The Edge of Always (26 page)

Camryn’s thoughtful expression dissolves into that grin I was shooting for.

I pick her up, cradling her ass in my hands, and she wraps her legs around my waist, hangs her arms over my shoulders. The second I taste her warm tongue in my mouth, I’m carrying her off to the shower with me, both of our shirts falling onto the floor before we make it past the bathroom door.

*     *     *

The very first place we hit after sundown is Old Point Bar. When we walk through the front door, we’re welcomed by an excited Carla who practically pushes two big guys out of the way to get to me, her arms wide out at her sides. We collapse into a hug.

“It’s so great to see you again!” Carla says over the loud music. “Let me look at you!” She takes a step back and examines me from my shoes to my head. “Still as handsome as ever.”

She turns to Camryn now. Then she glances at me and then back to Camryn again. “Uh-huh, I knew he wouldn’t let
you
go.” She pulls Camryn into a hug and squeezes her tight.

“I told Eddie after you two left,” she goes on, looking back and forth between us, “that she was a keeper. Eddie agreed, of course. He said the next time you came around here that Camryn would be with you. He tried to bet me money on it.” She points at me and winks. “You know how Eddie was.”

In two seconds I feel my heart sink into the soles of my feet. “ ‘Was’?” I ask warily, afraid of her answer.

Carla doesn’t lose her smile, maybe just a little, but for the most part she doesn’t lose it. “I’m sorry, Andrew, but Eddie died in March. A stroke, they say.”

My breath hitches, and I take a seat on a bar stool next to me. I sense Camryn step up beside me. All I can see is the floor.

“Oh don’t you do that now, you hear me?” Carla says. “You knew Eddie better than just about anyone. He didn’t even cry when his own son died. You remember? He played his guitar all night long in Robert’s honor.”

Camryn’s hand interlocks with one of mine. I don’t look up until Carla walks around the bar and grabs two shot glasses and a bottle of whiskey from the glass shelf behind her. She sets the glasses down in front of me and starts pouring.

“He always said,” Carla continues, “that if he died before any of us did that he’d rather be woken up on the Other Side to people dancin’ on his grave than cryin’ on it. Now drink up. His favorite whiskey. He wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Carla’s right. Even though she is, and I know Eddie would hate it that anyone grieved over him, I still can’t let go of the bottomless hole I feel in my heart right now. I look at Camryn next to me and see that she’s trying not to cry, her eyes coated with tears. But she smiles, and I feel her hand gently squeezing mine. Camryn reaches out for the whiskey that Carla poured and waits for me to take the other. I slide my hand across the bar top and grasp it in my fingers.

“To Eddie,” I say.

“To Eddie,” Camryn repeats.

We touch our glasses, smile at each other and drink it down.

Our serious moment is quickly over when Camryn brings her hand down, slamming the glass upside-down on the bar. She makes the most disgusted, kick-in-the-teeth face I’ve ever seen a girl make and lets out a sound like her breath is on fire.

Carla laughs and takes her shot glass away, wiping the area underneath it with a rag. “Didn’t say it was good, just that it was Eddie’s.”

Even I have to admit the shit is nasty. Rotgut nasty shit. I don’t know how Eddie drank this all those years.

“Are you two still playin’ together?” Carla asks.

Camryn climbs up onto the empty bar stool next to me and answers first, “Yeah, we’ve been doing a lot of that.”

Carla looks at us both suspiciously, taking my shot glass and putting it away underneath the bar somewhere now.

“Been playin’ a lot for how long? And why haven’t I seen you here sooner?”

I sigh heavily and fold both hands on the bar, leaning more comfortably against it. “Well, after we left here we went to Galveston and I sort of ended up in the hospital with that tumor.”

“You
sort of
ended up in the hospital?” Carla says, and I wonder if her smart ass is related to that cop back in Florida somehow. She points sternly at me but her words are for Camryn. “We told him to go to the doctor, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“You knew, too?” Camryn asks.

Carla nods. “Yeah, we knew. But your boy here is as stubborn as a mule.”

“I agree with you there,” Camryn says with a hint of laughter in her voice.

I shake my head and lean away from the bar again. “Well, before you two gang up on me,” I say, “anyway, obviously I’m alive. Later, Camryn and I went through some really messed up things along the way, but we both made it through OK.” I smile warmly over at her.

“Looks like you came full circle,” Carla says, and it invokes our attention at the same time. “I hope you’re going to play tonight. Eddie would’ve loved to be up there with you one last time.”

Camryn and I lock eyes briefly.

“I’m up for it,” she says.

“So am I.”

Carla smacks her hands together. “Well, all right then! You can go on whenever you want. The only band we had scheduled tonight cancelled.”

We hang out at the bar with Carla for an hour before we finally make it to the stage. And even though the bar is only half-full tonight, we play to an excited crowd. We start off with our trademark duet, “Barton Hollow”; it seems only fitting that it be the first one, since Old Point is where we performed it together the first time. We go through several songs before finally getting to “Laugh, I Nearly Died,” in which I make an announcement on stage beforehand that it’s in honor of Eddie Johnson. I play it without Camryn and with an Eddie replacement, some nice Creole man named Alfred.

A little after midnight, Camryn and I say good-bye to Carla and Old Point Bar. But in true New Orleans style, we don’t go to bed early, we stay out and party with the best of them. We hit d.b.a. first, then head over to the bar where Camryn schooled me in a game of pool that night. It’s been almost a year since we were here last and were kicked out on our asses after a bar fight; I hope they don’t remember me. By two in the morning, after several games of pool and several drinks, just like last time I’m helping Camryn into the hotel elevator because she can barely hold herself up.

“You all right, babe?” I laugh lightly, repositioning my arm around the back of her waist.

Her head sways side to side. “No. I’m not all right. And you
would
laugh.”

“Aww, I’m sorry,” I say, but it’s only partly true. “I’m not laughing at you, just wondering if we’re going to be sleeping next to the toilet this time.”

She moans, though I think it was her way of arguing with me instead of expressing her discomfort. I get a better grip on her as the elevator opens, and I walk with her out into the hall and back to our room. I lead her to the bed, strip off everything but her panties, and help her into one of her tank tops. She lies down against the pillow, and I start to cover her with the sheet. But I remember that being this drunk, anything other than her panties and top will just make her sweat profusely, ultimately causing her to lose all of the alcohol she drank tonight.

Just in case, I grab the small wastebasket near the TV and place it next to the bed on the floor. Then I go into the bathroom, wet a washcloth with the cold water, and wring it out over the sink. But by the time I make it back to the bed to swab Camryn’s face and forehead, she’s already passed out.

*     *     *

When I wake up the next morning, I’m surprised to see that she’s awake before me.

“Mornin’, baby,” she says so softly it’s almost a whisper.

I open my eyes to see her lying on her side, facing me, her face pressed against her pillow. Her blue eyes are warm and vibrant, not the tired, hangover kind that I expected.

“What are you doing up so early?” I ask, reaching out to brush her cheek with the backs of my fingers.

“I’m not sure,” she says. “I was a little surprised myself.”

“How do you feel?”

“I feel fine.”

I drape my arm over her waist and pull her body next to mine, our bare legs tangling together. She traces the tip of her finger around the definition of my chest muscles. Her touch breaks my skin out in chill bumps.

I study her eyes and her mouth and let my fingertips follow every path that my eyes take. She is so beautiful to me. So goddamn beautiful. She reaches up and caresses my fingers underneath her own and then she kisses them, one by one, and pulls her body even closer. Something is different about her.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” I ask.

A gentle smile warms her eyes and she nods. Then she touches her lips to mine, pressing her breasts firmly against my chest. Her nipples are hard.
I’m
hard long before I feel her hand grip my erection. She licks the tip of my tongue before closing her mouth around mine and I wrap my arms around her body possessively. She presses herself against me below, the softness of her skin, her wetness that I feel so easily through her thin, cotton panties. Without breaking the hungry kiss, I reach down with one hand, slipping my fingers behind each side of her panties and take them off. I thrust my hips toward her, pressing my swollen cock against her warmth.

I roll over on top of her and look down into her eyes. But I don’t say a word. I don’t tell her how wet she is, or force her to look at me. I don’t dominate her with words or gestures or demands. I just gaze into her eyes and know that this is a moment where words are not needed.

I kiss her lips again softly, the corners of her mouth, the outline of her cheekbone. Parting her lips with my tongue, I very softly kiss her and reach down and take my cock into my hand, rubbing it against her. I feel her hips shift toward me, letting me know how bad she wants me inside of her. I don’t want to tease her this time, or deny her what she needs, so I push myself in just barely and watch her lose control of her gaze, her eyes fluttering, her lips parting. Forcing my cock in further, I feel her legs tremble around me. She moans softly, biting down on her bottom lip. I kiss her again and finally push myself deep inside of her, as far as I can go. I hold it there, basking in the shaking of her thighs, the trembling of her hands as they hold onto me, her fingers digging into my back.

I rock harder against her, gyrating my hips. A thin layer of sweat begins to bead off our bodies. I want to lick it off her, but I don’t stop. I can’t stop…

I raise my body up enough that our chests are no longer touching and I grab one of her legs from around me, gripping under the bend of her knee, pushing it back so I can thrust deeper. I pound her harder, pushing her thigh down against the bed. She calls out my name, both of her hands clutching my waist, but she pulls them back and curls her fingers around the top of the mattress above her head. I watch hungrily as her breasts bounce up and down against her chest and I thrust even harder, leaning over to take her nipples into my mouth and then into my teeth.

My vision gets hazy. She moans loudly and then begins to whimper. The whimpering makes me crazy. I let go of her thigh and feel my body closing in on hers again, her breasts smashed into my chest, her arms wrapped tightly around my back. I feel her fingernails press painfully into my flesh. She rocks her hips against mine, and my mouth crashes over hers. As I start to come, my kiss becomes more ravenous. Tremors move through my body and I moan against her mouth and my hard thrusts are reduced to gentle rocking. Camryn takes my bottom lip between her teeth and I kiss her gently, still rocking my hips against her until I’m finished.

I collapse onto her chest. My erratic heartbeat trying to find its rhythm again, I feel the pumping of blood in my fingers and in my toes and aggravating the vein near my temple. I lay the side of my face against her bare breasts, my mouth parted, the breath expelling unevenly from my lips. Her fingers move through my moist hair.

We lie here together just like this, all morning, without saying a word.

I don’t remember falling asleep. When I open my eyes, the clock beside the bed says that it’s eleven ten. And I realize that I don’t feel naked because I have no clothes on, but I feel naked because Camryn isn’t in the bed with me.

She’s sitting on the windowsill, dressed in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt without a bra. She’s gazing out the window.

“I think we should go,” she says without taking her eyes off the bright New Orleans landscape.

I sit up on the bed with the sheet draped over my lower half. “You want to leave New Orleans?” I ask, confused. “But I thought you said we left too soon the first time.”

“Yeah,” she says, but still doesn’t turn around. “The first time we left too soon, but we can’t stay here longer now just to make up for that.”

“But why do you want to leave? We’ve only been here one day.”

She turns to face me. There’s something like sentiment or resolve in her eyes, but I can’t make out which, or if it’s both.

After a long hesitation, she says, “Andrew, I know this might sound stupid, but I think if we stay here… I…”

I stand up from the bed and step inside my boxers I find on the floor. “What’s going on?” I ask, approaching her.

She looks at me. “I just think that… well, when we first got here yesterday all I could think about is what this place meant to us last July. I realized that I kept picturing the times before, trying to relive them—”

“But they’re just not the same,” I add, having an idea.

It takes her a second, but finally she says, after a subtle nod, “Yeah. I guess it’s just that this place is such a significant memory—Shit, Andrew, I don’t even know what I’m saying!” Her thoughtful expression dissolves into frustration.

I pull out a chair at the table in front of the window and sit down, leaning forward and draping my folded hands between my knees, and I gaze up at her. I begin to say something to add to her explanation, but she beats me to it.

“Maybe we should never come back here.”

I didn’t expect her to say
that
. “Why?”

She presses the palms of her hands on the windowsill to hold up her body, her shoulders rigid, her back slouching. Confusion and uncertainty start to fade from her face as the seconds pass and she begins to understand.