The Edge of Never

by J. A. Redmerski

  “For someone oh-so-sore,” he mocks, his dimples deepening, “you sure were workin’ those hips.”

  Still blushing, I try to distract from my little performance as much as possible by making my way over to the bags. “Yeah, well you shouldn’t be sneaking up on me like that.”

  “I wasn’t sneaking,” he says, “just enjoying myself—you really do have a sweet voice.”

  I blush harder, turning my back to him and rummaging through one bag.

  “Thanks, baby, but I think you’re kinda biased.” I look back just long enough to playfully smirk at him.

  “No, I mean it,” he says and he seems serious, “you aren’t as bad as you think you are.”

  “Not as bad?” I turn around, holding a large bottle of Baby Oil. “What does that mean exactly, that you think I’m only a little bad?” I scoff at him and hold up the Baby Oil. “I said a small bottle.”

  “Well, they were out of small bottles.”

  “Uh huh.” I smirk again, setting the bottle on the TV stand.

  “Well, no I don’t think you’re bad at all,” he says and I hear the bed squeak as he sits on the end of it.

  I look at him through the mirror in front of me.

  “Well you did good on the shampoo and conditioner,” I say, plucking the bottles out and setting them next to the Baby Oil. “But the body wash, not so much.”

  “What?” He looks truly disappointed. “You said not liquid hand soap. That clearly says body wash across the front.” He points at it as if to justify.

  “I’m just kidding,” I say, smiling gently at his reaction. “This is perfect.”

  He looks relieved, letting his hand drop to his side on the bed.

  “You should perform. At least once. Just to see what it’s like.”

  I do not like that light-bulb moment he seems to be having right now. Not one bit.

  “Ummm, yeah…no.” I shake my head at him through the mirror. “Kind of like eating bugs or becoming an astronaut for a day, that ain’t gonna happen.”

  I reach inside the bag and pull out…oh no he didn’t….

  “Why not?” he asks. “It’ll be an experience, something you never thought you’d do, but afterwards you’ll feel exhilarated.”

  “What-the-hell-is-this?” I ask turning around, holding up a box of Vagisil in my fingers.

  He looks incredibly uncomfortable. “It’s…well, you know,” he winces, “for your…girly parts.” He nods uneasily towards my ‘girly parts’.

  My mouth falls open. “You think I smell? Have you seen me itching?” I’m trying not to laugh.

  Andrew’s eyes pop wide open. “What—No! I just thought it might help with the soreness.” I’ve never seen him look so embarrassed, and at the same time, shocked. “Hey, it wasn’t exactly a comfortable thing standing in that particular aisle reading the labels and being a guy.” He starts gesturing with his hands. “I saw it was for that general area and I tossed it in the basket.”

  I set the Vagisil down and walk over to him. “Well, that stuff isn’t exactly going to help with soreness due to…,” I purse my lips, “…‘excessive friction’, but it’s the thought that counts.” I sit on his lap, straddling his waist and lean in to kiss him.

  He wraps his arms around my back.

  “So, I guess it’s safe to assume we don’t need separate rooms anymore,” he says, smiling up at me.

  With my hands locked around the back of his neck, I lean in and kiss him again. “I started to go over there to get your stuff myself while you were gone until I realized I threw your extra key on the floor when I stormed out of there last night.”

  He slides his big hands down and grips my butt, pulling me closer. Then he kisses me in the hollow of my neck and stands up, taking me with him.

  “I’ll go get it now,” he says, letting me slide carefully out of his grasp. “I figure it’ll take me a couple of days to learn to play that song and to learn the lyrics—you seem to have it down.”

  Uh oh…

  I narrow my eyes at him in a sidelong glare. “Learn it why?”

  His dimples deepen again. “If I do recall, you gave up your freedom after winning it at that game of pool.”

  His expression is all but pure evil.

  I shake my head slowly at first and then gradually harder as the realization of the situation starts to sink in.

  “Your words were,” he nods once, “and I quote: I don’t want that freedom unless it comes to eating bugs or hanging my ass out the car window—sorry, babe, but you should learn when to keep your mouth shut.”

  “No…Andrew,” I step away from him, crossing my arms, “you can’t make me sing in front of people. That’s just cruel.”

  “To you or the audience?”

  He grins.

  I stomp on his foot.

  “I’m kidding! I’m kidding!” He laughs out loud.

  “Well, you can’t make me do it.”

  He cocks his head to one side, green eyes lit up with a little bit of everything that makes him irresistible. “No, I won’t force you to do anything, but…,” Oh great, now he’s fake-pouting. But worse, it’s working! “…I really, really, really wish that you would.” He cups my elbows in his hands and draws me close.

  I snarl at him and grit my teeth behind my tightly-closed lips.

  One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi.

  I take a deep breath.

  “Fine.”

  His face lights up.

  “But just once!” I point one finger. “And if anyone laughs at me you better not leave me in jail!”

  He grabs my face, squishing my cheeks in his hands and kisses my fish-lips.

  31

  MINUTES LATER, ANDREW’S COMING back through the door with his bags and his brother’s acoustic guitar.

  He is really excited about this.

  I’m utterly terrified and already kicking myself for agreeing to it. But I have to admit, there’s also a tiny pang of excitement in me, too. I’m not totally afraid to be in front of a crowd—had no problem giving a speech on endangered wildlife in eleventh grade, or playing the part of Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest on stage my senior year. But singing is different. My acting isn’t all that bad. My singing, especially a duet with someone like Andrew who sings like a blues-rock god who melts panties, is another story.

  “I thought you didn’t want to hear my kind of music, anyway?”

  Andrew sets his bags on the floor and goes to the bed with the guitar.

  “Well, whatever that song was you were so cutely dancing and singing to, I will let slide—I was diggin’ it.”

  “The Civil Wars—my flavor-of-the-month, I guess,” I say, coming out of the bathroom with wet hair, drying the ends with a towel (decided to rewash it after Andrew came back with the goods). “The song is called Barton Hollow.”

  “Very modern-folksy,” he says, strumming the guitar a few times. “I like it.”

  He adds, looking up at me: “Where’s your phone?”

  I walk over and get it from the windowsill, scroll the progress bar back to the beginning and hand it to him. He sets it beside him on the bed and hits play. I go back to drying my hair while he does his learn-by-ear thing, stopping and starting the music over again and again, curling his fingers around the neck of the guitar and testing the sound of the strings until he finds the right ones that match the music. In a matter of minutes, after a few out-of-tune chords, he starts to play the first riff easily.

  And by nightfall he’s pretty much got the whole song down pat, with the exception of one short riff he keeps mixing up with another. Wanting to learn it as quickly as possible, he ended up looking for the music online and once he found it that definitely sped the progress up.

  The lyrics were easier.

  “I think I’ve almost got it,” he says sitting on the windowsill against a dark and cloudy, rainy background. It started raining around eight and has been ever since.

  Every now and
then I would join in and sing some with him, but I’ve been too nervous. I really don’t know how I’m going to pull something crazy like this off if I’m nervous with only him in the room. So much for not being afraid in front of crowds. I predict an extreme case of stage fright, after all.

  “Come on, babe,” he says with a nod, his fingers draped over the guitar, “just because you already know all the words doesn’t mean you shouldn’t practice with me.”

  I plop down on the end of the bed.

  “You promise you won’t make any of your goofy faces at me, or grin, or smile, or—.”

  “I won’t even breathe,” he says, laughing. “I swear! Come on.”

  I sigh and get up from the bed, putting my half-eaten strip of beef jerky on the nightstand. Andrew positions the guitar on his thigh and takes a quick sip of bottled tea to get his mouth ready to sing.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he says as I’m slowly walking over, “the guy has way more lines by himself to sing than the girl—she only has that one solo, the rest you’ll be singing right along with me.”

  I shrug nervously. “True,” I admit. “At least through most of the song your voice will help drown mine out.”

  He places the guitar pick in-between his lips and reaches his hand out to me. “Baby, come here.”

  I walk over and take his hand and he pulls me between his legs, the guitar between us. Once I’m still and where he wants me, he takes the pick from his mouth. “I love your voice, alright? But even if I thought you couldn’t sing I’d still want you to do this. What anyone else thinks doesn’t matter.”

  My lips lift into an unsure, demure smile. “OK,” I say, “I’ll do it for you, but it’s only for you; better remember that.” I point sternly at him. “You’re gonna owe me.”

  He shakes his head. “First of all, I don’t want you doing it just for me, but since practicing is more important than arguing with you about it, I’ll wait until after you sing at Old Point to ask you if you got anything out of it other than giving me my way.”

  “I think that’s fair enough.”

  He nods once and positions himself again and then starts to put the pick against the chords.

  “W-Wait…maybe if you stand up, too, I won’t feel so singled out.”

  Andrew laughs and stands up from the windowsill. “Damn, girl—alright, however you want to do it. If you decide you want to do it with a bag over your head, you can.”

  I look at him as if entertaining the stupid idea.

  “No way, Camryn, no bags. Now let’s do this.”

  We practice well into the night until we’re forced to quit because apparently we were disturbing the hotel guests on either side of us. And just when I was really starting to get the hang of it and letting loose a lot more, not worried what Andrew might be thinking of my singing.

  I think I was doing pretty well.

  We go to bed earlier tonight since our practice got cut short and we lay curled up next to one another and just talk.

  “I’m glad you got fed up with my shit,” I say lying in the fold of his arm. “Otherwise, I might be back in North Carolina right now.”

  I feel his lips press into the side of my hair.

  “I have to confess something,” he says.

  My ears perk up. “Oh?”

  “Yeah,” he says, looking up at the ceiling where lights from the moving city outside move in strange patterns every now and then. “Back in Wellington, Kansas, in that first motel we got, when you were in the bathroom the next morning and I gave you two minutes to get ready…,” He pauses and I feel his head move slightly as if looking down at me.

  I draw my head away from his arm so I can look up at him.

  “Yeah, I remember; what did you do?”

  He smiles nervously.

  “I sort of took a picture of your driver’s license with my phone.”

  I blink back the mild stun.

  “What for?” I rise up a little higher so I can look at him without risking my eyes getting stuck in the top of my head like that.

  “Are you mad?”

  I let out a spat of air. “I guess it depends on what you planned to do with the rather personal information.”

  He looks away, but I catch the blush on his face even in the darkness of the room.

  “Well, it definitely wasn’t so I could find you later and cut you up into little pieces or anything.”

  My mouth falls open. “Well that’s a comfort!” I laugh.

  “Seriously, though, why’d you take it?”

  He looks back at the ceiling again, seeming lost in thought.

  “I just wanted to make sure I knew how to find you again,” he confesses, “you know…just in case we did decide to go our separate ways.”

  My eyes smile at him, but my mouth doesn’t. I’m not mad that he took the photo for that reason—I kind of want to kiss him for it—but I’m not sure I like the whole ‘just in case’ part, either. It makes me feel more than I already did that he planned to leave at some point, no matter what.

  “Andrew?”

  “Yeah, babe?”

  “Is there anything else you’re not telling me?”

  He pauses. “No. Why do you ask?”

  I look at the ceiling, too.

  “I don’t know, I’ve just always sort of felt this strange…reluctance from you.”

  “Reluctance?” he says, surprised. “Was I reluctant to talk you into going on this road trip with me? Or reluctant to go down on you?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “Camryn, the only thing I’ve ever been reluctant about is wondering if it was right that we be together.”

  I lift up from the bed and turn fully at the waist to see him. The shadow across his face makes his eyes fiercer. He’s shirtless and lies with one arm bent behind his head.

  “You think we’re not right?”

  This conversation is starting to make my stomach fall in on itself.

  He reaches out the hand not propped behind his head and takes my wrist gently. “No, babe, I…I think we are right in every way…and that’s why I thin—that’s why I thought it was better we didn’t get involved.”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense.”

  He pulls me down to him and I lay on the top of my hands on his chest.

  “I just wasn’t sure if we should go through with it,” he says, combing his fingers through the hair beside my ears. “But, babe, you weren’t exactly sure of anything, either.”

  I lay back down beside him. He’s got me on that one.

  The only thing I still don’t quite understand is what were his reasons for being so careful to get involved, exactly? He knows why I left home and all about Ian’s death. I have a laundry list of valid reasons stuck to the fridge by a banana magnet for all to see. Andrew’s reasons are still hidden in a shoebox somewhere labeled Christmas Cards.

  And I think it’s more than just his dad.

  He moves his arm out from underneath my head and climbs on top of me, a leg on each side, his body propped up by his muscular arms.

  “I’m glad you can’t sleep to music,” he says, apparently recalling the first thing I ever said to him and then he leans in and kisses me.

  I lift my arms and cradle his beautiful face in my hands, pulling him down to kiss me again. “And I’m glad that Idaho is famous for potatoes.”

  His eyebrows scrunch up in his forehead.

  I just smile and pull him toward my lips again. He kisses me deeply, tangling his tongue with mine. And then he starts to kiss his way down toward my stomach. He traces a circle around my bellybutton with the tip of his tongue and curls his fingers behind the elastic of my panties.

  “I don’t think I can….” I say softly, gazing down at him.

  He licks my stomach and then kisses my fingers as my hands move to his face and then into his hair.

  “No sex,” he says, “and I promise I’ll lick you carefully.” He slides my panties off and I lift my ass a little to make it easie
r for him.

  He kisses my inner thigh. And then the other.

  “I’ll keep my tongue really wet so it doesn’t sting,” he says gently and kisses my inner thighs again, getting closer to my warmth.

  I gasp a little when his fingers touch me very carefully and spread my lips apart.

  “Damn, baby, you really are swollen.” His comment is heartfelt and not at all teasing.

  It does sting slightly, but my God I want this so bad….

  I feel his breath hot between my legs. “I’ll be very gentle,” he says and my breath catches when his very wet tongue licks me once slowly, his fingers still holding me apart but without putting any pressure on the area.

  My body melts into the sheets as he licks me over and over, putting just enough pressure on me that I feel no pain, but complete and uninhibited ecstasy.

  ~~~

  We’ve been practicing Barton Hollow for two days, mostly in our room at the Holiday Inn, but we walked out by the Mississippi river at the end of Canal Street and did some practicing there, too. I think Andrew came up with the idea to sneakily try to get me more comfortable singing in public. There weren’t many people out there at the time, but I was still nervous as hell. Most just walked past without stopping to check us out (we weren’t in full performance-mode and often stopped and started over at different parts of the song, so it wasn’t really much to listen to), but one or two here and there lingered as they walked past. A woman smiled at me. But I don’t know if it was a pity smile because I’m horrible, or if she happened to like my voice.

  I guess it could go either way.

  By day three, Andrew is sure that we both have it down and is set on heading to Old Point soon to perform.

  Me, not so much. I need another week or month or year or two.

  “You’re gonna do fine,” he says while tying his boots. “Actually, you’re gonna do great. By the end of the song, I’ll have to beat the guys off you.”

  “Oh shut up,” I say, slipping on a black open shoulder top with cute chain straps. I’m definitely not wearing the strapless one on a night like this. “I saw the way the girls were lookin’ at you that night—I think having you up there with me is the only thing I’ve got going for me because everyone will be too preoccupied with you to notice my screw-ups.”