35. Chapter 35
thirty-five
Jamie
I wake up to my phone buzzing beside my head.
Em: Plan on buying me lunch after we play. I’ll be there in five.
With a groan, I drag myself out of bed. At some point during the launch last night, she took my phone and added a calendar event to shoot hoops at the rec today, claiming I look like shit and exercise might help.
I know she’s babysitting me more than seeking out my company, but I suppose it’s better than drowning in self-pity for another day.
I shove my phone in the pocket of my pajama pants just as she knocks. “Thanks for dressing up,” she says when I open it.
“I just need a minute.”
She follows me inside, and I can feel her silent judgment at the mess. My dress shirt from the launch is on the kitchen island. A pizza box and a six pack of empty bottles litter my living room.
I do a quick brush and swish of mouthwash and throw on shorts and a dirty shirt. I’m going to get sweaty again anyway.
Em drives, and I plug my phone into her dash and scroll my music. Five minutes in, her fist hits my bicep. “Cut the shit.”
“Sorry.” She can’t stand when I let a song play for a few beats, then change it. My brain feels like a rubber ball tossed into an empty room, and I can’t focus on anything beyond the basics of feeding myself. Sleeping. Working.
Wes spent the night reminding me that a winter ale launch means the end of the year. Time running out. Not only has my hope for a psychic tip imploded, but it’s a lot harder not to acquiesce to his advice fresh off my latest misread with Noel.
I shut the radio off altogether, suddenly hungover, or car sick, or love sick.
Em pulls to a stop light and stares at me. “Are you going to tell me what the hell is going on?”
It was not lost on her that Noel wasn’t there last night celebrating the launch with me. I hid behind the busy night, then left early with an excuse that I’m not on the hourly schedule, so my shift was over when I said it was.
The first time I embraced the boss role Em’s been pushing me toward, and I used it to be a dick.
By the time I got to my apartment, I’d spiraled into a full-on panic wondering if this was more than just a fight with Noel. If she might disappear completely the way she did two years ago. The thought made me feel like there was a vacuum hose attached to my lungs, sucking all of my air.
I toss my phone in the cupholder and tip my head back against the headrest. “I think I fucked it up.”
Em blows out a breath. “Jameson, I’m usually the first one to jump on you for being an idiot when it comes to women, and I don’t know the whole story, but I don’t get the feeling you did this by yourself.
” I turn my head to look at her but she’s staring thoughtfully out the windshield. “Let me guess. Something scared her?”
I press my palms into my eyes. “Yeah, that’s kind of her thing.”
“It’s yours too.”
I’d take that punch if I thought I deserved it, but I handed Noel my whole beating heart. Even after the hotel when I started to get that playing with fire feeling, I pushed through it.
“I went all in with her, Em. Even scared, I was doing the hard thing. But once again, I was the only one. Christ, what is it about me that makes loving me so damn conditional?”
Em turns to me, her eyes wide. “ Jamie .”
“No, don’t pity me, just tell me what it is because I’ve been trying to get it for a long fucking time, and I can’t figure it out.”
“You’re asking the wrong question, J. If someone thinks that about you, then they’re not for you. But tell me why on earth you think Noel is one of those people, because as an outside observer, that is not what I see.”
But that’s a big chunk of it, isn’t it? What’s missing to the outside observer. The thing Noel kept even from me.
“Noel and I were part of the vision she had that night on the roof,” I confess. “She saw us the same way she saw everything else. She told me on our trip to the mountain.”
This stuns Em silent like I thought it might, but not for long. “And you didn’t like that.”
I huff a laugh. I more than didn’t like it. It pressed on a bruise I didn’t even know was still there, but I stuffed it way down deep because the thought of losing her was way worse than a stupid blow to my ego.
But the thing about shoving stuff down and never dealing with it, is it becomes like a smear across your vision.
Like someone has taken their thumb and pressed a blurry spot in the center of your sunglasses, or dragged their dirty palm down your windshield.
Your whole world becomes filtered through this thing that’s between you and whatever you’re looking at.
I couldn’t see us the same way after that.
I was an imposter. A fraud who got here by some stroke of luck. Just like my career.
I rub at my chest where it feels tight with anxiety. “It turns out the vision was wrong anyway. Becca didn’t even cheat on me.”
“Hold up. Becca what ?” Em puts her blinker on, her eyes darting between me and the road. “The baggage from that is, like, half of your personality.”
I roll my eyes. “Well, it was wrong. Apparently a few of them have been wrong, but Noel failed to mention that until we ran into Becca and it all came out. Everything I thought happened, didn’t. Our whole break up was over a misunderstanding.”
“Jesus. So are you two… talking again?”
I look at her, incredulous. “I don’t want Becca back.”
“Jamie. This is hard to keep up with.”
“I don’t want Becca. Whether she went through with it or not, what we had wasn’t what I thought. I just want to quit getting shit so wrong all the time. Do you know what that’s like, to never be able to trust your head?”
“You’re not a head guy, Jamie. You’re a gut guy. And if Noel’s the opposite, maybe that’s why you two work so well. Yin and yang and all that.”
“Yeah well, she doesn’t see it that way. She said she wouldn’t have even stayed here if it wasn’t for that vision.”
Em’s face softens. “If she thinks that, she’s lying to herself.
People do that when they’re scared. You tell yourself you need Wes because you’re scared to fuck up what you have.
So she told herself she needed whatever calling this fate gave to her.
I personally don’t think either one deserves the credit you’re giving out.
” Em turns into the long driveway to the rec center, slowing for some kids crossing the road on bikes.
“I mean, seriously, Jamie. If you can’t see the way that girl looks at you, I don’t know how to help you. ”
“Not to sound cocky, Em, but a lot of women look at me.”
“Sure,” she says, pulling into a parking spot and cutting the engine.
“They look at you—” she pushes her finger into my cheek before I can dodge her.
“Noel looks. At. You.” This time her finger lands directly in the center of my chest, and I swear I feel it sink right through the bone and scrape against my heart. I have to turn away.
“Look, this is all way out of my wheelhouse—psychic visions, destiny, and all that—but I do know that ever since I’ve known you, you’ve been fixated on some future version of yourself that you’re still trying to achieve, and the whole time, there’s been a you right now who’s pretty fucking great.
If Noel says she loves that you, I think you should believe her because I would bet it was a big deal for her to say it. I bet she was scared as hell.”
The weight of that bears down on me at once, and I picture Noel that night I passed out on her porch, rightfully terrified.
I knew she was scared that night at Fortune too, when I begged her to be a psychic conduit for me even after she admitted she was here dealing with some heavy stuff of her own.
I haven’t really considered how scary the rest of it is, though.
The enormity of what I asked of her. Carrying the fact that she and I might be destined all by herself.
I still think she should have told me, but I can see why she didn’t.
Why it was easier to navigate that part without adding my expectations to it.
I’ve put a lot of pressure on her even after promising I wouldn’t.
And worst of all, I didn’t even protect her when she started to crumble from it. Instead, I was immediately defensive.
Maybe I haven’t been the brave one after all.
“I’m a selfish asshole,” I admit with a gust of air.
Em snorts. “Hardly. You just got your feelings hurt, Jamie, and it’s okay to say when something hurts. This whole situation seems like it touched a nerve for both of you, and I’m actually kind of proud of you right now for not pretending it didn’t. I think you’ve leveled up a little bit.”
I laugh quietly, but I’m thinking of what Noel said about growing pains being a sign of growth, and praying that’s what this ache in my chest turns out to be.
Em’s right about me being caught up in the future, wanting that future me I envisioned to come to fruition, but maybe part of that growth is realizing that it’s the unknown where you find the greatest possibility.
God knows teenage me wouldn’t have been able to look into a crystal ball and see my life today.
And I can’t see tomorrow, but I can see that everything I accused Noel of—following fate instead of my gut, worrying about what might be instead of what is—I’ve been right there going along with it.
The next morning, I head to the brewery as soon as the sun is up, my head spinning with ideas and a new resolve to focus on the present.
There are things I’ve been kicking around for months, waiting to bring up with Wes.
Waiting on the right time or the right mood.
Waiting to ask permission to do what I want with my own damn company.