The Edge of Always

When we get back to Aidan and Michelle’s just after midnight, I head to bed before everyone else. I lay here for an hour, listening to their voices filter down the hallway and into the room. Andrew was going to come to bed with me, but I insisted he hang out with his brother. He worries about me way too much these days. We’ll be going back to Raleigh tomorrow, and I want him to spend as much time with Aidan as he can.

Another hour passes and I’m still awake.

Frustrated, I thrust my hand inside my purse, fishing for the bottle. Without even realizing it, I am now down to my last few pills.

I pass out on three this time.

15

“Camryn? Baby, please wake up.” I shake her back and forth, my hand gripping her shoulder.

My dominant emotion right now is worry. My secondary emotions are anger and hurt. But strangely enough, the feeling of uncertainty is keeping all of the others at bay.

I shake her again. “Get up.”

I have no idea how many of these fucking pills she took, but judging by the nearly empty bottle, the prospect of it being enough to overdose sends a panic through my entire body. But she’s breathing steadily and her heartbeat seems normal. If she doesn’t wake up—

Her eyes creep open, and I suck in a fast breath of relieved air. “Camryn. Look at me.”

Finally she focuses enough to look me in the eyes. “What?” she moans softly and tries to shut her eyes again, but I grab her by both shoulders and force her to sit up.

“I said wake up. Keep your eyes open.”

She sits up sloppily, but it’s nothing too out of the ordinary from having been forced awake and upright like that.

“How many did you take?”

Michelle stands in the doorway behind me. “Do you want me to call an ambulance?”

Suddenly, Camryn becomes completely coherent. I don’t know if my question has finally caught up with her, or if the mention of an ambulance is what did it, but she looks at me with wide, frightened eyes.

“How many of these goddamn pills did you take?”

Her gaze drops from mine, and she looks over to see the prescription bottle on the nightstand. When I decided that sleeping past two in the afternoon was not at all like her and came in here to check on her, I found the bottle on the floor

“Camryn?” I shake her again and get her attention back.

She just looks at me. I see so much in her eyes right now that I can’t choose between humiliation, regret, hurt, anger, or surrender. And then her eyes begin to fill with tears. I feel her body shaking underneath the weight of my grip on her arms. She bursts into tears, falling into my arms, sobbing uncontrollably, and it rips me in half.

“Andrew?” Michelle says from the door.

Without looking back at her, I say, “No, she’ll be all right.” And I swallow down my own tears and anger, feeling my chest constrict.

The door shuts quietly behind me as Michelle leaves the room.

I hold Camryn for a long time, letting her cry into my shirt. I don’t say a word. Not yet. Partly because I know she needs this, just to be able to cry and get it all out. But the rest of me is so fucking pissed off and hurt that I feel like I need to take a step back and gather my composure so I don’t say the wrong things. I hold her tight, wrapping my arms around her trembling body. I kiss her hair and try not to cry myself. The pissed-off part of me helps with that.

“I’m so sorry!” she cries out, and in that fraction of a second when I hear the pain in her voice, it almost completely erases the angry part of me and I grip her even tighter.

“You’re apologizing to me?” I ask with disbelief. I pull her away with my hands firmly around her upper arms. Shaking my head furiously at her, I go back to a few minutes ago. “No, first I need you to tell me how many you took.” I look her dead in the eyes.

“Last night,” she says. “Only three.”

“How many were in this bottle originally?”

“I don’t know. Twenty, maybe.”

“Then how long have you been taking them?”

She pauses and answers, “Just since Tuesday. They’re my mom’s. I took one when I had a headache, but then I started taking them…” Her eyes well up with moisture again.

I reach out and wipe the tears from her face. “God damn it, Camryn,” I say, pulling her into my chest again for a brief moment. “What the hell were you thinking?!”

“I wasn’t!” she cries. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me!”

I grab her cheeks in the palms of my hands. “You know what’s wrong. You’re fucked up over losing Lily, and you don’t know how to deal with it. I just wish you would’ve talked to me.”

With her face still in my hands, her eyes stray from mine. The eerie silence between us strikes me in the strangest way.

“Camryn?” I try to get her to look at me again, but she won’t. “Talk to me. You have to talk to me. Listen, there’s nothing you did wrong, or could’ve done to prevent what happened. You have to know that. You have to under—”

Her head jerks away from my hands, her eyes boring into mine full of pain and… something else.

“It is my fault!” she says, backing away from me on the bed.

She stands up from the bed on the other side and crosses her arms, her back facing me.

“It’s not your fault, Camryn.” I walk toward her, but the second she feels me getting too close, she whirls around at me.

“No, it is my fault, Andrew!” she says with tears barreling from her eyes. “I couldn’t stop thinking about how being pregnant was going to mess everything up! I hated it that we were still living in Galveston after four months! I wondered how we were ever going to do the things we wanted to do with a baby! So yes, it’s my fault that we lost her and I fucking hate myself for it!” She buries her face in her hands.

I rush the short distance over to her, wrapping her up within my arms again. “God, Camryn, it wasn’t your fault!” I don’t think I’ve ever said anything to anyone with that much emotion before. My chest shudders uncontrollably against her.

“Look at me!” I say, pulling her away again. “That shit is so normal. And if you’re guilty, then so am I. I thought about things like that every now and then, but also like you, I wouldn’t have given her up willingly if I could have.”

She doesn’t really have to confirm that statement out loud because I know she wouldn’t have either. But she confirms it anyway:

“I didn’t regret her at all,” she says. “And I… I want her back!”

“I know. I know.” I hug her tight and walk her to the foot of the bed, guiding her to sit down. I crouch between her legs, propping my arms on her thighs and taking both of her hands into mine. I look up at her and say one more time, “It wasn’t your fault.”

She wipes away a few tears, and we just sit here like this for what feels like forever. I think she believes me—either that or she’s just avoiding it. Then she looks toward the wall behind my head and says in a quiet voice, “Does this make me a drug addict?”

I want to laugh, but I don’t. Instead, I just shake my head and smile softly up at her, pressing my fingertips around her hands gently.

“It was a moment of weakness, and even the strongest person isn’t immune to weakness, Camryn. Four days and one bottle of painkillers doesn’t make you a drug addict. Bad judgment call, but not an addict.”

She looks back down at me. “Michelle and Aidan are going to think so.”