13. Chapter 13
thirteen
Noel
“ I s this one a date?” Kate asks. “Because this one feels like a date.”
I set my phone on the bathroom counter so I can still see her while I gather my hair into a ponytail. Then drop it. Then gather it again. My hands are clumsy. Not exactly shaking, but I wouldn’t trust myself with a paint brush at the moment either.
“It’s not a date,” I say, scooping my hair again.
“Right. I should have known by how casual you’re being about it.”
“The problem—” I explain around the hair elastic between my teeth, “—is that I would know how to act if it were a date.” I drop my hair again, my shoulders sagging.
“But advice on hanging out with a guy who hopes you’ll give him a psychic business tip, but who also might be your soulmate is surprisingly sparse. ”
Kate hums. “Did you check Reddit?”
“First.”
“Damn, where’s Dear Abby when you need her?”
“Dead, I think.”
“So where are you going?”
“I have no idea. He wouldn’t tell me.” Last night when I left Jamie’s loft, he’d only said he had somewhere he wanted to take me, and to be ready by noon.
I give my outfit one more look in the mirror—a pair of cut-offs and my hand painted Chucks, a vintage Matchbox 20 tee.
Also makeup and perfume, but I’ll deny it in the interrogation.
“Wow,” Kate says.
“What?”
“Nothing, I’m just remembering the time we went to Boston to see Hamilton and you made me send a schematic of the parking garage so you could ‘plan ahead.’” She makes air quotes and I flip her off.
“I’m taking Colin’s advice. Trusting the universe.” Which is so something that shouldn’t come out of my mouth, so of course Kate doesn’t buy it.
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
“You like him!”
I turn away from the phone so she doesn’t see the pink flaring on my cheekbones. I hate being called out. Having to admit something before I’m sure it won’t come back around swinging.
I do like him. Which, I suppose shouldn’t be that surprising given what I’ve seen in the visions, but I didn’t anticipate that it would be this easy.
That I’d go from tolerating this arrangement to looking forward to it.
After the massage and the movie that followed, both of which I’m conveniently not mentioning, I’d felt newly light despite all of the then-cold Thai food I consumed.
I’d left wanting more of it. The company, yes, but specifically his.
And I woke up this morning with these clumsy hands and a distinct slick of sweat at my hairline.
The pressure of Jamie possibly being my destiny is overwhelming.
If I like him the way I think I might, I’ll have to admit how much of my future is out of my control, which is terrifying.
But if it ends up going south now, it will be a sign that there is no fate, and the world is the big ball of chaos I thought it was, which is just a different shade of terrifying.
Normal date jitters truly have nothing on this situation Jamie and I find ourselves in.
Or, I suppose, it’s only me who finds myself here.
My claim on Jamie exists only in the ether at this point.
All of this is an exploration that he has no idea he’s even participating in, and I have no evidence that what I saw between us is even something he’s thinking about.
At least not as much as the psychic tip he wants from me.
My shoulders sink and I pull my lip between my teeth. “Please be nice to me,” I beg Kate. “This is already so far out of my comfort zone.”
“Okay, okay,” Kate says in that calming tone she’s used since we were kids. “Look, all I’m saying is I’m proud that it didn’t instantly occur to you to freak out about this. In fact, one might even call it a sign.”
“Cow,” Jamie says, pointing out my window as we cruise down a sun-bleached country road.
My head swivels just in time to catch a reddish-brown dairy cow standing in a field, and my grin splits.
We’re in a pickup truck today with Fortune Brewing emblazoned on the side, headed west out of the city.
About twenty minutes into the drive, the houses and storefronts started to melt into rolling hills and trees with their tips turning gold.
That’s when he’d challenged me to this cow-spotting game.
“I think you have them plotted on a map.”
He grins, but doesn’t deny it. He has on one of his tight-fitting T-shirts that makes his inked biceps look obscene, and the baseball cap I’m beginning to think is his signature sits high on his forehead like he accidentally knocked it askew batting away a mosquito or a swooping seagull and didn’t bother to fix it.
Forcing myself not to straighten it is a good distraction from the dark stubble that’s been filling in on his jaw since yesterday, the way it changes his face to something a little more in line with the mystery of this whole thing.
Eventually, we turn down a winding dirt driveway. Open fields line either side and Jamie pulls to a stop in front of the single, white sided building occupying a swath of land that rolls as far as I can see.
“What is this place?”
“It’s a farm,” he says, killing the engine and unbuckling.
I sit up taller, scanning the fields for a duck or sheep or some other cute animal I might get to pet, but it’s just hills of green. “What kind of farm?”
“Hops.” His grin explodes. I don’t really know what hops are, except that they go in beer, but he’s clearly happy to be here and my veins start to fizz in secondhand excitement.
Jamie pulls a backpack from behind his seat and climbs out of the truck. He comes around to my side, offering me a hand down. My sneakers hit the gravel, landing toe to toe with his boots. Not the rubber ones from the silly picture he sent, but dark brown work boots, water stains on the toe.
The night at his bar, his hair was styled with product, jeans designer label, and the sneakers he wore to breakfast had been very expensive. This, I think, is a little glimpse into Work Jamie. I’d be hard-pressed to pick a favorite.
“You look like a brewer today,” I say, nervously tightening the ribbon in the ponytail I’d finally decided on. A farm might be the only place he could have taken me where I’d be overdressed.
His cheek hitches up. “What did I look like before?”
A Nike model, I stop myself from saying. “Just, you know, a guy.”
“Bishop.” A bearded man in a John Deer hat heads our way, hands in the pockets of a pair of brown coveralls. He greets Jamie with a genuine smile and shoulder-slapping handshake.
“Hey, Ronnie. Long time, man.”
Ronnie pats his round belly. “Had to lay off the ale for a while. Get my summer bod in shape. Good thing winter’s coming, because I’m thirsty.”
“I think I can help you out with that,” Jamie says, laughing. “This is Noel.”
“Well, hello.” Ronnie holds a meaty hand out. His eyes roam me curiously as we shake, and I wonder how many of Jamie’s friends know about our history.
“Nice to meet you, Ronnie.”
“I was going to take a last look before harvest if that’s okay,” Jamie says with a hand to my lower back.
Ronnie nods. “Of course. Go take a gander at your betrothed plants.”
I wave goodbye to Ronnie, and Jamie leads us around the barn, over a small hill, up to the edge of what looks like a tunnel of foliage, the walls twice as tall as him.
The green is so vibrant, I immediately want to try to recreate it with paint.
The urge catches me off guard, like a friend I hadn’t expected to run into, and I press a palm to my chest, trying to physically keep it from disappearing again.
“This is gorgeous.”
Jamie’s eyes light at my reaction, as if he’d been hoping for it.
“Watch your step,” he says, as the ground dips, taking us straight into the mouth of this thing.
The plants climb up a simple string grid, where they’re led overhead in a canopy.
Vines trail from the sky like tendrils of Demeter’s hair, and they’re dotted with pine cone-like flowers in the same green, odd little things. I recognize them immediately.
“These are in the wreath on your logo and…” I reach for the sleeve of his T-shirt, pulling it up. The same wreath wraps around the thickest part of his bicep, drawn in black. “In your tattoo.”
“The tattoo came first,” he says, grinning as if he somehow manifested his own destiny by marking himself this way. I can’t bring myself to argue with any of these possibilities anymore.
I touch a fingertip to one of the ink strokes, tracing it.
I can’t help myself. They’re lovely. It’s done in all black like the birds on his other arm, but with a lighter line.
And the detail! Each petal seems to lift right off of his skin.
“I didn’t know hops plants flowered,” I say, looking up to see him watching me, lips slightly parted.
“It’s not a typical looking flower,” he says, swallowing, “but yeah. They do.” Sunlight filters in through the greenery, dappling his face as he reaches for one of the plants above us. Under the leaves and backlit like this, he’s almost painfully gorgeous.
“Flowers are kind of my thing,” I say, stretching to touch one myself. “Botanicals.”
“Yeah?” He drops the backpack and pulls a fleece blanket from inside, watching me for more.
“My Nana used to have these beautiful gardens behind the cottage, mostly native flowers. It’s the first thing I learned to sketch. Now they’re pretty much all I paint.”
She also kept fresh cut flowers in Mason jars all over the house.
It was my job to change the water every few days and pluck the spent petals of white peonies and orange lilies.
At night I’d sit at the kitchen table with my sketchbook and draw her bouquets by lamp light, teaching myself how to shade and show dimension.
Nana would putter around me, fixing dinner, poking her head over my shoulder. She was an artist too, and she had the ability to spot the most interesting details—a speck of pollen ready to fall, the deep pink vein in a white peony petal—and she’d point at it silently, draw my eye to it.