16. Chapter 16
sixteen
Noel
J amie pushes the ladder back in place, and I watch shamelessly as he wipes his hands off on the back of his jeans.
He turns his head and catches me looking. My heart thuds twice in quick succession.
It’s been beating erratically since that moment on the stairs, when he stood to his full height, my hand dropping from his hair, and stared at me like if we weren’t three stories up and he wasn’t nursing multiple injuries, I’d be on my back.
Another shiver runs through me, and I clutch his sweatshirt tighter. “So what’s next, James Dean? A bank heist?”
He steps off of the stack of pallets, smirking. “That’s a lot of snark coming from such a big smile.”
I roll my eyes, but he’s right. The agitation that was chugging in my blood after my mother’s call has burned off like sea smoke, lost to a sunset that looked like a painting and a man just as beautiful.
He steps to my side, bumping me with his shoulder. “Want to go for a drive?”
“Sure.”
It’s a few blocks back to Fortune where he’s parked in the back lot.
His car is new and spaceship-like. Fancy enough to convey success without flaunting it.
Red and blue lights and scrolling messages light up the dash when he plugs in his phone.
The cab has captured his scent and infused it into the air, salt and grass, and I breathe it into my lungs.
If it’s true what they say about pheromones, Jamie’s are in full agreement with fate because my legs squeeze together involuntarily.
An Airborne Toxic Event song comes through the speakers, and Jamie steers us out of the city, over the drawbridge. He turns left at the end, heading toward the water, then makes a right, cutting through the community college. “Where are we going?”
“To the beach.”
I pull my heels to the edge of my seat. “It’s dark out.”
“Lucky for us, it’s still there even after the sun goes down.”
“Funny.”
He skips the public lot—though I suppose it would be closed anyway—instead pulling to a stop on a dark stretch of road, beneath a street light that flickers every so often.
Twenty-eight years of muscle memory have me tensing at this dark beach at night, but when he puts the car in park and looks at me with those deep, moody eyes. I’m sucked back into his forcefield. A forcefield that now involves a lot more touching than it did before. Touching that I want more of.
We leave the car on the side of the road, and I take his hand, letting him lead me down a small embankment, through the overgrown dunegrass.
The light from the street disappears as soon as we hit the sand, but a harvest moon sits low in the sky, making the water look like it’s lit from below.
There’s not much beach with the tide in, and what’s here is black and scattered with broken shells.
Jamie kicks one with the toe of his sneaker.
“It’s really dark down here,” I say, my fingers squeezing his.
“Yeah. It’s so the lighthouse doesn’t get polluted with extra light.”
I look out at the rock jetty that leads to Spring Point Ledge. Surf crashes against it violently. “No one knows where we are.”
Jamie pulls to a stop, his head whipping around, eyes wide. “Shit. I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. Of course you’d be nervous to be here with me—”
I shake my head quickly. “It’s not you. I’m just nervous. Usually. As a rule.”
He watches me for a minute, then digs his phone out of his pocket. Opening the camera, he twirls me around so my back is pressed to his front and extends his arm to snap a selfie of the two of us, his chin set on my head.
“What are you doing?” I laugh.
He types something over my head, then lowers the screen so I can see.
Jamie: Noel and I are at the boat launch .
“My friend Em,” he says. I smile. He texted our picture to her.
She texts back immediately.
Em: I’m taking a piss. Good talk.
I giggle and let my weight relax into him, sighing when his arms wrap around me and squeeze the way they did earlier. “Let’s keep going.”
“You sure?”
I hold my hand out in reply, and he clasps it tight, leading us to a flat, dry spot. He sits down, and I lower myself beside him. I’ll have sand in every crinkle of this skirt, but I don’t care.
“Are you feeling better?” I ask.
“Yes. Thank you. Again. I think you saved me from permanent damage the other night on my couch.” He tips his ears to his shoulders one by one. “How did you know how to fix my neck like that?”
I shrug knowing I didn’t do much besides squeeze muscles I really wanted to touch. “Maybe I knew an exceptionally reckless man in another lifetime.”
He laughs and drapes his forearms over his knees. “Do you believe in that? Other lifetimes?”
He’s said it casually, but how can a question like that be casual when you’re staring out at the ocean with a man who you might be fated to? I mean, if you believe in psychic visions, alternate timelines aren’t a big stretch.
“I think one lifetime is enough to handle. If there are others, they’ll have to exist without me considering them.”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Sometimes one life seems like a lot. Other times, it feels like one shot at it isn’t nearly enough.”
“One shot at life?”
“Yeah. Especially when you spend so much of it with an undeveloped brain. Like if we only get ninety or so years on this ride, if we’re lucky, we should get to start with the wisdom we need to make the most of it.” He shifts his weight, and I move closer, daring to let my legs hang beside his.
“What about you?” he asks. “Maybe it’s not a whole other lifetime, but would you change anything?”
I blow out a contemplative breath. The question seems magnified through the lens of things I know that Jamie doesn’t, about us and the possibility that these visions are the result of some higher power giving me a chance to fix something I keep screwing up because I’m afraid.
“I had this little business a while back,” I tell him. “With my art before Nana got sick. I turned my paintings into paper goods like planners, bookmarks, greeting cards. Invitations were my biggest seller. I even have one design that was licensed for a wallpaper—poppies.”
“That’s incredible.”
I smile. “It was. Sometimes I think in another life, I’d do that.”
“Why can’t you do that in this life?”
I shrug and stare out at the water. “Savings, 401Ks, health insurance. Lots of reasons. Plus, my mother lives with me, so my finances aren’t entirely my decision.”
“I thought you said she lived in a van.”
“Mmm. For now, she does.” Until the engine dies and I run out of money to lend her.
“You shouldn’t drop it if it’s something you really want to do. When I was starting out, I bought my own insurance. Invested with a private firm. It’s doable.”
“It’s risky.”
“So is spending your life making someone else rich.”
I shoot him a look, and he holds up a hand in apology. “Sorry. I’m overstepping. It’s just a common debate between me and my brother.”
“What is?”
“The, ah, business problem I have. It’s just kind of a fight between us.”
He’s suddenly clammed up, his eyes darting away like he didn’t mean to take this turn.
But we’re here and I want to know what I’m missing in this agreement. I’m suddenly shocked at myself for not asking before, but I was preoccupied with my part. The part Jamie has no idea about. “What are you fighting with your brother about?”
He looks at me for a beat, then back out to the water. “I have an offer on the table to buy my brand,” he says. “It’s more money than I’ve ever seen, but it’s in exchange for a piece of myself, something I want to keep. Wes thinks I should do it—sell out. I don’t want to, so we’re… debating.”
Nerves start to percolate in my belly. “That’s what you want my help with? That’s a really big deal, Jamie.”
“The last one was a really big deal too.” He grins at me but I don’t return it. “Look, I wasn’t even going to tell you. I don’t want it to freak you out.”
“Kind of late.” When he said he had a decision to make, I hadn’t given it much thought, but I can see now that was a misstep.
Though, I suppose he’s right. The last decision was a big deal too, but he didn’t ask for my help with that one. It was an accident that I even saw what I saw. And the question he did ask, about Becca, well, I don’t think he ever considered the answer wouldn’t be the one he wanted.
This one, though, is huge and so is the pressure he assured me didn’t exist.
He blows out a regretful breath. “It’s just that Wes is the businessman, not me. I’m a hometown kid who likes beer. We both know I’m out of my depth.”
His jaw goes tight, and I remember what he said at the bar that night. This is the moment I prove myself or the moment they all find out I’ve never known what the hell I was doing . I’m torn between the ratcheting anxiety in my chest, and a softening at that vulnerability.
“Imposter syndrome,” I say.
“Huh?”
“It’s called imposter syndrome. It means you don’t believe you deserve to be in the place you are. Like you think one day everyone is going to find out you’re a fraud who got here by some stroke of luck.”
He half laughs, half groans.
“What?”
“That’s exactly how I got here. A stroke of luck.
Magic. Look, I have no idea what would have happened if you didn’t tell me about the money, Noel, but I know the decisions that led me where I am weren’t born from some shrewd business sense.
Your vision told me what to do. I just followed it.
” He must see the way the blood drains from my face because he sighs.
“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make this whole thing worse for you. ”
“No,” I say, wrapping my arms around my knees.
“It’s fine.” Maybe I should be concerned that Jamie’s hoping for too much from this thing, but on the other hand, I trust this, or I wouldn’t be here at all.
The farm, the inspiration I feel returning, the way we are after such a short time—these are dominos falling into place.
I know this better than Jamie, and somehow he’s not the one who needs convincing.