She turns to Camryn now. Then she glances at me and then back to Camryn again. “Uh-huh, I knew he wouldn’t let you go.” She pulls Camryn into a hug and squeezes her tight.
“I told Eddie after you two left,” she goes on, looking back and forth between us, “that she was a keeper. Eddie agreed, of course. He said the next time you came around here that Camryn would be with you. He tried to bet me money on it.” She points at me and winks. “You know how Eddie was.”
In two seconds I feel my heart sink into the soles of my feet. “ ‘Was’?” I ask warily, afraid of her answer.
Carla doesn’t lose her smile, maybe just a little, but for the most part she doesn’t lose it. “I’m sorry, Andrew, but Eddie died in March. A stroke, they say.”
My breath hitches, and I take a seat on a bar stool next to me. I sense Camryn step up beside me. All I can see is the floor.
“Oh don’t you do that now, you hear me?” Carla says. “You knew Eddie better than just about anyone. He didn’t even cry when his own son died. You remember? He played his guitar all night long in Robert’s honor.”
Camryn’s hand interlocks with one of mine. I don’t look up until Carla walks around the bar and grabs two shot glasses and a bottle of whiskey from the glass shelf behind her. She sets the glasses down in front of me and starts pouring.
“He always said,” Carla continues, “that if he died before any of us did that he’d rather be woken up on the Other Side to people dancin’ on his grave than cryin’ on it. Now drink up. His favorite whiskey. He wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Carla’s right. Even though she is, and I know Eddie would hate it that anyone grieved over him, I still can’t let go of the bottomless hole I feel in my heart right now. I look at Camryn next to me and see that she’s trying not to cry, her eyes coated with tears. But she smiles, and I feel her hand gently squeezing mine. Camryn reaches out for the whiskey that Carla poured and waits for me to take the other. I slide my hand across the bar top and grasp it in my fingers.
“To Eddie,” I say.
“To Eddie,” Camryn repeats.
We touch our glasses, smile at each other and drink it down.
Our serious moment is quickly over when Camryn brings her hand down, slamming the glass upside-down on the bar. She makes the most disgusted, kick-in-the-teeth face I’ve ever seen a girl make and lets out a sound like her breath is on fire.
Carla laughs and takes her shot glass away, wiping the area underneath it with a rag. “Didn’t say it was good, just that it was Eddie’s.”
Even I have to admit the shit is nasty. Rotgut nasty shit. I don’t know how Eddie drank this all those years.
“Are you two still playin’ together?” Carla asks.
Camryn climbs up onto the empty bar stool next to me and answers first, “Yeah, we’ve been doing a lot of that.”
Carla looks at us both suspiciously, taking my shot glass and putting it away underneath the bar somewhere now.
“Been playin’ a lot for how long? And why haven’t I seen you here sooner?”
I sigh heavily and fold both hands on the bar, leaning more comfortably against it. “Well, after we left here we went to Galveston and I sort of ended up in the hospital with that tumor.”
“You sort of ended up in the hospital?” Carla says, and I wonder if her smart ass is related to that cop back in Florida somehow. She points sternly at me but her words are for Camryn. “We told him to go to the doctor, but he wouldn’t listen.”
“You knew, too?” Camryn asks.
Carla nods. “Yeah, we knew. But your boy here is as stubborn as a mule.”
“I agree with you there,” Camryn says with a hint of laughter in her voice.
I shake my head and lean away from the bar again. “Well, before you two gang up on me,” I say, “anyway, obviously I’m alive. Later, Camryn and I went through some really messed up things along the way, but we both made it through OK.” I smile warmly over at her.
“Looks like you came full circle,” Carla says, and it invokes our attention at the same time. “I hope you’re going to play tonight. Eddie would’ve loved to be up there with you one last time.”
Camryn and I lock eyes briefly.
“I’m up for it,” she says.
“So am I.”
Carla smacks her hands together. “Well, all right then! You can go on whenever you want. The only band we had scheduled tonight cancelled.”