The One That Got Away (Kingston Ale House)

by A. J. Pine

  “I can name that beer in one sip,” she said.

  “Don’t rush,” Tim told her. “I’ve got all night.”

  “Actually, do it, now,” Jamie said, and for the first time tonight she wished she could read the expression that went with his words.

  Instead she sipped. One long, slow gulp.

  “It’s a Hefeweizen,” she said, then rested the glass on the bar. “A close second to my favorite, which is a Belgian white, though this one hasn’t brewed me one yet.” She nodded toward where she thought Jamie was. Who knows? It could have been Tim. Heat coursed through her, and she closed her eyes. She saw no fireworks, but it was most definitely the Fourth of July.

  “Game over,” Jamie said.

  “No way, dude. We’re just getting started,” Tim insisted. “Drinks are on the house the rest of the night. What can I get you?” he asked Jamie, and Brynn listened to him sigh.

  “You got any Jack?”

  Chapter Twelve

  Jamie woke with a start. The room was pitch black, and it took him a moment to get his bearings, to remember he wasn’t in his apartment but instead in a hotel in Oklahoma. He grabbed his phone from the nightstand and checked the time. It was just after nine in the morning. His brows furrowed. He couldn’t reconcile the darkness of the room with what his phone was trying to tell him, and then it happened again, the noise that must have woken him. A sharp knock at the door.

  He climbed from the bed, eyes straining to make out Brynn’s form in the bed across from his. She was still asleep.

  There had been Jack at the bar last night, but he only drank one shot, regardless of how many times Tim insisted he have one more. He knew Brynn would want to get on the road as soon as her glasses arrived. While Tulsa was their planned first stop, they weren’t doing much of the tourist thing like they had in St. Louis. Last night was simply to rest—and to see a side of Brynn he never knew was there. Sure, he’d always found her beautiful, but she had never let on that she knew it. That’s one of the things he loved, how unassuming she was.

  But last night she floored him, and thank God she couldn’t see the look on his face when she dipped her tongue into the foam of that beer. Her hair in a haphazard bun atop her head, eyes closed in concentration, recognizing the beer before she officially tasted it. Nothing had ever turned him on more.

  As he approached the door, he finally took note of his attire—shirtless but jeans still on from last night. This was a good thing, because imagining what Brynn did at the bar had the same effect on him as watching her do it in real time, and his erection strained against the denim.

  One more round of knocking sounded before he reached the door.

  “Just a sec,” he said, his throat dry and hoarse.

  When he opened the door, a young woman stood there. She wore an unzipped fleece jacket, under which was a green T-shirt, the image of Yoda dead center on her torso and the letters OOYL stretched across her chest.

  “That’s funny,” Jamie said.

  “You’re half naked,” she responded. “And you owe me two hundred fifty bucks.”

  “Excuse me?”

  The question came from behind him. Brynn.

  Why was it so dark in here? He turned to face Brynn.

  Her hair was crazy. There was no other way to describe it than tornado-like. Creases from her pillowcase lined her cheek, and she squinted either at the light coming in from the door, or to try to make out the scene before her, or both.

  It was her T-shirt, though, that caught his eye. Her Chicago Cubs shirt, the one she’d had since high school. Brynn wasn’t even a Cubs fan, but she bought the shirt to wear to school for a team-themed spirit day, and when Jamie asked why she didn’t borrow a Sox shirt from him, she claimed she didn’t want to wear a shirt two sizes too big.

  Why hadn’t she bought herself a Sox shirt? he’d asked, and her only response was that she wanted something with a little color. She wouldn’t get rid of the shirt, so Jamie made her promise she’d never wear it when she was out with him. He guessed this was her way of bending the rules since they weren’t technically out.

  As much as it should have been the team represented by the shirt that got Jamie’s attention, it was the realization that he hadn’t seen her in the shirt since high school. And that maybe the shape of her upper body had changed since they were teens. And maybe—just maybe—now would be a good time for her to put on her bra.

  “Ahem.” The sound came from the girl at the door.

  “Who is it?” Brynn asked. “What time is it? And why is there, like, zero evidence of daylight in here?”

  Jamie looked from girl to girl, only sure of one of the answers. He opened his mouth to speak, but the girl outside the door’s threshold beat him to it.

  “I’m Lauren. It’s nine fifteen. I heard this place has some sweet blackout shades. And I have a package to deliver to a Brynn Chandler.”

  Finally, Jamie thought. Answers.

  Brynn clapped her hands together and squealed. Then she leaped at Jamie, depth perception be damned, and flung her arms around his neck.

  “My glasses! You did it! Oh my God, thank you.”

  She squinted hard toward Lauren, no doubt Brynn’s new best friend, and reached for the package Jamie hadn’t noticed in the girl’s hand.

  “I need you to sign and pay first,” she said. “Two-fifty, and I forgot my scanner, so I hope you have cash. Otherwise I gotta drive an hour there and back again.”

  Jamie found his wallet on the dresser and counted out its contents. Two hundred and seventy-five bucks, enough for the glasses, a small tip, and a little left over for housekeeping. They’d have to hit an ATM on their way out of town.

  “Here you go,” he said, and then signed for the glasses since Lauren wouldn’t hand them over until he did so. As soon as she relinquished the item, he thanked her and closed the door.

  “Open it, Jamie. Open, open, open!”

  He laughed as he freed the item from inside the box and then placed the glasses gingerly on Brynn’s face.

  She crinkled up her nose.

  “Is that what you’ve always looked like?”

  He crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Very funny.”

  Then she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, and Jamie’s eyes lingered on the snug Cubs T-shirt.

  “Shit,” she said. “I need a shower.”

  Jamie felt himself pressed firm against his jeans and knew he had to take evasive action.

  “Me first!” he said, and like a bratty child, hopped into the bathroom and slammed the door shut behind him. “Don’t worry,” he called out to her. “I won’t use all the hot water.”

  In fact, he didn’t use any hot water at all.

  …

  Is that what you’ve always looked like?

  That’s the best she could do? What else was she supposed to come up with when after a day without sight and a night like last night the first thing she sees is Jamie, hair rumpled with sleep, and the whole no-shirt-with-jeans thing happening.

  These ways she’d been seeing him since the trip began…it was just projection. She was projecting her feelings about Spencer—about the possibility of Spencer—on Jamie. That had to be it.

  She spun slowly, taking in the room’s polished wood floor, its four-poster wooden beds and ornately patterned wallpaper. This was no motel, and Brynn knew it wasn’t a place Jamie would have stayed alone. Then there was the situation of the glasses. She blamed him again, guilted him into paying for the courier, and now on top of whatever this room had cost him, he just dropped two hundred fifty dollars cash so she could see.

  She flopped down on the bed and listened to the shower water run, going over their pattern for the past week. It seemed Jamie was always opening doors at the wrong time, and Brynn was always losing something when he did—a contact, Spencer, a contact again. For two people who were supposed to be the best of friends, they had a shitty rhythm. She didn’t want to blame Jamie when things got t
hrown out of whack, but he always seemed to be there when they did.

  Yet he always picked up the pieces when she couldn’t. Contact in her apartment sink? Jamie to the rescue. Spoiled kiss (second attempt in ten years) with Spencer Matthews? Jamie brings her to California. Contact lost in a Galena, Kansas, gas station? Jamie gets her glasses to her by morning. Maybe he had some work to do in the opening doors department, but he did pretty well with the friendship.

  Brynn sighed, and then she felt the urgency that came with waking up—the urgency to pee.

  She popped back up and padded to the bathroom door. A light knock.

  “Jamie? Can I come in to pee?”

  He didn’t answer, so she knocked harder and then cracked the door open.

  “Jamie?”

  “Yeah?”

  His one word dripped with exhaustion, and she wondered if she should offer to drive again even though she knew what his answer would be.

  “Can I sneak in to pee?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  She opened the door wide, expecting to hit a wall of steam, but the air in the bathroom was as cool and clear as that out in the bedroom.

  “Don’t listen,” she said as she slid down her shorts and underwear. “And don’t peek, either.”

  “Wouldn’t think of it.”

  She expected him to tease her, but his words were clipped and compliant.

  “I’m gonna flush, okay? Just warning you.”

  He didn’t respond, so she assumed he was enjoying his shower, waking himself up for the long day ahead.

  “Thank you, by the way.”

  Brynn decided this was as good a time as any to have a chat, especially since she didn’t have to see him and think about him shirtless in his jeans. Because now he was naked in the shower and, oh God, she needed to keep talking and stop thinking.

  “Thank you,” she started again. “For my glasses, for bringing us to this nice place last night, for the fun with Tim in the bar.” She took his silence as permission to continue. “I know I can be difficult when things don’t work in my favor, like yesterday. And last week. But you never lose your patience with me, Jamie. You should, but you don’t. So—thanks. I’m going to pay you back that two-fifty when we get to an ATM. That part’s not on you.”

  He remained silent, and she hoped she hadn’t misread his smile when he gave her the glasses. Although, if he was angry with her, she wouldn’t blame him. Maybe this trip wouldn’t exactly be glass-half-full the whole way through. But she promised herself this—for the rest of the journey, she was going to go with the flow. Roll with the punches. Take whatever came at her and make the best of it. That was how she’d get to the finish line and guarantee that when she arrived at Spencer’s book launch, she’d be in the best place—in her head and in her heart—for their reunion.

  She headed for the bathroom door and was almost out of the room when Jamie popped his head around the shower curtain.

  “You’re welcome, Sleepy Jean,” he said. “I just—need a few more minutes to wake up. Order us some coffee?”

  She smiled at him. “Sure.” She pulled the door closed behind her and filled her mind with thoughts of steamed milk and caffeine, certainly not with what lay behind the shower curtain.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jamie hadn’t charged his phone since they arrived in Tulsa. His mind seemed to be constantly preoccupied with things he wanted to put off, but undealt-with thoughts liked to creep up when he least expected them—like when a certain girl licked the head off a draft beer or when that same girl wore a baseball shirt that made him crazy. So when he finally plugged his phone into its car charger as they readied themselves to leave Tulsa, of course there was a text waiting from Annie. No, it wasn’t waiting. It was taunting. Goading. Reminding him that two days into their trip, he was no closer to telling Brynn the truth as he was running out of time before handing her off to another guy.

  Annie: Are you two engaged yet? If not, did you at least do it?

  Do it? Jamie was sure his cold shower this morning was pretty much the opposite of doing it. Not that he wasn’t thinking about, well, it.

  He texted back:

  Plans delayed due to temporary blindness but getting back on the rails today.

  Then he turned his phone to silent and locked his screen. He didn’t have the energy to explain any further, so he put the truck in drive and pulled up to the lobby door where he’d left Brynn waiting with her suitcase.

  He hopped out of the truck to grab her stuff and toss it in the back of the cab.

  “James Fenimore Kingston, have you seen this hotel? It’s gorgeous. I can’t believe I missed it!” She looked over her shoulder at the hotel as Jamie ushered her to the car.

  He opened the passenger door for her and rolled his eyes.

  “My middle name isn’t Fenimore.”

  “It should be.”

  “I have a perfectly adequate middle name,” he told her.

  This argument wasn’t new. At some point it would take effort and research for her to keep up with the replacement middle names, but his grandfather’s name, David, never seemed to do when Brynn wanted to hyperbolize. And “Hyperbole” was her middle name whenever she was over-the-top excited. Just plain James meant she was pissed, but throw in another famous James’s name, and the moniker took on a whole new tone. Regaining her sight and seeing the hotel he wished she could have seen last night was one of those instances.

  James Fenimore, James Byron, James Augustine—he was pretty sure he was the only person he knew, next to Brynn, with the knowledge of James Joyce’s full name. It was the day they both graduated college, and though they hadn’t seen each other since the Christmas before, when Brynn called him on the phone, it was like he’d just left her house after a late-night SNL viewing.

  “James Augustin Aloysius Kingston. You are graduating college today.”

  He had been nervous that morning. Nervous and excited and clueless and all-knowing at the same time. But Brynn’s voice, and her welcomed teasing, grounded him in the moment.

  “I am,” he’d said. “And so are you.”

  “I think this means we have to be grown-ups now. Did you get a manual? Because I didn’t get a manual.”

  He knew Brynn had called for him—to ease his mind about that day—but the tremor in her voice said she needed him, too.

  “No manual,” he’d told her. “I think we just figure it out as we go.”

  “Figure it out together?”

  “Deal.”

  That had been it. While they’d stayed friends, best friends, throughout college, there was always that undercurrent of strain. College gave them the physical and emotional distance they needed, and Jamie was sure they were stronger for it. When she called him that morning, addressing him with one of her too important middle names, Jamie knew they were back—picking up the pieces of where they were when this thing between them almost broke.

  They were stronger that day, Sleepy Jean and Jamie, and had grown stronger ever since. Now he wanted to cross that uncrossable line, which could be great, but it could also break them completely.

  “Yes,” he finally said, wondering what else she might see more clearly after a day of blindness. “The hotel is pretty nice.”

  He closed her door and made his way to the driver’s side of the vehicle. He took a deep breath.

  See it, B. See us.

  Jamie wasn’t practiced in the art of telepathic suggestion, but he thought he’d give it a try. Because shit, this would be so much easier if Brynn would just realize she felt the same about him as he did about her. Fucking doubt. It ate a hole in his insides. He never doubted anything—not his work, not how the women he dated felt about him—and he was beginning to understand why.

  His job was the easy part. He was good at what he did. Science came naturally to him, and the science of brewing even more so. And women? Well, his social life wasn’t lacking. But connection—something was missing there. He couldn’t remember the las
t woman he truly connected with enough that when the relationship ended he regretted its ending. They all just seemed to run their course, or in the case of Liz, run completely off track when he finally saw what was right in front of him—what had always been in front of him, but he’d been too scared to act. Too scared to lose. Because regret would not be enough when it came to losing Brynn.

  “Hey, sweetie. Aliens take possession on your walk around the truck?”

  He looked at Brynn, who was sitting next to him in the vehicle, the one he hadn’t remembered entering. His left hand gripped the wheel, and his right was at the ready with the key slotted into the ignition.

  “Shit,” he said under his breath. And then louder. “I was just thinking.”

  She nudged his shoulder. “Can you think and drive? Because I’m a little worried about your multitasking abilities right now.”

  She slid her glasses to the tip of her nose and inclined her head toward him, looking over the top of her frames. He let out a laugh, one that broke whatever spell he was under for the moment.

  “Can you even see me when you do that? You’re just south of making eye contact, you know. But my nose will take your look into account.”

  She sighed, resituating her glasses and then, proving Jamie right, readjusting her gaze so they were eye-to-eye.

  “Got you to laugh, Mr. Serious. What’s up with you, anyway?”

  He started the truck. He could multitask. There was no question about that. But he sure as hell didn’t want to tell her what was up, at least not when it felt so one-sided.

  “Ready to hit Amarillo?” he asked, and she settled into her seat and nodded, not pressing him to answer her question, and so he didn’t. “I’ve gotta fill up first.”

  At that, Brynn began rummaging through her bag, and when her hands emerged, she thrust two twenty dollar bills at him. Jamie took the cash, looked at it, and then tucked it into the center console cup holder so he could shift into first and stop blocking the hotel’s entrance.