The Edge of Always(75)

Tears pour from her eyes. It takes her a second to gather her composure.

And then she says, “Andrew, I promise never to leave you on life support and let you suffer when I know in my heart that your life is spent. I promise that if you’re ever lost or missing that I will… never stop looking for you. Ever.” This just makes me smile. “I promise that when you die, I’ll make sure that “Dust in the Wind” is played at your funeral and to never bury you where it’s cold. I promise to always tell you everything no matter how ashamed or guilty I feel, and to trust you when you ask me to do something because I know that everything you do has a purpose. I promise to be by your side always and to never let you face anything alone. I promise to love you forever in this life and wherever we go in the afterlife, because I know I can’t go on in any life unless you’re in it too.”

Pastor Reed says to me, “Do you, Andrew Parrish, take Camryn Bennett to be your wedded wife, to have and to hold, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, to love and to cherish, from this day forward?”

“I do,” I say and place the wedding ring I bought in Chicago on her finger. She gasps quietly.

Then he turns to Camryn and says, “Do you, Camryn Bennett, take Andrew Parrish to be your wedded husband, to have and to hold, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, to love and to cherish, from this day forward?”

“I do.”

Finally, I hand her my ring, because I’ve been hiding them both from her until this very moment, and she slides it on my finger. Pastor Reed finishes up, including those anticipated seven words—“I now pronounce you husband and wife”—and then he gives me permission to kiss my bride. It’s all we’ve wanted to do since the ceremony started, and now that we can, we find ourselves just staring at one another, lost in each other’s eyes, seeing each other in a different light, one so much brighter than we’ve seen it since the day we met in Kansas on that bus. I feel my eyes beginning to sting, and I scoop her up into my arms and crush my mouth over hers. She sobs into our kiss and I squeeze her around her back, lifting her bare feet completely from the sand and I spin her around. My mom is bawling like a baby. I feel like I might never stop smiling.

Camryn is my wife.





Camryn


I just became Camryn Parrish. I can’t wrap my head around the emotions that I feel. I’m crying, but kind of laughing inside at the same time. I feel excited, yet I feel anxious. I look down again at this ring he just slid on my finger, and I know he spent a lot of money on it. Then I glance at his ring, almost identical to mine though it’s a masculine version, and I just can’t be mad at him for them. I just can’t. I hear Marna sobbing behind me, and I can’t help but walk over and hug her again.

“Welcome to the family,” she says, her voice shuddering.

“Thank you.” I smile and wipe my tears away.

Andrew slips his arm around my waist, and the pastor joins us. Once he and Marna start talking and catching up, Andrew and I slip a few feet away from them, and he can’t stop looking at me. It makes me blush.

“What is it?” I ask.

He shakes his head, his smile glowing. “I love you,” he says, and it just makes me want to cry again, but I manage to keep it together.

“I love you, too.”

We spend our honeymoon at our apartment, very untraditionally. Because we want to wait until our first out-of-the-country trip to do a real honeymoon.

“Where do you think it’ll be?” he asks.

We’re sitting outside in two lawn chairs, having a beer and listening to the live music playing on the beach or in the park, in the distance somewhere.

“I don’t know,” I say and take a drink from the bottle. “Want to make a bet on it?”

Andrew rubs his bottom lip with the pad of his thumb. “Hmmm.” He contemplates it, takes another swig of his beer, and then says, “I think the first one we pull out of that hat will be…” he purses his lips “… Brazil.”

“Brazil, huh? Nice one. But I don’t know—I have this weird feeling it’ll be something more like Italy.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

We both take a swig at the same time.

“Maybe we should make some kind of bet,” he says, the dimple on the right side of his cheek deepening.

“A bet, huh? Sure, I’m in.”

“All right, if it’s Brazil, then you have to go with me to the beach, true Rio de Janeiro style.” His grin is wicked.

It takes me a minute to realize what he’s talking about, and when it dawns on me, I feel the night air hit my teeth as my mouth falls open. “No. Way!”

Andrew laughs.

“I’m not prancing around on a public beach topless!”

He throws his head back and laughs louder. “No, I don’t think they really do that over there, babe,” he says. “But I mean you have to wear one of those Brazilian bikinis. None of that I’m-self-conscious shit and cover up like you did in Florida. You’ve got a bangin’ body.” He takes another swig and sets the bottle down on the table in front of us.

I ponder it for a moment, chewing on the inside of my mouth. “Deal,” I say.

Looking a little surprised that I agreed to it so easily, he nods.