I nod. “That’s a good idea. And since it sucks traveling when it’s cold, that makes total sense.”
We just stare at each other over the roof of the car for a long moment until I interrupt all of the gear-churning inside our heads and say, “Well, get the bags. We can talk about it inside. You need to check on Georgia.”
“Ah, Georgia’s fine,” he says, leaning over inside the backseat again. “My mom’s been watering her.”
I grab the guitars and my purse. When we enter Andrew’s apartment, it smells exactly like it did the first time I ever came here: vacant. And just like Andrew said, Georgia is alive and well.
I practically fall onto the couch, exhausted, hanging my legs over the arm at the knees.
“But the next place we go,” Andrew says as he passes the back of the couch, “will be far away from here.” I hear his keys hit the top of the counter in the kitchen.
I rise up and call out, “How far?”
“Europe, South America,” he says with a big grin as he reenters the living room. “You said you’d like to see Italy and Brazil and all of those places. I say we pick one and go there next.”
A shot of energy zips through my body. I stand up and look at him, so excited right now about the prospect that I can hardly contain it. “Seriously?”
He nods with a giant, close-lipped smile. “Hell, staying true to tradition, we could even write down all of the places we want to see on little strips of paper, drop them in a hat and pick one at random.”
I squeal. I actually squeal! My hands come up vertically against my chest. “That’s perfect, Andrew!”
He sits down on the couch now, propping both feet up on the coffee table, his knees bent. I can’t sit down. I stay right where I’m at and just stare down at his smiling face.
“Of course, we’ve got to keep the money flowing,” he says. “We’ve still got plenty in the bank, but traveling out of the country will definitely drain it quicker.”
“I can’t wait to get a job,” I say, and that comment stimulates my memory. “Andrew, you told me before to be completely honest with you about where I’d rather live.”
That gets his attention. “Where do you want to live?”
I contemplate it for a moment and answer, “For now, I think Raleigh, but only because I’d like to be where Natalie and my mom are, and because I know I can easily get a job where Natalie works. Her boss really seemed to like me and told me to fill out an application and—”
Andrew stops me. “You don’t have to explain your reasons.” He reaches out for me and I sit on his lap, facing him. I didn’t realize I was babbling nervously. I just don’t want him to feel obligated.
He smiles at me and locks his fingers together behind my waist. “My question,” he says, “is what exactly do you mean by ‘for now’?”
“Well… that’s the hard part,” I say.
He tilts his head slightly to one side, looking at me curiously, his dimples barely visible in his cheeks.
Eventually, I just come out with it, “I don’t think we should spend all of the money on a house because I don’t want to stay there forever. And besides, if we do that, we won’t have as much money to fall back on when we want to go to Europe or wherever, and working minimum-wage jobs won’t help us save much.”
He gives me a sidelong glance. “Wait. I hope you don’t want us to live in your mom’s house. We need our privacy. I want to be able to bend your sweet little ass over the coffee table whenever I want.”
I laugh and squeeze my thighs around his playfully. “You are so bad!” I say. “But no, I definitely don’t want to live with my mom.”
“Well, if you don’t want to buy a house and you don’t want to live with your mom, the only thing left is renting, and that drains a lot of money, too.”
I feel embarrassed, because it’s to the point where I have to talk about Andrew’s money as though it’s mine also, which I doubt I’ll ever get used to.
I look away from his eyes. “Remember when you said we could get a little house somewhere?”
“Yeah,” he says, and his eyes are getting brighter, as though he knows what I’m going to say already.
“Well, we could maybe pay cash for a very small house or a condo, just big enough for us… I don’t know, something cheap but decent, and still have a lot left over to keep in the bank for our trips. We won’t have rent, and all we’ll have to pay every month are utilities and things like that, which we can do from working and from playing gigs but never take from our savings.”
Why is he smiling like the Cheshire cat?!
I feel my head fall in between my shoulders, my face getting hot. “What’s so funny?!” I ask, pressing my palms against his chest and trying not to laugh.
“Nothing’s funny. I just like it that you’ve finally realized that what’s mine is yours.” He tightens his fingers around my waist.
“Whatever,” I say, trying to conceal the blush in my cheeks, pretending to be offended.
“Hey,” he says, shaking my hips, “don’t do that—just finish what you were saying.”
After a long pause, I say, “And when we leave to go wherever that piece of paper in the hat tells us to, we can get Natalie to housesit. Or!” I point upward. “When we finally find that peaceful place on the beach that you dreamed about and want to live there, we can either sell our house in Raleigh or rent it out to draw in extra income. Maybe even rent it to Natalie and Blake!”
I can tell there’s something going on inside his mind. His smile is still soft and he never takes his eyes off me. But he’s so quiet until finally he breaks the silence and says, “It sounds like you’ve put a lot of thought into this. How long did it take you to figure all of that out?”
Only right now do I realize that it’s been long enough. I think back to the day when I started trying to piece together our future, when I officially had it in my head that I did want to settle down and that I was tired of being on the road.
Andrew waits patiently for me to answer, always with soft and thoughtful eyes, his way of constantly reminding me that nothing I can say to him is going to create any negativity between us.
“It was on the highway after we left Mobile,” I say. “When I first told you that I wanted to see Italy and France and Brazil one day. When I said I never wanted to settle down forever. From that night on, I was determined to figure it out. How we would pull everything off.” My gaze strays. “I broke the rules and planned it all out.”
He leans forward and kisses my lips.
“Sometimes planning is necessary,” he says. “You did a good job. I think the whole plan is perfect.” And then he crushes me against him, kissing me passionately.
When the kiss breaks, I gaze at him for a moment, his face in my hands. “But I want to marry you here,” I say, and his eyes brighten. “I don’t want your mom to feel left out, y’know? She’s really the only reason I feel bad about wanting to move to Raleigh. And I feel even worse that she was planning that baby shower and we never got—”
“She’ll like that,” he says, stopping me before I start babbling again. “I definitely do.”
He kisses me again.
Andrew
33
I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day. The weather is perfect. The plans to get married that we didn’t make all fell perfectly into place. I called my mom up yesterday and told her meet us on the beach on Galveston Island. She made it on time, without having any idea why we asked her to be here.
I raise my hand above me when I see her, waving her toward us, and the second she sees us, she knows. Her face breaks out into the biggest smile, and it’s easily contagious.
“Oh, you two,” my mom says, stepping up to us, “I can’t believe you’re finally doing this. I’m just… I’m so…” Tears roll down her face and she reaches up to wipe them away, laughing and crying at the same time.
Camryn, barefoot and dressed in that ivory vintage gown she found at the flea market, wraps her arms around my mom and hugs her.
“Oh, Marna, please don’t cry,” she says, though I think it’s more of a plea because seeing my mom cry is choking Camryn up.
“Is anyone else coming?” my mom asks when she pulls away.
“You’re our exclusive guest of honor,” I say proudly.
“Yeah,” Camryn adds, “it’s just you and the reverend here.”
My mom moves around us to give Reverend Reed a hug, too. She has been attending his church for nine years—tried to get me to go a hundred times, but I’m just not the church type. But I thought who better to ask to marry us?
And while Reverend Reed is standing in front of us on the beach, holding his worn Bible in his hands and saying a few words, all I can see or hear is Camryn standing in front of me with her hands in mine. The breeze combs through her loose strands of hair, free from that golden braid over her shoulder that I love so much. I love her smile, her blue eyes, and her soft skin. I want to kiss her now and get it over with. I press my fingers gently against the tops of her hands and pull her a little closer. The wind whips through the long fabric of her dress, pushing it against her hourglass form. I hold in my smile when I notice a piece of hair fly into her mouth. She tries to covertly work it out with her tongue without drawing attention to herself.
Knowing she doesn’t want to create any kind of interruption, even for something as simple as this, I reach up and move the hair away for her.
I feel like we’re the only two people in the world.
When it’s time to say our vows, I know that neither one of us wrote anything down or had much time to think about what we wanted to say. And so pretty much the same way we tend to do everything, we just do it.
I grip her hands tighter between us and say, “Camryn, you are the other half of my soul, and I will love you today and every day for the rest of our lives. I promise that if you ever forget me, I’ll read to you like Noah read to Allie. I promise that when we get old and our bones hurt, that we’ll never sleep in separate rooms, and that if you die before me, I’ll make sure you’re buried in that dress. I promise to haunt you like Sam haunted Molly.” Her eyes are beginning to water. I caress the insides of her palms with my thumbs. “I promise that we’ll never wake up one day years from now wondering why we wasted our lives away by doing nothing, and that no matter what hardships befall us, I’ll always, always, be right here with you. I promise to be spontaneous, to always turn down the music when you’re asleep, and to sing about raisins when you’re sad. I promise to always love you no matter where we are in the world, or in our lives. Because you’re the other half of me that I know I can never live without.”
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.”