4. Chapter 4 #2
I’ve been dodging them as best I can in between nurse visits, but I want to throw that last one back in his face. If I had known Jamie Bishop was going to pass out on my porch, I surely wouldn’t have taken Kate’s suggestion to come here.
I’m not a psychic or fortune teller or whatever he thinks. That night was one bizarre moment in time, and it’s not something I’m looking to repeat.
Of course, having that argument means admitting I remember him, which is a non-starter, so instead I’ve been gaslighting him by reminding him he’s concussed and not thinking clearly.
I might have convinced myself if not for the fact that, sitting this close to him, I have to admit there’s some things I can’t explain. At the top of the list of my problems: he looks exactly like he did in the dream.
When we arrived, a nurse secured a bandage to the cut on his forehead, and the wrap made his hair stick up like an anime character. It’s because of the haircut. The same as I saw that night: short on the sides, sexy floppy thing on top.
Haircuts I can rationalize. A coincidence.
Current trends and all that. But then the same nurse had taken a pair of surgical scissors to his bloody T-shirt, and when the fabric fell away, I saw them—the freckles across his chest and stomach.
I knew they’d be there. Then there’s his belly button. An outie. I saw that too. In the dream.
I googled what percentage of the population has an outie belly button, and it’s ten. Ten measly percent. There’s no way I could have guessed this. I can’t explain that away no matter how hard I try, and oh, am I trying.
The curtain swings open, and a new nurse steps in.
“Good evening,” she says. “Oh, that looks painful.”
Jamie gives her an aw shucks look and pink paints her round cheeks. She checks the oxygen monitor on his finger just as his phone buzzes in his lap.
He lunges for it without thinking, whimpering in pain as he connects the call. “Kelly,” he rasps. “Hey. Listen, babe—” babe ? “—I took a pretty hard hit at hockey and I’m at the ER. Can you come get me?”
Whatever he hears on the other end of this call is not what he expected because his ears flush red and he flicks a glance at me. I pretend to read the juice box they gave him on hour one.
“Uh, no… I can’t come over… My knee’s fucked and I have three broken—” He runs a hand over his face, sighing the rest of his sentence. “—ribs. I’m not even sure how I’m going to work tomorr—”
A shriek rings from the phone and he winces.
The nurse clucks her tongue and shakes her head in my direction like can you believe this woman , but as much as I’m inclined to agree, I don’t feel like joining in.
I do, however, mentally add a check to the Different column. Jamie is currently sleeping with someone named Kelly. Not the girl from that night—Becca, I think her name was—or you know, me .
“Look, do you think you could pick me up? I can’t drive.
” His jaw twitches and his voice drops an octave.
I don’t have to know him in some other dimension to know he’s pissed.
“Seriously? Just drop me off and you can go back—Okay… yeah… thanks for nothing, Kel.” He ends the call with a growl, tossing the phone on the bed.
So, cool development: an hour into this reunion and I’m bearing witness to yet another break up for Jamie. I’m trying my hardest not to read into that.
The nurse turns to go, and I contemplate clinging to her scrubs and begging her to stay and act as a full-time buffer for this awkward situation I’ve found myself in.
She doesn’t register my mental anguish, though, and I’m left alone with Jamie who looks like he would maybe punch something if he could lift his arm.
“You know, Noel. I’m starting to rethink the whole guardian angel thing.”
I’m desperate to know why he keeps referring to me this way, but I tug at a piece of string on the flannel pajama pants I threw on, pretending to watch the television in the corner.
“This is so fucked up.” He waves a hand between my chair and his bed, and despite the bandages and smell of antiseptic, I blush at the sight of his firm chest, the shadow of abs every time he moves. “You obviously know who I am.”
Blinking away from all that , I meet his annoyed gaze. We’ll get to that part, but first I need more information. “How long has your family owned the house next to my grandmother’s cottage?”
“Bob’s not my family,” he says. “He’s my mother’s husband, and he’s owned it longer than I’ve known him, which is the last eleven years.”
“Do you crash there a lot?” And what I really mean by that is: Did we sleep next door to each other before I played that party game with you? Maybe even that night?
If so, it’s possible I saw him once before in passing and that’s why my brain chose to cast him in the dream. An entirely rational piece of evidence.
“Not anymore,” he says rather vaguely. He gestures for the juice and I hold it up while he sips. “Bob usually calls me to close it up for him, though. That’s why I have a key.”
“You work for him then?”
Something snarky passes over his face. “I can see why you might think that, but no. I own my own business. The brewery. You really don’t know this?”
I scrunch my nose. “How would I?”
“I don’t know.” He lifts a weak hand to his temple then lets it fall. “I was never clear on how it worked.”
Oh, jeez. He thinks I read his entire life in that candle wax. Or that I can pop in and out of his head on a whim. “It definitely doesn’t work like that ,” I say, and his swollen cheek twitches into a smug smile.
“I knew you were lying about remembering me.”
My body deflates. I don’t want to argue with him. Although, I could certainly point out that our growing irritation with each other is going in the Different column too. It looked like we were getting along quite well in the dream.
I’m still not willing to tell him that part, though—the me and him naked part—so I turn back to the TV, my thumbnail ragged now from my teeth.
I should go. He’s a grown man, he can handle the rest of this visit himself.
But I just witnessed someone he referred to as “babe” abandon him when he needed help and it put a bad taste in my mouth.
And maybe I could learn a little bit more about him, now that he’s here and basically captive.
For better or worse, I lost that chance when I bolted the night we met.
I’m not looking to relive that experience, but it’s not like I haven’t wondered about him from time to time, in between long bouts of extreme denial. If ever the wondering might edge out the denying, it would be when I’m back and inexplicably sitting in the Emergency Room with him.
I shift on my plastic chair. “That night,” I say, and my heart riots in warning. “Um… How did it work?”
Jamie shifts too, pain rippling across his face as he turns toward me. “You told me I’d get the money,” he says. “And I did. It’s how I opened my brewery.”
Goosebumps trickle down my arms. Okay, maybe I don’t want to know more, because this sounds bat shit. “It’s a coincidence,” I hedge. “I’m sure it would have worked out even if I didn’t tell you that.”
“No, Noel. It wouldn’t have.” He’s suddenly dead serious. “I’d been looking for investors for a while, had a few good leads, but bills were due, and nothing was panning out. My stepdad’s buddy had a job opening. I was pretty much resigned to it the night I met you.”
“The job I told you not to take?”
“Same one. I needed a steady paycheck because I was… well, I’m sure you remember.”
I’m thinking of proposing. “Right.” I swallow.
“It wasn’t a bad gig, managing a bar on the pier in Old Orchard.
It was probably better than I deserved at the time.
Nepotism at best, but giving up the dream sorta broke my heart.
Then you told me to wait, that the money would come.
I canceled the interview the next day. Two weeks after that, my neighbor at the time knocked on my door completely out of the blue.
I used to bring him six packs from my home brew set up, and it turned out he was sitting on a big settlement for some accident years ago.
He offered to invest. I got to open my place. Just like you said I would.”
I pull back, searching his face for a sign that he’s joking. There’s no way he diverted his entire livelihood based on a chance meeting with a stranger. A potentially unstable stranger. “What would have happened if you didn’t get the money?” I ask, though I’m not sure I can handle the answer.
“Considering I was barely making rent at the time?” He shrugs. “I would have been broke, possibly homeless. Probably ruined my credit. Most likely, I’d have ended up couch surfing and pouring someone else’s beer instead of mine.”
Oh my God .
“Jamie! I can’t believe you told him no, just like that, because of what I saw. What if I was a lunatic?”
“I knew you weren’t.”
“You had no way of knowing that. You don’t make major life decisions on a freaking candle.
” I feel like I’ve just missed getting hit by a bus, despite this having happened two years ago.
If I’d been wrong, it would have messed up everything for him.
How could he have taken such a huge risk, and how can he be so casual about it now?
He blows out a breath. “Well, there was the other thing.”
I meet his eyes and the whole thing is still raw and right there. His girlfriend. That look he’d given her before I threw a psychic bomb into their relationship. I remember the way the light drained from his face that night, and the indignation coursing through me softens. “It was true, then?”
“Oh, yeah.” He laughs quietly and kneads at the back of his neck like the entire experience has settled in that one spot. “I couldn’t just ignore the other piece of advice you gave me when that one was so spot on.”