The Edge of Always

13

“I’m really glad you invited us here,” I say behind Michelle as I toss the empty beer bottles into the trash.

Michelle sets the small stack of plates on the counter and starts to rinse them off in the sink before loading them into the dishwasher. “Hey, no problem,” she says, smiling at me. “I needed some company, to be honest. It’s been pretty stressful around here.” She places another plate into the dishwasher rack below.

I move closer and lean against the counter, crossing my arms. Is she giving me permission to probe by saying that? I’m not sure, but I’m comfortable with her enough that I go ahead and do it anyway.

“Your job taking a lot out of you?” What I really wanted to ask was: Everything OK between you and Aidan? remembering what Marna said about she and Aidan having some marriage troubles, but I think that’s probing a little too much too soon.

She smiles warmly and rinses off the last plate. “No, I think being at the clinic is therapy, if anything.”

I stay quiet, but attentive.

“That bar is taking a lot out of Aidan lately,” she goes on, “but he’s doing it to himself. He has more than enough employees to handle things, but he spends a lot of time there dealing with the things he’s paying everyone else to do.”

I look at her curiously. “Why?”

She shuts the dishwasher and glances toward the arched entryway that leads into the living room where Aidan and Andrew are talking and laughing and saying “Shit, bro” a lot. Then she turns back to me and says in a lowered voice, “He’s just upset with me.” She looks away and dries her hands off on a dishrag hanging from the cabinet knob above the counter.

That’s it? I keep quiet a few seconds just in case she’s the really-long-pause type, but she doesn’t go on. It frustrates me a little. Then suddenly she says, “I shouldn’t be bringing things like this up. Not after what you and Andrew went through. I’m really sorry.”

“No, Michelle,” I say, hoping to ease her mind. “Hey, I’m here to listen.”

For some strange reason, Michelle bringing up what Andrew and I “went through” doesn’t bother me like it always did when everybody else would do it. Maybe it’s because I know she’s not trying to force me to talk about it, or is afraid to be normal around me. Right now, it’s all about Michelle, and I want to be here for her.

She hesitates, glancing once more toward the living room, and sighs. “He wants children,” she says and I feel my heart tighten, but I don’t let it show in my face. “And I do, too—just not right now.”

“Oh, I see.” I nod and think about it for a second. “Well, it could be worse. At least it has nothing to do with an affair or that he has suddenly started cooking meth in the basement.”

Michelle laughs lightly and hangs the dishrag back on the cabinet.

“You’re right,” she says, her brown eyes lit up with her smile. “I never thought of it like that. I just wish he’d give me three more years at least. I’m around children all day, being a pediatrician. I love them. You have to, to do the kind of work I do, but I have a deeper level of insight when it comes to the responsibility of raising one. Aidan’s insight stops at Little League and camping trips, you know what I mean?”

I laugh gently. “Yeah.”

A very small part of me wonders if Michelle is saying this to me as her way of trying to ease my own pain, by telling me that raising a baby is hard. Maybe she is, but at the same time, I think it’s just me. Telling me what’s going on between her and Aidan and considering the issue, it would be hard not to say something like that.

“So, how is Andrew’s physical therapy going?”

The mood instantly shifts within the room, like we can both breathe a little easier now that we’ve gotten through the risky subject matter.

“He had some muscle weakness for a while, but he’s been doing great. Doesn’t really go to physical therapy much at all anymore.”

Michelle nods and pulls out a chair, too. “Well that’s good,” she says and there’s an awkward bout of silence.

Aidan and Andrew break that awkward moment when they both come into the kitchen with us. Aidan heads straight for the fridge while Andrew sits his heavy ass right on top of my lap.

“An-drew!” I whine and laugh at the same time, trying to push him off. “Lose a few pounds! Damn, baby, you’re squishing me!”

He turns on my lap, facing sideways long enough to squish my face in both of his hands and kiss me between the eyes.

“Get. Off!” I shout and finally he does. “You’ve got a bony ass.” I rub my hands across my legs to work out the muscles. Of course, his ass is nowhere near bony, but the look on his face was worth the dramatic lie.

“Like little boys,” Michelle says from the sink now.

I didn’t even notice her get up.

Aidan shuts the fridge with another bottle of beer in his hand and sits down in the chair Michelle just left. Andrew lifts me up as if I’m weightless and steals my chair, putting me on his lap afterward.

“Much better,” I say.

He wraps his arms around my waist. “So, Aidan and I were talkin’.”

Uh-oh, I don’t know if I like the sound of that.

“Yeah?” I ask warily, looking more at Aidan since I can’t really see Andrew behind me.

“This should be interesting,” Michelle jokes from the sink, facing us all with her hip propped against the counter’s edge.

Aidan sets his beer on the table and says, “Would you be interested in playing at my bar tomorrow night? Busiest night of the week. The stuff you two play will fit right in with the customers.”

The only time I’ve ever really felt this nervous playing in any bar or club was the first time I performed with Andrew at Old Point in New Orleans. I think it just makes me really nervous to sing in front of his family. In front of people I don’t know and will likely never see again. It’s not so nerve-wracking, but this, I have to say, is causing my stomach to twist into knots.

“I don’t know…”

Andrew squeezes me gently from behind. “Oh come on,” he says, trying to encourage me without being too pushy.

Be pushy, Andrew! Stop being so cautious! Be like you used to be when you told me to get on the roof of your car in the rain, or when you forced me to help change that stupid tire!

“Come on,” Aidan says with the quick backward tilt of his head. “Andrew says you’re quite the singer.”

I blush and wince at the same time. “Well, Andrew is also biased, so you can’t really take his word for it.”

“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” Michelle adds and takes her own seat on Aidan’s lap. He playfully smacks her thighs with both hands, and it reminds me of how Andrew tends to do that same thing to me a lot. Aidan doesn’t look as much like Andrew as Asher does, but as far as everything else they share, you can definitely tell they’re brothers.

I think on it a moment and turn at an angle to see Andrew behind me, draping my arms around his neck and interlocking my fingers. He’s grinning from ear to ear. How can I say no to that?

“All right,” I agree. “I’ll do it. But I get to pick the music.”

Aidan nods his acceptance.

“Whatever you want,” Andrew says.

“How long would we play?” I ask.

“However long you choose,” Aidan says. “As little as one song if you want. It’s up to you.”

Andrew and I go to bed late after playing a few competitive games of Spades with Aidan and Michelle. And even though we’re in the spare room right across the hall from theirs, it’s not as awkward being here as it is at my mom’s. Only there isn’t any noise coming from their room like I know there was from ours during the past half hour. I tried to keep my moans and whimpers at a low volume, but, well, that’s not an easy thing to do when Andrew’s having his way with me.

I think I’ve been laying here for three hours since Andrew fell asleep. I hear the noise from the street outside and Andrew breathing softly next to me. Every now and then the light from a car will move across one section of the wall and blink out seconds later.

I can’t sleep. I’ve had a hard time falling and staying asleep since… well, for a couple of weeks. I try not to toss and turn too much so I don’t wake Andrew up. He looks so peaceful lying there.

Finally, I crawl quietly out of the bed and rummage inside my purse for one of those pills. They’ve been helping me sleep. And I like the way they make me feel. Because they make me feel something other than pain. But I’m being careful. I don’t have an addictive personality, and I’ve never taken any kind of drugs ever in my life. Though I did try pot a few times my senior year, but everyone did.

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.

“I’m so nervous,” Camryn says next to my ear, having to speak loudly over the music.

I make a pffft sound with my lips. “Oh, please. Since when do you get nervous anymore? We’ve done this dozens of times.”

“I know, but I’m singing in front of Aidan and Michelle this time.”

“He can’t sing for shit, so his opinion is hardly valid.”

She smiles. “Well, I’m not nervous to the point that I don’t want to do it. I guess it’s actually kind of exciting.”

“That’s my girl,” I say and lean in to kiss her lips.

“Those two girls,” Camryn yells to me without looking in their direction, “front table to your left, they’re having sex with you in their heads right now, I swear to God.”

I laugh lightly and shake my head.

“And that guy standing next to the woman in the purple shirt,” I say, nodding subtly in his direction, “has had your thighs wrapped around his head since you walked on this stage.”

“So it’ll be them tonight then, huh?” she asks.

I nod and say, “Uh-huh.”

“Make sure you give it to them good, baby,” she says, grinning wickedly at me.

“Oh, I will,” I say with the same amount of wicked on my face.

We started this back on our second night at Levy’s: we each pick a guy and a girl from the crowd who give off that I’d-love-to-fuck-you vibe and we make them feel “extra special” during one of our songs. But we always start giving our targets small bits of attention long before we go in for the kill. Just one look, a three-second-long meeting of the eyes to let her, or him in Camryn’s case, know that we’ve noticed them a little more than anyone else in the room. Camryn’s already working her magic. The guy has a dopey-ass grin plastered on his face now. She glances at me and winks. Slipping my guitar strap over my shoulder, I slowly look over at the two girls. They’re pretty hot, I have to say. I make eye contact with the brunette first, hold it for a few seconds, and then look at her friend for the same amount of time. The second I look away, I notice them giggling and talking to each other behind their hands. I just smile and move my fingers across the guitar strings to test out the tuning. Camryn taps her thumb on her mic and then walks over to the side to drag the two stools that we’ll end up only sitting on for maybe one song. She hops onto hers and crosses her legs; those sexy black mile-high heels are enough by themselves to make her look like she knows what’s she’s doing in this business. Little silver studs decorate them. God damn, some of the things she wears makes me crazy.

An announcer, young guy, comes out on the stage and introduces us. Many of the voices carrying through the vast space quiet down and then even more when I start to play the guitar. And when Camryn leads the first song, her voice is so sultry that she pretty much gets everyone else’s attention in no time.

We go through four songs to an awesome welcoming crowd who are dancing, getting drunk, and trying to sing along. The vibe in the bar is explosive, and I love it.

Camryn walks down the three steps from the stage with her mic in hand and makes her way toward her victim. Before the song is over he’s dancing with her, having one helluva time. When his hands get too close to parts only I’m allowed to touch, Camryn, like a professional, smiles and continues to sing to him while pushing him away.

Then we take a short break.

Camryn pulls me off toward the back of the stage as the voices rise up all around us again.

“I’ve gotta go to the bathroom,” she says.

I pull the guitar strap over my head and set the guitar against the back wall.

“You go and I’ll get us a drink,” I say. “Do you want anything?”

She smiles, nodding. “Yeah, just get me whatever, I don’t care.”

“Alcoholic?” I ask.

She nods again and kisses me, pretty eager to break away quickly probably so she doesn’t pee on herself.

“Oh, and why don’t you do the next song solo tonight?” she suggests.

“Really? Why?”

She comes up closer and rests her hands on my chest. “You do that song better by yourself, and I think I’m done for the night. I’d like to watch you.” She pecks my lips. She’s so much taller in those shoes that she’s looking me straight in the eyes.

If that’s what she wants, I’m good with it. I don’t want to push her.

“All right, I’ll sing it alone,” I say. “It’ll make it easier to seduce my two girls out there, anyway.”

She smiles and says with a little laughter in her voice, “Don’t overdo it, Andrew. Remember what happened the last time.”

“I know, I know,” I say, waving her on.

She turns around, and I smack her on the butt as she scurries off toward the restrooms.