The Edge of Never

I don’t want to end up like my car.

A single duffle bag packed with a clean pair of clothes, toothbrush, cell phone and MP3 player with my favorite classic rock songs—another mark that Dad left on me: “That new stuff kids listen to these days is shit music, son,” he said at least once a year. “Get the Led out, boy!” I’ll admit I didn’t completely shun newer music just because my dad did. I have my own damn mind, remember? But I did grow up on a healthy dose of the classics and I’m very proud of that.

“Mom, I don’t need those.”

She’s stuffing a Ziploc bag with about a dozen little packets of hand-sanitizing wipes for me to take. She’s always been a germaphobe.

I’ve lived back and forth between Texas and Wyoming since I was six-years-old. Ultimately, I realized that I fit better in Texas because I like the Gulf and the heat. I’ve had my own apartment in Galveston for four years now, but last night my mom insisted I stay at her place. She knows how I feel about my dad and she knows that sometimes I can be explosive when I’m hurting, or when I’m pissed off. Spent a night in jail last year for beating the fuck out of Darren Ebbs after he punched his girlfriend in front of me. And when I had to have my best friend, Maximus, put to sleep because of congestive heart failure, I busted my hands up pretty good taking my emotions out on the tree behind my apartment.

I’m not violent in general, only to douchebags and occasionally, myself.

“Those buses are nasty,” she says, tucking the baggie down into my bag. “I rode on one back before I met your father and I was sick for a week afterwards. I still don’t understand why you won’t take a plane. You can get there in a fraction of the time.”

“Mom,” I say, kissing her cheek, “it’s just something I need to do—like it was meant to be, or something.” I don’t really believe that second part, but I thought I’d humor her with something meaningful, even though she knows I’m full of shit. I walk over and open the kitchen cabinet, taking two brown sugar and cinnamon Pop-Tarts from the box and dropping them in my bag. “Maybe the plane is supposed to crash.”

“That’s not funny, Andrew.” She glances over at me sternly.

I smile and squeeze her. “I’ll be alright, and I’ll make it in time to see Dad before …” my voice trails.

Mom hugs me back tighter than I did her.

By the time I make it to Kansas, I’m starting to wonder if my mom was right. I thought I could use the long ride to think, to clear my head and maybe figure out what I’m doing and what I’m going to do after my dad dies. Because things will be different. Things always change when someone you love dies. You just can’t prepare yourself for those changes no matter what you do in advance.

The only thing that’s a certainty is always wondering who’s going to be next.

I know I’ll never be able to look at my mom the same again …

I think the bus ride has been more of a taunt than a time for meaningful contemplation. I should’ve known that time alone with my thoughts would be unhealthy. Already I’ve decided that my life has been pretty much wasted and I’m going through all the eye-opening emotions: What am I here for? What’s the point in life? What the hell am I doing? I sure as hell haven’t had any epiphanies, or stared out the bus window, lost in some dramatic movie-moment when suddenly life becomes clear to me. The only music playing in the background of this movie is Alice in Chains’ Would?, and that’s not exactly an epiphany-moment kind of song.

The driver is just about to close the doors on the bus when I step up and he notices me.

Thank God, a bus I might actually get to sleep on; plenty of empty seats.

I head toward the back, my sights set on two empty seats right behind the cute blonde who I’m pretty sure is jailbait. My dad said it right once: “Can’t tell twelve from twenty these days, son. It must be something the government has been puttin’ in the water—be damn careful when you need to knock some boots.”

As I near the girl on the bus, I notice her move her bag over onto the aisle seat so that I won’t sit there.

That’s funny. I mean yeah, she’s cute and all but there are about ten or so empty seats on this bus, which means I’m going to get two to myself so I can sprawl my ass out however I want and get some much-needed shuteye.

Things don’t go as planned and several hours later, just after dark and I’m still wide awake, staring out the tall window beside me with music blasting in my ears. The girl in front of me has been passed out for about an hour and I got tired of hearing her talk in her sleep; though I could hardly make out anything she was saying, I didn’t really want to know. Kind of feels like spying, hearing someone’s thoughts when they have no idea what they’re doing. I’d much rather hear my playlist.

After I finally fall asleep, my eyes crawl open when I feel something tapping against my leg. Wow, she’s kind of beautiful even with her hair all smashed on one side of her face and the darkness covering the rest of her. Jailbait, Andrew. I don’t have to remind myself that she’s probably jailbait to keep myself from doing anything I know I shouldn’t; no, I remind myself because I don’t want to be disappointed when I find out that I’m right.

After a quick back-and-forth about the possibility of my music being what woke her up, I turn it down and she slips back down into her little bus-seat-cubicle.

When I lean up over the top of her seat to look down at her, I’m wondering to myself what possessed me to do it. But I’ve always been one for a challenge and her spunky attitude towards me in a conversation that lasted less than forty-five seconds was enough to shake her hand in this metaphorical bet.

I’ve always been a sucker for spunky attitudes.

And I never back down from a challenge.

The next morning, I offer to let her borrow my MP3 player, but apparently she’s as much of a germaphobe as my mother.

A man, probably in his early forties, has been sitting on the other side of the bus, three seats up from the girl. I saw the way he was looking at her when I first got on. She had no clue he had been watching her and it’s disturbing to think about how long he’s been watching her since before I got on, or what he’s been doing to himself sitting up there all alone in the dark.

I’ve been sort of keeping my eyes on him ever since. He’s so enamored by her that I doubt he knows I’ve been watching.

His eyes keep glancing between her and down the center of the aisle towards the matchbox restroom. I can almost hear the gears churning in his head.

I wonder when he’s going to try to make his move.

Just then, he gets up.

I slide out of my seat and into the one beside her. I just play it off like it’s nothing. I can feel her eyes on me, looking at me wondering what the fuck I think I’m doing.

The man walks past, but I don’t let him see my eyes because then that would give away that I’m onto him. Right now, he probably thinks I’m just playing my own game with the girl; that I’m making my own move and for now, he’ll get over it and probably try again later.

And later is when I’ll cave his face in with my fist.

I reach into my bag and fish for the baggie of antibacterial wipes my mom packed. Ripping one from the packet, I wipe the earbuds down and then reach over to her. “Like new,” I say, waiting for her to take them, but I know she won’t.

“Really, I’m good. But thanks.”

“You’re probably better off anyway,” I say, putting the MP3 player in my bag. “I don’t listen to Justin Bieber or that crazy meat-wearin’ bitch, so I guess you’ll just have to do without.”

Judging by that irritated look on her face, I pissed her off. I laugh quietly to myself, turning my head at an angle so she doesn’t catch me grinning.

“First off, I don’t listen to Justin Bieber.”

Thank God.

“And second, Gaga isn’t so bad. Playing the shock-value card a little too long, I admit, but I like some of her stuff.”

“That’s shit music and you know it,” I quote my father, shaking my head.

I put my bag on the floor and lean back on the seat, propping up one foot on the seat in front of me. I wonder why she hasn’t told me to leave yet. And this also worries me. Would she have been ‘too nice’ to tell that man to leave right away if he had made it here before me? There’s no way someone like her would be in to someone like him, but face it, sometimes girls let that overly sympathetic gene get the best of them. And that few seconds is really all it takes.

I look over at her again, letting my head fall sideways against the seat. “Classic rock is where it’s at,” I say. “Zeppelin, the Stones, Journey, Foreigner—any of that ringing any bells?”

She rolls her eyes at me. “I’m not stupid,” she says and a grin lifts one side of my mouth because there’s that spunky attitude again.

“Name one song by Bad Company and I’ll leave you alone about it,” I challenge her.

I can tell she’s nervous, how she gently bites down on her bottom lip, and like talking in her sleep and being watched by bad men, she probably doesn’t even know it.

I wait patiently, unable to peel the grin from my face because it’s amusing watching her squirm, trying to sort through all of the times she was in the car with her folks listening to this stuff, searching for some memory that will help her in this critical moment.

“Ready For Love,” she finally answers and I’m impressed.

“Are you?” I ask and something hits me in this moment. I don’t know what the hell ‘it’ is, but it’s there, waving at me from behind a wall, like when you know someone’s watching you, yet you don’t see anybody.

“Huh?” she says, as caught off-guard by my question as I was afterwards.

A smile creeps up on my face. “Nothing,” I say, looking away.

The pervert from the restroom comes quietly back down the dark aisle and goes back to his seat, no doubt pissed off that I’m sitting where he wants to be sitting. I’m just glad she waited for him to pass by before finally asking me to move so she can have both of her seats back.

After I crawl back behind her, I lean around the edge of her seat and say, “Where are you going, anyway?”

She tells me Idaho, but I think there’s more to her answer than that. I can’t put my finger on it, but I get the feeling she’s either lying, which is probably a good thing because I’m a total stranger, or she’s hiding something else.

I let it go for now and tell her where I’m heading and then duck back in my seat behind her.

The man three seats up just looked at her again. I’m about ready to bash his fucking brains in right now, just for looking.

Hours later, the bus pulls into a rest stop and the driver gives us all fifteen minutes to get out, stretch our legs and get something to eat. I watch the girl head inside toward the restrooms and I’m the first in line to order food. I get my food and head back outside, taking a seat on the grass next to the parking lot. The pervert walks past me, stepping back inside the bus by himself.

I manage to talk her into sitting with me. She’s hesitant at first, but apparently I’m charming enough. My mom always told me I was her charming middle-child. I guess she was right all along.

We talk for a minute or two about why I’m going to Wyoming and why she’s going to Idaho. I’m still trying to figure her out, what it is about her that I can’t quite place, but at the same time trying to force myself not to be attracted to her because it’s like I just know she’s jailbait, or she’s going to lie about it.

But she looks close to my age, younger than me, but we can’t be too far apart.

Goddammit! Why am I even considering an attraction to her? My dad is dying right now as I sit here on the grass next to her. I shouldn’t be thinking about anything other than my dad and what I’m going to say to him if I do manage to get to Wyoming before he passes.

“What’s your name?” I ask, setting my drink on the grass and trying to push thoughts of my dad’s death somewhere else in my mind.

She thinks about it for a minute, probably wondering whether she should tell me the truth, or not. “Cam,” she finally answers.

“Short for what?”

“Camryn.”

“I’m Andrew. Andrew Parrish.”

She seems a little shy.

“So, how old are you?” she asks and it completely surprises me. Maybe she’s not jailbait, after all, because underage girls, when they want to lie about their age, usually steer clear of this topic at all costs.

I’m hopeful now that maybe she’s legal. Yeah, I really want her to be …

“Twenty-five,” I say. “What about you?” I can’t breathe all of a sudden.

“Twenty,” she says.

I think about her answer for a moment, pursing my lips. I’m still not sure if she’s lying, but maybe after more time with her on this journey that seems to have brought us together, I will find out the truth eventually.

“Well, it’s good to meet you, twenty-year-old Cam short for Camryn heading to Idaho to see her sister who just had a baby.”

I smile. We talk for a few minutes more—eight minutes to be exact—about this and that and I screw with her head some more because that spunky mouth of hers deserves it.

Actually, I think she likes it, the way I treat her. I can tell there’s an attraction. Though small, I sense it. And it can’t really be because of the way I look—hell, my breath probably smells like ass right now and I haven’t had a shower today—if it was because of looks, unlike most girls who are ever into me, she turned me down already. She didn’t want me sitting next to her on that bus. She wasn’t shy to tell me to turn my music down, with a snippy-ass attitude at that. She got pissed when I accused her of having Bieber Fever (it pisses me off that I even know what the fuck that means—I blame that on society) and I get the feeling that she would have no problem kicking me in the nuts if I touched her in an inappropriate way. Not that I would. Hell no. But it’s good to know that she’s the type.

Hell yeah, I like this girl.

We board the bus and I crawl back in my seat, letting my legs stretch out into the aisle and then I see her white tennis shoes poke out from her aisle seat and I smile at the thought that I’d been interesting enough for her to take ideas from. I check on her about twenty minutes later and just like I thought, she’s passed out cold.

I turn the music back up and listen to it until I fall asleep, too, and wake up the next morning long before she does.

She pops her head over the top of her seat and I smile and wave a finger at her.

She’s even prettier in the daylight.

Camryn

Eight

“Ten minutes,” I say, “and we’re off this tin can.”

Andrew grins and pulls his back away from the seat and goes to put his MP3 player away.

I’m not exactly sure why I felt the need to tell him.

“Did you sleep better?” he asks, zipping up his bag.

“Yeah, actually I did,” I say, reaching around to feel the back of my neck where I don’t feel any twisted muscles this time. “Thanks for the involuntary idea.”

“You’re very welcome,” he says with a huge grin.

“Denver?” he asks, looking up at me.

I’m assuming he’s asking if that’s my next stop. “Yeah, almost seven hours away.”

Andrew shakes his head, seeming as dissatisfied with that time-frame as I am.

Ten minutes later and the bus pulls into the Garden City station. There are three times as many people at this station than there were at the last one and this worries me. I make my way through the terminal and to the first empty seat I see because they are filling up quickly. Andrew slips around a corner underneath the vending area sign and comes back with a Mountain Dew and a bag of chips.

He sits down beside me and cracks the top on the soda can.

“What?” he asks looking over at me.

I didn’t notice I had been watching him gulp that soda down with a disgusted look on my face.

“Nothing,” I say, looking away, “I just think it’s gross.”

I hear him laugh under his breath beside me and then the chip bag rattles open.

“You seem to think a lot of stuff is gross.”

I look over at him again, positioning my bag on my lap. “When was the last time you ate something less … heart-attack inducing?”

He crunches another chip and swallows. “I eat whatever I want to eat—what are you, one of those uppity vegetarian girls that complain about how fast food is making the country fat?”

“I’m not one of those,” I say, “but I think the uppity vegetarian girls might be onto something.”

He chomps down on a couple more chips and takes a swig of his soda, grinning over at me.

“Fast food doesn’t make people fat,” he says steadily chewing away. “People make their own choices. Fast food restaurants are just bankin’ good on the stupidity of Americans who choose to eat their food.”

“Are you calling yourself a stupid American?” I grin right back at him.

He shrugs. “I guess I am when my options are limited to vending machines and burger joints.”

I roll my eyes. “Oh, like you’d actually choose to eat something better if you had the choice to make. I don’t buy that.”

I think I’m getting better at these comebacks.

He laughs out loud. “Hell yeah I’d choose something better. I’ll take a fifty-dollar steak over a day-old burger any day, or a beer over a Mountain Dew.”

I shake my head, but can’t wipe the faint grin off my face.

“What do you normally eat, anyway?” he asks. “Salads and tofu?”

“Bleh,” I say with a wrinkled face. “No way in hell would I ever eat tofu and salads are just weight-loss fads.” I pause and grin over at him. “Honestly?”

“Well, yeah—spit it out,” he says.

He’s looking at me as though I’m something funny and cute that needs to be studied.

“I like SpaghettiOs with meatballs and sushi.”

“What, like all mixed together?” Now he looks quietly disgusted.

It takes me a few seconds to catch on.

“Oh, no,” I say, shaking my head back and forth, “that would be gross, too, by the way.”

He smiles, looking relieved.

“I’m not big on steak,” I go on, “but I’d eat one if offered to me, I guess.”

“Oh, so you’re asking me to ask you on a date?” His grin just got wider.

My eyes bulge and my mouth falls open. “No!” I say, practically blushing. “I was just saying that—”

Andrew laughs and takes another swig.

“I know, I know,” he says, “don’t worry. I’d never consider asking you on a date.”

My eyes and mouth get even bigger and my face flushes hot.

He laughs even louder.

“Damn, girl,” he says, still with laughter in his voice, “you don’t catch on too quick, do you?”

I frown.

He frowns, too, but he’s still sort of smiling at the same time.

“I’ll tell you what,” he says, looking a bit more serious, “if we happen to get lucky enough to find a steakhouse at one of our rest stops that can cook a steak in the fifteen minutes we have before the bus leaves us behind, then I’ll buy you one and let you decide while we eat our steaks together on the bus if it’s a date, or not.”

“Well, I can tell you now that it won’t be a date.”

He smiles crookedly.

“Then it won’t be,” he says. “I can live with that.”

I think he’s done with the topic, but then suddenly he adds, “But then what would it be, if not a date?”

“What do you mean?” I say. “It would be a friendship thing, I guess. Y’know, two people who happen to be sharing a meal together.”

“Oh,” he says with a sparkle in his eyes, “so now we’re friends?”

That catches me off-guard. He’s good. I give it a moment’s thought, pursing my lips in contemplation.

“Sure,” I say. “I guess we are sort of friends at least until Wyoming.”

He reaches over and offers his hand to me. Reluctantly, I shake it. His grip is gentle, but firm and his smile is genuine and kind.

“Friends until Wyoming it is then,” he says, shaking my hand once and letting go.

I’m not sure what just happened, but I don’t feel like I’ve done anything I’m going to regret later. I guess there’s nothing wrong with having a traveling ‘friend’. I can think of a hundred other kinds of people who Andrew could be and it could be worse. But he seems harmless and I admit he’s interesting to talk to. He’s not an old lady looking to tell me stories of when she was my age, or an older delusional man who still thinks he’s as hot as he was when he was seventeen and that somehow he thinks I might be able to see him for what he used to look like. No, Andrew is right there in the goldilocks zone. Sure, it’d be better for many different reasons if he was a girl, but at least he’s close to my age and he’s not at all ugly. Oh no, Andrew Parrish is far from being anywhere near the Ugly Tree.

Truthfully, he lives right next door to the Sexy Tree and I think that’s the only thing that bothers me about this whole situation.

You know damn well that it doesn’t really matter what’s going on in your life, who you just lost, how much you hate the world, or how inappropriate it is to have an attraction to someone before that mending phase has reached the acceptable zone. You’re still human and the moment you see someone attractive, you can’t help but make note of it. It’s human nature.

Acting on it is a whole other story and that’s where I draw the line.

That’s not gonna happen, no matter what.

But yeah, the fact that he’s hot bothers me because it only means that I will have to try that much harder to make sure that nothing I say or do will give him the wrong impression. Hot guys know they’re hot. They just do, even the ones who don’t go around flaunting it. And it’s also human nature for hot guys to automatically assume that an innocent smile, or a conversation that goes on for three minutes without awkward silence, are signs of an attraction.

So, this ‘friendship’ is going to take a lot of work on my part. I want to be nice, but not too nice. I want to smile when necessary, but I have to be careful and measure the level of the smile. I want to laugh if something he says is funny, but I don’t want him to think it’s an I’m-so-fucking-into-you kind of laugh.

Yeah, this is definitely going to take work. Maybe an old lady would’ve been better, after all …

Andrew and I wait in the terminal for nearly an hour before the next bus pulls into the station. And as expected, it doesn’t look like we’re going to have two seats to ourselves this time. The line waiting to board already looks like there might not be enough seats to hold everyone. Dilemma. Crap. Andrew and I are suddenly temporary friends, but I can’t bring myself to ask him to sit with me. That might count as one of those things that gives the wrong impression. So, as the line inches forward and he follows close behind, I’m hoping he’ll take it upon himself to sit next to me. I’d rather it be him than someone else who I haven’t even spoken to.

I make my way toward the center of the bus and into two empty seats, passing up the one on the outside and taking the one by the window.

He sits next to me and I’m secretly relieved.

“Since you’re a girl,” he says, putting his bag on the floor between his feet, “I’ll let you keep the window seat.”

He smiles.

After the bus is full and I can already feel the extra body heat rising up all around us from so many people crammed inside the space, I hear the door squeal shut and the bus lurches in motion.

The drive doesn’t seem so long and torturous anymore now that I have someone to talk to. It only takes about an hour of constant conversation about everything from what all of his favorite classic rock bands are, to why I like Pink and how much better her stuff is than Boston and Foreigner who sound the same to me. We argued about this for twenty minutes out of that hour—he’s really stubborn, but then he said the same about me, so maybe we’re both guilty. And I let him in on who ‘Nat’ is, though I don’t go into the gruesome details of mine and Natalie’s relationship.