She tosses the sticker labels into the nearby wastebasket.
“About how pain isn’t a damn competition.”
“Yes, I remember,” she says. She starts to take the panties from the bed, but I reach over and snatch a few pairs off the top before she gets the chance. I hold up a pink lacy pair in front of me and set the other two pairs on my chest.
“Damn, I like these,” I say, and she snatches them from my fingers.
“Anyway,” she goes on, while I pick up the next two pairs and do the same thing, “I don’t want to talk about this stuff anymore, alright?” Then she snatches the last two pairs from my hands and makes her way to her top dresser drawer and stuffs them all inside.
She walks back over to me and crawls onto my lap, her knees buried in the blanket that covers the bed. I rub my hands back and forth over her thighs, on either side of me.
“I want to go out tonight,” she says. “What do you think?”
I curl my bottom lip between my teeth in thought and make a sucking sound just before I say, “Sounds like a plan. Where do you want to go?”
She smiles sweetly down at me as if she has been giving this plan a lot of thought today already. I love to see her smile like that. And it’s totally fucking real, so maybe Natalie is overacting, after all.
“Well, I thought we could go to the Underground with Natalie and Blake.”
“Wait, isn’t that the place that douchebag kissed you on the roof?”
“Yeah,” she says in a singsong voice. Damn, if she doesn’t stop moving around on my lap like that … “but that ‘douchebag’ is in jail for a year. And Natalie really wants us to go. She texted me about it just before I got here.”
“Sure she’s not trying to suck up to you because she’s got a guilty conscience?”
Camryn shrugs. “Maybe so, but it’ll be fun to go, regardless. And it’ll be nice to watch live bands play rather than be on the stage for a change.”
She lies across my chest, and I reach down and fit her perfectly shaped ass in the palms of my hands and squeeze. She kisses me, and I move my hands up and wrap my arms tight around her body.
“All right,” I say softly when the kiss breaks and her lips linger an inch from mine. I run my fingers through her hair and then hold her head in place with her cheeks in my hands. “The Underground it is. And then tomorrow I’m going to fly back to Texas and start packing.”
“I hope you’re OK with me not going,” she says.
“Yeah, I’m fine with it.” I kiss her forehead. “Y’know, you never did say whether or not you were going to have Natalie go with you to look for an apartment.”
She lifts up, straightening her back and then grabs my hands, interlocking our fingers.
“I’ll get around to it,” she says with a smile. “One step at a time, and right now the next step is getting ready to go out tonight.”
I nod, smiling back at her, and then I squeeze her hands and pull her down toward me again.
“You’re the world to me,” I whisper onto her lips. “I hope you never forget that.”
“I’ll never forget,” she whispers back and moves her hips very subtly on my lap. Then she nudges my lips with her own and says just before kissing me, “But if I ever do, for whatever reason, I hope you’ll always find a way to remind me.”
I study her mouth and then her cheeks resting underneath the pads of my thumbs.
“Always,” I say and kiss her ravenously.
It’s been a while since the last time I partied at a club like the Underground before. Hell, I’m only twenty-five, and that place made me feel old. I guess spending most of my bar and club nights in more laid-back places like Old Point made me forget that heavy metal exists. Hey, I like heavy metal, but give me the old stuff any day. Camryn and I spent the night with Blake and Natalie, listening to some band who calls themselves Sixty-Nine—how original—screech out fuck-up note after fuck-up note on the guitar while the lead singer growled into the mic like a moose during mating season.
But the crowd seemed to like it. Or maybe it was because most of them were drunk or high. Probably both.
I should be drunk, but I agreed to be the designated driver for the night. And I’m OK with that. I wanted Camryn to party her ass off and have a good time. She needed this. And I’m proud of her for trying, because I halfway expected her to refuse to do anything for a very long time. I’m hurting over the loss of Lily, too, but Camryn is still here and she’s what matters right now.
The cold November night air feels good after being cooped up inside that warm, smoky warehouse for the past three hours.
“Are you all right to walk?” I ask Camryn, walking alongside her with my arm firmly around her waist.
She lays her head on me and buries her hands inside her coat sleeves.
“I’m good,” she says. “You cut me off at the right hour this time, so you don’t have to worry about carrying me the rest of the way like you did that night back in New Orleans.” I feel her head shift to gaze up at me, and I glance down at her briefly, trying also to watch our steps along the dark sidewalk. “You remember that night, don’t you?”
“Of course I remember.” I squeeze my arm tighter around her waist. “It wasn’t that long ago and besides, even if it was, I could never forget that night, or any night with you, for that matter.”
She smiles up at me and then watches out ahead, too.
“You’re very unforgettable,” I add, grinning at her briefly.
“I woke up once that night,” she says, burrowing her head into the warmth of my arm. “I saw the toilet on one side of me and wondered how I got there. Then I felt your body behind me, your arm over my waist, and I didn’t want to get up. Not because I was still half drunk and my head felt like it had been run through a shredder, but because you were with me.”
“Yeah, I remember …” I lose myself in that memory for a moment.
We walk huddled together through the cold for ten minutes until we make it to the gas station where the car is parked in an abandoned lot nearby. I turn the heat on full blast and drive the chick car back to Camryn’s mom’s house, wishing we had just stayed in a hotel all this time when we pull into the driveway and I see her mom’s car parked out front. I like Nancy, but I also like being able to walk around the house in my boxers, or naked, without worrying about an audience.
I help Camryn out of the car and take her inside, my arm still around her waist just in case any of the liquor hasn’t caught up to her yet. But she’s fine. Buzzed pretty good, but fine. I lock the door behind us, and Camryn immediately slips out of her coat and tosses it on the coat rack in the corner of the foyer. I do the same.
The
