by A. J. Pine
“What’s this for?” he asked.
“Gas,” she said. “I didn’t think I had any cash left. But sometimes I have a few bills in one of the credit card slots in my wallet.”
Jamie raised a brow, and she continued.
“Whenever someone gets mugged in a movie, they always make them open up the cash pocket so they can see the contents, make sure they’re getting it all.”
He nodded, a slow smile spreading across his face.
“And you want to outsmart all those muggers trolling the hipsters in Lincoln Park.”
She crossed her arms. “If they take everything, how will I hail a cab for help?”
Jamie scrubbed his hand across the stubble on his chin.
“Cabs do take credit cards.”
Brynn sighed and opened her mouth to reply, but he cut her off.
“And what if they take the whole wallet?”
“Then I guess they’ll get a little surprise after I cancel my credit cards.” Brynn rolled her eyes. “You’re making fun of me, but if I didn’t hide my emergency cash from the muggers, we’d have none right now.”
Jamie pulled into the first gas station they came across, one that housed two pumps and a pay hut that looked like it had room for no more than the person who sat in it along with his cash register. Jamie shook his head as he eyed the sign in the small window: Computer down. Cash only.
A self-satisfied grin greeted him when he turned to face Brynn.
“You’re welcome,” she said.
He put the truck in park and killed the engine.
“You know, for someone who makes her living working with numbers, you have a pretty twisted sense of logic.”
“All part of my charm,” she said. And she was right.
Jamie grabbed the forty bucks, grateful he had just half a tank to fill, and decided that when they actually did find a working ATM that he’d grab an extra twenty and slip it behind his debit card.
Chapter Fourteen
“Tell me about the bar. It’s the only part I didn’t get to see for myself.”
Brynn closed her eyes, waiting for Jamie to launch into a description of the place where she had the most sensual beer drinking experience she could remember. But remembering the way she tasted the foam somehow brought her to thoughts of Jamie this morning as he popped his head out from behind the shower curtain. And then her mind conjured images of Jamie from last summer, trim and tan, playing volleyball with his buddies at the beach. Only the net and the volleyball quickly disappeared, and the image of him wearing nothing but his swim trunks augmented the quick glimpse she got of his covered-with-beads-of-water torso. Her breath quickened, and she opened her eyes just as he gave her a sideways glance.
Brynn took off her glasses and kept her eyes open.
“Didn’t we just blow all our remaining cash so you could get those back?”
She nodded but looked straight ahead, no farther than what was right in front of the windshield, the blurry sight of the road her main focus. Sure, it made her dizzy, but not half as much as the bewilderment she felt when thinking of Jamie naked in the shower. Because she never thought of Jamie naked in the shower. And shit. Naked in the shower were the only words attaching themselves to the idea of him at the moment, so the blurry street it would be.
“I want you to describe the bar to me, and I’ll concentrate better if I can’t see anything else.”
Jamie seemed to believe the half-truth because he launched into his recollection of the Campbell Lounge almost immediately.
“The lights were pretty low,” he started, and she nodded.
“I could tell. Felt cozy.” A small smile settled onto her face, and tension she didn’t know she was carrying ebbed out, her shoulders relaxing and her eyes falling shut once more. Her mind played no tricks now as she concentrated on Jamie’s voice.
“It was. Lots of dark wood from the floors to the bar top.”
“Mmmm hmmm.” She produced the image in her mind’s eye, a floor planked with dark hardwood, stools lining the rustic-looking bar. She had no idea if the picture in her head fit what Jamie actually saw, but it felt nice, thinking of the two of them—and Tim, of course—in a place like that.
Jamie cleared his throat, the sound jarring her so that her eyes opened with a start, and she put her glasses back on. When she looked at him, he opened his mouth to say something, but her phone chirped with a text notification, and she dug in her bag to see who it was.
“Oh,” she said, eyes on the phone’s screen.
“Holly?” he asked, his voice tight, and Brynn had a momentary urge to lie. But she didn’t lie to Jamie, or to anyone for that matter. Even if she did, he’d see through her. The point was that she had the urge, irrational as it was, not to tell Jamie who had sent the text.
“It’s Spencer,” she said, forcing a cheery nonchalance to her tone and then immediately regretting doing it. Why? Spencer Matthews, soon-to-be-published author and senior year crush, just texted her to say he was thinking about her, that he was looking forward to seeing her again.
This was good news—all the encouragement she needed after wondering if she was making a fool out of herself for taking this trip. When she told Spencer she was coming, he’d acted pleased, but he could have just meant to be polite. Now he texted her with no prompting, thought about her, and she had to remind herself that this was what she wanted—the plan finally coming to fruition.
Yet, at the same time…
“You should get some sleep or something,” Jamie said, interrupting her thought. “We have a long drive, and the rest of it’s going to pretty much look like this until we hit desert.”
Brynn peered through her thick lenses out onto the rolling green earth passing them by. Trees lined the rural expanse, and other than the thin cloud wisps stitching the sky above, the trees rose into what looked almost like a sea overhead.
They’d slept until nine, but Jamie’s voice was tight, the suggestion evidence that he no longer wanted to discuss last night—or anything for that matter. Her breath hitched, and she wanted to say something, that it was all wrong for the day to look like this and Jamie to write it off as not worth the view. They should stop, take a picture. Or better yet, she should close her eyes, but not to sleep. She could take off her glasses again and ask him to narrate the scene, because something made her want to see it through his eyes.
“I’m not tired,” she said, mirroring the words she said last night, the ones that led to their beer-tasting escapade and a night that was perfect other than temporary blindness.
“I just concentrate better when we’re not talking, and I didn’t want you to be bored,” Jamie countered. “So if it’s all the same to you, I’m just going to pay attention to the road for a bit.”
“Maybe we should chill and have a leisurely breakfast,” she said, ignoring the coffee cups in the cup holders between them. “That got us off on the right foot for the first leg of the journey.” If you didn’t count the flat tire that forced them to do so.
“I’m fine.”
“I could drive, even, if you want to take a break from concentrating today. For real. It’s all highway, so your transmission should be safe.”
She offered a weak smile, but Jamie didn’t take the bait. And while she wasn’t sure she wanted to ask, she knew she should. Because the Spencer thing couldn’t still be an issue. Brynn had gotten past the kiss. Jamie should have gotten past whatever he felt about her and Spencer. Because if he hadn’t, he’d tell her, right?
“James Earl Jones Kingston, is everything…”
“I said I’m fine, B. Just practicing safe driving.”
Yet no hint of a smile, even when she pulled out the James Earl Jones. In fact, he wouldn’t even look at her when she spoke. Safe driving. That didn’t mean he couldn’t throw her a glance or offer a quick grin. But she wouldn’t push it.
Jamie nodded in the general vicinity of the radio, and she knew the conversation was over when he gave her control of the
tunes.
She scrolled through the music files on her phone, but somehow “Daydream Believer” didn’t feel quite right. So she played with the tuner until a local station came in with minimal static.
Old-school hair-band music, Jamie’s favorite next to classic rock. But just as Motley Crue’s “Kickstart My Heart” blared from the speakers, Jamie hit the power button.
“Headache,” he said.
“I’ve got ibuprofen,” she said.
“I’m fine.” He leaned in to the driver’s side door, as if he didn’t have enough room in his seat.
She gave up and closed her eyes, resting her temple against the cool glass of the window and sliding to the edge of her seat as well.
Maybe she was tired after all.
Chapter Fifteen
What the hell had he been thinking taking Brynn with him on this trip?
Safe driving his ass. Jamie couldn’t keep his eyes on the road for long, his head constantly drifting to the right to see if she was still sleeping. He wanted to brush the curls out of her face, skim the back of his fingers over her cheek. Instead he gritted his teeth and white knuckled the steering wheel, berating himself for thinking this trip would be anything more than what he offered her.
If it had been just him in the truck, cruising along Route 66 (or, technically, I-40) for the last five hours, he’d have filled at least four of those hours with the recent Brew Strong podcasts he’d missed. He’d have appreciated watching the trees lining the route slowly morphing to those impressive yet mildly freaky white windmills that now seemed to be judging him and his life decisions. And instead of pulling off on to the frontage road from mere obligation, he’d be marveling at the Cadillac Ranch art installation in the cow pasture he was now standing in as he wondered if his passenger would wake up or miss the stop completely.
It didn’t help that he hated himself a little more with each mile for putting his ego and his heart through such torture—and also for deceiving Brynn. He wasn’t one for half-truths. Nor was he an ulterior motives kind of guy. Yet here he was, his agenda for this trip a far cry from hers.
He shook the can of black spray paint as he stared at the line of graffitied cars half buried in the dirt at angled nosedives. He’d come prepared. He wasn’t sure what he’d have wanted to add to make his mark if he’d been here alone, but when he decided to take Brynn with him, he was sure they’d be doing this together, contributing something that signified their often zigzagging journey to what should have been a happy ending. But all it took was one damn text to remind him that while his agenda had been to finally make things right with Brynn, her agenda was someone else entirely. Annie was right. He was a fucking idiot. But then again, he always had been when it came to Brynn. Why this surprised him now, he didn’t know.
“Welp…” He heard her voice from behind. “If anyone needs a lesson on how to freak a girl out, leave her asleep in a vehicle on the side of the road and let her wake up alone.”
She was out cold when they’d pulled up, and at the time he didn’t see the sense in waking her. He was going to do his thing with the spray paint and be back in the car before she knew they’d stopped. In hindsight, he could see how maybe it wasn’t the best decision to leave her on her own in the truck in such a strange place.
Jamie opened his mouth to apologize until she strode up next to him and he laid his eyes on what she was wearing. The weather had warmed the closer they got to California. This afternoon in Amarillo it was a sunny eighty-three degrees, a far cry from the wet and windy autumn they’d left in Chicago. Brynn had apparently layered in anticipation because, instead of the jacket she’d had on when she got into the car in Tulsa, she now wore only a simple white button-down with jeans. The light cotton was wrinkled from the hours in the car, but that’s not what caught his eye. It was the one-too-far she’d gone with leaving the top unbuttoned. In fact, he was sure she hadn’t meant to show him the cream-colored lace of her bra, let alone the pink flesh of her nipple that peeked out of the demi-cup.
Yes, Brynn and Annie had schooled him on bra cup definitions when they were freshmen in high school, when he was still too squirrelly to know the difference between being horny all the time and being in love with his best friend. But fucking Christ on a cracker, he knew the difference now, and he could safely say that at that very moment he was experiencing both.
He didn’t have to say anything because Brynn followed his bug-eyed stare right to the source, and she barked out a laugh. Her skin turned as pink as the part he wasn’t supposed to see, and she quickly buttoned not only the one that had come undone but one more above it for safe measure.
“I guess it’s a good thing it’s just us on the side of this creepy little road, right?” she asked, crossing her arms not-so-nonchalantly over her chest. “Is it legal to do that?”
She nodded toward the can of paint he’d forgotten was in his hand, and Jamie cleared his throat. He’d been doing a lot of that lately.
“It’s kind of an unwritten rule that tourists can, um, contribute…to the art.” He gave her a quick explanation of Cadillac Ranch, the art exhibit turned collaborative tourist experience.
Brynn walked up to the car closest to them, reading some of the inscriptions already on it.
Kisses and hugs to our fam + friends.
Jack was here.
Randy 08.
“Well,” she said. “I don’t think you can top Randy 08.We might as well just go home.”
Jamie laughed. He’d been choking on bitterness for five hours, the taste of it burning a hole in his stomach, yet all she had to do was say something so simply Brynn, and he laughed. No matter what his feelings were for this girl—this woman—she was the friend who could always make him smile, and maybe that didn’t have to change. He got over her once before, didn’t he? Enough to live his life without pining, at least. He could do it again if it meant they’d always have this.
She walked around the half-buried car, running her fingers along the undercarriage before ending up back where she began, facing him.
“Are you still fine?” she asked, her eyes hesitant behind their protective glass. And his gut twisted at the way he’d treated her when she’d received Spencer’s text. She didn’t deserve his jealous reaction or the way he froze her out after that. He wasn’t alone on this trip, but for the past five hours he’d acted like he was, and the only person he had to blame for missing out on actually spending that time with Brynn, instead of alongside her, was himself.
He closed the distance between them but stopped short of his usual gesture, a kiss to the top of her head. Instead he used his free hand to tug on one of her curls.
“Better than fine, Sleepy Jean.”
At this she laughed. “I can’t believe I passed out for…how long has it been?”
He spread his arms wide as if greeting her.
“Welcome to Amarillo.”
…
Brynn toed the dirt at her feet with the worn white rubber of her favorite gray Chuck Taylors. She’d missed the whole day? She’d roused a few times from her slumber, but she couldn’t bring herself to cut through the tension that filled the space between her and Jamie in the truck. So she’d chosen more sleep each time instead of making the first move.
She could feel it now, the clearing of the air between them, but it also felt like something had shifted. An acceptance, almost, coming from both of them. But an acceptance of what? His smile, the way he wrapped her hair around his finger and gave it a playful yank, was an apology of sorts. Jamie didn’t need to say it, because she felt it.
Now, when she swatted his hand away and poked him in the belly—were his abs always that hard?—she hoped he read that as her I’m sorry. Brynn wasn’t sure what she was sorry for or if she even owed him an apology, but as much as she wanted this trip to have the ending she’d been waiting for, she wanted to know that she and Jamie would be okay when it was over, too. And right now she was pretty sure they would be.
“Do you want
to do the honors?” Jamie held the can of paint in her direction, but she shook her head.
“This is your trip, James. I’m just a stowaway. Do whatever you would have done if I weren’t here.”
Jamie shrugged as he walked toward the car and then shook out his arms in exaggerated preparation, and she watched his black T-shirt sleeves pull taut against his biceps. She was grateful his back was to her now so he couldn’t see her involuntarily lick her lips, an action she rationalized as a response to the dry Texas heat and not the warmth pooling inside of her.
He stood facing the roof of the buried car and then in one leap was standing on it right where it framed the back windshield.
“Jesus!” Brynn blurted the word, her heart leaping as Jamie faltered for a millisecond and then righted himself. She had lurched forward with the word and then laughed at the ridiculous gesture. It’s not like she could have caught him if he fell. No way in hell. Instead they would have both lain in a broken heap until another car full of tourists with spray cans showed up.
Jamie winked at her, and this time the voice in her head was the one to scream Jesus!
You know I’ll always catch you, right?
Those were Jamie’s words, the ones he’d spoken to her the night of the reunion when she almost bit it on the sidewalk outside her apartment and again the next morning when he’d kept her from face-planting on the wooden stairs before brunch. She’d been so focused on not needing saving that she couldn’t see past her own stubbornness, the fear that made her unwilling to let him back in.
But holy fucking shit. She got it. Maybe they’d both crack wide open if he fell and she tried to catch him, but oh my God. She wanted to be the one to break his fall.
Damn it.
Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.
Jamie was dating Liz, and she was on her way to Spencer, and now was not anywhere near the right time for—for—these feelings. Not halfway between Chicago and L.A. with him almost killing himself while spray-painting his version of the White Sox logo on a half-buried Cadillac. And certainly not ten years after her teenaged self went down this road only to have him slam on the brakes before they got past their first kiss.