Tears stream from my eyes.
He takes it the wrong way. His hands slip from mine and suddenly he can’t look at me anymore. I reach out and cup his face in my palms, forcing his tortured gaze.
“Andrew..,” I shake my head, tears rolling down my cheeks, “…it was always you,” I whisper harshly. “Even with Ian, I felt something was missing. I told you, that night in the field; I told you that…,” My voice trails. I smile and say, “You are my partner in crime. I’ve known that for a long time.”
I kiss his lips.
“I can’t think of anything in this world I’d rather do than to see it with you. We belong on the road. Together. It’s where I want to be.”
His eyes are watering, but he lets his bright smile push the tears away before they fall. And then he crushes his mouth against mine, both of us cupping each other’s faces in our hands. His kiss steals my breath away, but I just kiss him deeper, drinking down as much of his own breath as I can. And without breaking the kiss his hands fall away from my face and he wraps them tight around my body, lifting me with him into a stand.
“You have to meet my mom today,” he says, scanning my face, peering deeply into my eyes.
I sniffle back the rest of my tears and nod. “I would love to meet your mom.”
“Great,” he says, guiding me to slip away from his waist and stand on my own. “I’ll get a shower and we’ll go do some stuff around town for a while and head over to see her after she’s off work.”
“OK,” I say, never letting the smile fade from my face.
I couldn’t let it fade even if I tried.
He looks at me for a long moment like he doesn’t want to pry himself away long enough even to shower, his smiling eyes as radiant as I saw them that night after our performance at Old Point. His face reads all sorts of things that one who is overwhelmingly happy might want to say, but he says nothing.
He doesn’t need to.
Andrew finally leaves the room to shower and I go to check my phone messages. Mom finally called. She left a voice mail telling me all about her cruise of the Bahamas that ended up lasting eight days. It really sounds like she’s into this guy, Roger. I might actually have to swing by home long enough to check him out and do my own douchebag inspection of his personality just in case my mom has been blinded by something he has that overshadows the warning signs: more money than my dad, a body sexier than Andrew’s—well, that’s not likely—or a really big…not sure exactly how I would find something like that out unless I asked Mom directly. That’s not gonna happen.
My dad called, too. Said he’s going to Greece in a month on a business trip and asked if I want to go along with him. I’d love to, but sorry, Dad, if I go to Greece anytime in the next year or so, it’ll be with Andrew. I’ve always been Daddy’s Girl, but you have to grow up sometime and now…now I’m Andrew’s Girl.
I shake the dreamy thoughts from my brain and go back to checking messages. Natalie finally called instead of biting her tongue and sending a text message. I know by now she’s beyond going stir crazy wanting to know what I’ve been doing and who I’m with. I think maybe I’ve made her squirm long enough.
Hmmm…I could just give her a morsel.
A devious grin spreads across my face. A morsel might be worse torture, but it’s better than nothing at all.
When Andrew comes out of the shower, walking through the den with a damp towel around the back of his neck, I call him into the living room. He stands there, shirtless: the sexiest fucking thing I have ever seen in my life, with water dripping down his tanned abs. I want to lick it all off, but I refrain for Natalie’s sake.
“Baby, come here,” I say, curling my finger at him, “I want to send Natalie a picture of us. She’s been on my back since New Orleans about you, but I still haven’t told her anything, not even your name. She left me a voice mail.” I start punching letters on my phone.
He laughs, drying the back of his hair with the towel. “What did she say?”
“She’s about to explode, basically. I want to mess with her head.”
Andrew’s dimples deepen. “Hell yeah, I’m game.” He plops down on the couch and pulls me down with him.
I snap a couple of shots of us together: one with us just looking straight into the camera, one with him kissing me fully on the cheek and one with him eyeing the camera seductively with his tongue snaking out of the side of his mouth and licking my face.
“That one’s perfect,” I say excitedly about the third one. “She’s going to freak out. Prepare yourself; Texas might see Hurricane Natalie blow through here once she gets this pic.”
Andrew laughs and leaves me on the couch with my phone.
“I’ll be ready in a few more minutes,” he says as he slips out of the living room.
I load the photo into a message and type in:
Here we are, Nat, in Galveston, Texas :-)
And then I hit send. I hear Andrew moving around in the apartment. I start to get up to spy on him when in less than one minute after sending the photo, Natalie texts me back:
OMFG! R U sleeping with Kellan Lutz?!?!!!!?
I burst into laughter. Andrew comes back around the corner, unfortunately with a shirt on this time and he’s tucking the front behind his belt. And he’s already replaced the shorts with a pair of jeans.
“What, did she reply already?” He seems faintly amused.
“Yeah,” I say with laughter in my voice, “I knew it wouldn’t take long.”
More messages start popping up in fast succession as if a machine is on the other end:
Cam, OMFG, he is fucking RAWR! What the hell???
Call me. Like NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!
CAMNRYN MARTYBETH BENNETT! U better call me!!
I’m dring over here!!!
I mean DRING
GRRR!!!!!!
DAMN AUTO-CORRECT! I fucking hate this phone.
DYING, not dring!!
I can’t stop grinning. Andrew comes around behind me and snatches the phone from my fingers.
He laughs scrolling through her mumbo-jumbo.
“Typo much?” he says. “Who the hell is Kellan Lutz?—is he ugly?” He looks at me with a twinge of fear in his eyes.
No…ummm, definitely not ugly.
“It’s just an actor,” I try to explain. “And no, he’s not. Don’t put too much thought into it; Natalie always, I mean always compares everyone to someone famous, usually with a serious over-exaggeration.” I take the phone from him while he’s halfway preoccupied by my explanation and set it on the couch. “She and I went to school with Shay Mitchell and Hayden Panettiere, Megan Fox was prom queen, Chris Hemsworth was prom king.” I make a clicking noise with my tongue. “And then there was Natalie’s worst enemy, a cheerleader who tried to steal Damon away from her in tenth grade; Natalie said she was the slutty version of Nina Dobrev—none of these people really looked like them, not really anyway. Natalie is just…odd.”
Andrew shakes his head, smiling. “Well, she’s definitely a character, I’ll give her that.”
Still hearing my phone buzzing against the couch cushion, I ignore it and step up to Andrew, wrapping my arms around his waist.
“Are you sure you want to do this with me?”
He gazes into my eyes, placing his hands on my cheeks. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life, Camryn.”
Then he starts to pace.
“I always felt this…this…,” his eyes are intense, concentrating, “…this hole…I mean it wasn’t an empty hole, there was always something in it, but it was never right. It never fit. I went to college for a short time, until I sat back one day and said to myself: Andrew, what the fuck are you doing here? And it clicked in my head that I wasn’t there because it’s what I wanted, I was there because it’s what people expected, even people I don’t know, society. It’s what people do. They grow up, go to college, get a job and do the same shit every day for the rest of their lives until they grow old and die—just like you e
xplained that night you told me about yours and your ex’s plans.” He swings his right hand out as if slapping the air. “Most people never see anything outside where they grew up.” He’s pacing harder, stopping only every now and then when he wants to put emphasis on an important word or meaning. He hardly looks right at me; he seems to be saying all of these things to himself more, as though a river of answers he’s been looking for all his life are finally flooding his mind and he’s trying to take them all in at once. “I was never really happy doing anything….”
Finally, he looks right at me.
“And then I met you…and it was like something just went off in my head, or it woke up, I-I don’t know, but….” He stands in front of me again. I want to cry, but I don’t. “…but I knew that whatever it was, it was right. It fit. You fit.”
I go up a little on my toes and kiss his lips. There are so many things that I want to say, but I’m overwhelmed by all of them and can’t choose.
“I guess I need to ask you the same question,” he says. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
My eyes smile warmly up at him.
“Andrew, it’s not even a question,” I say. “Yes!”
Andrew smiles so brightly at me that his devilishly sexy green eyes glisten.
“So then it’s official,” he says, “we’ll leave here tomorrow. I’ve got money in the bank to get us by for a while.”
I nod and smile and say, “I’ve not really earned the money I have in the bank and I’ve always used it sparingly because of that, but for this, I’ll use every dime of it and when it runs out—”
“Before our money gets close to running out,” he interrupts, “we’ll work on the road, just like you mentioned before. We can play at clubs and bars and at farmer’s markets.” He laughs out loud at the idea, but is quite serious. “And we can even work in bars and restaurants cooking and washing dishes and doing the server thing and…I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out.”
It all sounds like a crazy dream gone rampant, but neither of us cares. We’re living in the moment.
“Yeah, before it runs out is definitely a better plan,” I say, blushing. “I don’t want to end up a panhandler or sleeping behind dumpsters or standing on street corners with Will Work for Food signs.”
Andrew laughs and squeezes my shoulders in his hands.
“No, we’ll never get to that point. We’ll always work, but not in one place for too long and never doing the same thing over and over.”
I look into his eyes for a moment and then wrap my arms around his neck, kissing him passionately.
Then he grabs his keys.
“Come on,” he says tilting his head back and holding his hand out to me. I take it. “First thing’s first: I’ve got to check on my car. She must be missing me!”
Porn magazines and a car revered as a woman!
I just shake my head laughing under my breath as he pulls me toward the door. I snatch my purse from the floor nearby and we head out.
35
OUR FIRST STOP IS where Andrew left his vintage 1969 Camaro and I see my first real stereotypical Texan when we pull into the garage where Andrew apparently used to work.
“Y’know I fired yer ass, right?” a tall man wearing a cowboy hat and black cowboy boots says walking outside to meet us. He had been standing in the open bay talking to another man who actually looks more like a mechanic.
He shakes Andrew’s hand and pulls him into a man-hug, patting his back.
“Yeah, I know,” Andrew says, patting his, “but I had to do what I had to do.”
Andrew turns to me.
“Billy, this is my girlfriend, Camryn. Camryn, this is my ex-boss, Billy Frank.”
My heart leapt when he called me his girlfriend. Hearing him say that definitely had more of an effect on me than I imagined it could.
Billy reaches out an oil-stained, rugged hand and without hesitation, I shake it. “Nice to meet you.” I smile.
He smiles back; his teeth are crooked and yellowed probably from too many years addicted to coffee and cigarettes.
“Well ain’t she a beaut,” Billy says grinning over at Andrew. “I’da skipped out on m’job too for a girl like that.” He playfully punches Andrew on the arm. He turns back to me. “Has he been treatin’ ya right? Boy’s got a mouth on him that’ll slap yer momma backwards.”
I laugh lightly and say, “Yeah, he does have a mouth, but he treats me wonderfully.”
Andrew’s eyes smile at me from the side.
“Well, if’n he ever gives ya any trouble, ya know where ta’ find me. Ain’t nobody ‘round here that can put him in his place like I can.” He grins over at Andrew.
“Thanks, I’ll remember that.”
We leave Billy Frank and walk through the bay and then exit a side door that leads out into a fenced area where cars are kept. I know immediately which one is his even though I’ve never seen it before except camouflaged in the tree bark of Andrew’s tattoo. It’s the nicest one on the lot. Dark gray with two black racing stripes down the center of the hood. It looks a lot like his dad’s vintage Chevelle. We weave our way through a maze of cars and he opens the driver’s side door after checking out the body from front to back on each side first.
“If she hadn’t needed some work when I decided not to take a plane to Wyoming,” he says as he runs his fingers along the door frame, “I would’ve driven her instead of taking that bus.”
“Well, not to think badly of your girl here,” I say, smiling and patting the hood, “but I’m glad she wasn’t up to drive you herself.”
Andrew looks at me, his face lit up the same way I see it more and more every day.
“I’m glad she wasn’t, either,” he says.
For a brief moment, I think about where either of us would be right now if that had happened, if we never met. But brief is long enough because thoughts like that wrench my stomach. I can’t imagine never having known him. And I never want to.
“So, are we going to be driving this one instead of the Chevelle?”
Andrew chews on the inside of his mouth, thinking it over. He stands at the open door with one palm lying flat against the roof. He pats it once gently and looks at me.
“What do you think? What do you want to do, babe?”
It’s my turn to chew the inside of my mouth in contemplation. I hadn’t really considered that the option would be mine to decide. I step up closer to the car and peer inside, checking out the leather bucket seats and…well, that’s really the only thing that I check.
“Honestly?” I ask, crossing my arms.
He nods.
I look back at the Camaro again, mulling it over.
“I kind of like the Chevelle,” I say. “I love this car—it’s badass—but I think I’m just more acquainted with the other one.” To make my case more solid I point at the seats. “And how would I lay my head on your lap, or sleep in the front with seats like that.”
Andrew smiles gently and rubs the roof of the car as if to assure her that it’s nothing personal. He pats it one more time and then shuts the door.
“Then we’ll take the Chevelle,” he says. “I’ll just drive her home later and park her.”
~~~
Andrew takes me out to eat and to a few random places he likes to go on Galveston Island. And then after rush hour traffic, he gets a call from his mom.
“I’m nervous,” I say on the passenger’s side as we head toward her house.
He wrinkles his eyebrows, looking over at me and says, “Don’t be; my mom will love you.” He looks back at the road. “She’s not one of those stuck up bitches who thinks no one is good for her son.”
“That’s definitely a relief.”
“Even if she was,” he says, grinning over at me once, “she’d still love you.”
I fold my hands together within my lap and smile. Doesn’t matter; he can talk her up all he wants about how sweet she is and it won’t do a thing for the nervous feeling in my stomach.
He glances over. “What, about leaving?”
“Yeah.”
He nods. “I’ll tell her, otherwise she’ll worry herself over me straight into therapy.”
“What do you think she’ll say?”
Andrew chuckles. “Babe, I’m twenty-five. I haven’t lived at home since nineteen. She’ll be alright.”
“Well, I just mean…you know…the nature of why you’re leaving and exactly what we plan to do.” I look away and back toward the windshield. “It’s not like packing up and moving to a different city; even my mom could handle that kind of news. But if I told her I planned to travel all over to wherever and that I was doing it with a guy I met on a bus, she’d probably be a little freaked.”
“Probably?” Andrew asks. “As in if you tell her?”
I look right at him. “No, I’m definitely going to tell her. Same as you, I think she should know…but, Andrew, you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I do, babe,” he says and flips on his left blinker and turns at the stop sign. “And you’re right; it’s not exactly normal.” Then he grins across at me and instantly it provokes a smile on my face. “But isn’t that one reason why we’re doing it? Because it’s not normal?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Of course, the biggest reason is because of the company,” he adds.
I blush.
Two more blocks of cozy, suburban-style houses and white sidewalks with kids buzzing by on bicycles and we pull into the driveway of his mom’s house. It’s a one-level with a pretty flower garden that wraps around the front side and two puffy green bushes on both sides of the sidewalk leading up to the front door. The Chevelle purrs into the drive behind a white four-door family car parked inside the wide-open garage. I look at myself real quick in the rearview mirror to make sure there are no boogers on my nose or any lettuce in my teeth leftover from the chicken sandwich I had earlier and Andrew comes around and opens my door for me.
The Edge of Never Page 32