can tell there’s an attraction. Though small, I sense it. And it can’t really be because of the way I look—hell, my breath probably smells like ass right now and I haven’t had a shower today—if it was because of looks, unlike most girls who are ever into me, she turned me down already. She didn’t want me sitting next to her on that bus. She wasn’t shy to tell me to turn my music down, with a snippy-ass attitude at that. She got pissed when I accused her of having Bieber Fever (it pisses me off that I even know what the fuck that means—I blame that on society) and I get the feeling that she would have no problem kicking me in the nuts if I touched her in an inappropriate way. Not that I would. Hell no. But it’s good to know that she’s the type.

Hell yeah, I like this girl.

We board the bus and I crawl back in my seat, letting my legs stretch out into the aisle and then I see her white tennis shoes poke out from her aisle seat and I smile at the thought that I’d been interesting enough for her to take ideas from. I check on her about twenty minutes later and just like I thought, she’s passed out cold.

I turn the music back up and listen to it until I fall asleep, too, and wake up the next morning long before she does.

She pops her head over the top of her seat and I smile and wave a finger at her.

She’s even prettier in the daylight.

Camryn

Eight

“Ten minutes,” I say, “and we’re off this tin can.”

Andrew grins and pulls his back away from the seat and goes to put his MP3 player away.

I’m not exactly sure why I felt the need to tell him.

“Did you sleep better?” he asks, zipping up his bag.

“Yeah, actually I did,” I say, reaching around to feel the back of my neck where I don’t feel any twisted muscles this time. “Thanks for the involuntary idea.”

“You’re very welcome,” he says with a huge grin.

“Denver?” he asks, looking up at me.

I’m assuming he’s asking if that’s my next stop. “Yeah, almost seven hours away.”

Andrew shakes his head, seeming as dissatisfied with that time-frame as I am.

Ten minutes later and the bus pulls into the Garden City station. There are three times as many people at this station than there were at the last one and this worries me. I make my way through the terminal and to the first empty seat I see because they are filling up quickly. Andrew slips around a corner underneath the vending area sign and comes back with a Mountain Dew and a bag of chips.

He sits down beside me and cracks the top on the soda can.

“What?” he asks looking over at me.

I didn’t notice I had been watching him gulp that soda down with a disgusted look on my face.

“Nothing,” I say, looking away, “I just think it’s gross.”

I hear him laugh under his breath beside me and then the chip bag rattles open.

“You seem to think a lot of stuff is gross.”

I look over at him again, positioning my bag on my lap. “When was the last time you ate something less … heart-attack inducing?”

He crunches another chip and swallows. “I eat whatever I want to eat—what are you, one of those uppity vegetarian girls that complain about how fast food is making the country fat?”

“I’m not one of those,” I say, “but I think the uppity vegetarian girls might be onto something.”

He chomps down on a couple more chips and takes a swig of his soda, grinning over at me.

“Fast food doesn’t make people fat,” he says steadily chewing away. “People make their own choices. Fast food restaurants are just bankin’ good on the stupidity of Americans who choose to eat their food.”

“Are you calling yourself a stupid American?” I grin right back at him.

He shrugs. “I guess I am when my options are limited to vending machines and burger joints.”

I roll my eyes. “Oh, like you’d actually choose to eat something better if you had the choice to make. I don’t buy that.”

I think I’m getting better at these comebacks.

He laughs out loud. “Hell yeah I’d choose something better. I’ll take a fifty-dollar steak over a day-old burger any day, or a beer over a Mountain Dew.”

I shake my head, but can’t wipe the faint grin off my face.

“What do you normally eat, anyway?” he asks. “Salads and tofu?”

“Bleh,” I say with a wrinkled face. “No way in hell would I ever eat tofu and salads are just weight-loss fads.” I pause and grin over at him. “Honestly?”

“Well, yeah—spit it out,” he says.

He’s looking at me as though I’m something funny and cute that needs to be studied.

“I like SpaghettiOs with meatballs and sushi.”

“What, like all mixed together?” Now he looks quietly disgusted.

It takes me a few seconds to catch on.

“Oh, no,” I say, shaking my head back and forth, “that would be gross, too, by the way.”

He smiles, looking relieved.

“I’m not big on steak,” I go on, “but I’d eat one if offered to me, I guess.”

“Oh, so you’re asking me to ask you on a date?” His grin just got wider.

My eyes bulge and my mouth falls open. “No!” I say, practically blushing. “I was just saying that—”

Andrew laughs and takes another swig.

“I know, I know,” he says, “don’t worry. I’d never consider asking you on a date.”

My eyes and mouth get even bigger and my face flushes hot.

He laughs even louder.

“Damn, girl,” he says, still with laughter in his voice, “you don’t catch on too quick, do you?”

I frown.

He frowns, too, but he’s still sort of smiling at the same time.

“I’ll tell you what,” he says, looking a bit more serious, “if we happen to get lucky enough to find a steakhouse at one of our rest stops that can cook a steak in the fifteen minutes we have before the bus leaves us behind, then I’ll buy you one and let you decide while we eat our steaks together on the bus if it’s a date, or not.”

“Well, I can tell you now that it won’t be a date.”

He smiles crookedly.

“Then it won’t be,” he says. “I can live with that.”

I think he’s done with the topic, but then suddenly he adds, “But then what would it be, if not a date?”

“What do you mean?” I say. “It would be a friendship thing, I guess. Y’know, two people who happen to be sharing a meal together.”

“Oh,” he says with a sparkle in his eyes, “so now we’re friends?”

That catches me off-guard. He’s good. I give it a moment’s thought, pursing my lips in contemplation.

“Sure,” I say. “I guess we are sort of friends at least until Wyoming.”

He reaches over and offers his hand to me. Reluctantly, I shake it. His grip is gentle, but firm and his smile is genuine and kind.

“Friends until Wyoming it is then,” he says, shaking my hand once and letting go.

I’m not sure what just happened, but I don’t feel like I’ve done anything I’m going to regret later. I guess there’s nothing wrong with having a traveling ‘friend’. I can think of a hundred other kinds of people who Andrew could be and it could be worse. But he seems harmless and I admit he’s interesting to talk to. He’s not an old lady looking to tell me stories of when she was my age, or an older delusional man who still thinks he’s as hot as he was when he was seventeen and that somehow he thinks I might be able to see him for what he used to look like. No, Andrew is right there in the goldilocks zone. Sure, it’d be better for many different reasons if he was a girl, but at least he’s close to my age and he’s not at all ugly. Oh no, Andrew Parrish is far from being anywhere near the Ugly Tree.

Truthfully, he lives right next door to the Sexy Tree and I think that’s the only thing that bothers me about this whole situation.

You know damn well that it doesn’t really matter what’s going on in your life, who you just lost, how much you hate the world, or how inappropriate it is to have an attraction to someone before that mending phase has reached the acceptable zone. You’re still human and the moment you see someone attractive, you can’t help but make note of it. It’s human nature.

Acting on it is a whole other story and that’s where I draw the line.

That’s not gonna happen, no matter what.

But yeah, the fact that he’s hot bothers me because it only means that I will have to try that much harder to make sure that nothing I say or do will give him the wrong impression. Hot guys know they’re hot. They just do, even the ones who don’t go around flaunting it. And it’s also human nature for hot guys to automatically assume that an innocent smile, or a conversation that goes on for three minutes without awkward silence, are signs of an attraction.

So, this ‘friendship’ is going to take a lot of work on my part. I want to be nice, but not too nice. I want to smile when necessary, but I have to be careful and measure the level of the smile. I want to laugh if something he says is funny, but I don’t want him to think it’s an I’m-so-fucking-into-you kind of laugh.

Yeah, this is definitely going to take work. Maybe an old lady would’ve been better, after all …

Andrew and I wait in the terminal for nearly an hour before the next bus pulls into the station. And as expected, it doesn’t look like we’re going to have two seats to ourselves this time. The line waiting to board already looks like there might not be enough seats to hold everyone. Dilemma. Crap. Andrew and I are suddenly temporary friends, but I can’t bring myself to ask him to sit with me. That might count as one of those things that gives the wrong impression. So, as the line inches forward and he follows close behind, I’m hoping he’ll take it upon himself to sit next to me. I’d rather it be him than someone else who I haven’t even spoken to.

I make my way toward the center of the bus and into two empty seats, passing up the one on the outside and taking the one by the window.

He sits next to me and I’m secretly relieved.

“Since you’re a girl,” he says, putting his bag on the floor between his feet, “I’ll let you keep the window seat.”

He smiles.

After the bus is full and I can already feel the extra body heat rising up all around us from so many people crammed inside the space, I hear the door squeal shut and the bus lurches in motion.

The drive doesn’t seem so long and torturous anymore now that I have someone to talk to. It only takes about an hour of constant conversation about everything from what all of his favorite classic rock bands are, to why I like Pink and how much better her stuff is than Boston and Foreigner who sound the same to me. We argued about this for twenty minutes out of that hour—he’s really stubborn, but then he said the same about me, so maybe we’re both guilty. And I let him in on who ‘Nat’ is, though I don’t go into the gruesome details of mine and Natalie’s relationship.

By the time the night falls, I realize there hasn’t been a single awkward moment of silence between us since we boarded the bus and he decided to sit next to me.

“How long are you staying in Idaho?”

“A few days.”

“And then you’re riding back on a bus?” Strangely, Andrew’s face has lost all of its humor.

“Yeah,” I say, not wanting to go too deeply into this topic because I don’t already know my answers in advance.

I hear him sigh.

“It’s none of my business,” he says looking over at me and I feel the space between us closing in since he’s sitting so close, “but you shouldn’t be traveling around by yourself like this.”

I don’t look at him.

“Well, I kind of have to.”

“Why?” he asks. “I’m not trying to hit on you or anything, but a young, devilishly gorgeous girl like you traveling by herself in the slums of the bus stations of America is dangerous.”

I feel my face break into a smile, but I try futilely to hide it.

I look over at him. “You’re not trying to hit on me,” I say, “yet you call me ‘devilishly gorgeous’ and practically use that what’s-a-girl-like-you-doing-in-a-place-like-this line all in the same sentence.”

He seems gently offended.

“I’m serious, Camryn,” he says and the playful smile on my face dissolves. “You could really get hurt.”

In an attempt to shift the awkward moment, I grin and say, “Don’t worry about me. I’m confident in my ability to scream really loud if I get attacked.”

He shakes his head and takes a deep breath, slowly giving in to my attempts to lighten things up.

“So tell me about your dad,” I say.

The almost-smile flees from his face and he looks away from me. It wasn’t an accident, bringing it up like I did. I don’t know, I just get this strange feeling that he’s hiding something. When he briefly mentioned back in Kansas about his dad dying, on the outside it didn’t seem to faze him. But he’s going all this way, by bus at that, to see his dad before he dies, so he must love him. I’m sorry, but you’re never unfazed when someone you love is dead, or dying.

Sounds strange coming from me, who can’t cry anymore.

“He’s a good man,” Andrew says, still looking in front of him. I get the feeling he’s picturing his dad right now, that he doesn’t actually see anything in front of him except for his memories.

He looks over at me and is smiling now, but it’s not a smile trying to cover up any pain, more-so one washed with a good memory.

“Instead of taking me to a baseball game, my dad took me to a boxing match.”

“Oh?” I feel my smile light up. “Do tell?”

He looks back out ahead, but the warmth in his face never leaves him in this moment. “Dad wanted us to be fighters—” He glances over. “Not boxers or actual fighters, though he probably wouldn’t have minded that so much, either. But I mean fighters in general, you know, in life. Metaphorically.”

I nod to let him know that I understand.

“I sat ringside, eight-years-old, mesmerized by these two men beating each other and the whole time I could hear my dad talking over the crowd next to me: ‘They fear nothing, son,’ he said. ‘And all of their moves are calculated. They move one way and it either works, or it doesn’t, but they learn something from every move, every decision.’”

Andrew catches my eye briefly and his smile dissolves, leaving his expression blank. “He told me that a real fighter never cries, never lets the weight of any blow bring him down. Except that final blow, the inevitable one, but even then they always go out like men.”

I’m no longer smiling, either. I can’t tell exactly what’s going on in Andrew’s head right now, but we share the same sober mood. I want to ask him if he’s OK, because it’s obvious that he’s not, but the timing doesn’t feel right. It feels weird because I don’t know him well enough to be digging around inside of his emotions.

I say nothing.

“You must think I’m a dick,” he says.

I blink, surprised. “No,” I answer. “Why do you say that?”

He backs off immediately and downplays the seriousness of his own question, letting that devastating smile slip back to the surface again.

“I’m going to see him before he kicks the bucket,” he says, and his choice of words shocks me a little, “because that’s what we do, right? It’s a customary thing, kind of like saying ‘bless you’ when someone sneezes, or asking someone how their weekend was when really you don’t give a shit.”

Damn, where is all of this coming from?

“You have to live in the now,” he says and I’m quietly stunned. “Don’t you think so?” His head falls to the side and he’s looking at me again.

It takes me a moment to get my head together, but even then I’m not sure about what to say.

“Living in the now,” I say, quoting him, yet at the same time thinking of my own belief of loving in the now. “I guess you’re right.” But I still wonder exactly what his take on the belief is.

I straighten my back against the seat and raise my head a little to look over at him more closely. It’s like suddenly I have this great desire to know all about his belief. To know everything about him.

“What is living in the now to you?” I ask.

I notice one of his eyebrows twitch for a second and his expression shifts, surprised at the seriousness of my question, or the level of my interest. Maybe both.

He straightens his back and raises his head, too.

“Just that dwelling and planning is bullshit,” he says. “You dwell on the past, you can’t move forward. Spend too much time planning for the future and you just push yourself backwards, or you stay stagnant in the same place all your life.” His eyes lock on mine. “Live in the moment,” he says as if making a serious point, “where everything is just right, take your time and limit your bad memories and you’ll get wherever it is you’re going a lot faster and with less bumps in the road along the way.”

The silence between us is just two minds thinking about what he just said. I wonder if his thoughts are the same as mine. I also wonder, more than I want to admit, why so many of his thoughts already make me feel like I’m staring into a mirror when I look at him.

The bus glides heavily over the freeway, always loud and rarely soft. But after so long, it’s easy to forget how unpleasant a bus ride is compared to the luxury of a car. And when you’re thinking more about the positive aspects of a bus ride, instead of the negative, it’s easy to forget that there’s anything negative about it at all. There is a guy sitting next to me with beautiful green eyes and a beautiful sculpted face and a beautiful way of thinking. There’s no such thing as a bad bus ride when you’re in the company of something beautiful.

I shouldn’t be here …

Andrew

Nine

I can’t believe she brought up my dad. Not that I’m pissed about it, but I’m surprised that she seemed to really want to know. That she even remembered. She didn’t dive into questions about what I do for a living to calculate how much money I might make, or giggle and blush and look all stupid while reaching out to touch my tattoos, using them as an excuse to touch me. Huge fucking turn-off. I mean yeah, it’s a turn-on when you’re just looking to get laid—makes it easier—but for some reason, I couldn’t be happier that Camryn didn’t do it.

Who the hell is this girl?

And why am I even thinking about this stuff?

She falls asleep before me with her head propped against the bus window. I resist the urge to watch her, noticing how soft and innocent she looks, which makes me that much more primal, more protective.

The pervert seems to have stopped watching her when he saw us sitting together inside the last terminal. In the eyes of men, he probably sees her as my ‘territory’ now, my property. And that’s a good thing because it means he’ll leave her alone as long as I’m around. The truth is though, we’ll only be together until Wyoming and this worries the fuck out of me. I hope the man changes buses before Camryn and I have to depart ways. Two more rest stops between here and Denver—I hope like hell Denver is his last stop and if not, I’ll be watching him the rest of the way to Wyoming.

He’s not going to Idaho. I’ll stop him anyway I can.

I gaze through the dark and stillness of the bus. The man is asleep, his head pressed back against the aisle seat. A woman sits beside him next to the window, but she’s way too old to catch this guy’s eye. He likes them young, probably really young. It makes me fucking sick to think of what he may have already done to some other young girl.

Despite the bus generally being loud, the whistling of the wind pushing against the metal, the fast crushing sound of rubber moving swiftly over the road, the large engine humming as it compels the heap of metal across the freeway, it’s still quiet. It’s almost peaceful. As peaceful as a bus ride can be.

I finger my earbuds in and turn on the power on my MP3 player, setting it to shuffle. What will it be, what will it be? I always let the first song set the mood. I have over three hundred songs on this thing. Three hundred different mood-setters. I think my MP3 player is biased though because the first song is almost always between Kansas’ Dust in the Wind, Zeppelin’s Going to California or something by The Eagles.

I wait for it, not looking down at the information on the playlist as if it’s some kind of guessing game and I don’t want to cheat. Ah, good choice. Aerosmith’s Dream On. I lean my head back against the seat and shut my eyes, not realizing until after I’m in the middle of doing it that my finger is gently pressing the volume down. Because I don’t want to wake Camryn up.

I open my eyes and look over at her, how she clutches that bag of hers so tightly that she must still be completely conscious of it even in a deep sleep. I wonder about what might be inside, if there’s anything in it that could tell me more about her. If there’s anything in it that can tell me the truth about her.

But it doesn’t matter. I won’t know her after Wyoming and she’ll probably never even remember my name. But I know it’s better that way. I have too much baggage and even as a friend, she doesn’t need any of it in her lap. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

The low, melodious droning of Steven Tyler’s voice lulls me to partial-sleep. Except when he’s screaming that high-pitched scream, where I wait for him to let it all out and then I drift off the rest of the way.

“Dude, seriously,” I hear a voice say.

Something is pressing against my shoulder. I wake up to find Camryn pushing me off of her with her little arms. It’s actually kind of funny, that awry look on her morning face and how no matter how hard she pushes, the weight of my body is too heavy to move me completely.

“Sorry,” I say, still trying to wake up. I lift up disoriented and feel the back of my neck as stiff as wood. I really didn’t mean to end up with my head pressed against her arm, but I’m not as mortified about it as she’s pretending to be. At least I’m pretty sure she’s pretending. She’s trying really hard not to break a smile.

Let me help her a little with that.

I grin over at her.

“You think it’s funny?” she says, her mouth partly hanging open and her eyebrows rumpled in her cute little forehead.

“Yeah, actually I do think it’s funny.” My grin gets bigger and finally that smile of hers breaks softly in her face. “But I am sorry. Really.” And I mean it.

She narrows one eye and looks at me sideways, scrutinizing my sincerity, which is also kind of cute.

I look away and reach my arms above my head to stretch and that makes me need to yawn.

“Gross!” she says and that word doesn’t surprise me at all. “Your breath smells like ass.”

A single voluble laugh comes out through my words: “Damn, girl, how would you know what ass smells like anyway?”

That shuts her up. I laugh again and rummage through my bag after dropping my MP3 player inside of it. I pop the cap on my toothpaste and squirt a dab on the end of my tongue, move it around inside my mouth real good and then swallow. Of course, Camryn’s watching me do all of this with a look of revolt, but that’s what I was shooting for.

The rest of the bus seems to have woken up before me. I’m surprised I slept this long and without waking up at least three times to find another comfortable position, which always manages to elude me.

My watch says that it’s 9:02 a.m.

“Where are we anyway?” I ask, gazing out the large window next to Camryn, searching for any freeway signs.

“About four hours away from Denver,” she answers. “Driver just announced another rest stop in ten minutes.”

“Good,” I say, stretching one leg out into the aisle, “I need to walk around. I’m stiff as hell.”

I catch her grinning, but she turns to face the window. Stiff as hell. OK, so she also has a dirty mind. I just laugh thinking about it.

The next rest stop isn’t too much different from the last several, with a series of gas stations on either side of the freeway and two fast food restaurants. I can’t believe this girl has me actually debating whether or not to head inside one like I normally would without a thought otherwise. I just can’t really tell if it’s because I want to prove to her that I can choose to eat better stuff if given the choice, or because I know she’s going to yell at me.

Wait a damn second. Who’s the one in control of the situation here?

Clearly she is. Goddammit.

We file out of the bus, Camryn in front of me, and after walking around the front of the bus she stops and turns at the waist, crossing her arms and looking up at me, pursing her lips.

“Well, if you’re so smart,” I say, sounding sort of third grade and I admit it, “then see if you can find something healthy to eat—that doesn’t taste like rubber dipped in shit—in one of these places.”

A grin tugs one corner of her mouth.

“You’re on,” she accepts the challenge.

I follow her into the gigantic convenience store and she makes her way first to the drink coolers. Like that blonde chick on that game show (I don’t know which because I don’t watch game shows, but everybody knows about that blonde chick), Camryn waves her hands in front of the cooler doors, as if revealing the world of fruit juices and bottled water to me for the first time.

“We start off with a variety of juice, as you can see,” she says in her proper showcase voice. “Any of this is better than soda. Take your pick.”

“I hate juice.”

“Don’t be a baby. There’s plenty to choose from. I’m sure you can find something you can stomach.”

She moves back two steps to let me see the dozens of flavored bottled waters on display behind the next door.

“And there’s water,” she says, “but I just don’t see someone like you sipping on a fancy bottle of water.”

“No, that’s too douchy.” Really, I have no issue with drinking bottled water, but I like this game we’re playing.

She smiles, but tries to keep a straight face.

I wrinkle my nose at her, purse my lips and look back and forth between her and the juice cooler.

I sigh heavily and step up closer, scanning over the different brands and flavors and mixed flavors and I wonder why there’s so much with strawberry or kiwi, or strawberry and kiwi in it. I hate both.

Finally, I open one glass door and settle on plain OJ.

She sort of winces.

“What?” I ask, still holding the door open.

“Orange juice isn’t so good to wash stuff down with.”

I let out a spat of air and just look at her, unblinking.

“I pick something out and you tell me it’s not good enough.” I want to laugh, but I’m trying to lay a guilt trip on her here.

And I think it’s working.

She frowns. “Well, it’s just … well that’s more of a grab-n-go vitamin C boost, really. It just makes you thirstier.”

She actually looks as though she’s worried that she offended me and this strikes me in the strangest way. I let myself smile just to see her smile again.

She grins at me like the Devil.

Oh, she’s good …

Camryn

Ten

Denver finally flies by and we’re drawing closer to Andrew’s final stop in Wyoming. I can’t lie and say it doesn’t bother me. Andrew was right in saying that it’s dangerous for me to be traveling alone. I’m just trying to understand why that fact didn’t faze me much before I met him. Maybe I just feel safer with him as my company because he does look like he can bust a few jaws without breaking a sweat. Damn, maybe I shouldn’t have ever talked to him in the first place; definitely shouldn’t have let him sit next to me because now I’m sort of used to him. Once we’re in Wyoming and we go our separate ways, I’ll be back to staring out the window watching the world fly by and not knowing where in it I’m going next.

“So, do you have a girlfriend?” I ask just to spark up conversation so I won’t think about being alone again in a few hours.

Andrew’s dimples appear. “Why do you want to know?”

I roll my eyes.

“Don’t flatter yourself; just a question. If you don’t—”

“No,” he answers, “I’m happily single.”

He just looks at me, smiling, waiting, and it takes me a second to understand what he’s waiting for.

I point at myself nervously, wishing I had come up with a less personal topic. “Me? No, not anymore.” Feeling more confident now, I add, “I’m happily single as well and want to stay that way. For about … forever.” I should’ve just left it at ‘happily single’ instead of rambling my way right out of the confident zone and making myself look obvious.

Of course, Andrew notices right away. I get the feeling he’s the type that never misses someone else’s foot-in-your-mouth moment. He thrives on them.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he says, grinning.

Thankfully he doesn’t probe.

He rests his head back against the seat and absently taps his thumbs and pinky fingers against his jeans for a moment. Secretly, I glimpse his muscular, tanned arms and try to see once and for all what the tattoos are of on his arms, but as usual they’re mostly hidden by the sleeves of his t-shirt. The one on the right side I saw a little more of earlier when he stretched down to tie his boot. I think it’s a tree of some sort. The arm facing me now, I can’t really tell but whatever it is, it has feathers. All of the tattoos I’ve seen so far are colorless.

“Curious?” he says and I flinch. I didn’t think he saw me checking them out.

“I guess.”

Yes, I’m very curious, actually.

Andrew lifts away from the seat and pulls the sleeve of his left arm over the tattoo, revealing a phoenix with a long, flowing beautiful feathered tail that ends a couple of inches past where his sleeve ends. But the rest of its feathered body is skeletal, giving it a more ‘manly’ appearance.

“That’s pretty awesome.”

“Thanks. I’ve had this one about a year,” he says, pulling the sleeve back down. “And this one,” he says, turning at the waist and pulling up the other sleeve (first, I notice the obvious outline of his abs underneath his shirt), “is my gnarly, Sleepy-Hollow-lookin’ tree—I have a thing for wicked trees—and if you’ll look real close …” I peer closer where his finger points within the tree trunk, “is my 1969 Chevy Camaro. My dad’s car, really, but since he’s dying I guess I have to keep it.” He looks out in front of him.

There it is, that tiny glimmer of pain that he kept hidden before when talking about his father. He’s hurting a lot more than he’s letting on and it sort of breaks my heart. I can’t imagine my mom or dad being on their deathbed and I’m sitting on a Greyhound bus on my way to see them for the last time. My eyes scan his face from the side and I really want to say something to comfort him, but I don’t think I can. I don’t feel like it’s my place for some reason; at least not to bring it up.

“I’ve got a couple of others,” he goes on, looking back over at me with the back of his head lying against the seat again. “A small one here,” he turns over his right wrist to show me a simple black star in the center right below the base of his hand; I’m surprised I didn’t notice that one sooner. “And a larger one down the left side of my ribs.”

“What is it, the one on your side? How big is it?”

His bright green eyes sparkle as he smiles warmly, tilting his head over to see me. “It’s pretty damn big.” I see his hands move as if he’s going to lift his shirt to show me, but he decides against it. “It’s just a woman. Nothing worth getting naked on a bus for.”

Now I want to see what it looks like more than ever, just because he doesn’t want me to see it.

“A woman you know?” I ask. I keep looking to and from his side, thinking maybe he’ll change his mind and lift his shirt, but he never does.

He shakes his head. “Nah, it’s nothing like that. It’s of Eurydice.” He waves his hand out in front of him as if to dismiss any further explanation.

The name sounds like something ancient, maybe Greek, and it’s vaguely familiar, but I can’t place it.

I nod. “Did it hurt?”

He smiles.

“A little. Well actually it hurts the most on the ribs, so yeah it hurt.”

“Did you cry?” I grin.

He laughs lightly.

“No, I didn’t cry, but hell, I might’ve if I decided to get it even a fraction bigger than it is. In total, it took about sixteen hours.”

I blink back, stunned. “Wow, you sat there for sixteen hours?”

For such a detailed conversation about this tat, it makes me wonder why he won’t actually show it. Maybe it doesn’t look all that great and the tattoo artist screwed it up, or something.

“Not all at once,” he says, “we did it over a few days’ time—I’d ask if you have any tattoos, but something tells me that you don’t.” He smiles, knowingly.

“And you’d be right,” I say, blushing a little. “Not that I’ve never thought about getting one.” I hold up my wrist and wrap my thumb and middle finger around it. “Thought about getting something here, like script that says ‘freedom’ or something in Latin—obviously, I didn’t think about it much.” Smiling, I breathe out a little embarrassed spat of air. Me talking about tattoos with a guy who obviously knows more about them than I ever could is a bit intimidating.

When I go to set my wrist back down on the armrest, Andrew’s fingers curl around it. It stuns me for a brief second, even sends a strange chill through my body, but it quickly fades when he starts talking so casually.

“A tattoo on the wrist for a girl can be very graceful and feminine.” He traces the tip of his finger around the inside of my wrist to indicate where it should go. I shiver a tiny bit. “Something in Latin, very subtle, just about here would look nice.” Then he lets go gently and I let my arm rest back on the armrest.

“I expected you to say ‘no way’ about ever getting one yourself,” he laughs and brings up his leg, resting it at the ankle on his knee. He interlaces his fingers and slides back further against the seat to get more comfortable.

It’s getting dark fast; the sun is barely peeking over the landscape now, leaving everything bathed in fading orange and pink and purple.

“Guess I’m not a predictable person.” I smile over at him.

“No, I guess you’re not,” he says smiling back and then looking thoughtfully in front of him.

Andrew wakes me up the next day sometime after 2 p.m. at the bus station in Cheyenne, Wyoming. I feel his fingers poking me in the ribs. “We’re here,” he says and finally I open my eyes and lift my head from the window.

My breath I know smells God-awful because it tastes dry and funky, so I look away from him when I yawn.

The bus’ brakes squeal to a stop at the terminal and like always, the passengers stir themselves out of their seats and start grabbing their carry-on bags from the overhead compartment. I just sit here, feeling a little panicked and I glance carefully over at Andrew. I literally feel like I’m going to have a mini-anxiety attack. I mean, I knew this time would come, that Andrew would leave and I would be alone again, but I didn’t expect to feel like a scared little girl sent out in the world to fend for herself with no one to look after her.

Shit! Shit! Shit!

I can’t even believe I let myself get comfortable with him and as a result I’m no longer able to make fear my bitch.

I fear being alone.

“Comin’?” he asks looking down at me from the center aisle and holding out his hand. He smiles at me gently, setting aside any smartass remarks or making jokes at my expense because, after all, it is the last time we will ever see each other. It’s not like we’re in love or something crazy like that, but something weird happens when you spend several days with a stranger on a bus, getting to know them and enjoying their company. And when they’re not so different from you and you share that bond without actually telling one another why you’re hurting, that just makes the inevitable departure more difficult.

But I can’t let him know this. It’s stupid. I put myself in this situation and I intend to go through with it. No matter where in the world it eventually leads me.

I smile back up at him and place my hand into his. And all the way down the aisle as he walks in front of me, he keeps my fingers clasped carefully within his hand from behind. And I find a sense of warmth in his touch, clinging onto it mentally for as long as I can so that maybe I can be more confident when I’m alone again.

“Well, Camryn …” he looks at me as if fishing for my last name.

“Bennett.” I smile and cave to my own rule.

“Well, Camryn Bennett, it was a pleasure to meet you on the road to nowhere.” He adjusts his bag strap on his shoulder and then slides his hands down inside the pockets of his jeans. The muscles in his arms harden. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

I try to smile and I do, but I know it looks like something in between a smile and a frown.

I adjust the strap from my purse on one shoulder and my sling bag on the other and then just let my arms hang limply at my sides.

“It was nice meeting you, too, Andrew Parrish,” I say, though I don’t want to say it. I want him to ride with me just a little farther. “Do me a favor if you don’t mind.”

I’ve piqued his curiosity and he cocks his chin a little to one side. “Alright. What kind of favor? Is it sexual?” His dimples deepen as his devilishly handsome lips start to curve.

I laugh a little and look down with a blush hot on my face, but then I let the moment fade because this really isn’t a lighthearted kind of request. Instead, I soften my expression and look upon him with true sympathy.

“If your dad doesn’t make it,” I begin and his expression falls, “let yourself cry, OK? One of the worst feelings in the world is being unable to cry and eventually it … starts to make things darker.”

He stares at me for a long, silent moment and then he nods, allowing a tiny thankful smile to appear only in the depths of his eyes. I reach out my hand to shake his goodbye and he does the same, but he holds it there for a second longer than normal and then pulls me into a hug. I hug him back tight, wishing I could just blurt out to him that I’m scared of him leaving me alone, but I know I can’t.

Suck it up, Camryn!

He pulls away, nods at me one last time with that smile I grew so quickly to like and then he walks away and out of the terminal. I stand here for what feels like forever, unable to move my legs. I watch him get into a cab and I keep watching until the cab drives away and out of sight.

I’m alone again. Over a thousand miles away from home. No direction, no purpose, no goals other than to find myself on this journey I never imagined I could bring myself to begin. And I’m scared. But I have to do this. I have to because I need this time alone, away from everything back home which brought me here in the first place.

Finally, I take control again and walk away from the tall glass windows to find a seat. There’s a four-hour layover before I get on the next bus into Idaho, so I need to find something to make use of my time.

I hit the vending machines first.

Sliding my change into the slot I start to hit E4 to get the fiber bar—the closest thing to healthy in the whole machine—but then my finger makes a sharp U-turn to hit D4 instead and a fattening, disgusting, sugary chocolate candy bar falls from the spiral and into the bottom. Happily taking out my junk food, I move over to the soda machine, passing up the one before it which has bottles of water and juice, and I get a teeth-decaying, stomach-bubbling, carbonated drink instead.

Andrew would be so proud.

Dammit! Stop thinking about Andrew!

I take my junk food and find an empty seat and wait out the day.

A four-hour delay turns into a six-hour delay. They announced it over the intercom, something about my particular bus being late due to mechanical failure. A chorus of disappointed moans rises throughout the terminal.

Great. Just great. I’m stuck in a bus station in the middle of nowhere and I could very well end up here all night, trying to sleep curled up in the fetal position on this hard plastic chair that’s not even comfortable for sitting.

Or, I could just go ahead and buy another bus ticket somewhere else.

That’s it! Problem solved!

I just wish I would’ve thought of this sooner and spared myself the six hours I’ve already wasted here. It’s like I tricked my brain somehow into thinking I actually had to drive all the way to frickin’ Idaho just because I already paid for the ticket.

I grab my bag and purse from the seat next to me and shoulder them as I march my way across the terminal, past a boatload of disgruntled passengers who clearly don’t have the option that I do, and make my way to the ticket counter.

“We’re closing the counter down ma’am,” the employee says on the other side.

“Wait, please,” I say, throwing my arms across the counter desperately, “I just need to get another ticket somewhere else. Please, you’ll be doing me a huge favor!”

The wiry-haired old woman wrinkles her nose at me and appears to chew on the inside of her cheek. She sighs and then taps a few keys on her computer keyboard.

“Oh thank you!” I say. “You’re awesome! Thank you!”

She rolls her eyes.

I swing my purse around and toss it on the counter and search quickly through it to find my little zipper wallet.

“Where are you traveling?” she asks.

Oh great, there’s that million dollar question again. I look around the counter for any other ‘signs’ like that baked potato back at the North Carolina terminal, but I don’t see anything obvious. The old lady is starting to get even more agitated with me and it makes me more anxious to hurry and figure this out.

“Miss?” she says with a heavy sigh. She glances at the clock on the wall. “I clocked out fifteen minutes ago. I’d really like to get home to my dinner.”

“Yeah, I’m so sorry.” I fumble my credit card out of my wallet and hand it to her. “Texas,” I say first as a test, but then afterwards I realize it felt right on my tongue. “Yeah, anywhere in Texas would be great.”

The old lady raises an ungroomed reddish brow. “You don’t know where you’re going?”

I nod furiously. “Uh, yeah, I just mean that I’ll take any bus going to Texas that’s next in line.” I smile across at her hoping she’s buying this load of crap and doesn’t feel the need to have my driver’s license checked out for anything suspicious. “I’ve already been here for six hours. I hope you understand.”

She looks right at me for a long, unnerving moment and then takes my credit card from between my fingers and starts tapping her keyboard again.

“Next bus leaving for Texas is in an hour.”

“Great! I’ll take that one!” I say before she even has a chance to tell me whereabouts in Texas exactly.

It doesn’t matter. And she’s in such a hurry to get home that she doesn’t seem to think it matters, either. As long as I don’t care, she surely doesn’t.

I get my brand new bus ticket and shove it inside my purse next to the old one as the counter closes behind me at 9:05 p.m. and I feel a small sense of relief wash over me. Walking back towards my seat, I fish around in my purse for my phone, pulling it out to check to see if I missed any calls or text messages. My mom called twice and left a voicemail both times, but still no call back from Natalie.

“Baby, where are you?” my mom asks on the other end when I call her back. “I tried calling Natalie to see if you were staying with her but can’t seem to catch her. Are you OK?”

“Yeah, Mom, I’m fine.” I’m pacing in front of my chair with my phone pressed to my right ear. “I decided to take a trip up to see my friend Anna in Virginia. I’ll be here for a little while hanging out with her, but I’m OK.”

“But Camryn, what about your new job?” She sounds disappointed, especially since it was her friend who gave me the chance and hired me. “Maggie said you worked for a week and then didn’t show up or call or anything.”

“I know, Mom, and I’m really sorry, but it just wasn’t for me.”

“Well, the least you could’ve done was be courteous and tell her—give her a two-weeks’-notice—something, Camryn.”

I feel awful about how I handled that and normally would not have done something so inconsiderate, but the situation unfortunately warranted it.

“You’re right,” I say, “and when I get back I’ll call Mrs. Phillips personally and apologize to her.”

“But it’s not like you,” she says and I’m getting worried she’s steering too close to the reasons why I really left and all that which I refuse to go into with her. “And to just up and leave to Virginia without calling me or leaving a note. Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Yes, I’m fine. Stop worrying. Please. I’ll call you again soon, but I gotta go now.”

She doesn’t want to and I can tell by how deeply she sighs on the phone, but she gives up.

“OK, well you be careful and I love you.”

“I love you, too, Mom.”

I check my phone one more time, hoping maybe Natalie sent me a text message and I just didn’t see it. I scroll back to several days, even though I know full-well that if there were any unread text messages on my phone that there would be a little red circle on the icon indicating it.

I end up scrolling back down so far without realizing it that Ian’s name pops up and my heart freezes inside my chest. I stop it right there and start to run my thumb over his name so that I can read the back-and-forth between us shortly before he died, but I can’t.

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