Jamie hadn’t charged his phone since they arrived in Tulsa. His mind seemed to be constantly preoccupied with things he wanted to put off, but undealt-with thoughts liked to creep up when he least expected them—like when a certain girl licked the head off a draft beer or when that same girl wore a baseball shirt that made him crazy. So when he finally plugged his phone into its car charger as they readied themselves to leave Tulsa, of course there was a text waiting from Annie. No, it wasn’t waiting. It was taunting. Goading. Reminding him that two days into their trip, he was no closer to telling Brynn the truth as he was running out of time before handing her off to another guy.
Annie: Are you two engaged yet? If not, did you at least do it?
Do it? Jamie was sure his cold shower this morning was pretty much the opposite of doing it. Not that he wasn’t thinking about, well, it.
He texted back:
Plans delayed due to temporary blindness but getting back on the rails today.
Then he turned his phone to silent and locked his screen. He didn’t have the energy to explain any further, so he put the truck in drive and pulled up to the lobby door where he’d left Brynn waiting with her suitcase.
He hopped out of the truck to grab her stuff and toss it in the back of the cab.
“James Fenimore Kingston, have you seen this hotel? It’s gorgeous. I can’t believe I missed it!” She looked over her shoulder at the hotel as Jamie ushered her to the car.
He opened the passenger door for her and rolled his eyes.
“My middle name isn’t Fenimore.”
“It should be.”
“I have a perfectly adequate middle name,” he told her.
This argument wasn’t new. At some point it would take effort and research for her to keep up with the replacement middle names, but his grandfather’s name, David, never seemed to do when Brynn wanted to hyperbolize. And “Hyperbole” was her middle name whenever she was over-the-top excited. Just plain James meant she was pissed, but throw in another famous James’s name, and the moniker took on a whole new tone. Regaining her sight and seeing the hotel he wished she could have seen last night was one of those instances.
James Fenimore, James Byron, James Augustine—he was pretty sure he was the only person he knew, next to Brynn, with the knowledge of James Joyce’s full name. It was the day they both graduated college, and though they hadn’t seen each other since the Christmas before, when Brynn called him on the phone, it was like he’d just left her house after a late-night SNL viewing.
“James Augustin Aloysius Kingston. You are graduating college today.”
He had been nervous that morning. Nervous and excited and clueless and all-knowing at the same time. But Brynn’s voice, and her welcomed teasing, grounded him in the moment.
“I am,” he’d said. “And so are you.”
“I think this means we have to be grown-ups now. Did you get a manual? Because I didn’t get a manual.”
He knew Brynn had called for him—to ease his mind about that day—but the tremor in her voice said she needed him, too.
“No manual,” he’d told her. “I think we just figure it out as we go.”
“Figure it out together?”
“Deal.”
That had been it. While they’d stayed friends, best friends, throughout college, there was always that undercurrent of strain. College gave them the physical and emotional distance they needed, and Jamie was sure they were stronger for it. When she called him that morning, addressing him with one of her too important middle names, Jamie knew they were back—picking up the pieces of where they were when this thing between them almost broke.
They were stronger that day, Sleepy Jean and Jamie, and had grown stronger ever since. Now he wanted to cross that uncrossable line, which could be great, but it could also break them completely.
“Yes,” he finally said, wondering what else she might see more clearly after a day of blindness. “The hotel is pretty nice.”
He closed her door and made his way to the driver’s side of the vehicle. He took a deep breath.
See it, B. See us.