The Edge of Always teon-2

by J. A. Redmerski

  By early evening, Camryn is dressed and her headache seems to be gone, so the four of us head to Aidan’s fine establishment of beer, peanuts, and live music.

  * * *

  Business at Aidan’s bar has been thriving, according to him, and when we walk in through the front door at barely seven o’clock, I see he wasn’t exaggerating. I’ve never seen it this packed before, and I’ve spent my fair share of Friday and Saturday nights here over the six years he’s owned it. Music funnels through the numerous speakers in the ceiling and walls, something folksy rock, much like Camryn and I have inadvertently made our trademark style. A couple of years ago, if someone were to ask me what kind of music I’d play if I ever had my own band, I never would’ve thought folksy rock. I’ve sung and performed classic rock like the Stones and Zeppelin in bars and clubs for a long time, but since meeting Camryn that has changed somewhat. We’ve adopted the Civil Wars’ style for the most part, just because it came so natural to us as a duo, but we still play a few classic rock greats when we perform, too.

  One of our favorites: “Hotel California” by the Eagles, technically the very first song we ever sang together. It may have been in the car while on the road and all just for fun, but it stuck with us. And we’ve done “Laugh, I Nearly Died” by the Rolling Stones, which Camryn insisted on learning.

  But Camryn still loves the newer stuff and the Civil Wars more than anything and so that’s usually what we play.

  Tonight will be no different.

  I kind of had a feeling she’d pick “Tip of My Tongue” and “Birds of a Feather,” because those are the two songs she has the most fun with. I love watching her perform them next to me up on stage because she becomes so vibrant and playful and sexy as hell. Not that she isn’t all of those things already, but it’s like another more daring and flirty side of her comes out when she’s singing. And she doesn’t just sing—she puts on a show. I think it’s that little actress she’s always had buried somewhere in herself. She told me she performed in plays at school, and I can definitely see she has the knack for it.

  But singing alongside me also seems to make her happy, and that’s why tonight is so important. It’s the first time we’ll be performing together since she lost the baby, and I’m hoping it’ll be therapeutic.

  We weave our way through the thick crowd of people and head to the stage where we take our time setting up. Not much to set up really with just a guitar—unfortunately not one of mine—and two microphones, but we’re not going on for another fifteen minutes.

  “I’m so nervous,” Camryn says next to my ear, having to speak loudly over the music.

  I make a pffft sound with my lips. “Oh, please. Since when do you get nervous anymore? We’ve done this dozens of times.”

  “I know, but I’m singing in front of Aidan and Michelle this time.”

  “He can’t sing for shit, so his opinion is hardly valid.”

  She smiles. “Well, I’m not nervous to the point that I don’t want to do it. I guess it’s actually kind of exciting.”

  “That’s my girl,” I say and lean in to kiss her lips.

  “Those two girls,” Camryn yells to me without looking in their direction, “front table to your left, they’re having sex with you in their heads right now, I swear to God.”

  I laugh lightly and shake my head.

  “And that guy standing next to the woman in the purple shirt,” I say, nodding subtly in his direction, “has had your thighs wrapped around his head since you walked on this stage.”

  “So it’ll be them tonight then, huh?” she asks.

  I nod and say, “Uh-huh.”

  “Make sure you give it to them good, baby,” she says, grinning wickedly at me.

  “Oh, I will,” I say with the same amount of wicked on my face.

  We started this back on our second night at Levy’s: we each pick a guy and a girl from the crowd who give off that I’d-love-to-fuck-you vibe and we make them feel “extra special” during one of our songs. But we always start giving our targets small bits of attention long before we go in for the kill. Just one look, a three-second-long meeting of the eyes to let her, or him in Camryn’s case, know that we’ve noticed them a little more than anyone else in the room. Camryn’s already working her magic. The guy has a dopey-ass grin plastered on his face now. She glances at me and winks. Slipping my guitar strap over my shoulder, I slowly look over at the two girls. They’re pretty hot, I have to say. I make eye contact with the brunette first, hold it for a few seconds, and then look at her friend for the same amount of time. The second I look away, I notice them giggling and talking to each other behind their hands. I just smile and move my fingers across the guitar strings to test out the tuning. Camryn taps her thumb on her mic and then walks over to the side to drag the two stools that we’ll end up only sitting on for maybe one song. She hops onto hers and crosses her legs; those sexy black mile-high heels are enough by themselves to make her look like she knows what’s she’s doing in this business. Little silver studs decorate them. God damn, some of the things she wears makes me crazy.

  An announcer, young guy, comes out on the stage and introduces us. Many of the voices carrying through the vast space quiet down and then even more when I start to play the guitar. And when Camryn leads the first song, her voice is so sultry that she pretty much gets everyone else’s attention in no time.

  We go through four songs to an awesome welcoming crowd who are dancing, getting drunk, and trying to sing along. The vibe in the bar is explosive, and I love it.

  Camryn walks down the three steps from the stage with her mic in hand and makes her way toward her victim. Before the song is over he’s dancing with her, having one helluva time. When his hands get too close to parts only I’m allowed to touch, Camryn, like a professional, smiles and continues to sing to him while pushing him away.

  Then we take a short break.

  Camryn pulls me off toward the back of the stage as the voices rise up all around us again.

  “I’ve gotta go to the bathroom,” she says.

  I pull the guitar strap over my head and set the guitar against the back wall.

  “You go and I’ll get us a drink,” I say. “Do you want anything?”

  She smiles, nodding. “Yeah, just get me whatever, I don’t care.”

  “Alcoholic?” I ask.

  She nods again and kisses me, pretty eager to break away quickly probably so she doesn’t pee on herself.

  “Oh, and why don’t you do the next song solo tonight?” she suggests.

  “Really? Why?”

  She comes up closer and rests her hands on my chest. “You do that song better by yourself, and I think I’m done for the night. I’d like to watch you.” She pecks my lips. She’s so much taller in those shoes that she’s looking me straight in the eyes.

  If that’s what she wants, I’m good with it. I don’t want to push her.

  “All right, I’ll sing it alone,” I say. “It’ll make it easier to seduce my two girls out there, anyway.”

  She smiles and says with a little laughter in her voice, “Don’t overdo it, Andrew. Remember what happened the last time.”

  “I know, I know,” I say, waving her on.

  She turns around, and I smack her on the butt as she scurries off toward the restrooms.

  14

  When I make it into the restroom, there’s a line of women waiting for empty stalls. The air is thick with liquor breath, perfume, and cigarette-smoke-laden clothes. A stall door will open and shut with an obnoxious bang every few seconds as people come and go. I go to wash my hands first, having to cram myself in between two drunk girls sitting on top of the counters on either side of me. Thankfully they’re the overly nice kind of drunk, because I can’t deal with a fight-ready rude one tonight. They apologize for being in the way and move over to give me some space.

  “Thanks,” I say and reach out to turn on the water.

  “Hey, you’re the singer chick,” the girl on my left s
ays, pointing her finger at me and smiling. She glances at her friend on the other side and then back at me.

  “Yeah, that’d be me, I guess.”

  I’m so not in the mood for bathroom conversation. The longer I linger in public restrooms, the grosser I feel.

  “You two are great,” she says, beaming.

  “Yeah, seriously,” her friend says. “What the hell are you doing singing in bars, anyway?”

  I just shrug and squirt more soap from the dispenser into my hand and try to avoid them as kindly as possible.

  “Yeah, really,” the one on my left adds. “I’d pay to see you play.”

  OK, so I’m not entirely immune to compliments. I smile and thank her again.

  When two more stalls become free, they jump at the opportunity and shut themselves inside. Soon after, they wave good-bye and wish me good luck with my “music career.” When I’m almost the only one left, I turn to the mirror, but I don’t look at myself. Instead, I reach into my pocket and take a pill, washing it down with water from the sink.

  It’s just to take the edge off.

  Then I look at myself, pushing the pill and the guilty feeling I get every time I take one, far into the back of my mind. I make up excuses to justify taking them, and I almost fool myself. But I know that the guilt I always feel is there for a reason.

  In less than eleven minutes, I don’t care about the guilt, the excuses, or the edge anymore, because that part of my brain has been numbed.

  I run my fingertips underneath my eyes to wipe away any smudged mascara, then blot the oil from my face with toilet paper. I have to look good when I go back out there. I feel great, but I have to look as good as I feel.

  Pushing myself through the crowd, I find Aidan and Michelle standing behind the enormous bar and join them. I then remember Andrew was getting me a drink, but I’m not walking back through all of those people just to get it.

  “You two are fantastic!” Michelle shouts over the noisy crowd. She hugs me, and I return it, feeling my pill-induced smile stretching hugely across my face.

  I turn to Aidan. “What did you think?”

  “I agree with Michelle!” he says. “You should write your own music and play here more often. I get all kinds of talent scouts in here. And celebrities.” He points to the back wall, where a series of autographed photos of various musicians and movie stars hang in an even line. “Get a head start with your own material,” he goes on. “I bet you two would easily land a music contract within a year.”

  I’m so high right now that he could tell me he thinks we suck and have no future in music at all, and I’d still smile like this, letting his words go through me like air.

  I look out across the length of the room to see Andrew up on the stage with his guitar and the house band getting ready to sing his trademark song, “Laugh, I Nearly Died.” He likely can’t see me through the crowd, but he knows I’m watching. I love to watch him onstage, in his element. I know that as good as we are together musically, he’ll always own it more when he performs alone. Maybe it’s just me, but I like to think of him the way he was the first time I saw him perform. Because on that night in New Orleans he was singing for me, and I felt like the luckiest girl in the world.

  I’d do anything to feel like that again. Anything…

  Seconds into the song, Andrew, like always, has the attention of everyone in the room. The two girls at the table are standing up now, dancing with each other provocatively, but I know it’s all for Andrew. I’ve seen it before. They want him, and he lets them believe, just for one night, that he wants them, too. Perfectly harmless. Andrew and I both look at it as making other people feel good about themselves. A little flirting here and there, making some lucky girl or guy the center of attention just long enough to make them blush and smile. You never know what’s going on in people’s lives behind closed doors, and a little flirty, positive energy can never be a bad thing.

  When we get back to Aidan and Michelle’s just after midnight, I head to bed before everyone else. I lay here for an hour, listening to their voices filter down the hallway and into the room. Andrew was going to come to bed with me, but I insisted he hang out with his brother. He worries about me way too much these days. We’ll be going back to Raleigh tomorrow, and I want him to spend as much time with Aidan as he can.

  Another hour passes and I’m still awake.

  Frustrated, I thrust my hand inside my purse, fishing for the bottle. Without even realizing it, I am now down to my last few pills.

  I pass out on three this time.

  15

  “Camryn? Baby, please wake up.” I shake her back and forth, my hand gripping her shoulder.

  My dominant emotion right now is worry. My secondary emotions are anger and hurt. But strangely enough, the feeling of uncertainty is keeping all of the others at bay.

  I shake her again. “Get up.”

  I have no idea how many of these fucking pills she took, but judging by the nearly empty bottle, the prospect of it being enough to overdose sends a panic through my entire body. But she’s breathing steadily and her heartbeat seems normal. If she doesn’t wake up—

  Her eyes creep open, and I suck in a fast breath of relieved air. “Camryn. Look at me.”

  Finally she focuses enough to look me in the eyes. “What?” she moans softly and tries to shut her eyes again, but I grab her by both shoulders and force her to sit up.

  “I said wake up. Keep your eyes open.”

  She sits up sloppily, but it’s nothing too out of the ordinary from having been forced awake and upright like that.

  “How many did you take?”

  Michelle stands in the doorway behind me. “Do you want me to call an ambulance?”

  Suddenly, Camryn becomes completely coherent. I don’t know if my question has finally caught up with her, or if the mention of an ambulance is what did it, but she looks at me with wide, frightened eyes.

  “How many of these goddamn pills did you take?”

  Her gaze drops from mine, and she looks over to see the prescription bottle on the nightstand. When I decided that sleeping past two in the afternoon was not at all like her and came in here to check on her, I found the bottle on the floor

  “Camryn?” I shake her again and get her attention back.

  She just looks at me. I see so much in her eyes right now that I can’t choose between humiliation, regret, hurt, anger, or surrender. And then her eyes begin to fill with tears. I feel her body shaking underneath the weight of my grip on her arms. She bursts into tears, falling into my arms, sobbing uncontrollably, and it rips me in half.

  “Andrew?” Michelle says from the door.

  Without looking back at her, I say, “No, she’ll be all right.” And I swallow down my own tears and anger, feeling my chest constrict.

  The door shuts quietly behind me as Michelle leaves the room.

  I hold Camryn for a long time, letting her cry into my shirt. I don’t say a word. Not yet. Partly because I know she needs this, just to be able to cry and get it all out. But the rest of me is so fucking pissed off and hurt that I feel like I need to take a step back and gather my composure so I don’t say the wrong things. I hold her tight, wrapping my arms around her trembling body. I kiss her hair and try not to cry myself. The pissed-off part of me helps with that.

  “I’m so sorry!” she cries out, and in that fraction of a second when I hear the pain in her voice, it almost completely erases the angry part of me and I grip her even tighter.

  “You’re apologizing to me?” I ask with disbelief. I pull her away with my hands firmly around her upper arms. Shaking my head furiously at her, I go back to a few minutes ago. “No, first I need you to tell me how many you took.” I look her dead in the eyes.

  “Last night,” she says. “Only three.”

  “How many were in this bottle originally?”

  “I don’t know. Twenty, maybe.”

  “Then how long have you been taking them?”

  She
pauses and answers, “Just since Tuesday. They’re my mom’s. I took one when I had a headache, but then I started taking them…” Her eyes well up with moisture again.

  I reach out and wipe the tears from her face. “God damn it, Camryn,” I say, pulling her into my chest again for a brief moment. “What the hell were you thinking?!”

  “I wasn’t!” she cries. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me!”

  I grab her cheeks in the palms of my hands. “You know what’s wrong. You’re fucked up over losing Lily, and you don’t know how to deal with it. I just wish you would’ve talked to me.”

  With her face still in my hands, her eyes stray from mine. The eerie silence between us strikes me in the strangest way.

  “Camryn?” I try to get her to look at me again, but she won’t. “Talk to me. You have to talk to me. Listen, there’s nothing you did wrong, or could’ve done to prevent what happened. You have to know that. You have to under—”

  Her head jerks away from my hands, her eyes boring into mine full of pain and… something else.

  “It is my fault!” she says, backing away from me on the bed.

  She stands up from the bed on the other side and crosses her arms, her back facing me.

  “It’s not your fault, Camryn.” I walk toward her, but the second she feels me getting too close, she whirls around at me.

  “No, it is my fault, Andrew!” she says with tears barreling from her eyes. “I couldn’t stop thinking about how being pregnant was going to mess everything up! I hated it that we were still living in Galveston after four months! I wondered how we were ever going to do the things we wanted to do with a baby! So yes, it’s my fault that we lost her and I fucking hate myself for it!” She buries her face in her hands.

  I rush the short distance over to her, wrapping her up within my arms again. “God, Camryn, it wasn’t your fault!” I don’t think I’ve ever said anything to anyone with that much emotion before. My chest shudders uncontrollably against her.