Читать книгу The Edge of Never, The Edge of Always: 2-Book Collection - J. Redmerski A. - Страница 21

Denver finally flies by and we’re drawing closer to Andrew’s final stop in Wyoming. I can’t lie and say it doesn’t bother me. Andrew was right in saying that it’s dangerous for me to be traveling alone. I’m just trying to understand why that fact didn’t faze me much before I met him. Maybe I just feel safer with him as my company because he does look like he can bust a few jaws without breaking a sweat. Damn, maybe I shouldn’t have ever talked to him in the first place; definitely shouldn’t have let him sit next to me because now I’m sort of used to him. Once we’re in Wyoming and we go our separate ways, I’ll be back to staring out the window watching the world fly by and not knowing where in it I’m going next.

“So, do you have a girlfriend?” I ask just to spark up conversation so I won’t think about being alone again in a few hours.

Andrew’s dimples appear. “Why do you want to know?”

I roll my eyes.

“Don’t flatter yourself; just a question. If you don’t—”

“No,” he answers, “I’m happily single.”

He just looks at me, smiling, waiting, and it takes me a second to understand what he’s waiting for.

I point at myself nervously, wishing I had come up with a less personal topic. “Me? No, not anymore.” Feeling more confident now, I add, “I’m happily single as well and want to stay that way. For about … forever.” I should’ve just left it at ‘happily single’ instead of rambling my way right out of the confident zone and making myself look obvious.

Of course, Andrew notices right away. I get the feeling he’s the type that never misses someone else’s foot-in-your-mouth moment. He thrives on them.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he says, grinning.

Thankfully he doesn’t probe.

He rests his head back against the seat and absently taps his thumbs and pinky fingers against his jeans for a moment. Secretly, I glimpse his muscular, tanned arms and try to see once and for all what the tattoos are of on his arms, but as usual they’re mostly hidden by the sleeves of his t-shirt. The one on the right side I saw a little more of earlier when he stretched down to tie his boot. I think it’s a tree of some sort. The arm facing me now, I can’t really tell but whatever it is, it has feathers. All of the tattoos I’ve seen so far are colorless.

“Curious?” he says and I flinch. I didn’t think he saw me checking them out.

“I guess.”

Yes, I’m very curious, actually.

Andrew lifts away from the seat and pulls the sleeve of his left arm over the tattoo, revealing a phoenix with a long, flowing beautiful feathered tail that ends a couple of inches past where his sleeve ends. But the rest of its feathered body is skeletal, giving it a more ‘manly’ appearance.

“That’s pretty awesome.”

“Thanks. I’ve had this one about a year,” he says, pulling the sleeve back down. “And this one,” he says, turning at the waist and pulling up the other sleeve (first, I notice the obvious outline of his abs underneath his shirt), “is my gnarly, Sleepy-Hollow-lookin’ tree—I have a thing for wicked trees—and if you’ll look real close …” I peer closer where his finger points within the tree trunk, “is my 1969 Chevy Camaro. My dad’s car, really, but since he’s dying I guess I have to keep it.” He looks out in front of him.

There it is, that tiny glimmer of pain that he kept hidden before when talking about his father. He’s hurting a lot more than he’s letting on and it sort of breaks my heart. I can’t imagine my mom or dad being on their deathbed and I’m sitting on a Greyhound bus on my way to see them for the last time. My eyes scan his face from the side and I really want to say something to comfort him, but I don’t think I can. I don’t feel like it’s my place for some reason; at least not to bring it up.

“I’ve got a couple of others,” he goes on, looking back over at me with the back of his head lying against the seat again. “A small one here,” he turns over his right wrist to show me a simple black star in the center right below the base of his hand; I’m surprised I didn’t notice that one sooner. “And a larger one down the left side of my ribs.”

“What is it, the one on your side? How big is it?”

His bright green eyes sparkle as he smiles warmly, tilting his head over to see me. “It’s pretty damn big.” I see his hands move as if he’s going to lift his shirt to show me, but he decides against it. “It’s just a woman. Nothing worth getting naked on a bus for.”

Now I want to see what it looks like more than ever, just because he doesn’t want me to see it.

“A woman you know?” I ask. I keep looking to and from his side, thinking maybe he’ll change his mind and lift his shirt, but he never does.

He shakes his head. “Nah, it’s nothing like that. It’s of Eurydice.” He waves his hand out in front of him as if to dismiss any further explanation.

The name sounds like something ancient, maybe Greek, and it’s vaguely familiar, but I can’t place it.

I nod. “Did it hurt?”

He smiles.

“A little. Well actually it hurts the most on the ribs, so yeah it hurt.”

“Did you cry?” I grin.

He laughs lightly.

“No, I didn’t cry, but hell, I might’ve if I decided to get it even a fraction bigger than it is. In total, it took about sixteen hours.”

I blink back, stunned. “Wow, you sat there for sixteen hours?”

For such a detailed conversation about this tat, it makes me wonder why he won’t actually show it. Maybe it doesn’t look all that great and the tattoo artist screwed it up, or something.

“Not all at once,” he says, “we did it over a few days’ time—I’d ask if you have any tattoos, but something tells me that you don’t.” He smiles, knowingly.

“And you’d be right,” I say, blushing a little. “Not that I’ve never thought about getting one.” I hold up my wrist and wrap my thumb and middle finger around it. “Thought about getting something here, like script that says ‘freedom’ or something in Latin—obviously, I didn’t think about it much.” Smiling, I breathe out a little embarrassed spat of air. Me talking about tattoos with a guy who obviously knows more about them than I ever could is a bit intimidating.

When I go to set my wrist back down on the armrest, Andrew’s fingers curl around it. It stuns me for a brief second, even sends a strange chill through my body, but it quickly fades when he starts talking so casually.

“A tattoo on the wrist for a girl can be very graceful and feminine.” He traces the tip of his finger around the inside of my wrist to indicate where it should go. I shiver a tiny bit. “Something in Latin, very subtle, just about here would look nice.” Then he lets go gently and I let my arm rest back on the armrest.

“I expected you to say ‘no way’ about ever getting one yourself,” he laughs and brings up his leg, resting it at the ankle on his knee. He interlaces his fingers and slides back further against the seat to get more comfortable.

It’s getting dark fast; the sun is barely peeking over the landscape now, leaving everything bathed in fading orange and pink and purple.

“Guess I’m not a predictable person.” I smile over at him.

“No, I guess you’re not,” he says smiling back and then looking thoughtfully in front of him.

Andrew wakes me up the next day sometime after 2 p.m. at the bus station in Cheyenne, Wyoming. I feel his fingers poking me in the ribs. “We’re here,” he says and finally I open my eyes and lift my head from the window.

My breath I know smells God-awful because it tastes dry and funky, so I look away from him when I yawn.

The bus’ brakes squeal to a stop at the terminal and like always, the passengers stir themselves out of their seats and start grabbing their carry-on bags from the overhead compartment. I just sit here, feeling a little panicked and I glance carefully over at Andrew. I literally feel like I’m going to have a mini-anxiety attack. I mean, I knew this time would come, that Andrew would leave and I would be alone again, but I didn’t expect to feel like a scared little girl sent out in the world to fend for herself with no one to look after her.

Shit! Shit! Shit!

I can’t even believe I let myself get comfortable with him and as a result I’m no longer able to make fear my bitch.

I fear being alone.

“Comin’?” he asks looking down at me from the center aisle and holding out his hand. He smiles at me gently, setting aside any smartass remarks or making jokes at my expense because, after all, it is the last time we will ever see each other. It’s not like we’re in love or something crazy like that, but something weird happens when you spend several days with a stranger on a bus, getting to know them and enjoying their company. And when they’re not so different from you and you share that bond without actually telling one another why you’re hurting, that just makes the inevitable departure more difficult.

But I can’t let him know this. It’s stupid. I put myself in this situation and I intend to go through with it. No matter where in the world it eventually leads me.

I smile back up at him and place my hand into his. And all the way down the aisle as he walks in front of me, he keeps my fingers clasped carefully within his hand from behind. And I find a sense of warmth in his touch, clinging onto it mentally for as long as I can so that maybe I can be more confident when I’m alone again.

“Well, Camryn …” he looks at me as if fishing for my last name.

“Bennett.” I smile and cave to my own rule.

“Well, Camryn Bennett, it was a pleasure to meet you on the road to nowhere.” He adjusts his bag strap on his shoulder and then slides his hands down inside the pockets of his jeans. The muscles in his arms harden. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

I try to smile and I do, but I know it looks like something in between a smile and a frown.

I adjust the strap from my purse on one shoulder and my sling bag on the other and then just let my arms hang limply at my sides.

“It was nice meeting you, too, Andrew Parrish,” I say, though I don’t want to say it. I want him to ride with me just a little farther. “Do me a favor if you don’t mind.”

I’ve piqued his curiosity and he cocks his chin a little to one side. “Alright. What kind of favor? Is it sexual?” His dimples deepen as his devilishly handsome lips start to curve.

I laugh a little and look down with a blush hot on my face, but then I let the moment fade because this really isn’t a lighthearted kind of request. Instead, I soften my expression and look upon him with true sympathy.

“If your dad doesn’t make it,” I begin and his expression falls, “let yourself cry, OK? One of the worst feelings in the world is being unable to cry and eventually it … starts to make things darker.”

He stares at me for a long, silent moment and then he nods, allowing a tiny thankful smile to appear only in the depths of his eyes. I reach out my hand to shake his goodbye and he does the same, but he holds it there for a second longer than normal and then pulls me into a hug. I hug him back tight, wishing I could just blurt out to him that I’m scared of him leaving me alone, but I know I can’t.

Suck it up, Camryn!

He pulls away, nods at me one last time with that smile I grew so quickly to like and then he walks away and out of the terminal. I stand here for what feels like forever, unable to move my legs. I watch him get into a cab and I keep watching until the cab drives away and out of sight.

I’m alone again. Over a thousand miles away from home. No direction, no purpose, no goals other than to find myself on this journey I never imagined I could bring myself to begin. And I’m scared. But I have to do this. I have to because I need this time alone, away from everything back home which brought me here in the first place.

Finally, I take control again and walk away from the tall glass windows to find a seat. There’s a four-hour layover before I get on the next bus into Idaho, so I need to find something to make use of my time.

I hit the vending machines first.

Sliding my change into the slot I start to hit E4 to get the fiber bar—the closest thing to healthy in the whole machine—but then my finger makes a sharp U-turn to hit D4 instead and a fattening, disgusting, sugary chocolate candy bar falls from the spiral and into the bottom. Happily taking out my junk food, I move over to the soda machine, passing up the one before it which has bottles of water and juice, and I get a teeth-decaying, stomach-bubbling, carbonated drink instead.

Andrew would be so proud.

Dammit! Stop thinking about Andrew!

I take my junk food and find an empty seat and wait out the day.

A four-hour delay turns into a six-hour delay. They announced it over the intercom, something about my particular bus being late due to mechanical failure. A chorus of disappointed moans rises throughout the terminal.

Great. Just great. I’m stuck in a bus station in the middle of nowhere and I could very well end up here all night, trying to sleep curled up in the fetal position on this hard plastic chair that’s not even comfortable for sitting.

Or, I could just go ahead and buy another bus ticket somewhere else.

That’s it! Problem solved!

I just wish I would’ve thought of this sooner and spared myself the six hours I’ve already wasted here. It’s like I tricked my brain somehow into thinking I actually had to drive all the way to frickin’ Idaho just because I already paid for the ticket.

I grab my bag and purse from the seat next to me and shoulder them as I march my way across the terminal, past a boatload of disgruntled passengers who clearly don’t have the option that I do, and make my way to the ticket counter.

“We’re closing the counter down ma’am,” the employee says on the other side.

“Wait, please,” I say, throwing my arms across the counter desperately, “I just need to get another ticket somewhere else. Please, you’ll be doing me a huge favor!”

The wiry-haired old woman wrinkles her nose at me and appears to chew on the inside of her cheek. She sighs and then taps a few keys on her computer keyboard.

“Oh thank you!” I say. “You’re awesome! Thank you!”

She rolls her eyes.

I swing my purse around and toss it on the counter and search quickly through it to find my little zipper wallet.

“Where are you traveling?” she asks.

Oh great, there’s that million dollar question again. I look around the counter for any other ‘signs’ like that baked potato back at the North Carolina terminal, but I don’t see anything obvious. The old lady is starting to get even more agitated with me and it makes me more anxious to hurry and figure this out.

“Miss?” she says with a heavy sigh. She glances at the clock on the wall. “I clocked out fifteen minutes ago. I’d really like to get home to my dinner.”

“Yeah, I’m so sorry.” I fumble my credit card out of my wallet and hand it to her. “Texas,” I say first as a test, but then afterwards I realize it felt right on my tongue. “Yeah, anywhere in Texas would be great.”

The old lady raises an ungroomed reddish brow. “You don’t know where you’re going?”

I nod furiously. “Uh, yeah, I just mean that I’ll take any bus going to Texas that’s next in line.” I smile across at her hoping she’s buying this load of crap and doesn’t feel the need to have my driver’s license checked out for anything suspicious. “I’ve already been here for six hours. I hope you understand.”

She looks right at me for a long, unnerving moment and then takes my credit card from between my fingers and starts tapping her keyboard again.

“Next bus leaving for Texas is in an hour.”

“Great! I’ll take that one!” I say before she even has a chance to tell me whereabouts in Texas exactly.

It doesn’t matter. And she’s in such a hurry to get home that she doesn’t seem to think it matters, either. As long as I don’t care, she surely doesn’t.

I get my brand new bus ticket and shove it inside my purse next to the old one as the counter closes behind me at 9:05 p.m. and I feel a small sense of relief wash over me. Walking back towards my seat, I fish around in my purse for my phone, pulling it out to check to see if I missed any calls or text messages. My mom called twice and left a voicemail both times, but still no call back from Natalie.

“Baby, where are you?” my mom asks on the other end when I call her back. “I tried calling Natalie to see if you were staying with her but can’t seem to catch her. Are you OK?”

“Yeah, Mom, I’m fine.” I’m pacing in front of my chair with my phone pressed to my right ear. “I decided to take a trip up to see my friend Anna in Virginia. I’ll be here for a little while hanging out with her, but I’m OK.”

“But Camryn, what about your new job?” She sounds disappointed, especially since it was her friend who gave me the chance and hired me. “Maggie said you worked for a week and then didn’t show up or call or anything.”

“I know, Mom, and I’m really sorry, but it just wasn’t for me.”

“Well, the least you could’ve done was be courteous and tell her—give her a two-weeks’-notice—something, Camryn.”

I feel awful about how I handled that and normally would not have done something so inconsiderate, but the situation unfortunately warranted it.

“You’re right,” I say, “and when I get back I’ll call Mrs. Phillips personally and apologize to her.”

“But it’s not like you,” she says and I’m getting worried she’s steering too close to the reasons why I really left and all that which I refuse to go into with her. “And to just up and leave to Virginia without calling me or leaving a note. Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Yes, I’m fine. Stop worrying. Please. I’ll call you again soon, but I gotta go now.”

She doesn’t want to and I can tell by how deeply she sighs on the phone, but she gives up.

“OK, well you be careful and I love you.”

“I love you, too, Mom.”

I check my phone one more time, hoping maybe Natalie sent me a text message and I just didn’t see it. I scroll back to several days, even though I know full-well that if there were any unread text messages on my phone that there would be a little red circle on the icon indicating it.

I end up scrolling back down so far without realizing it that Ian’s name pops up and my heart freezes inside my chest. I stop it right there and start to run my thumb over his name so that I can read the back-and-forth between us shortly before he died, but I can’t.

I thrust the phone angrily back into my purse.