“Natalie on you again about coming home?”

“Yeah, she’s relentless.” She puts the phone away in her purse.

Camryn is a horrible liar. Horrible. She couldn’t lie to save her life, and right now, the way she keeps gazing off at the log-cabin-style wall, she’s definitely lying. I pick my teeth clean with a toothpick and study her.

“Are you ready to go?” I ask.

She smiles weakly at me, obviously hiding something, and then I notice the screen on her phone illuminate inside her purse. She checks the text message and suddenly she’s more eager to leave. Her smile gets bigger, and she stands up quickly from the table.

“Wait, I have to pay.” I wave the waitress over to us, and Camryn sits back down in the booth impatiently.

“Why so in a hurry all of a sudden?” I tease her as the waitress places the bill on the table, but before she walks away I pull my credit card from my wallet.

“No reason,” Camryn says.

I just grin. “OK,” I say and lean back against the seat, stretching my arms over the top and making myself comfortable. It’s a ploy. The more comfortable that I look the more impatient she becomes.

Minutes later the waitress returns with my credit card and the receipt. I jot down her tip on the store receipt and very slowly get up, put on my coat, stretch my arms high in the air above me, fake-yawn—

“Dammit, will you hurry up!”

I knew she couldn’t stand it much longer. I laugh, grab her by the hand, and leave the restaurant.

When we make it back to the hotel, Camryn stops in the lobby, “You go ahead. I’ll be up in a second.”

It’s obvious she’s up to something, but it being my birthday I just play along with her game, kiss her cheek, and hop inside the elevator. But once I’m inside the room, I’m the one getting impatient.

I don’t have to wait long before she’s entering the room holding a new guitar.

I stand up the second I see it. “Wow…”

Her smile is sweet and tender, bashful even. It’s as though a tiny part of her is worried I won’t like it.

I walk straight over to her.

“Happy Birthday, Andrew,” she says, holding it out for me.

I place one hand around the neck, the other at the body and I admire it with the biggest smile. Sleek. Beautiful. Perfect. As I turn it around in my hands to check out the backside, I notice a line of silver cursive writing along the back of the neck that reads:

He drew iron tears down Pluto’s cheek,

and made Hell grant what Love did seek.

A line from one of several stories told of Orpheus and Eurydice. I honestly don’t know what to say.

“Do you like it?”

I look up at her. “I love it. It’s perfect.”

She looks away from my eyes with a blush in her face. “Well, I don’t know anything about guitars. I hope it’s not a sucky brand or anything like that. The guy at the guitar shop helped me pick it out. Then I had to wait a few days to have the script put on it, which I never thought would happen because of this and that and—”

“Camryn,” I say, stopping her nervous rambling. “I’ve never had a better birthday gift.” I close the empty space between us and kiss her lips softly.

Camryn

22

Somewhere on Interstate 75—May

We’ve been on the road for months. By March, we had already grown so used to it that living in and out of hotels had become second nature. A new room every week, a new city, a new beach, a new everything. But no matter how new it all is, each time we go in it’s as if we’re stepping through the front door of a house where we’ve lived for years. I never would’ve imagined calling a hotel room “home,” or that life on the road would be as easy to adjust to as it has been for us. Sometimes it’s been hard, but everything is an experience and I wouldn’t change any of it.

But I wonder if the long winter got to me. I wonder, because I’ve caught myself daydreaming about being in a house somewhere, living the home life with Andrew.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure it was just the winter.

It’s two o’clock in the morning, and we’re broke down somewhere in southwest Florida on a long stretch of desolate highway. And it’s pouring down rain. Buckets of rain. We called for a tow truck an hour ago, but for some reason it still hasn’t showed.

“Is there an umbrella in the car anywhere?” I ask over the rain pounding loudly on the roof. “Maybe I can hold it over you while you fix the car!”

“It’s pitch-black out there, Camryn,” he says, his voice raised as high as mine. “Even with a flashlight I doubt I could do it. I’d have to figure out what’s even wrong with it, first.”

I slump down further into the front seat and prop my feet on the dash, my knees bent toward me. “At least it’s not cold,” I say.

“We’ll manage out here tonight,” he says. “Wouldn’t be the first time we slept in the car. Maybe the tow truck will show up before daylight, and if not, I’ll fix it when I can see.”

We sit together in silence for a moment, listening to rain beat on the car, the thunder rumbling like a wave through the clouds. Eventually, we get so tired that we crawl into the backseat, curl up on it together, and try to get some sleep. After a short while, when it’s obvious we’re both uncomfortable and there’s not enough room for us to sleep like this, Andrew crawls over into the front. But we still can’t fall asleep. I feel him shifting for a while and then he asks, “Where do you see yourself in the next ten years?”

“I’m not sure,” I say, staring up at the roof of the car. “But I do know that I want to be doing whatever it is with you.”

“Me too,” he says from the front, laying the same way that I am now, on his back looking upward.

“Have you thought about anything specific?” I ask, quietly wondering where he’s going with this. I switch my left arm for my right, tucking it underneath the back of my head.

“Yeah,” he says. “I want to settle down somewhere warm and peaceful. Sometimes I picture you on the beach, barefoot in the sand with the breeze blowing through your hair. I’m sitting under a tree not too far away, playing around with my guitar—”

“The one I bought you?”

“Of course.”

I smile and continue to listen, picturing the scene in my mind.

“And you’re holding her hand.”

“Whose hand?”

Andrew falls silent for a moment. “Our little girl,” he says distantly as if his mind is a little further away than mine is.

I swallow and feel a knot grow in my throat. “I like that visual,” I say. “So, you want to settle down?”

“Eventually,” he says. “But only when it feels right. Not a day before.”

A gust of wind hits the side of the car, and a loud clap of thunder shakes the ground.

“Andrew?” I ask.

“Yeah?”

“Number three, to add to our list of promises. If we make it to old age and our bones hurt and we can’t sleep in the same bed anymore, promise me we’ll never sleep in separate rooms.”

“It’s a promise,” he answers with a smile in his voice.

“Good night,” I say.

“Good night.”

And when I fall asleep minutes later, I dream about that warm beach and Andrew watching me walk along the sand with a little hand clasped in mine.

*     *     *

The tow truck never came. We wake up the next morning stiff and in pain, regardless of each of us having a seat to ourselves.

“I’m going to kick the shit out of that tow truck guy if I ever see him,” Andrew growls underneath the hood.

He’s busy twisting a wrench around… I’m not even going to pretend that I know what that thing is. He’s fixing the car. That’s all I know. And he’s in a seriously foul mood. I just hang around to help him with whatever he needs, and I don’t play the dumb-blonde card by asking him what this doohickey is or what that thingamajig does. Truth is, I really don’t care. And besides, it’d just aggravate him more if he had to explain it.