Brynn took off her glasses and kept her eyes open.
“Didn’t we just blow all our remaining cash so you could get those back?”
She nodded but looked straight ahead, no farther than what was right in front of the windshield, the blurry sight of the road her main focus. Sure, it made her dizzy, but not half as much as the bewilderment she felt when thinking of Jamie naked in the shower. Because she never thought of Jamie naked in the shower. And shit. Naked in the shower were the only words attaching themselves to the idea of him at the moment, so the blurry street it would be.
“I want you to describe the bar to me, and I’ll concentrate better if I can’t see anything else.”
Jamie seemed to believe the half-truth because he launched into his recollection of the Campbell Lounge almost immediately.
“The lights were pretty low,” he started, and she nodded.
“I could tell. Felt cozy.” A small smile settled onto her face, and tension she didn’t know she was carrying ebbed out, her shoulders relaxing and her eyes falling shut once more. Her mind played no tricks now as she concentrated on Jamie’s voice.
“It was. Lots of dark wood from the floors to the bar top.”
“Mmmm hmmm.” She produced the image in her mind’s eye, a floor planked with dark hardwood, stools lining the rustic-looking bar. She had no idea if the picture in her head fit what Jamie actually saw, but it felt nice, thinking of the two of them—and Tim, of course—in a place like that.
Jamie cleared his throat, the sound jarring her so that her eyes opened with a start, and she put her glasses back on. When she looked at him, he opened his mouth to say something, but her phone chirped with a text notification, and she dug in her bag to see who it was.
“Oh,” she said, eyes on the phone’s screen.
“Holly?” he asked, his voice tight, and Brynn had a momentary urge to lie. But she didn’t lie to Jamie, or to anyone for that matter. Even if she did, he’d see through her. The point was that she had the urge, irrational as it was, not to tell Jamie who had sent the text.
“It’s Spencer,” she said, forcing a cheery nonchalance to her tone and then immediately regretting doing it. Why? Spencer Matthews, soon-to-be-published author and senior year crush, just texted her to say he was thinking about her, that he was looking forward to seeing her again.
This was good news—all the encouragement she needed after wondering if she was making a fool out of herself for taking this trip. When she told Spencer she was coming, he’d acted pleased, but he could have just meant to be polite. Now he texted her with no prompting, thought about her, and she had to remind herself that this was what she wanted—the plan finally coming to fruition.
Yet, at the same time…
“You should get some sleep or something,” Jamie said, interrupting her thought. “We have a long drive, and the rest of it’s going to pretty much look like this until we hit desert.”
Brynn peered through her thick lenses out onto the rolling green earth passing them by. Trees lined the rural expanse, and other than the thin cloud wisps stitching the sky above, the trees rose into what looked almost like a sea overhead.
They’d slept until nine, but Jamie’s voice was tight, the suggestion evidence that he no longer wanted to discuss last night—or anything for that matter. Her breath hitched, and she wanted to say something, that it was all wrong for the day to look like this and Jamie to write it off as not worth the view. They should stop, take a picture. Or better yet, she should close her eyes, but not to sleep. She could take off her glasses again and ask him to narrate the scene, because something made her want to see it through his eyes.
“I’m not tired,” she said, mirroring the words she said last night, the ones that led to their beer-tasting escapade and a night that was perfect other than temporary blindness.
“I just concentrate better when we’re not talking, and I didn’t want you to be bored,” Jamie countered. “So if it’s all the same to you, I’m just going to pay attention to the road for a bit.”
“Maybe we should chill and have a leisurely breakfast,” she said, ignoring the coffee cups in the cup holders between them. “That got us off on the right foot for the first leg of the journey.” If you didn’t count the flat tire that forced them to do so.
“I’m fine.”
“I could drive, even, if you want to take a break from concentrating today. For real. It’s all highway, so your transmission should be safe.”
She offered a weak smile, but Jamie didn’t take the bait. And while she wasn’t sure she wanted to ask, she knew she should. Because the Spencer thing couldn’t still be an issue. Brynn had gotten past the kiss. Jamie should have gotten past whatever he felt about her and Spencer. Because if he hadn’t, he’d tell her, right?
“James Earl Jones Kingston, is everything…”