Yet Jamie said nothing. Nothing. Even though she knew he knew the song on the first note.
Her brows pulled together, and she turned to him, the suddenly stoic driver with his jaw clenched.
“Are you letting me win?” she asked. “Because this isn’t how I wanted things to happen, you throwing the game on what I know is your favorite song.” She batted her lashes. “Come on, James. I thought I was your brown-eyed girl.”
She’d meant to tease, but as soon as the words left her lips, they felt all wrong.
He cleared his throat.
“Not cheating, B. Just zoned out.”
Gone was his easy smile and his take-no-prisoners attitude. As quickly as the game had begun, it ended, and Brynn somehow knew not to ask any questions.
So they listened to song after song in what was otherwise silence.
She took the current tune, Tom Petty’s “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” to steer the conversation in a new direction.
“Did you smoke in college?” she asked. “It’s funny, but of all the things we’ve done together, we never got high.”
“You don’t get high,” Jamie said, eyes still on the road.
“I tried it once,” she countered.
He smiled at this. “Yeah, but it’s not your thing.”
She thought about this for a second, not sure why she felt defensive. After all, he was right. It wasn’t her thing. She hated it the one time she tried it, but somehow him making this assessment of her college self, one he saw much less often while they spent four years at different schools, put her on edge.
“You didn’t answer my question,” she continued.
“Which was…?”
He seemed to be enjoying her agitation, the visor of his baseball hat doing nothing to hide the crinkled lines at his eyes that accompanied his grin.
“Did you smoke in school?”
At this Jamie full-on laughed. “I brewed beer in my living room. I had to while away the days of waiting with something,” he said with a chuckle. “That was it, though. Only college. And even then, never on the regular.” He let go of the wheel with his right hand and placed it over his heart. “Once I became a brewmaster, I had no choice but to pledge my life to the barley and hops. Anything else would be sacrilege.”
Brynn slapped him on the shoulder.
“Hey,” he reprimanded, though his smug grin never left his face. “No beating the driver.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Why didn’t you ever do it with me?” As soon as the words left her mouth, she rolled her eyes at herself and groaned under her breath. “Smoke, I mean. Why didn’t I know this about you?”
It was a small detail, a tiny pocket of his college life she wasn’t aware of, and she knew it shouldn’t bother her. But she thought she knew everything about the guy sitting next to her. The whole best-friend thing meant no secrets, right? It’s not like she hid anything from him. Except for stuff that dealt with feelings. Ugh. Stupid teenaged Brynn. And stupid teenaged Jamie. They were both just so…stupid.
Jamie shrugged. “It’s not like I was some big pothead. And you for sure weren’t, so…I don’t know. No biggie.” He paused. “It’s something we don’t do together now, so why does this matter?”
Brynn’s lips pursed into a small pout. Why did it matter?
“It doesn’t,” she said. “I guess I’m just learning there’s stuff I don’t know about you, James. I never took you for a man of mystery, but maybe I was wrong.”
Jamie adjusted his hat, pulling the bill down lower, but it did nothing to hide his raised brows, and Brynn wondered if he liked the idea of her seeing him like this—a man with a secret or two up his sleeve. And though she wouldn’t admit it out loud, the answer was yes. She kind of did like seeing him this way, like a part of the lens she looked through had always been smudged, and only now was she starting to clean it off and see what had been blocked from view.
Right now it was not-a-pothead Jamie, but who knew what else lurked beneath that lowered bill? She had several days to find out.
…