The Edge of Always teon-2

by J. A. Redmerski

A gust of wind hits the side of the car, and a loud clap of thunder shakes the ground.

  “Andrew?” I ask.

  “Yeah?”

  “Number three, to add to our list of promises. If we make it to old age and our bones hurt and we can’t sleep in the same bed anymore, promise me we’ll never sleep in separate rooms.”

  “It’s a promise,” he answers with a smile in his voice.

  “Good night,” I say.

  “Good night.”

  And when I fall asleep minutes later, I dream about that warm beach and Andrew watching me walk along the sand with a little hand clasped in mine.

  * * *

  The tow truck never came. We wake up the next morning stiff and in pain, regardless of each of us having a seat to ourselves.

  “I’m going to kick the shit out of that tow truck guy if I ever see him,” Andrew growls underneath the hood.

  He’s busy twisting a wrench around… I’m not even going to pretend that I know what that thing is. He’s fixing the car. That’s all I know. And he’s in a seriously foul mood. I just hang around to help him with whatever he needs, and I don’t play the dumb-blonde card by asking him what this doohickey is or what that thingamajig does. Truth is, I really don’t care. And besides, it’d just aggravate him more if he had to explain it.

  But the sun is out. And it’s hot! I feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven!

  I splash around in the puddles from last night’s rain, soaking my flip-flops. I don’t know what’s gotten into me other than simply the weather, but I raise my arms high in the air above me and look up at the sky, twirling around and around in the middle of the road.

  “Will you get over here and help me?” Andrew grumbles.

  I skip over to him and pinch his sides playfully because I’m in such a great mood, and I just can’t help it. But then bang, Andrew’s reaction to it causes his head to dart up and hit the underside of the hood. I wince and my hand flies over my mouth.

  “Shit, baby! I’m sorry!” I reach out to a pissed-off Andrew, green eyes swirling, but then he shuts them as his cheeks fill up with air and wheeze out slowly.

  I grab his head, rub it, and then kiss him on the nose. I still can’t stop smiling, but I’m not laughing at him, just trying to work the puppy-dog eyes.

  “You’re forgiven,” he says and points underneath the hood. “I need you to hold this piece still right here for a second.” I go around to that side, peer underneath the hood, and stick my hand into the area, feeling for his fingers to guide me.

  “Yeah, right there,” he says. “Now just hold it.”

  “For how long?”

  “Until I say,” he says, and I see the grin sneak up at the corner of his mouth. “If you let go, the oil pan will fall out and we’ll be stuck here for a long time.”

  “Well, hurry up then,” I say, already feeling a crick in my neck beginning to form.

  He walks around to the trunk and gets a bottle of water. Slowly he twists off the lid. Takes a sip. Looks around at the fields. Takes another sip.

  “Andrew, are you screwing with me?” I peek around the raised hood the best I can to see him.

  He just smiles. And takes another sip.

  Dammit, he is screwing with me! I think…

  “Don’t let go. I mean it.”

  “Bullshit,” I say and start to move my fingers, but decide not to. “Are you telling me the truth? Seriously?”

  “Yeah, sure I am. The oil pan will fall right out and it’ll probably splash all over you too. Hard to get that shit off your skin.”

  “My back is starting to hurt,” I say.

  He takes his sweet time, and just when I’m about to let go, he moves around behind me and grabs me by the waist, pulling me away from the hood. One hand comes up and he smears black gook all over my cheek. I shriek at him and push him away.

  “Gah! Shit, Andrew! What if I can’t get this stuff off?” I’m seriously pissed, but a small part of me can’t resist that smile of his.

  “It’ll come off fine,” he says, leaning back underneath the hood. “Now just get in the car and turn the key when I tell you to.”

  I snarl at him once before doing what he asked, and in no time the Chevelle is running again and we’re in our way to St. Petersburg, just an hour away.

  Today feels a lot like summer, and we can’t get enough of it. After we get to our hotel room and take a much-needed shower, we head to the nearest department store to buy him a pair of swimming trunks and me a bikini, intent on heading to the ocean for a swim.

  He insists on the tiny black bikini with little silver stars, but he isn’t the one who’ll have to keep pulling that butt floss from between my cheeks every five seconds. So I settle for the cute red one with a tab bit more coverage.

  “Probably better you picked that one, anyway,” he says, as we hop inside the car in the parking lot of the store.

  “Why’s that?” I ask, grinning, as I kick off my flip-flops.

  “Because I might end up busting a few jaws.” He puts the car into reverse and we back out.

  “Just for looking?” I ask with a hint of disbelief and laughter.

  His head falls to the side to look at me. “Nah, I guess not. I kind of get off on it when other guys look at you.”

  “Ewww!” I scrunch up my nose.

  “Not like that!” he says. “Geez!” He shakes his head as if to say UNbelievable, and we pull out of the parking lot and onto the street, which is busy with tourist traffic. “It just makes me feel good, y’know, having you on my arm. Does wonders for a guy’s ego.”

  “Oh, so I’m just an arm trophy to you?” I cross my arms and smirk over at him.

  “Yeah, babe, that’s all I keep you around for. I thought you knew that already.”

  “Well, I guess then it’s no secret that I keep you around for the same reason.”

  “Oh, really?” he asks, glancing over before staring at the road in front of him.

  “Yep,” I say and lean my head back on the seat. “I just keep you around to make bitches jealous. But at night, I’m dreaming about the love of my life.”

  “Who might that be?”

  I purse my lips and look all around me, then back at him playfully. “Well, I won’t tell you his name because I don’t want you to go after him and see you get your ass kicked. But I can tell you that he’s got medium-brown hair, gorgeous green eyes, and a few tattoos. Oh, and he’s a musician.”

  “Really? Well, he sounds awesome, so why use me as your arm trophy then?”

  I shrug, because I can’t really think of a good line.

  “Come on, you can tell me,” he says. “It’s not like he and I talk.”

  “Sorry,” I say, glancing over, “but I don’t talk about him behind his back.”

  “Fair enough,” he says with a smile. “You know what?”

  “What?”

  Andrew grins mischievously, and I don’t like it one bit.

  “I remember a couple of things on our first road trip that you never got around to doing.”

  Uh-oh…

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I lie.

  He drops his right hand from the steering wheel and rests it on his leg. That daring look in his eyes is gaining momentum, and I try not to make my growing nervousness so obvious.

  “Yeah, I think you owe me a bare ass in the window, and I still need to bear witness to your bug meal. What will it be? Grasshopper? Cricket? Earthworm? Or, maybe a granddaddy long leg. I wonder if they have granddaddy long legs in Florida…”

  My skin is crawling. “Give it up, Andrew,” I say, shaking my head. I prop my foot on the door and twirl my braid between my fingers, trying to mask my worry. “I’m not doing it. And besides, that was the first road trip and you can’t just carry stuff over like that. Should’ve made me do it when you had the chance.”

  He’s still grinning like the devious shithead he is.

  “No,” I say again, flatly.

  I glance ove
r. “No!” I say one last time, and it leaves him laughing.

  “All right,” he says, putting his right hand back on the steering wheel. “It was worth a try, though. Can’t blame me for tryin’.”

  “I guess not.”

  Andrew

  We spend the entire day swimming and laying out on the beach. We watch the sun set over the horizon and eventually the stars, as they come alive in the darkness. Just an hour after nightfall we’re met by a group of people our age. They’ve been on the beach not far from us for a while, hanging out.

  “From around here?” the tall guy with a full-sleeved tattoo down his right arm asks.

  One of the couples sits down in the sand near us. Camryn, sitting between my legs, leans away from my chest attentively.

  “No, we’re from Galveston,” I answer.

  “And Raleigh,” Camryn adds.

  “We’re in from Indiana,” the black-haired girl sitting down says. She points at the others she came with who are still standing. “They live here, though.”

  One of the other guys wraps his girlfriend up in his arms. “I’m Tate, this is Jen,” he indicates his girlfriend, then points to the others standing nearby. “Johanna. Grace. And that’s my brother, Caleb.”

  The three of them nod and smile down at us.

  “I’m Bray,” the black-haired girl sitting by Camryn says. “And this is my fiancé, Elias.”

  Camryn sits up fully and dusts the sand away from her hands by brushing them together. “Cool to meet you,” she says. “I’m Camryn and this is my fiancé, Andrew.”

  Elias reaches out to shake my hand.

  Tate, the guy with the tattoo says, “We’re heading to a private spot on a beach about thirty minutes from here. It’s a great party spot. Pretty secluded. You’re both welcome to join us.”

  Camryn twists her body a little at the waist to see me behind her. We talk to each other with our eyes for a moment. At first, I wasn’t really up to it, but she seems to want to go. I stand up, helping her up with me.

  I turn to Tate. “Sure. We can follow you out.”

  “Kick ass,” Tate says.

  Camryn and I grab our beach towels and the bag we brought packed with beef jerky, bottled water, and sunscreen, and we follow Tate and his friends off the beach and to the parking lot.

  And now we’re back in the car being spontaneous again. I’m not so sure about this shit, maybe because it’s been so long since I’ve partied with anyone other than Camryn, but they seem harmless enough.

  The so-called thirty-minute drive ends up being more like forty-five.

  “I have no idea where the hell we are anymore.”

  We’ve been on a dark highway and off the main freeway for the past twenty minutes at least, their Jeep Sahara coasting over the road in front of us at seventy-five miles an hour. I’ve got no problem keeping up, but I don’t usually speed like this in unfamiliar territory at night where I can’t spot the cops hiding on the side of road out ahead. If I get a ticket it’ll be my own damn fault, but I might still bust that Tate guy’s head for it just on principle.

  “At least we have a full tank of gas,” she says. Then she laughs and hangs her foot out the window and says, “Maybe they’re leading us to a creepy cabin in the woods somewhere and plan to kill us.”

  “Hey, that thought did cross my mind,” I laugh back at her.

  “Well, I trust you to keep me safe,” she jokes. “Don’t let any of them cut me up into little pieces or force me to watch Honey Boo Boo.”

  “You got it,” I say. “Which brings to mind number four on our list of promises: if I’m ever lost or missing, promise you’ll never stop looking for me until it’s been exactly three hundred sixty-five days. On day three sixty-six, accept that if I was alive I would’ve already found my way back to you, and that I’m long dead. I want you to go on with your life.”

  She lifts away from the seat, bringing her foot back inside the car. “I don’t like that. Some people go missing and are found years later, alive and well.”

  “Yeah, but that won’t be me,” I say. “Trust me, if it’s been a year, I’m dead.”

  “OK, fine,” she says, slipping out of her seat belt and scooting over next to me. She lays her head on my shoulder. “Only if you agree to do the same for me. One year. Not a day more.”

  “I promise,” I say, though I’m lying through my teeth. I would look for her until the day I died.

  23

  It’s OK to lie about some things. This “promise” just happens to be one of them. There’s no way I could stop looking for him after one year. Truthfully, I’d never stop looking for him. This pact full of promises that we swore to keep is important to both of us, but I guess when it comes to some things, I’ll just have to openly agree and deal with things however I want if it ever comes to that.

  Besides, I get the feeling he’s lying, too.

  Andrew doesn’t know it, but that black-haired girl, Bray, I saw a couple of hours earlier in the restrooms not far from the beach. She ended up using my stall after me. We didn’t actually talk to one another, just passed each other with a friendly smile and that was it. I’m guessing that’s what motivated her to have her friends invite us to party with them.

  I think it’ll be fun. Andrew and I spend one hundred percent of our time alone with each other, and I think it’ll be good for both of us to step out for a while and associate with others more. And he didn’t have any objections, so I’m guessing he probably thinks it couldn’t hurt, either.

  The drive to this “private” spot feels more like an hour.

  Their Jeep turns left onto a partially paved road and the farther we follow, the bumpier the drive. Their headlights bounce through the darkness in front of us until finally the tree-enveloped road opens up into a wide area of rocks and sand. Andrew pulls up beside them and shuts off the engine.

  “Well, it’s definitely secluded,” I say as I get out of the car.

  Andrew comes up next to me, gazing out at the deserted beach. He takes my hand. “We can turn back now, there’s still time,” he taunts me. “Once they get us away from the car, it might be the last time we ever see each other.” He squeezes my hand and pulls me closer to him playfully.

  “I think we’ll manage,” I say just as the last of them pile out of the Jeep and meet us at the back of the vehicles.

  Tate opens the back of the Jeep and lifts out a giant ice chest and drops it in the sand. “We’ve got plenty of beer,” he says, lifting the lid and reaching inside.

  He tosses a bottle of Corona to Andrew. Not Andrew’s first choice of beer, I know, but he won’t turn one down, either.

  Bray and her fiancé, I can’t even remember his name, step up together beside me while Tate pops the cap on another bottle of Corona and hands it out to me.

  I take it. “Thanks.”

  Andrew pops the cap on his with the bottle opener he keeps on his key ring.

  “If you’ve got any blankets to lie on, might want to bring one,” Tate says. His girlfriend joins him, passing me a smile as she walks in between us wearing her skimpy white bikini. “And I’ve got a kickass system in this baby,” he adds, patting the back of the Jeep with his hand, “so I’ve also got the music covered.”

  Andrew pops the trunk and grabs the blanket he always keeps back there, the same one we used the night we tried to sleep in that field last July. Only now, thanks to me, it has been washed and doesn’t stink like oil and car funk.

  “Where are my shorts?” I ask, rummaging around in the backseat.

  “There right here,” Andrew says from the trunk. When I lean out of the car, he throws them toward me, and I catch them in midair.

  “I don’t plan on swimming in that abyss at night,” I say, slipping them on over my red bikini bottoms.

  Overhearing, Bray says, “I’m glad I’m not the only one!”

  I smile over the roof of the Chevelle at her and then shut the door. “Have you been out here before with them?”

 
Tate and the others are walking toward the beach now carrying the ice chest, beach bags, and other random items. They leave the doors open on the Jeep with the speakers blasting rock music.

  “We did last night,” Bray says, “but Elias got drunk way too early and started puking up his insides, so I drove us back to our hotel pretty early.”

  Elias, yeah, that’s her fiancé’s name. He shakes his head and gives her the sarcastic yeah-thanks-for-telling-everybody look.

  Andrew and I walk alongside Bray and Elias, hand in hand toward everybody else already setting up camp not too far out, closer to the water. As we step up and lay our blanket out on the sand, Tate lights a match and tosses it onto a pile of tree branches. The flame ignites the lighter fluid he had already squirted all over the pile. A tall, searing rod of fire curls up over the top of the pile and illuminates the darkness all around us with a dancing orange glow. Already the heat from the flames are making me hot, so I slide our blanket a few feet farther away from the bonfire before Andrew and I sit down on it. Bray and Elias follow suit with two giant beach towels. Tate, his brother, and the other three girls all share a large quilt. I dig the bottom of my beer bottle into the sand beside me so that it sits upright.

  Tate makes me think of those really blond, tanned California surfers. Like every guy here, including Andrew, Tate sits with his knees bent upward and his arms propped on them at the wrists. And as I’m quietly checking everybody else out, I catch something briefly in the corner of my eye that instantly puts me into territorial mode. The blonde sitting next to Tate’s brother, who I doubt is his girlfriend because they don’t act like they’re together, is watching Andrew with hungry eyes. I don’t just mean the innocent look-but-won’t-touch kind. No, this girl would try to sleep with him the second I walked away.

  When she notices me watching her, she looks away and starts talking to the other girl beside her.

  I don’t have anything to worry about where Andrew is concerned, but if she disrespected me knowing he’s my fiancé, I would not think twice about kicking her ass.

  I wonder if Andrew noticed.

  24