by A. J. Pine
“Have you ever stopped to think,” she started, “that you might be forcing her to choose him? You push her far enough away, she’s going to eventually keep moving in that direction on her own.”
He cleared his throat. Either the Arizona desert was making it dry, or he was swallowing back the tiniest inkling that maybe she could be right. Because she wasn’t right. Right?
“That’s actually the complete opposite of what I’m doing. I’m letting her be sure of what she wants—of who she wants. I’m also showing her that I can say fuck you to my own fear if it means she gets what she wants in the end. I don’t want her to be with me and then weeks, months, or even years later still wonder what would have happened if she’d gone to that book launch. I can’t live in the possibility of that doubt. I’ve already been doing it for ten years.”
Annie sighed. Then she sighed again, and Jamie groaned.
“Just say whatever it is you want to say, Annie. It can’t get much worse than it already is.”
He paced while she hesitated.
“Okay,” she started, and something in her tone calmed his frenetic energy. “Jamie, I know about that summer after graduation.”
Huh. So maybe this could get worse. She waited a beat, probably to give him the chance to play dumb, but he knew better. Annie knew. Of course she knew.
“I figured you might,” he said.
“Ha!” she yelled, and he had to pull the phone from his ear. “Lucky guess, actually! I thought something was up, but I was never able to put my finger on it until now. Damn that girl can keep a secret when it comes to you. Okay, tell me everything.”
“Christ,” he hissed and ran his fingers through his hair.
“Spill it, Kingston. Your future with this girl depends on it, and I may be your only hope.”
He shook his head. “Thanks a lot, Obi Wan. I appreciate the manipulation.” But Annie was right. She might be his only shot at cleaning up the mess that was him and his best friend.
“You know about the mono the night of the party, right? The party, where something was finally going to happen between the love of my life and the guy she drooled over for the entire year.”
Annie took in a sharp breath. “Love of your life. God, tell me you told her that.”
He shook his head and realized she couldn’t see him. Whatever—he didn’t want to confirm what she already knew. Maybe he finally told Brynn he loved her, but he hadn’t quite put it like that—the finality of it, that there was no one before her and certainly would be no one after, at least not a woman he’d love like her. No matter who her first choice was, Brynn would always be his.
“So she missed the party,” he continued. “And I took her to urgent care because her parents were downtown.”
“Yeah, I got that part,” Annie said. “Tell me the part I missed.”
He felt like he was seventeen again, reliving that night. He’d played it over and over in his head countless times throughout the years, but he’d never spoken of it out loud. That wasn’t his thing—talking about stuff. Unless it was with Brynn. But this night was the one part of his life he couldn’t hash out with his best friend because after he told her they were better keeping things as they were, Brynn made him promise not to bring it up again.
“I stayed with her, and nothing really happened. She fell asleep on the couch watching SNL. Her fever broke, and when she woke up and saw that I hadn’t left her, she told me she was supposed to get kissed that night.”
He could swear Annie had stopped breathing.
“You still there?” he asked.
“Did you kiss her?”
He nodded, again remembering she couldn’t see him, so he offered verbal confirmation.
“She asked me to. Of course I kissed her. I was in love with her, enough that I freaked out as soon as it was done. All I kept thinking was if I hadn’t been there, it would have been him.”
“And then your parents split.”
Wow. She was good.
“Yep. And all I kept telling myself was how that would be me and Brynn someday, how even if we had this fantastic summer, she would have always seen me as her consolation prize, and eventually she would have resented me. And I would have lost her completely.”
This was the part he hated reliving, the short-lived excitement at the possibility of them followed by what he saw as their eventual reality.
“She would always be in my life if we stayed friends. That’s what I told myself then, and I guess to an extent I was right. We’ve been friends ever since.”
“But you were in love with her. You are in love with her. Feeling that way and keeping it from Brynn—that doesn’t make for the best friendship.”
No, it didn’t. He hadn’t just violated her trust for the past two weeks. It had been the whole decade. And any other woman he’d dated between then and now—Liz included—he’d violated their trust, too. He didn’t need to cheat to be unfaithful to any of his girlfriends because, if he really admitted it, he had always been unfaithful with his heart. He knew that now.
“Did you ever once think that maybe Brynn has been living with her own brand of doubt these past ten years?”
He squinted in the midmorning sun and swore under his breath for leaving his Sox hat on the passenger seat of the truck.
“I don’t follow.” He was, however, following the time ticking away as he waited for Mickey to install a new battery and starter in the truck. Every minute he was stuck in Holbrook put another mile between him and Brynn.
“What if that kiss,” Annie went on, “was Brynn’s realization that Spencer never was the guy, that it was you and she just didn’t know it yet?”
He shook his head. “I was in the right place at the right time. You didn’t see her that night. She was ready to go to that party even though she was burning up with a fever and couldn’t swallow her own saliva without crying.”
Annie laughed, and Jamie’s jaw clenched. He was thrilled she was enjoying this.
“But she didn’t go. And maybe she wasn’t supposed to.” Great. Now Annie believed in signs? “You can’t be that blind,” she continued. “Can you? It’s not like you even initiated the kiss. She did. Plus, weren’t you the one who called things off before they were ever on?”
“I didn’t know how else not to mess things up between us.”
The logic sounded warped when he said it out loud, but it made sense to him then. He’d wanted Brynn. He wasn’t denying that. But he needed her to be more for him that summer than he could have been for her. He needed his friend and to know he’d never lose her.
“Honey, you guys messed things up the second you sucked the ChapStick off her lips,” she said. “But God, Jamie. It all makes sense, now. How often do you think Brynn came to me upset about missing that party? Do you want to know how much she pined for Spencer Matthews after that night? And don’t bother answering, because it’s a rhetorical question, and I’m going to tell you whether you want the answer or not.”
Jamie was leaning pretty far toward not, but he kept his mouth shut since Annie was obviously on a roll. He squeezed his eyes closed to shield himself against the blow. He held his breath. If he wasn’t holding the phone in his hand, he would have plugged his ears and yelled Lalalalalala like a child throwing a tantrum, because the one thing he’d never asked Brynn after that night was the one thing he knew he couldn’t bear to hear.
“Not one bit,” she said.
Jamie opened his eyes, but he still held his breath until the word left his mouth.
“What?”
“Not one time that whole summer did Brynn mention not kissing Spencer. Not one time did she mention that boy. At all.”
Mickey poked his head out of the shop, Jamie’s keys in his hand. It was ten thirty, and the car was ready to go. Jamie held up a finger, letting the man know he’d be right there.
“I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me, Annie.”
She groaned. “It was you, you idiot.” Again with the idio
t? “It had to be you. A whole year she goes on and on about finally getting Spencer to notice her, and then poof! She misses her big night and never mentions him again? She doesn’t tell me about this epic kiss you guys must have had, one that seemed to have wiped Spencer Matthews off the map. Instead she spends her summer with the same guy she always hangs with—you. Even after you kissed her and rejected her. And now you’re doing it again. A girl can only take so much before she says ‘fuck it’ to the hand she’s dealt and travels across the country for a new deck.”
Jamie’s head was spinning.
“Rejected her? What the hell? I was in love with her. I’ve always been in love with her. I thought she liked…all she talked about was…a whole year, Annie. For a whole year she never saw me like I saw her. And then…I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t be her second choice. Just like now. Fuck.” He finally understood exactly what he was doing. “I’m not giving her a choice, am I? I’m making her choose him.”
He was inside the shop now, handing Mickey his credit card and not even looking at the invoice. Whatever it cost, he was paying the sum and getting the hell out of Holbrook. Knitting lady was still there, eyeing him over her needles. He didn’t care. He just needed to leave.
“If it helps, I think she’s an idiot, too,” Annie said. “And then this reunion thing—you both spent a decade convincing yourselves you were better off as friends, and part of that must have been Brynn convincing herself that maybe she was supposed to kiss Spencer that night. If it was wrong to kiss you, then it must have been right to kiss him. But enough is enough. The two of you are finally driving me to insanity. I’m done. Ten years is my statute of limitations on aiding and abetting both of your scared stupidity.”
Brynn had said in Amarillo that he’d broken her heart that summer, that she would have chosen him then, but he rationalized it was the heightened emotion of their newlywed kiss—and the heightened everything that happened afterward. She couldn’t have fallen in love with him from one kiss when they were seventeen.
Then again, he fell in love with her without their lips ever touching. Kissing her that night was everything, but that’s not what made him fall in love or what kept him in love with her for ten years, even if he wouldn’t admit it. It was all the other stuff that made Brynn Brynn—her ridiculous love of the Monkees; her hair in that crazy bun she’d only wear in front of Holly or him; the way she felt everything so deeply it radiated into her movement, sometimes so much that she stabbed a guy with a letter opener or poked him in the eye. It was her fear of heights and her spur-of-the-moment determination to face it. She was everything that made him fall in love. But she was also the nail in the coffin of his fear. Loving her was terrifying. The thought of losing her damn near paralyzed him. Now he let fear take the wheel again, steering Brynn back to a guy who’d be happy to swoop in and clean up the mess that Jamie kept making.
“I’m a fucking idiot,” he said, and Mickey the mechanic and knitting lady both uttered a “What?” in unison. But Jamie waved them off and signed the credit card receipt.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Annie said, her words dripping with exhaustion.
“I gotta go. And I need to do this right. Don’t call her. Or Holly. It needs to be me and only me.” Maybe she was right about how Brynn felt. Maybe she wasn’t. Either way, Jamie knew how he felt. Brynn was his best friend, and he never wanted to lose that. But he also wanted more. He needed more, and he could either let his fear keep pushing her away or he could get the hell out of Holbrook and show Brynn that he’s the right guy, one she can trust, but who’s just had some shit timing.
“My lips are sealed, James. Go get her.”
Jamie trusted Jeremy to take care of things in L.A. today. Sure, if anything went wrong, he’d lose his spot at the fest. But he would survive that.
He couldn’t survive losing Brynn.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Turkey jerky and Twizzlers wasn’t exactly the breakfast of champions—or lunch, for that matter—but it was slim pickings at the gas station. Brynn lucked out with a row of seats to herself, the Holbrook to Los Angeles shuttle apparently not a popular route for a Friday. This meant if she fell asleep, the only shoulder she’d drool on would be that of her suitcase perched on the seat next to her.
She’d tried texting Holly to tell her how this morning had panned out, but either the bus or whatever new town they’d entered or the combination of the two was messing with her cell service, and three texting attempts had failed. It was probably for the best since her head was beginning to ache. She was confident it was no worse than last night immediately following the injury, but she could use an ibuprofen or three right about now.
She rummaged through her purse, which might as well have been that magic satchel Mary Poppins carried, because she produced everything from emergency tampons to a romance novel she was reading but couldn’t find the small tube of pain relief pills. It was entirely possible that in her packing haste she’d put it somewhere else. Good thing she didn’t let the driver take her bag, because the pills must be buried somewhere in it.
She let the towel rack off the hook and blamed Jamie for the headache. Fine. Maybe she blamed herself a little, too. She could have fought him on this, on the whole sending her off to L.A. thing. But the truth was, as much as she was sure she loved him, she didn’t know how to convince him. Or trust him not to lie again. This seemed to be their thing. They were friends. They crossed the line. Jamie pushed her away, and she let him.
She blew out a long breath. The whole situation exhausted her and made her head pound more. Brynn unzipped the large front pocket of her suitcase to rummage for the pills, but when she opened the compartment, a bulging plastic bag popped out. She took in a hitching breath.
The lucky bouquet.
“Dammit, Jamie!”
The woman across the aisle glanced her way, eyebrows raised. She hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but if he couldn’t hear her, then the other seven passengers headed to Los Angeles should.
Just holding the stupid thing brought the whole day in Amarillo back to her. No, it brought the whole trip back and the reunion and the summer they were seventeen. Jamie skipped out on the biggest party of the year to risk his health and stay with her when she was burning up with fever and tested positive for mono. Ten years later he’d walked in on her with the one guy he thought she’d always put on a pedestal—and maybe she had—and instead of telling her how he felt had let her go off on him in an angry-drunk rampage. Not her finest moment. Then he offered to make it up to her by bringing her exactly where she thought she wanted to go: L.A. Maybe she could understand how professing his love to her after all of that may have seemed less than optimal.
But it wasn’t the texts from Spencer or the anticipation of finally finding out if something was there that flooded her thoughts now. It was Jamie showing up at her apartment in his hoodie and baseball cap. It was the flat tire, riding to the top of the St. Louis Arch (without hurling, thank you very much), going blind in Galena, and naming that beer on her first sip. She thought of sneaking a peek at him as he leaned out of the shower and the places her mind went after that delicious sight. And then when he almost fell off the top of that Cadillac…she knew.
Oh.
She was so worked up over Jamie’s lapse in judgment that she’d sort of, kind of, maybe neglected to tell him that her big revelation hadn’t been the kiss. Or the phenomenal sex. Or even what happened again after the shower. Her first revelation was when they were seventeen. But Jamie needed a friend that summer, and as much as it hurt to realize too late how she felt about him, she promised herself she’d be that friend.
This time around, she let him freak out again, but he wasn’t alone. She allowed her own fear to get in the way, too, and together they’d let doubt push them further and further apart when, after ten freaking years, they’d finally found their way to each other. It took a little bit of tequila to fully kick in, but Brynn realized she loved him
while he nearly killed himself spraying graffiti on an upside-down car in the desert. She didn’t need to see Spencer to know he wasn’t the one, so what the hell was she doing taking a bus to him now?
“I’m an idiot,” she grumbled. Across the aisle, the lady shot her a look again, and Brynn threw up her hands, knocking her pinky on the frame of the window. “Ow. Shit!” She cradled her hand against her chest and then laughed. If Jamie had been there, she most likely would have just clocked him in the face. The thing was, she wasn’t clumsy by nature. She’d never accidentally punched, poked, or stabbed any other person in her life. Just Jamie, because he was the only one who got her fired up emotionally—usually out of exasperation, but it seemed like that was changing. Good or bad, he pulled that extra dose of passion out of her and made her feel really and truly alive.
It amazed her that she’d let ten years go by without admitting to herself he was the one person with the power to do it. And it infuriated her that he didn’t know, couldn’t tell that there was no competition. Spencer was the stand-in. At least the idea of him was.
“Is it your bouquet?”
Brynn turned toward the voice, the same woman who had been looking at her before. She was older, with a long salt-and-pepper braid that draped over her right shoulder. Her green eyes crinkled at the corners as she smiled.
“What?” Brynn asked.
“The bouquet? I don’t mean to pry, but if it’s yours, I was going to ask where the groom was.”
Brynn looked down to where she unwittingly clutched the bouquet to her chest. Her lucky bouquet.
Her heart swelled as she thought of the groom.
“He’s stuck in Holbrook,” she said, not correcting the woman. “We’re meeting in L.A.”
“Rough honeymoon?” the woman asked with a wink, and Brynn remembered the bandage on her forehead and the headache that seemed to throb less the more she thought about making her way back to Jamie in Los Angeles.
