The Edge of Always(87)

OK, so I did, but… that’s not how this was supposed to go down.

“But… what’s my punishment?”

She stops just long enough to turn and look back. “You’re going to watch.”

“Wait…what?”

I start to follow. Evil witch.

She goes into the living room and lies down on the couch, her head resting upon the arm, one leg propped over the back.

Evil, evil witch!

She looks up at me seductively and that’s all it takes; the second her eyes meet mine I move over and on top of her, crushing my mouth over hers. “No f*cking way, babe,” I whisper hotly onto her mouth, and I kiss her even harder.

Her hands grasp the front of my shirt, her tongue tangled passionately with mine.

And then Lily starts to cry.

I stop. Camryn stops. We look at each other for a moment, both of us frustrated, but we can’t help but smile. Lily is a deep sleeper and hardly ever wakes up at night anymore, but somehow her timing tonight doesn’t surprise me.

“I’ll do it this time,” she says, lifting herself from the couch.

I stand up, running my hand over the top of my head.

After she disappears down the hallway, I head back into the kitchen and sit back down at the table to scrawl “Italy” on another strip of paper. I drop it into the hat and refold all of the others and drop them in it, too.

Minutes later, the house is quiet after Camryn gets Lily back to sleep. She sits down in the chair next to me again, pulling her bare legs onto the seat and crossing them. Propping one elbow upon the table, she rests her chin in her hand and looks at me with a warm smile, like something’s on her mind.

“Andrew,” she says. “Do you really think we can do this?”

“Do what, exactly?”

She rests both arms across the table out in front of her, tangling her fingers.

“Travel with Lily.”

I pause and then lean my back against the chair. “Yeah, I do think we can pull it off. Don’t you?”

Her smile weakens.

“Camryn, do you not want to travel anymore?”

She shakes her head. “No, that’s not it at all. I’m just really scared. I’ve never known anyone personally who has tried anything like that. It’s just scary. What if we’re just being delusional? Maybe normal people don’t do this sort of thing for a reason.”

At first, I was worried. I had this gut feeling that maybe she had changed her mind, and while I’d be OK with whatever she wanted to do, a part of me would’ve been disappointed for a while.

I lean back up and rest both arms across the table in front of me just like Camryn. My eyes soften as I look at her. “I know we can do this. As long as it’s what we both want equally, that neither one of us are only doing it because we think it’s what the other wants, then yes, Camryn, I know we can pull it off. We have the savings. It’ll be a few years before Lily starts school. There’s nothing stopping us.”

“Is it what you really want?” she asks. “You promise there’s not some part of you that’s only going through with it because of me?”

I shake my head. “No. Even though if I didn’t want it as much as you, I would do it anyway because it’s what you want—but no, I truly want it.”

That weak smile of hers strengthens again.

“And you’re right,” I go on, “it’s scary, I admit. It wouldn’t be so much if it were just you and me, but—think about this for a second. If we didn’t do this, what else would we do?”

Camryn looks away in thought. She shrugs and says, “Work and raise a family here, I guess.”

“Exactly,” I say. “That fear is the fine line between us and them.” I gesture outward to indicate “them,” the kind of people in the world we want to avoid becoming. Camryn understands; I can see it in her face. And I’m not saying that people who choose to stay in one place all their life and raise a family are wrong. It’s the people who don’t want to live like that, who dream about being something more, doing something more, but never pull it off because they let fear stop them before they get started.

“But what will we do?” she asks.

“Whatever we want,” I say. “You know that.”

“Yeah, but I mean later on. Five, ten years from now, what will we be doing with our lives, with Lily’s life? As much as I love the thought of doing it forever, I really can’t imagine it being realistic. We’ll run out of money eventually. Lily will have to start school. Then, we’ll end up right back here and become one of them anyway.”

I shake my head and smile. “Make that fear and excuses that make up that fine line. Babe, we’ll be OK. Lily will be OK. We will do whatever we want, go wherever we want to go and we’ll enjoy our lives, not settle for a life that neither of us really want. Whatever happens, whether we start to run out of money, can’t find work to replace it, Lily needs school and we have to make the decision to stay put in one place for a long time, even if that place is back here in this house, then we’ll do what we have to do. But right now—” I point sternly at the table “—right now those aren’t things we have to worry about.”

She smiles. “OK. I just wanted to make sure.”