The Edge of Always

“True,” I say, “but it’s San Francisco! I would love to go there.”

She smiles a little.

Uncle Cole, in his tall, brooding glory, takes three more bottles of beer from the fridge and wedges them by the necks between his fingers. He smiles at me as he passes and slips into the living room with the house full of people.

He’s awesome. When he arrived, he slipped me a congratulations card with two hundred bucks in it.

“Zoey, I think it’s great. And honestly, I can’t wait to visit my best friend in California. Yeah. That even sounds good when I say it. California.” I gesture both hands dramatically.

She laughs. “I really am going to miss you, Lil.”

“Me too.”

Her mom comes into the kitchen behind her with her dad, Blake, not far behind. “Did you tell Lily the news?” her mom asks as she reaches inside the fridge.

“Yeah, I told her just now.”

“What do you think, Lily?” her mom asks.

Her dad kisses Zoey on the head, takes the beer from her mom, and heads outside, probably to smoke a cigarette.

“I’m excited for her,” I answer. “I’m moving to Boston for college. She’s moving to California. We may not be together like we have been growing up anymore, but there’s something about not staying stationary in the same place forever that makes it all feel right.”

“You are definitely the daughter of Andrew and Camryn Parrish, that’s for sure,” her mom says, grinning.

I smile proudly and hop down from the bar stool to follow her and Zoey back into the living room.

“A toast!” my dad says in the middle of the room, holding up his beer. He looks across the room at me. We have the same green eyes. “To our little girl, Lily. May you show everybody at college how it’s done!”

Everybody takes a drink. “To Lily!”

I spend the entire day, all the way until nightfall with my friends and family and, of course, Gavin, whom I love so much. We are so much alike. We met shortly after he moved here from Arizona. His locker was on the same wall as mine, and he ended up in almost all of the same classes as me. Zoey honed in on him first, which isn’t a surprise given her flirty personality. I remember her telling me on his first day of school, “That one will be mine. You watch and see.” And I never had any intention of interfering, but apparently Zoey was too much for someone like Gavin. I think maybe I can give Zoey the credit for Gavin and me ending up together, though. If it wasn’t for her, he might never have had an excuse to force himself to talk to me instead.

Zoey was over him as fast as he made it obvious I was the one he was interested in.

It’s really weird, too, because Gavin and I are so eerily alike that it almost feels like fate brought us together. We both had our sights set on the same college. We love the same music and movies and books and television shows. We both love art and history and have, during different points in our lives, thought about what it would be like to travel through Africa. Gavin is interested in archeology. I’m interested in archeological conservation.

Gavin wasn’t my first boyfriend, or my first kiss, but he was my first everything else. I can’t imagine spending my life with anyone other than him.

I hope we turn out like my parents did. Yeah, I really hope for that.

* * *

After graduation, I spent the summer with my parents. And I didn’t waste a minute of that time with them because I knew it would be short. In the fall, I moved to college, and Mom and Dad—well, their plans were as big as mine. I think they did an awesome job raising me, but I knew that once I moved out on my own and started a life for myself with school and with Gavin, my parents would be setting off to fulfill a life dream of their own.

I’m so happy for them. I miss them every day, but I’m so happy.

They never forget to mail me letters—not e-mails, but real handwritten letters. I’ve saved them all, from the ones stamped in Argentina and Brazil and Costa Rica and Paraguay to the ones that came from Scotland, Ireland, Denmark, and places all over Europe. I love it that my parents are the way they are, so free-spirited and driven and in love with the World. I admire them. From the stories they tell me about when they were a little older than me, I realize that their lives, even before they met, started out rocky, but eventually everything fell into place. My mom told me about her past and how she used to be very depressed. She didn’t go into too much detail, and I could always tell that she was holding things back. But she wanted me to know that she and my dad would always be there for me, no matter what happens or what decisions I make.

I think she was worried I might make some of the same wrong decisions that she made when she went through some hard times, but honestly, I can’t imagine ever being unhappy.

Mom told me about when she met Dad, too. On a Greyhound bus, of all things. I just laughed. But whenever I think about them and about the things they went through together, I can’t help but be awed by it.

According to Mom, my dad was a little wild back then. She said the way he used to be is the number one reason why it took him so long to warm up to Gavin. She didn’t go into details about that, either, but… dang, my dad must’ve really been… Yuk! Never mind.

But I learned so much from my parents. They taught me how precious life is and never to take a second of it for granted, because any second could be my last. My dad was big on me being myself, standing up for what I believe in, and speaking my mind rather than someone else’s. He told me that people will try to make me just like them, but not to fall for it because before I know it, I will be. My mom, well, she was big on making sure I knew that there is so much more out there in the world than crappy jobs and paying bills and becoming a slave to society. She made sure I understood that no matter what anyone says, I don’t have to live in a way that I don’t choose. I pick my path. I make my life one to remember and not one that will fade into the background of every other uneventful life around me. Ultimately, it’s my choice and only my choice. It will be hard at times, I may have to flip burgers and scrub toilets for a while, I will lose people I love, and every day won’t be as bright as the one before it. But as long as I never let the struggles pull me completely under, one day I will be doing exactly what I want to do. And no matter what happens, or who I lose, I won’t be sad forever.

But what I think I learned the most from my parents is how to love. They love me unconditionally, of course, but I mean the way they love each other. I know a lot of married couples—most of my friends’ parents are still married—but I’ve never quite known two people more devoted to each other than my mom and dad. They’ve been inseparable all my life. I can only recall a couple of arguments between them, but I’ve never heard them fight. Ever. I don’t know what it is that makes their marriage so strong, but I sure hope that whatever it is, they passed some of that magic onto me.

Gavin walks into my dorm room, shutting the door behind him. He sits down on the edge of my bed. “Another letter from your folks?”

I nod.

“Where are they now?”

“Peru,” I say, looking back down into the letter. “They love it on that side of the world.”

I feel his hand on my knee to comfort me. “You’re worried about them.”

I nod again, gently. “Yeah, as always, but I worry about them more when they’re over there. Some places are really dangerous. I just don’t want them to end up like—”

Gavin reaches out and fits my chin in his fingertips. “They’ll be fine, you know they will.”

Maybe he’s right. My mom and dad have been backpacking across the world for two years now, and the worst danger they’ve encountered—by what they’ve told me, anyway—was that my dad was robbed once and another time they had an issue with their passports. But anything could happen, especially being alone like that with only backpacks and the open road.

Apparently, I’m a lot like my mom when it comes to how much I worry.

“Two more years and they’ll be just as worried about you,” he adds, and then pecks me on the lips.

“I guess so,” I say, smiling up at him as he stands from the bed. “My mom will probably be up every night wondering if I got mauled by a lion.”

Gavin smiles a crooked smile.