12. Jamie
twelve
Jamie
“It’s okay to have big feelings, Adam,” I told my nephew, talking him down from a crying outburst of epic proportions. “You can tell me about them any time.”
Ren gave my phone back when he’d seen my family was calling. He’d made me promise not to sink into my workaholic tendencies, and I was making an effort to comply. The emails could wait.
“But I want to see you, Uncle Jamie.”
That sent a dagger straight to my heart. But I’d resolved to do better. “It’s all right, little guy. You’re going to see me in four weeks, remember? How many is that?”
He held out his fingers, showing me four.
“Exactly. That’s really soon.” It was amazing how much time and space didn’t matter when it came to my nephew’s love.
We spoke every month by video chat, but it didn’t go unnoticed that I needed to put more of an effort in.
Monthly calls might not be sufficient now that Adam was older and asking for me.
“And your mom said if you got dressed and went to dinner, you’d get to have a popsicle when you got home,” I tried.
That brought out a smile. “A blue one?”
I nodded, hoping I wasn’t lying. “Yep. A blue one.” What if they were creamsicles?
“Okay, I gotta go.” He dropped the phone on the ground.
“Thank you,” Marley’s voice said from above, and I got a great view of her double chin. I fought the brotherly urge to point that out. “I know you’re on vacation, but he’s been having a rough time this week.”
“I meant what I said. You can call me anytime.”
“But you’re supposed to be taking a break from obligations, not—”
“You and the kids are not an obligation.”
But did it feel like that to them? Was I giving off that vibe? The dagger dug its way deeper.
“Love you, Jamie.” Marley probably sensed the depth of my silence. A crash sounded on the other end of the line, and she looked away. “Shit, I gotta go.”
Between the sounds of Adam’s fit and the yelping of their chihuahua, now wasn’t the time to bring up my ex-girlfriend’s reappearance. Maybe next time.
“Love you too—”
And she was gone.
Autumn’s happiness was irrefutable when she was in her domain. I watched on my walk across the mess hall as she and Jack laughed together. They were clearly comfortable with each other, and I wondered how long they’d been together.
Ren and I took seats across from them, and it felt so high school cafeteria . It transported me to a time when I’d sat as close as a sardine nestled next to her.
A lot of things were different now, but some things had never changed, and I wondered again about her life. How had the last decade played out for her?
Autumn’s laugh brought me back to the present. She was happy in this new life and, if I was being honest, happier than I’d ever seen her.
Sometimes, I imagined how different our lives would have been if I’d made the selfish choice.
If I had agreed with her back then, just said okay .
But what did I know at nineteen? Probably not enough to keep her.
I could do this, though, keep her now, be a friend to her like I should have been all those years ago.
Jack was the luckiest guy in the universe, and he seemed good to her. His carefree, playful shove told me he knew it.
“Hey, sorry for missing craft night. I—”
“It’s fine.” Her abruptness put me on edge, but Autumn moved on and introduced us. “So this curmudgeon is Jack.” She gestured to the imposing, long-haired blond man next to her. It made me wonder how the two of us measured up if we stood side by side. And who would win at arm wrestling.
“I think I saw you at yoga this morning,” he said, with a bright smile and cool confidence. “Some of us were awake,” Jack teased Autumn again, and I shook his hand, wanting to make a good impression.
“Why do I put up with you again?” Autumn’s words were tinged with mock exasperation.
Jack elbowed her. “Maybe since I brought you here in the first place?”
“You’re just going to lord that over me forever.”
He nodded, as if to say, “duh.”
Autumn turned her focus back to me. “Jack, this is Jamie. We knew each other in high school.”
She didn’t say we were together, just that we knew each other.
Ren looked between Autumn and me with sudden interest. “Wait, you get to call him Jamie?” He whipped his head around, eyes like saucers, waiting for me to explain.
She looked perplexed. “What do you call him?”
“James?”
Autumn’s face contorted. “That makes you sound like a lawyer who hasn’t touched grass in years because he’s cooped up in his office.”
“I am a lawyer… Hey .”
Jack was also looking between Autumn and me, and something passed when he met Autumn’s eyes. He quirked his eyebrows. “This is Jamie?”
“Yeah. The one and only.” I did my best not to sound smug.
Jack’s eyes focused on me for a moment, as if he wanted to ask something but seemed to change his mind. “I would have paid good money to see a teenage Autumn stumbling over her words on the debate team.”
“Stumbling? More like ripping people to shreds and taking no prisoners.”
Autumn blushed, and Jack gave her a look, but I couldn’t decipher it.
“Like that time at the Hollygrove Debate?” I asked.
“You mean at districts? When we argued that the infrastructure of Seattle could withstand a zombie apocalypse?”
I explained to our clueless counterparts. “Our argument was that we could take the monorail to the Space Needle, and the zombies wouldn’t be able to operate the elevator to the top.”
At the time, I couldn’t believe how passionate she got about something so silly, but her energy and hard facts had won us the debate.
That day, no one had been prepared for our level of dedication or our zombie apocalypse knowledge.
That was also when I’d learned Autumn had never been to the top of the Space Needle, and so I’d rectified that immediately as a reward for our win.
Ren looked from her to me and back. “So you’d trap yourselves in the Space Needle?”
We both laughed, as if we were the only ones in on the joke.
“There’s enough food and drink and a view of the entire city to see where to go next.” Autumn chuckled. “Plus, we’d know how to fortify shit, obviously.”
I brought up another classic. “My other favorite debate was about two songs by the same indie artist spanning decades and which had the bigger social impact and why.”
We’d debated the lyrics, bars, and overall genius. Both songs were incredible. I tried not to look as Autumn’s hand found itself on my forearm for the briefest moment before she cradled her chin.
“Later, I’ll play the songs for you. Their haunting melodies remind me of that new tune you were working on the other night.” Autumn mimed playing a guitar.
Great. And he played guitar.
Jack, to his credit, immediately tried to change the subject.
“That’s really Leo’s thing. You know, Mr. One-man Band,” he explained to Ren and me.
“He always jokes that all he needs to complete the ensemble is a tambourine. He was so high that night.” Autumn started laughing at Jack’s mention of a tambourine.
She was about to explain, to clue us in on the inside joke, when Ren spoke up.
“Stop already. I’m not used to this. I’m never on the outside of an inside joke,” Ren griped before waving his fork between Autumn and Jack. “Tell us instead, how did you two meet?”
I didn’t know if I wanted to hear the details. At least Autumn was with someone like him. He made her happy, clearly, but did she need to brag about him this whole damn dinner?
“Freshman year, the coffee shop on 5th?” Autumn looked at Jack, who shrugged in agreement, his mouth full.
“Hey. Sorry I’m late.” Gia approached our table in a flurry as she pushed the tangle of red curls from her face.
Dramatic eyeliner highlighted her jade-green eyes that lit up as she sidled up next to Jack, who adjusted himself toward her, welcoming her closer.
Gia kissed Jack, and I knew I’d been way off.
“We met there, but the inflatable screen showing the double feature of Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Mummy was our first friendship date,” Jack corrected, pulling Gia into his side where she tucked nicely.
“And what, we’re going on two years since you stumbled into camp after taking care of those animal deathtraps all day, right? ” he asked Gia with a smirk.
She leaned away from him, affronted. “They’re called horses,” Gia admonished, unable to hold back her smile. “Sometimes, I wish I was still an intern in Wildwood. Homemade s’mores by my new crush after work was the best perk.”
Jack hugged her side. “It’s like you were always supposed to find me here.”
“Hard having to find you over and over again, since we’re apart months at a time.” Gia’s tone lost its playfulness. His face fell, but he recovered quickly as she kissed his cheek. “Sorry, I just miss you, babe.” She gave him a smile, and the tension lines in Jack’s forehead relaxed once again.
“Miss you too.” He pulled her in even closer.
Ren jumped in to lighten the mood. “When was our first friendship date?” he asked, as if I could ever forget.
“Easy. Your first day. I think you told me you had access to my schedule and that I couldn’t get out of taking you out for a drink to celebrate.”
Ren had that way about him. He always knew I needed a little bit of a push to socialize and take care of myself, and he was happy being the one to tug me in the right direction. Case in point: camp.
“A scandalous office affair, I’d imagine,” Autumn teased, and we all laughed.
“Songs will be written about this bromance,” he told her with all seriousness. “You know, Jamie’s a big deal back at the office. About to become senior associate and everything.”
Autumn raised an eyebrow. Did everyone else notice that he was directly addressing her?
“I’m not surprised,” she said sincerely. “I’m sure he’ll be running the place soon enough.”
It suddenly felt a hundred degrees in here. I resisted the urge to fan myself. “I don’t know about that…”
Autumn focused her attention on me and the world fell away, making the lull in the otherwise boisterous mess hall obvious.
“It’s too quiet here. Maybe we should see if the one-man band takes requests?” I asked.
We all looked for Leo, but he was nowhere to be found. Autumn and Gia began chatting about Gia’s week, different animals and places she’d gone to help. Turned out, Gia had found a new job doing house calls and equestrian center visits in the Greater Portland area.
The knot in my gut eased. Any tension lines I’d been carrying had probably also left the building.
Jack and Autumn were friends, best friends, and based on their interactions, they had an easy camaraderie that I had only come close to experiencing, and that person sat right next to me.
How had I never seen it with Ren? I knew then that I needed to do more work to make our friendship thrive.
I’d promised Ren we’d play bingo for the night’s activity. We took our plates to the correct bins and headed out, but I couldn’t stop thinking of my luck tonight after learning about Jack and Gia’s relationship. It was wrong, but it didn’t stop me from feeling high as a kite.
“B-10,” Felicia called out.
We were playing a bougie twist on bingo, with prizes like bottles of wine and expensive chocolates, the grand prize being a stay at a winery on the other side of the mountain.
Too bad Ren and I weren’t paying attention. I hadn’t played bingo before and was having a great time until Ren started delving into my past life, but it was time to open up.
“So, Jamie . Can I call you that too?”
“Don’t give me that look. It was high school. Of course the pretty girl got to call me whatever she liked.”
“The pretty girl you dated .”
“She was an all-star athlete, on student council, and the most challenging person I ever went head to head with. I didn’t stand a chance.”
“Bet you still wouldn’t.” He snickered as he marked another spot on his bingo sheet. I didn’t know how he was paying attention.
“I wouldn’t take that bet,” I agreed, realizing I’d admitted too much thanks to whiskeys number three and four.
“What were you like in high school, anyway? Let me guess, you had that same all-work, no-play ambition that I love so much about you?”
A smile tugged at my lips. I’d worked a lot in high school, sure, maintained top grades, but back then… “More like the do-anything-for-a-laugh type.”
He gasped. “Really? Tell me more.”
Regaling Ren was easy. He was a great listener and would pipe in with his own stories. My favorite was how he’d organized the senior prank at his high school—setting off confetti and glitter bombs in the teacher’s lounge and cafeteria. “Teachers still talk about it to this day.”
“They do not.”
“Well, my brother’s a teacher there, and he still does. Blames me for the glitter he gets on his shoes.”
“That’s the brother that windsurfs?”
“Yeah. He’s the cool one. Even lets me call him by his nickname, Pooh Bear, like my mom calls him. That’s why he’s my favorite.” He looked me dead in the eyes.
“You manipulative bastard.” I knew exactly what he was on about.
“Are you telling me that sexy lumberjack is the only one who gets to call you Jamie?”
Oh my god, he did not call Autumn “sexy lumberjack.”
“Sexy lumberjack has a name and doesn’t pester me about whether I do briefs while in my briefs when I go home.”
Ren’s entire body shook with laughter over our inside joke, referencing a past client who had hit on me every chance she got.
“Well, Jamie sounds like a person who would do briefs in their briefs, and I want to be friends with him… James, however…”
“Fine. Call me Jamie,” I conceded.
His head dipped nervously. “I know we’re joking about it, but you have experience now. Do you think you can be friends with an ex? Grant has had me thinking, and I realized I kind of wish things weren’t completely over with Zachary. We used to be best friends.”
“I don’t know if you would call what I’m going through ‘experience,’ but yeah, I think it can work.
I hope it can work.” I shrugged. Ren stared at me as if he could see right through me, and it made me want to sink back inside my shell, but I fought it anyway.
“Autumn and I were close back then, and seeing her now… It’s just a lot.
But I realized today that I’ll take whatever I can get. ”
“You sound like you loved her,” Ren noted, in a moment of seriousness I wasn’t used to from him.
The word love sounded so wrong in the past tense, but it was the truth, so I nodded.