I heard a thump-thump as he dropped a pair of black running shoes on the floor and emerged from the closet. When he made it over, he looked at me like I’d done something wrong and took the half-folded shirt from my hands.
“Don’t be so perfect, babe; just shove them in the bag.”
A seemingly insignificant moment we shared, yet it was ultimately what gave me the courage to get on that plane. I knew that if I stayed, if I continued to put too much thought into it, the only thing I’d accomplish would be to let fear control my, our, entire life from that point on.
And every day that I look back on our life now, the only thing that scares me anymore is knowing that we came within an inch of spending the rest of our lives in North Carolina.
We spent three weeks in Jamaica, loved it so much that we didn’t really want to leave. But we knew that we had so much more to do, so many places yet to see. And so one night after mingling on the beach with the locals, Andrew reached inside the bag (we swapped out the cowgirl hat for a purple Crown Royal bag, since it was easier to carry around) and pulled out Japan. On the other side of the ocean…
This was something we didn’t anticipate.
Needless to say, we ditched the bag and the draw-a-country-at-random idea altogether because of this. We started choosing where to go next based on our location: Venezuela, Panama, Peru, and eventually Brazil. We saw them all, spending the longest time, two months, in Temuco, Chile, and avoiding at all costs places known to be more dangerous to travelers, cities and even whole countries in any state of unrest. And everywhere we went, we found ourselves feeling more and more a part of each culture. Eating the food. Participating in the events. Learning the languages. Just a few key phrases here and there was mostly what Andrew and I managed.
And we did go back home to the United States for the holidays. Thanksgiving in Raleigh. Christmas in Galveston. New Year’s in Chicago. And, of course, we also spent Lily’s second birthday in Raleigh. We took Lily to her doctor to get a checkup and to keep her shots up-to-date. And yes, Andrew got checkups too, and just like his daughter, he was as healthy as a horse.
Just before spring, Andrew agreed to the idea of letting Natalie and Blake rent our house. It was kind of perfect, actually. They were looking for a place, and we could have used the income, plus it eliminated us having to pay any more utility bills. We still had plenty of money in the bank, but traveling like we were was definitely putting a dent in it. But we started learning the ins and outs of spending while abroad by taking advantage of hostels and cheap hotels and even cheaper vacation homes. We didn’t need luxury, just a safe and clean place for Lily.
But what I think what saved us the most money was that we never traveled anywhere as tourists. We didn’t buy souvenirs or anything that we didn’t need. We weren’t there to join the vacationers on guided tours or to spend money doing all of the things that people planning a vacation might do. We only bought the necessities and occasionally splurged on some good food or a new toy for Lily when she’d get bored with the one she had.
And we did perform every now and then for a little extra money, but with Lily, we never performed together. Since we wouldn’t dare think of leaving Lily in someone else’s care even for a few minutes, I stopped performing altogether, and Andrew played his acoustic and sang for a while on his own. But ultimately, he stopped, too. Foreign countries. Different styles of music. Completely different languages. It didn’t take us long to see that our music wasn’t as effective in these places as it was back home.
A few months after Lily’s second birthday, Andrew and I decided that it was time to move on. We wanted to see as much as we could before we had to settle down somewhere so that Lily could start school. And I was ready to see Europe. So as summer drew nearer, Portugal became our next destination.
Andrew and I “grew up” the day we stepped off that plane in Jamaica. That was what I meant when I said we became different. Sure, Lily straightened us up a lot after she was born, but when we walked off the plane and felt the breeze on our faces, not only did I finally know that the air really does feel different in other countries, but we knew that it was for real. We were far away from home with our daughter, and no matter how much fun we might have from that day forward, we could never let our guard down.
We grew up.
Andrew
41
I think a lot about my life before, even before Camryn and I met, and I see that it’s kind of scary how much I’ve changed. I was what she calls a “man whore” when I was in high school. And, OK, I was a bit of a man whore after high school, too—she knows about every woman I’ve ever been with. About my partying days. She knows pretty much everything about me. Anyway, I think about my past a lot, but I don’t miss it. Except every now and then when reminiscing about growing up with my brothers, I do feel that nostalgia that Camryn was talking about our second time in New Orleans.
I don’t regret anything I did in my past, as wild as I was at times, but I wouldn’t do it over, either. I managed to get through that life and score a beautiful wife and daughter, which I really don’t deserve.
I found out yesterday that Aidan and Michelle, after two kids and years of marriage, are getting a divorce. I hate that for them, but I guess not everybody is meant to be together like Camryn and me. I wonder if they could’ve made it if they hadn’t killed themselves working. That bar consumed my brother, and Michelle was being consumed by her job, too. Camryn and I talked about how they seemed to be drifting apart, even on Camryn’s first visit to see them before Lily was born.
“All they do is work,” Camryn said one night last year. “Work, take care of Avery and Molly, watch TV, and go to bed.”
I nodded contemplatively. “Yeah, I’m glad we didn’t end up like that.”
“Me, too.”
Asher, on the other hand, is with a sweet girl named Lea. And I’m proud to say that they decided one day to spontaneously make the move to Madrid. My little brother has really done well for himself, landing a job as a systems software engineer, which allowed him to relocate. He didn’t have to. He could’ve stayed put in Wyoming, but apparently he’s more like me than I knew. Thankfully, Lea shares his interests and determination; otherwise, their relationship would end up more like Aidan and Michelle’s than mine and Camryn’s. And Lea’s income from selling handmade dresses on the Internet is pretty awesome, I hear. Camryn thought about trying something like that out, until she realized she’d have to sew.
With them living in Madrid, it gave us a place to stay while we were there ourselves. Asher insisted that we didn’t have to pay rent, but we paid it anyway. Camryn didn’t want to be a “moocher,” as she put it.
“One dollar,” Asher said, just to appease her.
“No,” Camryn said. “Six dollars and eighty-four cents a week, and not a penny less.”
Asher laughed. “Girl, you are kind of weird. Fine. Six dollars and eighty-four cents a week.”
It started out that we were only going to stay with my brother for a couple of weeks, but one night, Camryn and I had a heart-to-heart.
“Andrew, I think maybe we should stay put for a while. Here, in Madrid. Or, maybe we should go back to Raleigh. I don’t want to, but…”
I looked at her curiously, yet at the same time it was apparent to me that we have been thinking along the same lines. “I know what’s on your mind,” I said. “It’s not as easy as we wanted it to be, traveling with Lily.”
“No, it’s not.” She looked off in thought, and her expression hardened. “Do you think we did the right thing? By taking her to so many places?”
Finally, she looked at me again. I could tell by the look in her eyes that she hoped I would say that yes, we did the right thing.
“Of course we did,” I said, and I meant it. “It was what we wanted to do when we set out on that first day. We have no regrets. Sure, we had to do things differently for her safety, bypass a lot of places we wanted to see, stay put in places longer than we wanted to so
we didn’t give her whiplash, but we did the right thing.”
Camryn smiled softly. “And maybe we instilled a love for travel in her.” She blushes. “I don’t know…”
“No, I think you’re right,” I said.
“So what do you think we should do?” she asked.
We stayed with Asher and Lea for three months before we set out again. We had one last stop to make before we were to head back to the United States: Italy. Camryn finally admitted to me the reason behind her persistent desire to go to Italy. Her dad took her there once on a business trip when she was fifteen. It was just the two of them. And that trip with her dad was the last time she felt like his little girl. They spent a lot of time together. He spent more time with her than he did on business.
“Are you sure it’s a good idea?” I asked before we left for Rome. “What if you go back there and ruin the memory, like you did that day with the woods behind your childhood house?”
“It’s a risk I’m willing to take,” she said, packing Lily’s clothes into our suitcase. “Besides, I’m not going there to relive those six days with my dad, I’m going to remember those six days with my dad. I can’t ruin something I can’t fully remember.”
When we got there I witnessed Camryn remembering everything. She took Lily and sat down with her on the Spanish Steps, I imagine much in the same way her dad did when he brought her here.
“We love you very much,” Camryn said to Lily. “You know that, right?” She squeezed Lily’s hand.
Lily smiled and kissed her momma on the cheek. “I love you, Momma.”
Then Lily sat between Camryn’s legs while Camryn worked her fingers through her blonde hair, twisting it into a new braid and laying it over her shoulder to look just like her own.
I smiled and watched thinking about a day so long ago:
“It would be a friendship thing, I guess,” she said. “Y’know, two people who happen to be sharing a meal together.”
“Oh,” I said, grinning faintly. “So now we’re friends?”
“Sure,” she said, obviously caught off guard by my reaction, “I guess we are sort of friends, at least until Wyoming.”
I reached over and offered my hand to her, and reluctantly, she took it.
“Friends until Wyoming it is, then,” I said, but I knew I had to have her. Longer than Wyoming. Forever would be sufficient.
It still blows my mind how far we have come.
After nearly three years on the road it was finally time to go home.
We went back to Raleigh and back to our humble little house. Natalie and Blake moved out and got a new place on the other side of town. Lily later started school, and for the next several years we were happy, but there was always a part of us that felt empty. I watched my little girl grow up into a beautiful young woman with dreams and goals and aspirations in life that rivaled mine and Camryn’s. I like to think that we—Camryn and I—are to take credit for how Lily turned out. But at the same time, Lily is her own person, and I think she might’ve turned out the way she did even without our help.
I couldn’t be prouder.
It seems like so long ago. And, well, I guess it was. But even today, I look back on the day I met Camryn on that Greyhound bus in Kansas, and it’s still so vivid and alive in my mind that I feel like I could reach out and touch it. To think, if the two of us hadn’t left like we did, told society and its judgments to piss off, we never would’ve met. If Camryn would’ve let fear of the unknown get to her too much, we might never have gotten on that plane to Jamaica. We truly lived our lives the way we wanted to live them, not the way the world expected us to live. We took risks, we chose the unconventional route, we didn’t let what anyone thought about our choices get in the way of our dreams, and we refused to settle doing anything for too long that we didn’t enjoy. Sure, we did things all the time that we didn’t want to do because we had to—worked in a few fast-food restaurants for a while, for instance—but we never let any of it control our lives. We found a way out eventually instead of letting it win. Because we only have one life. We get one shot at making it worth living. We took our shot and ran like hell with it.
And I think we did pretty damn good.
I honestly don’t know what else to say. It’s not like our life is over now that our story seems to be. Nah. It’s definitely far from being over. Camryn and I still have so much left to do, so many places to see, so many of Life’s Rules to defy.
Today is the first day of the rest of our lives. It’s a special day, for Lily, for us, for everything the three of us stand for. Our story is over, yes, but our journey isn’t, because we’ll always live on the edge until the day we die.
Epilogue
Fifteen years later
Lily
“Lily Parrish!” Mrs. Morrison calls out my name from the stage in the auditorium. I hear my friends and family shouting from the crowd, followed by whistles and clapping.
I reach up and hold my graduation cap on my head as I ascend the wooden steps. It fits oddly. My dad teased me, said it’s because I have an oddly-shaped head, and it’s my mom’s fault because I couldn’t have gotten it from him.
As I walk across the stage more whistles and shouting and clapping fills the auditorium. My heart is beating fast against my ribs. I’m so excited. I think I’ve been smiling this big for the past twenty minutes.
Principal Hanover holds my diploma out to me, and I take it from her hand. The clapping gets louder. I look down at the front row at my parents, standing next to their seats, bright-eyed and animated with excitement. My mom blows me a few kisses. Dad winks at me and claps. They are both so proud of me that it’s choking me up. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for them. I couldn’t have asked for better parents.
After the graduation ceremony is over, my boyfriend, Gavin, and I make our way through the crowds to find my mom and dad.
Mom engulfs me in her arms and kisses my head. “You did it, Lily!” She squeezes me. “I’m so proud!” I hear the tears in her voice.
“Mom, don’t cry. You’ll mess up your mascara.”
She rubs her finger underneath both eyes.
Dad hugs me next. “Congratulations, babygirl,” he says.
I push up on my toes and kiss him on the cheek. “Thank you, Daddy.” Then he pulls me around to his side and fits his hand on my waist protectively.
He gives Gavin the evil eye, looking him up and down, the same way he has every time he’s seen him in the two years we’ve been together. But this time, it’s all in good fun. For the most part, anyway. It took my dad a year to cut Gavin some slack and trust him enough to let me go out on a date with him without him or Mom going with us. So embarrassing. But the overprotectiveness never managed to run Gavin off, and I think that alone gave my parents more reason to respect him.
He is really a great guy, and deep down I think my parents know that.
“Congratulations, Gavin,” my dad says and shakes his hand.
“Thanks.” Gavin is still kind of terrified of my dad. I think it’s cute.
My parents throw a huge graduation party for me at home and everybody shows up. I mean everybody. There are people here I haven’t seen in a few years: Uncle Asher and Aunt Lea came all the way from Spain! Uncle Aidan is here, too, with my cousins Avery and Molly, and his new wife, Alice. My grams, Marna and Nana Nancy (she doesn’t ever want to be called anything with a GR in it) are here, too. Nana isn’t doing so well. She has multiple sclerosis.
“Oh my God, girl, you’re going to leave me!” my best friend, Zoey, says as she comes up to me. We grew up together, just like her mom, Natalie, did with my mom here in Raleigh.
“I know! I hate it, but you know I’ll visit!” I hug her tight.
“Yeah,” she says, “but I’m going to miss the hell out of you.”
“I told you,” I say, “you could always move to Boston to be closer.”
She rolls her eyes, her dark-colored hair falling about her shoulders as she steps away and ho
ps up onto the kitchen bar stool. “Well, not only will I not be moving to Boston with you, looks like I won’t be staying in North Carolina much longer, either.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, surprised.
I sit down on the bar stool next to her. My uncle Cole walks into the kitchen with a few empty beer bottles in his hands. He chucks them in the trash.
Zoey sighs, props her elbow on the bar, and starts twirling a few strands of hair between her fingers. “My mom and dad are moving to San Francisco.”
“What? Seriously?” I can hardly believe it.
“Yeah.”
I can’t tell if she’s disappointed or just doesn’t know how to feel about it yet. “Well that sounds awesome,” I say, hoping to encourage her. “You don’t want to move?”
Zoey pulls her arm from the bar and crosses her legs. “I don’t know what to think, Lil. That’s a long way from home. Not like it’s just up the street.”
“True,” I say, “but it’s San Francisco! I would love to go there.”
She smiles a little.
Uncle Cole, in his tall, brooding glory, takes three more bottles of beer from the fridge and wedges them by the necks between his fingers. He smiles at me as he passes and slips into the living room with the house full of people.
He’s awesome. When he arrived, he slipped me a congratulations card with two hundred bucks in it.
“Zoey, I think it’s great. And honestly, I can’t wait to visit my best friend in California. Yeah. That even sounds good when I say it. California.” I gesture both hands dramatically.
She laughs. “I really am going to miss you, Lil.”
“Me too.”
Her mom comes into the kitchen behind her with her dad, Blake, not far behind. “Did you tell Lily the news?” her mom asks as she reaches inside the fridge.
“Yeah, I told her just now.”
“What do you think, Lily?” her mom asks.