CHAPTER NINETEEN
Avonlea – Thirteen Years Ago
Ifind Jamie on the roof. How this became our place, I’m not sure, but I’ve been looking forward to this rooftop reunion for what feels like forever, not just a year.
The ladder to the top is now an affixed, sturdy thing. Angus must’ve known we’d keep using the rickety old one and were likely to break our necks if he didn’t upgrade it.
“Hey, Jamie,” I say as my head pops above the roofline to catch him watching for me. He looks… good. Older.
Hotter.
“Hey, Avi,” his voice husks, and—wow—that’s different too. I can almost feel its deeper timbre like a brush against my senses.
I take my time making my way over to him but stop short and sit with my legs curled under me. Jamie’s broad shoulders take up more of the width of the chimney now, so I don’t think we can sit there side by side anymore. I take in all of his features and the other ways he’s changed.
The most prominent one is his lack of glasses. “Did you get contacts?”
He nods. “Aye, and it’s nice not to worry about the glasses all the time.” He holds my gaze and, with nothing in the way to block those beautiful green irises, I feel like I’m trapped in them, swimming in a sea of emeralds.
“You cut your hair,” he states, scooting away from the chimney so he can reach out and push the lock that’s fluttering around my face behind my ear. If I had goose bumps before, it’s nothing to the shiver that rolls down my spine now.
“Do you like it?” I duck my chin, effectively pulling away from his hand.
The meticulously styled waves fall forward again, brushing my shoulders.
All the girls in my class—or the cool ones at least—cut their hair shorter before the end of school, so I did too. But I still don’t know that I like it.
“I do.” There’s a smile in his voice that I want to see, so I look up, letting our eyes lock again. I wonder if he’ll kiss me—like the last time we were on this roof—but he doesn’t. Instead, he pushes back to sit against the chimney.
I hide the pang of disappointment with a question. “Truth?” I ask, and his smile goes wide.
“Anything you wanna know,” he says.
“How do you like it in America?”
His shoulders relax and he looks so cool. Comfortable. There’s a confidence to the way he holds himself now that I don’t think I noticed before.
“It’s pretty great actually. The town we live in, it’s near Lake Tahoe.
” At my mystified expression, he clarifies.
“It’s a huge loch, but they don’t call them that.
They say lake. You’d love it. It’s so blue and the water is super clear—like, you can see these huge boulders way down beneath the surface.
And it’s surrounded by massive mountains.
The whole area reminds me a lot of Scotland, except it almost never rains. ”
“What must that be like,” I say with a giggle, looking over my shoulder at the darker clouds in the distance that are sure to bring the rain with them.
“Yeah, it’s really dry there. But the mountains…
It’s like being surrounded by a whole range of peaks as big or bigger than Ben Nevis.
I even learned how to snowboard last winter, and the hiking is incredible.
The people are nice. And there’s a lot more of them.
” He laughs, and I almost miss the one that was more boyish.
He’s only fifteen, but this is a man’s laugh, and it surprises me.
“There’s two hundred kids in just my year at school. ”
“Are you making friends?” I can’t imagine he isn’t; who wouldn’t want to be friends with Jamie?
“Aye. I joined the school paper. Can you believe it, they have a school paper? Well, of course your school probably does too, but we didn’t have that here. Anyway, it’s great. My friend Rory—you’d love her—she and I do that together which is pretty cool. Everyone else is nice too.”
I feel red-hot jealousy score through me. He has a new “girl” friend, and she’s the only one that he singled out by name. I shouldn’t hate that, but a tiny (or not so tiny) part of me does. He didn’t call her his girlfriend though, so at least there’s that.
“That’s great, Jamie,” I say, forcing a smile. “So you’re happy?”
“Yeah, I guess. It’s different, but mostly in good ways. I miss Gran and Grandad and my friends here. But I think Mum and Dad were right, and it’s been good to get out and experience somewhere new.”
“Do you think you’ll stay there…?” I ask and then bite my lip. Why did I ask that?
“Like forever?” He scrunches his brows in question.
I shrug. I’ve thought a lot about his promise to always come back, but what happens when summer breaks become a thing of the past? Will he come back to Scotland or will I lose him to his new home and never see him again?
“I don’t know. Mum and Dad really love their new jobs at the distillery. I imagine they’ll stay, but who knows what I’ll do after I finish school. I mean, I could come back to Scotland for university, but there are great ones there too.”
It’s his turn to shrug. I open my mouth to tell him about the culinary schools I’ve been looking at for after I finish secondary school, but he keeps talking, his eyes shifting away from me.
“My girlfriend, Cat, thinks she’ll go to UNR—that’s the university about an hour from us. It sounds like a good one.”
I stutter over the word in my brain. Girlfriend. Girlfriend? The stutter carries over to my speech when I say, “You—you have a girlfriend?” My attempt at nonchalance fails miserably. If I thought I was jealous a minute ago when he mentioned Rory, it is nothing to how I feel now.
There’s an apology in his eyes. Maybe he can see me turning green with envy.
“Aye, she, uh—she’s a cheerleader.” He rubs the back of his neck, ears going pink.
I snort a laugh. “A cheerleader, huh? Like with pom-poms?” Turns out my defense mechanism right now is pettiness.
“Aye,” he says, sounding defensive. “She asked me out about a month ago.”
I never would’ve pictured him with a cheerleader. That girl Rory, from the paper, sounds more like his type. But what do I know about that anyway? It’s not like he ever talked to me about girls before. It’s always just been us, in this little bubble on Skye, but now…
“Is she your first? Girlfriend, I mean…” I trail off, feeling so stupid. There I was wondering if he’d lean in and kiss me, and he has a girlfriend. Of course he does, look at him!
“Nah. I’ve had a couple,” he says, and swipes a hand through his hair.
“A couple?” I ask, incredulous.
“I mean, it’s high school… well, that’s what they call it at least. I think they just like me for my accent.”
“Who wouldn’t?” I say under my breath, and he smiles like he’s pleased by my assessment.
He was never cocky, so this is a new side of him that I haven’t seen before.
If he puts this air on in front of all the girls at school, it’s no wonder he’s had multiple girlfriends.
But I prefer the real Jamie to this one. My Jamie.
“What about you? Any boyfriends?” He waggles his eyebrows at me and my cheeks heat under his stare.
“Maybe…” I say, turning my face away as it flushes deeper. “I don’t kiss and tell.”
Not that there’s much to tell. There was only one boy, and even though the kissing was frequent, it never made me feel the way my first kiss with Jamie did.
His eyes widen like he’s surprised… or maybe because he doesn’t like to hear I was kissing another boy. I hope it’s the latter; jealousy is better than him thinking there aren’t any boys who’d want to kiss me.
“Sounds like it was a good year for the both of us.” He bumps my shoe with his and I look into the face of my best friend. I nod and force a smile to match his.
But on the inside, my heart sinks as I realize our comfortable contact—the hugs, the hand holding—is a thing of the past for our friendship now.
It would be too intimate as just friends, especially now that he has a girlfriend.
Cat. Ugh, it’s such a cheerleader name. She’s probably the captain too. I try not to roll my eyes—or cry.
“So, where’s our book of adventures then? We’ve got to make it a great summer as well,” I say with all the confidence I can muster, feeling as if our summers will never be the same now.