“We met this group of people who offered us to drive out and party with them on a hard-to-find area of the beach. So we did. And we had a good time. But then shit got weird.”
“Weird how?” Natalie interrupts.
“Like LSD or who-the-hell-knows weird,” he says.
Natalie’s eyes get bigger and grow fierce as she looks back at me. “You did LSD? What the f**k is wrong with you, Cam?”
I shake my head. “No, no way did I do it willingly. They drugged us!”
Everyone’s eyes match Natalie’s now.
“Yeah,” Andrew goes on. “We’re not even sure what they gave us, but we were both trippin’ out of our minds.”
“I was roofied once,” Blake’s sister, Sarah, says.
She looks about eighteen.
Blake’s body jerks forward to sit straight up, causing Natalie to hit her front teeth on her beer bottle. “What?” he asks with fire shooting from his eyes.
“Oh, you didn’t know about that?” Sarah says sweetly, acting like she had simply forgotten to tell him at some point.
Obviously, it was better that he hadn’t known.
“Owww!” Natalie whines, holding her mouth.
“I’m sorry,” Blake says. He kisses her cheek and turns back to his sister. “Who the f**k roofied you, Sarah? Don’t shit me, either. You better tell me… Did anything happen?” There’s dread in his face.
Sarah rolls her eyes. “No. Nothing happened because Kayla was there and she drove me home. And no, I don’t know who did it, Blake, so please just chill out.” Then she turns back us. “You were saying?”
“I’ll go with you, man,” Andrew says to Blake. “You ever find out who did it, just let me know. That’s bullshit.”
I elbow Andrew softly. He takes the hint and says, “Anyway, Florida was an experience, I have to say, but I never wanna do it again.”
Andrew doesn’t tell them anything about that skanky bitch who tried giving him a bl*w j*b. I’m glad he doesn’t, because that would be an awkward conversation. Not to mention, Natalie would have a field day with information like that. We hang out in the beanbag chairs and talk to our friends for a few hours until around eight o’clock, when Blake has to drive Sarah home. Shortly after the three of them leave, everybody else follows, and Andrew and I are alone in our first official home together as newlyweds.
He comes back in from the kitchen with a candle in his hand after lighting it on the stove. The gas was turned on early. Then he uses that flame to light the others on the table.
“Are we going to sleep on the floor?” I ask, watching him.
“Nope,” he says as he moves away from the candles. He drags all the beanbags into the center of the room and fits them closely together, creating a makeshift bed, then pats one of them with the palm of his hand. “This’ll have to do for now. I’m not sleeping on the floor. Talk about waking up with a stiff back.”
I smile. “This is strange, isn’t it?” I say, looking around at the bare walls of our house, envisioning what kind of pictures or paintings might look good on them.
“What, having no furniture or electricity? You should be used to that by now.” He chuckles.
I get up from my beanbag by the wall and sit down on the bed he made. I reach out toward the table and poke my finger around in the hot wax of a candle, letting it sting and then cool and conform to the tip of my finger.
“No, I mean this house. Us. Everything, really.”
“Strange in a good way, I hope.”
“Of course,” I say, smiling up at him.
Silence fills the house. The light from the candles cast large dancing shadows on the walls. It smells like bleach and Pine-Sol and other various cleaners, although it’s faint.
“Andrew,” I say, “thank you for moving here.”
Finally, he sits down beside me and we both stare into the flames for a moment.
“Where else would I be other than wherever you are?” he says.
“You know what I mean,” I say. I reach out and move the palm of my hand over the top of one flame, just to feel the heat on my skin and to see how close I can get before it’s too much.
“I know,” he says, “but just the same.”
I pull my hand away and look at him; his face looks soft in the orangish glow of the candlelight, even with the stubble he’s started letting grow again.
“Camryn, I need to tell you something,” he says.
Instantly, my heart locks up in my chest at the way he said it.
“What… I mean, what do you mean you have to tell me something?” I’m so nervous. I don’t know why.
Andrew draws his knees upward and props his forearms on top of them. He looks back at the flame once, only for a few seconds, but even a few seconds is too long.
“Andrew?” I turn around fully to face him.
I notice his throat moves as he swallows. He looks me in the eyes.
“I’ve been having headaches,” he begins, and my heart falls into my stomach. I think I’m going to throw up. “Just since Monday, but I set up an appointment with a doctor here. Your mom recommended him.”
I hate her right now for keeping this from me. My hands are shaking.
“I asked your mom not to say anything because I wanted this house stuff to go smoothly—”
“You should’ve told me.”
He tries to reach out for my hand but I inadvertently push it away and rise to my feet. “Why’d you keep this from me?!” I feel dizzy.
Andrew stands up, too, but he keeps his distance. “I told you,” he says. “I didn’t want—”
“I don’t care! You should’ve told me!”
I fold my arms over my stomach and arch over forward a little. I’m surprised I haven’t already puked. My nerves are so frayed it feels like they’re really coming apart inside me. “This can’t be happening…” Finally, I bury my face in my hands and rupture into sobs. “Why the f**k is this happening?!”
Andrew is next to me in seconds. I feel his arms wrap around me. He pulls my trembling body into his chest and holds me. Tight.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” he says. “I honestly don’t feel like I did before, Camryn. I’m having headaches, yes, but they feel different.”
When I tame my sobs enough that I feel like I can speak without choking, I raise my head to see him.
He encloses my face in his hands and smiles faintly at me. “I knew you would react this way, baby,” he says in a quiet voice. “I don’t want you to stress out for the next four days until my appointment on Monday.” He holds my gaze still. “It doesn’t feel the same. Just focus on that, because I’m telling you the truth.”
“Are you?” I ask. “Or, are you saying that to keep me from worrying?” I already have it set in my mind that the latter is exactly what he’s doing. I pull away from him and start pacing the floor, my arms crossed, one hand resting on my lips. I can’t stop shaking.
“I’m not lying to you,” he says. “I’m going to be fine. I feel like I’m going to be fine, and you have to believe that.”
I whirl around to face him again. “I can’t do this anymore, Andrew. I won’t.”
He tilts his head slightly to one side; his gaze is thoughtful, curious, concerned.
I know he wants me to elaborate on what I said, but I can’t. I can’t because the things I want to say would only upset and hurt him. And they would just be words. Words born from pain and anger and a part of me that wants to look God, or whoever, or whatever, in the face and tell It to go to Hell.
I need to calm myself. I need to take a step back and breathe.
I do just that.
“Camryn?”
“You’re going to be fine,” I say to him matter-of-factly. “I know you’re going to be fine.”
He steps back up to me, kisses me on the forehead, and says, “I will be.”
Andrew
35
The past four days have been stressful. Although Camryn said she’d remain positive and not let it get to her, she hasn’t been herself. Her nerves are shot all to hell. Twice I’ve heard her crying in the bathroom and throwing up. Ever since I told her about the headaches last Tuesday night, she’s been acting a lot like she was before we left out to visit Aidan and Michelle in Chicago: faking her smiles and pretending to laugh when something is supposed to be funny. She’s just not herself. Worried about her and remembering what happened after her miscarriage with the painkillers, I flat out asked her if she’s found that “moment of weakness” at all again.
She says she hasn’t and I believe her.
But nothing is going to fix her this time except us leaving this hospital today and me having a clean bill of health.
If I don’t… well, I don’t want to think about that.
I’m more worried about her than I am about myself.
Camryn was asked to wait in another room while the scan is being done. I can tell she wanted to argue with the nurse, but she did as she was asked. And just like the last time, I feel like I’ve been in here for hours, feeling slightly claustrophobic in the tunnel of this huge, noisy machine. Be very still, the technician had asked me. Try not to move or we’ll have to do it over. Needless to say, I practically didn’t breathe for fifteen minutes.
When the scan was over, I pulled the earplugs from my ears and tossed them in the nearby trash.
Camryn just about lost it when the nurse who came to discharge me said that it would be Wednesday before we’d know anything.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Camryn’s eyes were feral. She looked between me and the nurse, back and forth, hoping that one of us could do something.
I looked at the nurse. “Is there any way we can find out the results today?”
Knowing just by looking at Camryn’s expression that she wasn’t going to budge, the nurse sighed and said, “Go sit out in the waiting room and I’ll see if I can get Dr. Adams to come look now.”
Four hours later, we were sitting in Dr. Adams’s office.
“I don’t see any abnormalities,” he said, and I felt Camryn’s hand release its death grip on mine. “But given your history, I think it will be in your best interest to see me once a month for the next several months and for you to make note of any changes you feel need noting.”
“But you said you didn’t see anything,” Camryn said, squeezing my hand again.
“No, but I still think it would be in Andrew’s best interest. Just to be on the safe side. That way, if anything does start to show up, we’ll catch it very early on.”
“You’re saying you think something’s going to show up?”
I wanted to laugh at the look of mild frustration on that doctor’s face, but instead I looked at Camryn to my left and said, “No, that’s not what he’s saying. Just calm down. Everything’s fine. See, I told you everything would be fine.”
And all I could do from that day onward was hope I was telling her the truth.