26. Chapter 26
twenty-six
Noel
“ W hy did he say that to you?” I have to nearly shout this because Jamie is power walking ahead of me, long legs eating up the cobblestone street. We’re almost to the restaurant where we’re supposed to meet Em and Cara and I don’t want to let this go until afterward.
Jamie seems to realize I can’t keep up and finally slows. “It’s the price of doing business with Wes, Noe. It’s fine.”
“It was awful.” As the captain of Team Jamie Bishop, Wes is now squarely on my shit list.
“His moods are factored into my salary.” His cheek hitches up in his Jamie Smile but I know how well he wields that charm, and I’m not falling for it.
I tug him to the edge of the sidewalk, and he follows reluctantly.
I can tell he’s bracing for something. What, I don’t know, but there’s a please don’t in the slump of his shoulders.
“Jamie.” I press in close and take his face in my hands, scratching at the stubble that’s starting to become a beard.
It’s a testament to the rightness between us when his body loosens like an untied knot. “It’s an old dynamic,” he says quietly. “Like I said.”
Except he didn’t. Not more than that simple platitude.
I know all about Jamie taking a chance after my reading, turning down the job, getting the investment, but I don’t know how Wes fits in.
“What he said, about you not doing it without him. Why didn’t you?
Why factor in his moods at all? You could just take your idea and run with it. ”
He pulls away, huffing a laugh. The edges of it are sharp.
“What?”
“You heard what he said. Brewing beer is one thing, Noe. Turning it into a business takes a certain skill that I don’t have.”
“Says who? Wes?” I don’t know who I am to talk here.
I’ve made plenty of excuses for not doing the things that scared me, but I’m trying to be different, and he’s the one who inspired me to do that.
It’s a shock to see Jamie Bishop unsure of himself.
He’s a risk taker, a dreamer. This knee-jerk diffidence doesn’t compute.
“Not everyone who runs a business has a degree in it, Jamie.”
“Sure, but most of them can understand a profit and loss statement, read a spreadsheet.” He blows out a resigned breath. “Look, Noe, it’s not just about the…” He gestures to his head, then shakes it. “I have bad instincts, okay? That gut feeling that guides people? Mine doesn’t work.”
I’m incredulous to the point of petulance on his behalf. “Give me an example.”
“When I was sixteen, I saved up enough money to get a car. I found a used Jeep Wrangler, soft top. I wanted it.” An expression similar to lust flashes on his face.
“I don’t know, call it hyperfixation or emotional attachment to an idea, but I had to have it.
So I did. Lemon would be a nice way to describe that thing. ”
“It’s a car,” I say. “You were a kid.”
“I wasn’t a kid when I went to that party and ended up with a misdemeanor on my record.
I wasn’t a kid when I… Becca.” We both still at her name for different reasons.
My reason tastes a lot like jealousy. “The point is I get these ideas… these obsessions, and my brain conflates how badly I want it with an assurance that it will all work out. I can’t tell the difference. ”
I swallow, my neck prickling. “And I removed that variable. With the vision.”
“Exactly. Becca, she was hard against me taking that chance, but I really felt like this time was different, that I wasn’t going to get this wrong.
Except I always feel like that. Then, you told me I was right this time.
There were at least two people who thought this was a good idea. And that was enough.”
Okay , I tell myself, working out this history. It’s fine because I did know he was right. It’s not dangerous for him to feel that way now given all we’ve seen.
“And Wes?”
“Look, everything happened really fast after that night on the roof. I’d just lost a six-year relationship, I was unemployed with a dream in one hand and seed money in the other, and I knew it for what it was.
A once in a lifetime opportunity. The way things unfolded, I needed to make decisions right away.
I needed a business plan to go to the bank with.
I needed profit projections. Just the online loan application was overwhelming.
I panicked. I realized that even though I knew it was the right path, there would be decisions to make daily that could sink me, so my first business decision was to take it out of my own hands. ”
He looks away sharply, red washing over his cheekbones. That night at the point, he wasn’t embarrassed, but this is something else. That was history. This is now. This is the future.
It’s starting to fall together, the way he has it in his head that the whole of his success is just some fluke, why he’s leaning so hard on another vision before he makes this decision.
People have been telling him what he can’t do his whole life through one message or another.
That night on the roof, I told him he could.
“Do you regret it? Going into business with him?”
He thinks for a moment. “Yes and no. I don’t think I’d be here without Wes. He carries a lot of it. But I’m not sure we’re headed to the same place. The whole thing is going through some growing pains, I guess.”
“Because you disagree about selling?”
“Maybe he’s right. Maybe I don’t take his advice and I give up a fuck ton of money just to run it into the ground on my own.
Or maybe I make the right call about not selling, and the growing pains break into something better.
Maybe he leaves altogether. I haven’t exactly made any big calls on my own before. ”
Because I told him what to do.
“I’m not risk averse, Noel. I’ve taken a lot of them in my life, but the stakes are higher now.
I have employees, business partnerships with people who I used to work for and who took a chance on me because of it.
I have community initiatives I’ve worked my ass off to develop.
My reputation. I know what it feels like now to be thought of as a success instead of a failure, and I don’t want to lose that feeling.
” His eyes meet mine with a seriousness that rarely shows itself.
“What happened on that roof was magic, Noe. You know that, right?”
I nod, but I’m a little uncomfortable with it suddenly. I want to tack an asterisk onto my agreement. Yes, it’s magic, but so are you .
What if my psychic assist only backed up his fear that he couldn’t do it alone?
I’m worried maybe knowing the future wasn’t as helpful as he thinks.
And I wonder what it will mean if it happens again.
If I see what he wants me to. Especially now that I know about the tiny hiccups, that there are pieces that are right, but not exact.
But on the other hand, we’re together. Happy. Just like the vision showed me. If I’m looking for signs that are right in front of me, that’s the biggest of them all—the way my life has changed for the better since I followed the visions. And they’re his signs too. They always have been.
“I think,” I tell him, smoothing my palms over his chest. “That growing pains are just that. Growth.”
Jamie smiles softly at me, fingers sliding into my hair. He tilts my head, kissing me in a way that’s meant to end this conversation. “I don’t want to talk about this when we’re supposed to be celebrating you,” he says. “Let’s go back to that.”
“Okay.”
I tuck my hands around his waist, dipping under his jacket, beneath the hem of his shirt, and he jumps. “Jesus, your hands are cold.”
“Sorry.” I press them higher on his back, teasing, and he shivers.
“We have to get you some warmer clothes.” He dips to run his nose along my jaw, whispering in my ear. “Because you’re staying here.”
My stomach somersaults at hearing it out loud, this very new decision. I don’t even know the details yet, but I know it will work out. We’ll figure it out together. “Mmhmm,” I say. “I’m staying.”
His real smile is back when he plucks the hat from his head—a Fortune beanie he just added to his merch line—and pulls it over my ears. I decide right then I’m keeping it along with the hoodies and the T-shirt I’ve acquired. “Does it look good?” I ask, tipping my shoulder and doing a little pose.
“Too good. Let’s ditch Em and Cara and go home. I want to see you in only that hat.”
He grabs me around the waist, pretending to drag me in the direction we came, and I laugh. “Stop. You promised to take me out.”
“I promised we’d celebrate. There’s more than one way to do that.” He sets me back on my feet and his expression turns soft. Something tingles in the back of my brain, like déjà vu. This scene. The affection on his face. The people bustling around us. It all feels familiar.
I reach up to touch my head and recognition locks into place. It’s the hat he was wearing in the vision I had at the beach. A navy blue beanie. It’s on my head now, but it’s the same one. And the dark scruff that’s been filling in on his face over the last few weeks, it was there too. I saw it.
The rest of the vision unfurls in front of me like a Choose Your Own Adventure game. It’s cold. We’re on a cobblestone street lit by lamp light. “Ha!”
“What is it?” He laughs.
I don’t wait for him to corner me the way I saw. I press myself up against the wall, and tug him by the front of his jacket, grinning as he slaps a hand against the brick wall above my head. Just like I knew he would.
People turn to look, just like I saw.
And then he’s there, fitting his knee between my legs, kissing me in that way I remember felt like a confession.
And now I know what he’s telling me with his mouth on mine and his hand in my hair.
Things that have come true between us in the few short weeks since I saw it.
I know everything that’s going to happen.
I feel it before he even touches me, that bruising grip on my thigh as he draws it over his waist, and inside, I’m a swirling ball of lust and magic.