The Edge of Never by J. A. Redmerski Page A

warmth in his face never leaves him in this moment. “Dad wanted us to be fighters—.” He glances over. “Not boxers or actual fighters, though he probably wouldn’t have minded that so much, either. But I mean fighters in general, you know, in life. Metaphorically.”
    I nod to let him know that I understand.
    “I sat ringside, eight-years-old, mesmerized by these two men beating each other and the whole time I could hear my dad talking over the crowd next to me: ‘They fear nothing, son,’ he said. ‘And all of their moves are calculated. They move one way and it either works, or it doesn’t, but they learn something from every move, every decision.’
    Andrew catches my eye briefly and his smile dissolves, leaving his expression standard. “He told me that a real fighter never cries, never lets the weight of any blow bring him down. Except that final blow, the inevitable one, but even then they always go out like men.”
    I’m no longer smiling, either. I can’t tell exactly what’s going on in Andrew’s head right now, but we share the same sober mood. I want to ask him if he’s OK, because it’s obvious that he’s not, but the timing doesn’t feel right. It feels weird because I don’t know him well enough to be digging around inside of his emotions.
    I say nothing.
    “You must think I’m a dick,” he says.
    I blink, surprised. “No,” I answer. “Why do you say that?”
    He backs off immediately and downplays the seriousness of his own question, letting that devastating smile slip back to the surface again.
    “I’m going to see him before he kicks the bucket,” he says, and his choice of words shocks me a little, “because that’s what we do, right? It’s a customary thing, kind of like saying ‘bless you’ when someone sneezes, or asking someone how their weekend was when really you don’t give a shit.”
    Damn, where is all of this coming from?
    “You have to live in the now,” he says and I’m quietly stunned. “Don’t you think so?” His head falls to the side and he’s looking at me again.
    It takes me a moment to get my head together, but even then I’m not sure about what to say.
    “Living in the now,” I say, quoting him, yet at the same time thinking of my own belief of loving in the now. “I guess you’re right.” But I still wonder exactly what his take on the belief is.
    I straighten my back against the seat and raise my head a little to look over at him more closely. It’s like suddenly I have this great desire to know all about his belief. To know everything about him .
    “What is living in the now to you?” I ask.
    I notice one of his eyebrows twitch for a second and his expression shifts, surprised at the seriousness of my question, or the level of my interest. Maybe both.
    He straightens his back and raises his head, too.
    “Just that dwelling and planning is bullshit,” he says. “You dwell on the past, you can’t move forward. Spend too much time planning for the future and you just push yourself backwards, or you stay stagnant in the same place all your life.” His eyes lock on mine. “Live in the moment,” he says as if making a serious point, “where everything is just right, take your time and limit your bad memories and you’ll get wherever it is you’re going a lot faster and with less bumps in the road along the way.”
    The silence between us is just two minds thinking about what he just said. I wonder if his thoughts are the same as mine. I also wonder, more than I want to admit, why so many of his thoughts already make me feel like I’m staring into a mirror when I look at him.
    The bus glides heavily over the freeway, always loud and rarely soft. But after so long, it’s easy to forget how unpleasant a bus ride is compared to the luxury of a car. And when you’re thinking more about the positive aspects of a bus ride, instead of the negative, it’s easy to forget that there’s anything negative about it at all. There is a guy