by A. J. Pine
Brynn laughed and watched her sister poke Jamie in the abs and then leave, her eyes falling on his after Holly was gone.
Jamie stared back at her from under the bill of his worn White Sox baseball hat. He looked cozy in his gray hoodie, his dark jeans slung low on his hips—quite the opposite of how Brynn felt right now, which was nothing short of anxious. He raised a brow as she bounced on the suitcase, forcing the zipper the rest of the way.
“You got this, Sleepy Jean?” Though he didn’t move to help her.
She slid off the suitcase and on to the floor, huffing out a breath. How did she answer that question?
Yes, her suitcase was packed. Yes, she’d taken two weeks of vacation. And yes, she was about to spend the majority of those two weeks driving cross-country—and maybe back—with one guy to go see another. Jamie’s idea, not hers.
His easy smile relaxed her, so she said, “Yeah. Sure.” Though at the moment she didn’t feel like she got anything at all.
“What about you?” she asked. “You still want to share your precious alone time with me?”
When she initially suggested he go, she’d meant for him to take a solo trip. Now it was a road trip for two.
Again—Jamie’s idea.
He took a tentative step forward, and when Brynn didn’t budge, he pulled her into a hug. They’d spoken in the past week, but today was the first time she’d seen him since last Sunday’s brunch. She’d thought they would avoid each other until it was time for him to get back behind the bar. Instead he’d strode over to the table with a pitcher of beer mimosa and a proposition—he’d go to Beer Fest, and she could ride shotgun, getting to L.A. in time to make it to Spencer’s book launch. Holly had answered yes for her before Brynn could even open her mouth, while Annie hadn’t said a word. So not like her. And because it felt like the olive branch they needed—without either of them having to discuss the reunion any further—Brynn had said yes. And as fast as her heart hammered at present, Jamie’s arms around her felt good—something right when she was afraid it had all gone wrong.
“It was my idea. Wasn’t it?”
She nodded.
“You need to see this thing through, B. I know you, and you’ll always wonder.” He cleared his throat. “And I need to spend a weekend with beer.”
They both laughed, the first time they’d done that together since the reunion.
He was right. She needed to see what was there between her and Spencer. Preferably sober and without an audience. But that didn’t change the tightness in her throat when she thought about her history with the whole Jamie and Spencer situation.
“I was going to take the trip anyway,” he said, grinning. “I just needed a kick in the ass to get me out the door. Now I’ll get us both out the door.” He never officially said he was doing it to make up for walking in on her, but Brynn knew that’s what this was. And she both loved him and wanted to smack him for feeling like he owed her. No matter how awful the reunion turned out to be, it was no one’s fault. She wanted things to be right between them, but their smooth and easy friendship had torn at the edges last week, creating a distance she hoped could be repaired with a cross-country trek in Jamie’s pickup truck.
She looked up at him, his blue eyes shadowed by the bill of his baseball cap. “I feel like I guilted you into this somehow, even though it was your idea,” Brynn admitted, and she waited for him to protest. He didn’t.
Jamie stood back, motioning between them.
“We need to fix this,” he said. “And you didn’t guilt me into anything. I need this trip, for a lot of reasons. Why can’t one of them be us?”
Brynn interrupted. “We’re fine, Jamie. I was drunk. And angry. But we’re okay.” She almost believed herself.
He smiled then, and she let the lightness of it fill her.
“Then getting you to the book launch in L.A. will just make us okayer. Won’t it? I’m going at this point—with or without you—so you can get your ass in the truck, or you can stay here contemplating your choices.” He adjusted the cap on his head.
She guessed he was right. Jamie wasn’t even going to charge her for gas since he was making the trip whether she tagged along or not. Financially, it made sense. The trip wasn’t in her budget to begin with. She’d pay him back, though. In installments or something. She wouldn’t take advantage of her friend, only the fortunate situation.
“B?” Jamie’s voice jolted her from her thoughts.
“Huh?”
“You ready to go?”
She took one last look at her bulging suitcase, then picked up the scarf from the edge of her bed and wrapped the featherlight fabric around her neck twice. She smoothed out her oversize sweater and nodded.
“Just need to throw on my boots and coat.”
“Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll grab this beast.” He nodded toward the suitcase, and she laughed.
“Thank you.” She hoped he could feel the warmth of her tone, that he knew how much she appreciated this gesture.
“Anything, SJ. You should know that by now.”
Brynn smiled, but with it she forced herself to swallow the lump rising in her throat. What if they wouldn’t be okayer when they reached L.A.? What if last week was just the first in the start of a series of irreparable rifts? What if she and Jamie were reaching their limit—the limit of how far a friendship could bend before it finally broke? She couldn’t take losing him again.
Glass half full. She listened to Holly’s advice. Brynn would see the good in everything about this trip, including what it would do for her and Jamie. A week on the road together? They’d have to be closer after that.
“Okay, then,” she said. “Let’s go.”
…
Jamie sat in the driver’s seat of his pickup truck, waiting for Brynn to make one last bathroom trip.
“I don’t want to be the one who slows us down because we have to stop at every gas station.”
He had tried to explain to her that they had plenty of time. He’d mapped out the trip, planned it just right. It was only twenty-nine hours from Chicago to L.A. Even if they made a couple extra stops, they’d still make it in less than a week, have the weekend in L.A., and then a leisurely drive back. As long as he was there by Friday, he was golden. Still, she ran back up to her apartment to take care of business.
His phone buzzed with a text.
Annie: You still an idiot?
He laughed and responded. Yep…who’s into self-inflicted torture.
Annie: Tell her, James.
Jamie: I will when she makes her choice. If it’s me, that is.
Annie: And tell her what you’re really doing at your festival this weekend.
Shit. Jeremy. Not like he’d forgotten he was meeting Jeremy in L.A., but he had overlooked the fact that he was Annie’s brother and that Annie was suddenly his relationship therapist. Of course Jeremy told her everything about his last-minute plans to launch his new brew with taste-testers in L.A. God, he wanted to tell Brynn, but that would only take away her free will, letting her know the trip was always for her, whether she came or not.
Jamie: She’s getting in the truck. Good-bye, Annie.
Jamie closed out of his texting app just as Brynn plopped down in the seat next to him.
“Who was that?” she asked, her voice nothing more than curious. He opened his mouth to answer, but she never gave him a chance. “One last good-bye to Liz?”
Right. Liz. He kind of maybe hadn’t told her about the breakup. Because fucking up Brynn’s reunion plans fucked up his own, and by now, after a week of keeping their distance between brunch and the trip, of Jamie realizing how much he needed to preserve their friendship and Brynn’s freedom to choose, it seemed safer to let her think he was still with his girlfriend for now.
“Yep,” he said, knowing he was a dick for perpetuating the lie. “One more good-bye. She’s got a busy week.”
Brynn clicked her seat belt in place and bounced in her seat. Jamie tried to ignore how m
uch he liked the sight of her soft, dark curls against the cream sweater or how the deep red scarf brought out the pink in her cheeks. When he found himself staring, he cleared his throat and turned to face the road.
“Excited?” he asked, looking at her through his peripheral vision.
She caught herself before she bounced again, smiled, and nodded.
“Starbucks drive-thru?” she asked, and he let out a breath, his shoulders relaxing as he did. That’s exactly what he needed, something normal and routine, like a cup of coffee. That would get rid of the unease.
“Hell yes,” he said, turning the key in the ignition and shifting the truck into drive.
They made it just in front of the Starbucks down the road when they heard a pop followed by an immediate change in height of Brynn’s side of the car.
She yelped, and Jamie swore.
“You’ve got to fucking be kidding me,” he said, and he maneuvered the vehicle into a loading zone outside the coffee shop.
“What?” Brynn asked. “What was that? What happened?”
Jamie threw his head back against his headrest. If his initial unease weren’t enough, this had to be some sort of sign, right? Not that he believed in signs.
“Flat tire,” he said. Then he took off his baseball cap, raking his hand through his hair before putting it back on again.
That’s when Brynn lost it. That was his only explanation for her sudden hysterical laughter. She’d cracked under the pressure, gone insane, and Jamie had literally driven her to the brink.
Still laughing, his now crazy friend undid her seat belt and turned to face him. She placed her hands on Jamie’s cheeks, forcing him to look at her.
“Glass half full!” she cried, and Jamie wondered who he should call first, the closest tire shop or some sort of doctor for Brynn.
“Are you…okay?” he asked, and she nodded, her laughter subsiding.
“God, I was so nervous about this trip. Were you? It’s probably just me. I mean, look at you, the picture of calm. You’re always the picture of calm. But Jesus, Jamie. I barely slept last night. And this morning when you showed up, I don’t know. I guess I’ve been freaking out a little bit. Are you and I going to be okay? Are we going to kill each other on this trip? What happens when I actually get to L.A. and see Spencer again?” She paused only to catch her breath, and he just sat there and listened. “But this is it!” she yelled. “This is our sign.”
He took her wrists in his hands, and she released her grip on his face.
“A sign that this trip will be apocalyptic? And since when do you believe in signs?”
She shook her head wildly.
“Not apocalyptic, silly! Don’t you see? If we take the glass half full approach, this is it. We get our travel mishap out of the way before we even leave. We can relax, sip on a soy peppermint mocha…”
“Black coffee,” Jamie interrupted, and Brynn threw her hands in the air, knocking her sun visor open and sending a small pile of paperwork straight into the side of her face. She laughed again. Regardless of this glass-half-full attitude she was adopting, neither of them were superstitious. And Jamie certainly wasn’t going to interpret them both seeing this as a sign—even though their interpretations were polar opposites.
No signs!
“Whatever. You know what I mean. Better to get a flat tire now than on the highway, right? We’re getting the hard part out of the way first. Nothing but smooth sailing from here on out.”
She looked at him, eyes bright and earnest, and he couldn’t help it. He agreed with her. That’s what Brynn did. When her passion took over, she took him along for the ride. It was one of the things he loved most about her. And maybe she was right.
A nice, relaxing breakfast while they waited for the tire to be changed—that would get them past all the awkwardness that had built up in the past week. The hard part, he thought. They could get that out of the way.
He brushed a rogue curl out of her eyes, letting his fingertips linger behind her ear.
Heart hammering in his chest, he echoed her words back to her. “Smooth sailing from here on out.”
Brynn held up her phone. “And a Monkees playlist.”
Finally, Jamie laughed, too.
Chapter Seven
Brynn was right—it was smooth sailing all the way to their first sight-seeing stop, St. Louis. They’d left early enough—even with the quick tire change—that they could still make Tulsa by dark. And so far they’d managed to avoid talking about the reunion. Brynn wasn’t sure if this was the best idea, pretending like it didn’t happen when the fact that it did happen was the reason she and Jamie were in his truck right now. Aside from Jamie’s insistence on fixing this, neither of them had mentioned that night again. Four hours, and the conversation never stalled, but it never went anywhere bordering on iffy.
Yep. Smooth sailing, all right. She wasn’t going to count the last hour when Jamie had taken away her control of the playlist. Even she had to admit that after three hours, maybe it was time for something other than the Monkees. So she settled for Jamie getting his classic rock fix with a Pandora station she set up just for him.
“Name that tune?” she asked, hoping he’d play along.
He grinned. “You mean even if it’s not all Monkees?”
She crossed her arms. “I do listen to other music. I just prefer Davy, Mickey, Mike, and Peter. A girl wants what a girl wants.” She shrugged.
The muscle in his jaw ticked, but then he relaxed into a smile again.
“Okay,” he said. “Best out of five?”
Brynn bounced in her seat and clapped. This was his favorite game. After the tire incident, she wanted to do whatever she could to assure him that the worst was over. That an amazing week lay ahead of them.
They waited for Eric Clapton’s “Layla” to end, and she tried to clear her mind, to ready it for rapid song name retrieval. But Jamie was the master. It took one lick of the guitar for him to get the first song.
“‘Shook Me All Night Long’!” he yelled, then slapped the steering wheel. “I can feel it, B. I’m gonna stay undefeated. You sure you don’t wanna just throw in the towel so you don’t embarrass yourself?”
She rolled her eyes. “Ha. Ha. Ha. Maybe I have a strategy. Did you ever think of that? I could just be waiting for the perfect moment to throw you off your game. You won’t even see it coming.”
He laughed softly, and they both broke into their best AC/DC impressions, singing along to the rest of the song.
When Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” began, Jamie called out the song title in what Brynn swore was the silent pause before the song started.
“You’re cheating!” she whined.
His shoulders shook as he laughed.
“How can I cheat at the game you started?”
She examined his phone.
“I don’t know! Maybe this is some secret playlist.”
“It’s a classic rock station, B. The app plays what it wants, not the other way around.”
She stared straight ahead, watching the road roll out in front of them as she sulked through a song she usually enjoyed. So when the next song started, she hadn’t cleared her mind. In fact, she was still sulking when the guitar intro ended and Van Morrison started singing the first verse of “Brown-Eyed Girl.”
Yet Jamie said nothing. Nothing. Even though she knew he knew the song on the first note.
Her brows pulled together, and she turned to him, the suddenly stoic driver with his jaw clenched.
“Are you letting me win?” she asked. “Because this isn’t how I wanted things to happen, you throwing the game on what I know is your favorite song.” She batted her lashes. “Come on, James. I thought I was your brown-eyed girl.”
She’d meant to tease, but as soon as the words left her lips, they felt all wrong.
He cleared his throat.
“Not cheating, B. Just zoned out.”
Gone was his easy smile and his take-no-prisoners atti
tude. As quickly as the game had begun, it ended, and Brynn somehow knew not to ask any questions.
So they listened to song after song in what was otherwise silence.
She took the current tune, Tom Petty’s “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” to steer the conversation in a new direction.
“Did you smoke in college?” she asked. “It’s funny, but of all the things we’ve done together, we never got high.”
“You don’t get high,” Jamie said, eyes still on the road.
“I tried it once,” she countered.
He smiled at this. “Yeah, but it’s not your thing.”
She thought about this for a second, not sure why she felt defensive. After all, he was right. It wasn’t her thing. She hated it the one time she tried it, but somehow him making this assessment of her college self, one he saw much less often while they spent four years at different schools, put her on edge.
“You didn’t answer my question,” she continued.
“Which was…?”
He seemed to be enjoying her agitation, the visor of his baseball hat doing nothing to hide the crinkled lines at his eyes that accompanied his grin.
“Did you smoke in school?”
At this Jamie full-on laughed. “I brewed beer in my living room. I had to while away the days of waiting with something,” he said with a chuckle. “That was it, though. Only college. And even then, never on the regular.” He let go of the wheel with his right hand and placed it over his heart. “Once I became a brewmaster, I had no choice but to pledge my life to the barley and hops. Anything else would be sacrilege.”
Brynn slapped him on the shoulder.
“Hey,” he reprimanded, though his smug grin never left his face. “No beating the driver.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Why didn’t you ever do it with me?” As soon as the words left her mouth, she rolled her eyes at herself and groaned under her breath. “Smoke, I mean. Why didn’t I know this about you?”
It was a small detail, a tiny pocket of his college life she wasn’t aware of, and she knew it shouldn’t bother her. But she thought she knew everything about the guy sitting next to her. The whole best-friend thing meant no secrets, right? It’s not like she hid anything from him. Except for stuff that dealt with feelings. Ugh. Stupid teenaged Brynn. And stupid teenaged Jamie. They were both just so…stupid.