The Edge of Always(28)

Though I admit I think a lot about what I’m going to do when I run out of these…

I shuffle one into my hand and look at it for a moment. Maybe I should take two tonight so I can get some deep sleep. I want to be refreshed and ready to perform tomorrow night at Aidan’s bar. Yeah, that’s a good enough reason to take one extra.

I swallow the pills down with the bottled water I left next to the bed, and I lie down next to Andrew, just gazing up at the ceiling and waiting for the effect to kick in. Andrew, feeling my movement, rolls over instinctively and lays his arm over my waist. I curl up next to him, carefully tracing the outline of Eurydice down his side. I do this until finally my head feels as light as air, and my eyes are filled with hundreds of tiny butterflies tickling the back of my eyelids and around my temples.

And I…





Andrew


Camryn slept way past lunch. When I finally got her to wake up, she did so with a migraine and a bitchy attitude. Cute, but bitchy. She barely had two beers last night but you’d think she drank a fifth of rotgut the way she’s lying in the bed with her face buried underneath the pillow.

“I brought you some Advil,” I say sitting down next to her. “Maybe you have a brain tumor.”

She knees me in the thigh. “Not funny, Andrew,” she says with a little moan in her voice.

I thought it was funny.

“Well, take these,” I say, removing the pillow from her head. She protests for a second before giving in.

She raises enough from the bed to wash them down with water and then collapses back onto the mattress, squeezing her eyes closed and rubbing her temples with her fingertips. I give her the pillow back, and she hides underneath it.

“Y’know, people usually get accustomed to drinking the more they do it, not the other way around.”

“I only had two beers,” she says, her voice muffled by the pillow. “It’s just a headache, probably has nothing to do with the beer at all.”

I lean over and kiss her on the stomach, briefly recalling the last time I actually did that, when she was pregnant. It makes me sad for a second, but like I’ve been doing since it happened, I force that shit down and suck it up.

“I can stay here with you if you want,” I say.

“No, I’ll be all right,” she says, and her hand emerges from the confines of the pillow. She blindly places it on my crotch until she realizes what that is and moves it quickly to my knee instead. I would mess with her about it, but I’ll let her slide this time.

“Alright, I’ll be with Aidan for a couple of hours,” I say and stand up from the bed. “Hopefully you’ll be better before tonight. I really want us to play.”

“I do, too,” she says and reaches out her hand to me.

I grab it and lean over, kissing her knuckles before leaving to ride around with my brother while he takes care of some business.

By early evening, Camryn is dressed and her headache seems to be gone, so the four of us head to Aidan’s fine establishment of beer, peanuts, and live music.

*

Business at Aidan’s bar has been thriving, according to him, and when we walk in through the front door at barely seven o’clock, I see he wasn’t exaggerating. I’ve never seen it this packed before, and I’ve spent my fair share of Friday and Saturday nights here over the six years he’s owned it. Music funnels through the numerous speakers in the ceiling and walls, something folksy rock, much like Camryn and I have inadvertently made our trademark style. A couple of years ago, if someone were to ask me what kind of music I’d play if I ever had my own band, I never would’ve thought folksy rock. I’ve sung and performed classic rock like the Stones and Zeppelin in bars and clubs for a long time, but since meeting Camryn that has changed somewhat. We’ve adopted the Civil Wars’ style for the most part, just because it came so natural to us as a duo, but we still play a few classic rock greats when we perform, too.

One of our favorites: “Hotel California” by the Eagles, technically the very first song we ever sang together. It may have been in the car while on the road and all just for fun, but it stuck with us. And we’ve done “Laugh, I Nearly Died” by the Rolling Stones, which Camryn insisted on learning.

But Camryn still loves the newer stuff and the Civil Wars more than anything and so that’s usually what we play.

Tonight will be no different.

I kind of had a feeling she’d pick “Tip of My Tongue” and “Birds of a Feather,” because those are the two songs she has the most fun with. I love watching her perform them next to me up on stage because she becomes so vibrant and playful and sexy as hell. Not that she isn’t all of those things already, but it’s like another more daring and flirty side of her comes out when she’s singing. And she doesn’t just sing—she puts on a show. I think it’s that little actress she’s always had buried somewhere in herself. She told me she performed in plays at school, and I can definitely see she has the knack for it.

But singing alongside me also seems to make her happy, and that’s why tonight is so important. It’s the first time we’ll be performing together since she lost the baby, and I’m hoping it’ll be therapeutic.

We weave our way through the thick crowd of people and head to the stage where we take our time setting up. Not much to set up really with just a guitar—unfortunately not one of mine—and two microphones, but we’re not going on for another fifteen minutes.