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
“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.”
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.
33
I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day. The weather is perfect. The plans to get married that we
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,
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.
