The Edge of Always (The Edge of Never 2)

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.

Camryn

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 says, 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.

Andrew

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 f**king 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 f**king 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 f**ked 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 f**king 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.