“God, I was so nervous about this trip. Were you? It’s probably just me. I mean, look at you, the picture of calm. You’re always the picture of calm. But Jesus, Jamie. I barely slept last night. And this morning when you showed up, I don’t know. I guess I’ve been freaking out a little bit. Are you and I going to be okay? Are we going to kill each other on this trip? What happens when I actually get to L.A. and see Spencer again?” She paused only to catch her breath, and he just sat there and listened. “But this is it!” she yelled. “This is our sign.”
He took her wrists in his hands, and she released her grip on his face.
“A sign that this trip will be apocalyptic? And since when do you believe in signs?”
She shook her head wildly.
“Not apocalyptic, silly! Don’t you see? If we take the glass half full approach, this is it. We get our travel mishap out of the way before we even leave. We can relax, sip on a soy peppermint mocha…”
“Black coffee,” Jamie interrupted, and Brynn threw her hands in the air, knocking her sun visor open and sending a small pile of paperwork straight into the side of her face. She laughed again. Regardless of this glass-half-full attitude she was adopting, neither of them were superstitious. And Jamie certainly wasn’t going to interpret them both seeing this as a sign—even though their interpretations were polar opposites.
No signs!
“Whatever. You know what I mean. Better to get a flat tire now than on the highway, right? We’re getting the hard part out of the way first. Nothing but smooth sailing from here on out.”
She looked at him, eyes bright and earnest, and he couldn’t help it. He agreed with her. That’s what Brynn did. When her passion took over, she took him along for the ride. It was one of the things he loved most about her. And maybe she was right.
A nice, relaxing breakfast while they waited for the tire to be changed—that would get them past all the awkwardness that had built up in the past week. The hard part, he thought. They could get that out of the way.
He brushed a rogue curl out of her eyes, letting his fingertips linger behind her ear.
Heart hammering in his chest, he echoed her words back to her. “Smooth sailing from here on out.”
Brynn held up her phone. “And a Monkees playlist.”
Finally, Jamie laughed, too.
Chapter Seven
Brynn was right—it was smooth sailing all the way to their first sight-seeing stop, St. Louis. They’d left early enough—even with the quick tire change—that they could still make Tulsa by dark. And so far they’d managed to avoid talking about the reunion. Brynn wasn’t sure if this was the best idea, pretending like it didn’t happen when the fact that it did happen was the reason she and Jamie were in his truck right now. Aside from Jamie’s insistence on fixing this, neither of them had mentioned that night again. Four hours, and the conversation never stalled, but it never went anywhere bordering on iffy.
Yep. Smooth sailing, all right. She wasn’t going to count the last hour when Jamie had taken away her control of the playlist. Even she had to admit that after three hours, maybe it was time for something other than the Monkees. So she settled for Jamie getting his classic rock fix with a Pandora station she set up just for him.
“Name that tune?” she asked, hoping he’d play along.
He grinned. “You mean even if it’s not all Monkees?”
She crossed her arms. “I do listen to other music. I just prefer Davy, Mickey, Mike, and Peter. A girl wants what a girl wants.” She shrugged.
The muscle in his jaw ticked, but then he relaxed into a smile again.
“Okay,” he said. “Best out of five?”
Brynn bounced in her seat and clapped. This was his favorite game. After the tire incident, she wanted to do whatever she could to assure him that the worst was over. That an amazing week lay ahead of them.
They waited for Eric Clapton’s “Layla” to end, and she tried to clear her mind, to ready it for rapid song name retrieval. But Jamie was the master. It took one lick of the guitar for him to get the first song.
“‘Shook Me All Night Long’!” he yelled, then slapped the steering wheel. “I can feel it, B. I’m gonna stay undefeated. You sure you don’t wanna just throw in the towel so you don’t embarrass yourself?”
She rolled her eyes. “Ha. Ha. Ha. Maybe I have a strategy. Did you ever think of that? I could just be waiting for the perfect moment to throw you off your game. You won’t even see it coming.”
He laughed softly, and they both broke into their best AC/DC impressions, singing along to the rest of the song.
When Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” began, Jamie called out the song title in what Brynn swore was the silent pause before the song started.
“You’re cheating!” she whined.
His shoulders shook as he laughed.
“How can I cheat at the game you started?”
She examined his phone.
“I don’t know! Maybe this is some secret playlist.”
“It’s a classic rock station, B. The app plays what it wants, not the other way around.”
She stared straight ahead, watching the road roll out in front of them as she sulked through a song she usually enjoyed. So when the next song started, she hadn’t cleared her mind. In fact, she was still sulking when the guitar intro ended and Van Morrison started singing the first verse of “Brown-Eyed Girl.”