Her cheeks deflate with air. “Fair enough,” she says and grabs her purse from the table. “But I was only saying that because I’m worried how she might feel if she knew I came to you, not because I’m worried she’ll be pissed at me for doing it.”
I nod. I admit, I believe her this time.
* * *
I’m hanging out in the den watching TV when Camryn and her mom come home from the birth control appointment. I find myself sitting up straighter, feeling awkward being in her mom’s house and all. I set the TV remote down on the oak coffee table and get up to meet Camryn halfway.
“So, how’d everything go?” Awkward posture. Awkward filler questions. Awkward everything. I hate awkward. We need to get our own place soon. Or a hotel room.
Camryn’s eyes soften as she comes up to me.
“It went fine,” she answers and pecks me on the cheek. “I got what I needed. What did you do today? I bet you looked all sexy driving around in that New Age chick car all day, huh?” The left side of her mouth lifts into a grin.
My face feels a little flush.
Her mom smiles faintly at me behind Camryn’s back as she passes and heads into the kitchen area. It’s the same kind of “quiet smile” Camryn was talking about this morning, the one that screams She’s so fragile and I feel so bad for both of you. I’m starting to understand why Camryn hates it so much.
“Well, I didn’t do much, but I did endure a fifteen minute face-to-face conversation with Shenzi at Starbucks.”
“Shenzi?”
I shake my head, smiling and say, “Never mind. Natalie. She wanted to meet me to talk about you. She’s just really worried.”
Camryn, annoyed, starts to walk toward the hallway leading to her bedroom. I follow.
“I can only imagine what she told you,” she says as she rounds the corner into her room. She sets her purse and a shopping bag on her bed. “And it pisses me off she’d call you behind my back.”
“I probably shouldn’t have met up with her,” I say, standing near the doorway. “But she was persistent and, honestly, I wanted to hear what she had to say.”
She turns to face me. “And what did you get out of it?”
The faint trace of discontent lacing her tone stings me a little.
“Just that you’ve been through a lot and—”
Camryn puts up her hand and shakes her head scoldingly at me. “Andrew, seriously. Listen to me, OK?” She steps right up and takes my hands into hers. “Right now, the only thing that’s causing me any added misery is everybody worrying about me all the time. Think about it—we basically had this conversation just this morning. Now look at me.”
I look at her, not that I wasn’t already.
“Am I moping around?” No, you’re not. “How many times have you seen me smile in the past week?” Many times, actually. “Have you once heard me say anything to indicate I’m hurting more than I’m letting on?” No, not really, I guess.
She tilts her beautiful blonde head gently to the side and reaches up, brushing the side of my face with her soft fingertips. “I want you to promise me something.”
Normally I’d say “anything” without hesitation, but this time I hesitate.
She tilts her head to the other side, and her hand falls away from my face.
Finally, I say with reluctance, “It depends on what it is.”
She doesn’t fight it, but I see the disappointment in her expression.
“Promise me we’ll get back to normal. That’s all I ask, Andrew. I miss the way we were before. I miss our crazy times together and our crazy sex and your crazy dimples and your crazy, vibrant, life-loving attitude.”
“Do you miss the road?” I ask, and the light snaps out of her face as if I’ve said something horribly wrong.
Her eyes stray from mine and she seems lost in some deep, dark moment.
“Camryn… do you miss the road?” I need the answer to this question now more than I did seconds ago, because of her unexpected reaction to it.
After a long, silent moment she looks at me again and I feel lost in her eyes, though in an uncomfortable way.
She doesn’t answer. It’s like… she can’t.
Not knowing what’s going on inside of her head and eager to find out, I finally say, “We can do it now.” I place my hands on her upper arms. “Maybe that’s exactly what you… I mean, we need.” As the idea comes together on my tongue, I get more excited by the second just thinking about it. Camryn and me. On the open road. Living free and in the moment like we had planned to do. I realize I’m smiling hugely, my face lit up with excitement. Holy shit! Yes, this is what we need to do. Why didn’t I think of this before?
“No,” she says flatly, and her answer snaps me right out of that blissful, dreamlike state.
“No?” I can hardly believe it, or understand it.
“No.”
“But… why not?” I ask and she walks away from me casually. “There’s no reason we have to wait anymore.”
I understand in this very second the reason behind her answer. But I don’t have to be the one to bring it up because she does it for me.
“Andrew,” she says, her expression soft with regret, “if we did that it would always linger in the back of my mind that it was something we were putting off because of the baby. It wouldn’t feel right to do it now. Not for a while. A long while.”
“OK,” I say and step up to her. I nod and smile warmly, hoping to make her understand that no matter what she wants to do, or not do, I’m behind her all the way.
“So, what level of bipolar did Natalie make me out to be today?” She laughs under her breath and goes over to the shopping bag she brought with her and reaches inside.
I laugh too and lie horizontally across her bed, my legs hanging over one side, bent at the knees.
“Level yellow,” I say. “Lowest level possible. But she made herself out to be a level red.” I tilt my head sideways to see her. “But I’m sure you already knew that.”
She smiles back at me and pulls a stack of panties out of the bag and starts peeling the sticker labels from the fabric.
“Well, I’m sure she filled your head full of stuff about how I went through a depression phase and all about the ‘shitty hand’ ”—she quotes with her fingers—“I was dealt.” She points at me, squinting one eye. “But that’s just it. It was a phase. I got over it. And besides, who doesn’t go through deaths in the family, divorces, and bad breakups? It’s ridiculous that—”
“Babe, what did I tell you before? Back in New Orleans?”
“You told me a lot of things.” She tosses the sticker labels into the nearby wastebasket.
“About how pain isn’t a damn competition.”
“Yes, I remember,” she says. She starts to take the panties from the bed, but I reach over and snatch a few pairs off the top before she gets the chance. I hold up a pink lacy pair in front of me and set the other two pairs on my chest.
“Damn, I like these,” I say, and she snatches them from my fingers.
“Anyway,” she goes on, while I pick up the next two pairs and do the same thing, “I don’t want to talk about this stuff anymore, alright?” Then she snatches the last two pairs from my hands and makes her way to her top dresser drawer and stuffs them all inside.
She walks back over to me and crawls onto my lap, her knees buried in the blanket that covers the bed. I rub my hands back and forth over her thighs, on either side of me.
“I want to go out tonight,” she says. “What do you think?”
I curl my bottom lip between my teeth in thought and make a sucking sound just before I say, “Sounds like a plan. Where do you want to go?”
She smiles sweetly down at me as if she has been giving this plan a lot of thought today already. I love to see her smile like that. And it’s totally fucking real, so maybe Natalie is overacting, after all.
“Well, I thought we could go to the Underground with Natalie and Blake.”
“Wait,
isn’t that the place that douchebag kissed you on the roof?”
“Yeah,” she says in a singsong voice. Damn, if she doesn’t stop moving around on my lap like that… “but that ‘douchebag’ is in jail for a year. And Natalie really wants us to go. She texted me about it just before I got here.”
“Sure she’s not trying to suck up to you because she’s got a guilty conscience?”
Camryn shrugs. “Maybe so, but it’ll be fun to go, regardless. And it’ll be nice to watch live bands play rather than be on the stage for a change.”
She lies across my chest, and I reach down and fit her perfectly shaped ass in the palms of my hands and squeeze. She kisses me, and I move my hands up and wrap my arms tight around her body.
“All right,” I say softly when the kiss breaks and her lips linger an inch from mine. I run my fingers through her hair and then hold her head in place with her cheeks in my hands. “The Underground it is. And then tomorrow I’m going to fly back to Texas and start packing.”
“I hope you’re OK with me not going,” she says.
“Yeah, I’m fine with it.” I kiss her forehead. “Y’know, you never did say whether or not you were going to have Natalie go with you to look for an apartment.”
She lifts up, straightening her back and then grabs my hands, interlocking our fingers.
“I’ll get around to it,” she says with a smile. “One step at a time, and right now the next step is getting ready to go out tonight.”
I nod, smiling back at her, and then I squeeze her hands and pull her down toward me again.
“You’re the world to me,” I whisper onto her lips. “I hope you never forget that.”
“I’ll never forget,” she whispers back and moves her hips very subtly on my lap. Then she nudges my lips with her own and says just before kissing me, “But if I ever do, for whatever reason, I hope you’ll always find a way to remind me.”
I study her mouth and then her cheeks resting underneath the pads of my thumbs.
“Always,” I say and kiss her ravenously.
10
It’s been a while since the last time I partied at a club like the Underground before. Hell, I’m only twenty-five, and that place made me feel old. I guess spending most of my bar and club nights in more laid-back places like Old Point made me forget that heavy metal exists. Hey, I like heavy metal, but give me the old stuff any day. Camryn and I spent the night with Blake and Natalie, listening to some band who calls themselves Sixty-Nine—how original—screech out fuck-up note after fuck-up note on the guitar while the lead singer growled into the mic like a moose during mating season.
But the crowd seemed to like it. Or maybe it was because most of them were drunk or high. Probably both.
I should be drunk, but I agreed to be the designated driver for the night. And I’m OK with that. I wanted Camryn to party her ass off and have a good time. She needed this. And I’m proud of her for trying, because I halfway expected her to refuse to do anything for a very long time. I’m hurting over the loss of Lily, too, but Camryn is still here and she’s what matters right now.
The cold November night air feels good after being cooped up inside that warm, smoky warehouse for the past three hours.
“Are you all right to walk?” I ask Camryn, walking alongside her with my arm firmly around her waist.
She lays her head on me and buries her hands inside her coat sleeves.
“I’m good,” she says. “You cut me off at the right hour this time, so you don’t have to worry about carrying me the rest of the way like you did that night back in New Orleans.” I feel her head shift to gaze up at me, and I glance down at her briefly, trying also to watch our steps along the dark sidewalk. “You remember that night, don’t you?”
“Of course I remember.” I squeeze my arm tighter around her waist. “It wasn’t that long ago and besides, even if it was, I could never forget that night, or any night with you, for that matter.”
She smiles up at me and then watches out ahead, too.
“You’re very unforgettable,” I add, grinning at her briefly.
“I woke up once that night,” she says, burrowing her head into the warmth of my arm. “I saw the toilet on one side of me and wondered how I got there. Then I felt your body behind me, your arm over my waist, and I didn’t want to get up. Not because I was still half drunk and my head felt like it had been run through a shredder, but because you were with me.”
“Yeah, I remember…” I lose myself in that memory for a moment.
We walk huddled together through the cold for ten minutes until we make it to the gas station where the car is parked in an abandoned lot nearby. I turn the heat on full blast and drive the chick car back to Camryn’s mom’s house, wishing we had just stayed in a hotel all this time when we pull into the driveway and I see her mom’s car parked out front. I like Nancy, but I also like being able to walk around the house in my boxers, or naked, without worrying about an audience.
I help Camryn out of the car and take her inside, my arm still around her waist just in case any of the liquor hasn’t caught up to her yet. But she’s fine. Buzzed pretty good, but fine. I lock the door behind us, and Camryn immediately slips out of her coat and tosses it on the coat rack in the corner of the foyer. I do the same.
The house is dead quiet, and the only lights are the dim orange glow from the nightlight plugged in the nearby hallway and the one over the kitchen counter, illuminating the bar.
Camryn surprises me when her hands slither up my chest and she presses hard with her fingers on my abs, pushing me against the foyer wall. She slips her tongue into my mouth and I bite gently down on it and her bottom lip before I kiss her. Her right hand moves down to the button on my jeans and she pops it right out with ease, sliding the zipper down afterward. I kiss her harder and groan against her mouth when she slides her hand into my boxers and grabs me.
God, it’s been so fucking long…
She presses harder against me, shoving my back against the wall.
I break the kiss just for seconds long enough to get out, “I want you so fucking bad, but let’s at least get to your room first.”
Her kiss turns more ravenous and then she says with her lips still on mine, “My mom’s not here.” She bites down hard on my lip, enough to make it sting, but it drives me absolutely mad for her. “She took Roger’s car to work tonight.”
I crush my mouth against hers and lift her into my arms to carry her through the hallway toward her room. We can’t get there fast enough, and she’s already got my shirt off before I carry her through the door and throw her back against the mattress. I strip the rest of her clothes off, leaving just her panties. She sits up on the edge of the bed and takes my jeans and boxers down the rest of the way. I crawl on top of her, holding the weight of my body up with one fist ground into the mattress on her side while I tease her with the other hand, rubbing my finger between her wet lips over the fabric of her panties. She squirms beneath me, shutting her eyes and tilting her head back on the mattress so that her breasts rise a little higher in front of me.
I move off the bed and slip her panties off with my middle fingers. I kiss her inner thighs and can’t stop myself from falling in between her legs so fast because I haven’t been able to do this for her in what feels like forever. I don’t tease her anymore. I don’t because I’m making myself crazy in the process.
I lick her furiously, and she tries to crawl her way across the bed and away from my mouth. She grips the sheets above her head until her head is hanging off the bed on the other side. I hold her firmly in place with my hands around her thighs, my fingers digging into her skin. I suck on her clit even harder until she can’t stand it anymore and her thighs try to close around my head.
I can tell she’s about to come when suddenly she grips my hair and forces my mouth away.
I look across the smooth geography of her body from between her legs to see her gazing down at me. She works her fingers through my hair. I wait, wo
ndering what she’s thinking, wondering why she made me stop.
It’s like she’s waiting for something, but I’m not sure what. All I can think about right now is forcing myself on her. It takes everyfuckingthing in me to hold back, to keep from rolling her over and forcing her on her hands and knees, from gripping her hair so hard that it hurts her, from…
She cocks her head to one side and watches me, studies me as if she’s contemplating my next move. I’m mesmerized by her face. There’s something enigmatic and frail in it that I’ve never seen before. Then she guides me up away from the edge of the bed and on instinct I lay down on my back. She crawls across my body, kissing my stomach and my ribs and my chest as she makes her way up, positioning herself on top of me. A low moan rumbles uncontrolled through my chest just feeling the warmth and wetness of her. She smiles down at me, sweet, innocent, though I know it’s anything but. And then takes me into her hand, and I feel my eyes roll into the back of my fucking head when she places me inside of her and slides down on me so slowly that it’s torturous.
I let her fuck me for as long as she wants, but it takes everything in me to keep from getting off before she does. And in that last second, something happens that I never anticipated, and I’m panicking inside, hoping she doesn’t sense it when I have to make that vital split-second decision whether to pull out of her or not.
Camryn
My heart is beating so fast. I’m out of breath and sweat is beading off my forehead even amid the cool air lingering within the room. As I start to come, Andrew, in a confused panic of some sort, pulls out. It surprises me a little, but I don’t let him know that. Instead, I lean forward, just barely touching my chest to his and I slide him up and down within my hand.
Afterward I collapse on top of him fully, my cheek pressed against his chest, my knees still bent at his sides as I straddle his lap. I hear his heart beating rapidly in my ear. He splays his arms out on both sides across the bed and catches his breath before enveloping me within them. I feel his lips press against my hair.
I just lay here, thinking. I think about what just happened and what didn’t. I think about how good he smells and how warm his skin is against mine. I think about how tame he has become. All because he’s worried he’ll hurt me, physically, emotionally, probably even spiritually, if that were possible. And I love him for it. I love him for how much he loves me back, but I hope he doesn’t stay this protective of me forever.