Wedding Bet (Fixer Brothers Construction Co #8)

19. Jamie

19

JAMIE

My hands shook as I held the thin paper in my hands, the torn envelope fluttering toward the kitchen counter.

OUTSTANDING BILL: $8,792

There it was, in bold letters, unmistakable.

“Oh, God, Jamie, is it bad?” Chase’s voice came from the phone, which was cradled between my ear and my shoulder.

“It’s worse than bad,” I managed to say as a pit formed in my stomach. “I came back to a shitstorm. Holy Christ.”

It had been nonstop since the moment I’d gotten back to Stellara Beach. When we landed after the flights, I took Mom back home, dropped her off, and immediately went to go grab a few essentials from the grocery store to fill her fridge.

By the time I was done at the store only twenty minutes later, I checked to see five voice messages from my mother.

In each one, she’d sounded more panicked. She’d had a bad fall on her driveway, and the concrete had screwed up her hip—a hip that wasn’t in great condition to begin with. The pain got worse and worse until she had no feeling in her leg at all, and in the span of just a few minutes, an elderly neighbor had called an ambulance for Mom, even though she begged her not to do it.

Mom knew exactly how much it would cost. But the old neighbor didn’t drive anymore, and the moment she heard about the numbness, she’d made the call.

And the ambulance, hospital, X-ray, and fees were now staring me in the face.

Mom was okay, but our finances weren’t.

“Shit,” Chase said, his voice full of sympathy. “Well, you know I’ll contribute, too, as much as I can. Fuck, I wish I could be there right now.”

“I wish I hadn’t been browsing different types of potatoes at the grocery store at the time,” I said. “I’m glad Mom is okay. Chase, we’ll manage this somehow. Even if I have to max out a credit card again. You should be enjoying your newlywed status right now, not worrying about this.”

“I’m so sorry,” Chase said. “I love you, J. Call me later, okay?”

“Love you, too. I will.”

I hung up the phone and glanced at the clock, already late for my second shift at the restaurant. I’d been working my usual long brunch shifts and then picking up many late afternoon ones, as well. I glanced around at the kitchen, tension knotting in my chest. The sink was overflowing with dishes that my roommates hadn’t touched. The trash was a mountain of garbage spilling out onto the floor. Splatters of tomato sauce and coffee dotted the whole counter, and empty old pizza boxes cluttered the small table.

It was a fucking mess. A mess that I almost always took care of, either by nagging my roommates or just getting fed up and doing it on my own.

But I didn’t have time. And I sure as hell didn’t have the money to hire a cleaning service.

I drove into work in my old car, the gas tank hovering dangerously close to empty. When I walked into work, I discovered that one of our line cooks had spilled an entire vat of old frying oil onto the floor while changing it out.

The floor was covered in slippery old grease, and we wouldn’t be able to start our shift—and start earning tips that I desperately needed, until we cleaned it up.

The threat of tears prickled at the corners of my eyes and my throat was tight as a vise. I helped the other workers, all hands on deck, cleaning up the spill as fast as we could. My shoulders ached. My feet throbbed like hell. And even after we’d cleaned everything meticulously, we opened up shop for the afternoon and found that it was a painfully slow day.

The slowest we’d been in weeks and weeks.

I’d be lucky if I could even collect half of my usual tips on a night like this.

I held myself back from breaking down for almost the whole shift.

It was only when I headed outside to toss a bunch of cardboard in the recycling bin that I got a quick moment to check my phone.

Landry’s name had popped up on my screen.

And that’s when a couple of tears finally broke off from the corners of my eyes, drying in the night air.

It was a simple text, just him asking how I was doing, and probably wondering why the hell I had been silent for the last many days. The truth was that I’d thought of Landry almost every day, in any spare minute that I had the chance to think at all.

In my head, I’d drafted a million different versions of things I could say on a phone call to him, or texts I could write. Flirty things, hopeful things. Memories and jokes from when we were in Colorado.

But the reality was that from the second I’d landed back at home again, Colorado had felt like another lifetime. Another version of me , entirely—a version that had free time, that had no cares in the world, that could do things like spend afternoons walking with Landry in buttery sunlight, followed by snowglobe evenings with him in bed by the moonlight.

It didn’t feel real anymore.

And now I choked up imagining any sort of world where Landry would drive down here, expecting the Jamie he’d known back there in the snowy wonderland, and instead finding the real me, and my total mess of a life. He’d find out how totally unprepared I was for adulthood, even when I’d been a working, independent adult for well over a decade.

My hands trembled as I wrote back a text to Landry, telling him as politely as I could that I didn’t think we were going to work out.

I wrote the last sentences, tears streaming down my face.

Thank you for being in a snowglobe with me. It meant everything.

I let out a rough breath of air, using the heels of my hands to push away my tears. There was no time to dwell. My only mission in life was to claw my way out of the monetary hell I’d been in for years, and finally start living a life I could be proud of.

So that I could finally let myself share my world with someone, without shame.

I successfully blotted out my feelings for the rest of the night, collecting my meager tips in my calloused hands at the end of the night. I drove to the gas station and put every dollar into my tank, watching the needle barely make it to half full. When I got back to the house, I made it part of the way up our front walkway before I saw the silhouette of one of my roommates making out with a girl on our couch and loud country music blaring from the living room speakers.

“Damn it,” I muttered under my breath, stopping in my tracks.

I didn’t want to go inside. There was nothing for me in this house, other than a tiny bedroom and the smell of stale beer.

I turned around, heading straight back down the walkway and along the street, walking the few short blocks to the ocean. Our house wasn’t on a particularly ideal portion of the water, because the beaches had more rocks than sand around here and it wasn’t a nice tourist destination.

The moment I stepped foot on the shore, though, I knew it was all I had been needing. I yanked off my boots and socks, my feet finally free after being trapped for sixteen hours. I pulled off my shirt next, tossing it in a pile by the steps that led down to the beach.

I let the breezy night air hit my skin, closing my eyes for a moment and pulling in a long breath of ocean scent. The waves lapped at the dark rocks, and I found a small patch of sand and plopped down onto my ass.

I didn’t care if I got damp or sandy. My clothes were already covered in grease, and I couldn’t care anymore.

For the first time since being home, I remembered myself.

The beach had a way of erasing everything else in the world, if only for a moment. Even if I felt rotten and unlovable, I at least always felt like I belonged , when I was by the water.

That had to be enough.

After staring out at the foam on the waves for who knew how long, my phone buzzed in my front pocket. My heart kicked in my chest.

Would it be another distress call from Mom about her hip or about money? Would it be work, or my roommates, or a damn bill collector asking about similar things?

Or would it be Landry, probably sending me the last message I’d ever see from him?

In another minute, I summoned the courage to pull my phone out of my pocket. I glanced at the screen and when I saw it was Landry, my heart rate doubled.

I opened it up.

It was a photo of a cat—not just any cat, but probably one of the more adorable ones I’d ever seen in my entire life. He was grey all over other than a patch of white between his eyes and two white paws up front. His eyes were wide in the photo, and one paw was outstretched toward a radiant orange tulip. It looked like he was playing with the tulip bud like it was a toy on a string.

Sprinkle, Landry’s beloved neighborhood stray.

A smile spread across my face and the sensation almost felt unfamiliar.

I probably hadn’t smiled like that in days, I realized.

I let out a breath that I hadn’t realized I’d been holding, wiping away a tear that had fallen down my cheek at the same time I smiled wide.

My hands were shaking a little again, but for a different reason this time. I let my thumb hover over the phone button on Landry’s message, pausing for a beat, feeling like the fate of the world was hanging in the balance.

And then I let my thumb down. The phone started ringing, and I held up my phone to my ear, forcing my hands to be steady. My heart was a drum in my chest as I waited one ring, then two, then three.

“Jamie,” came Landry’s voice when he finally picked up, and it was as if every cell in my body relaxed, just a little, hearing that familiar sound.

“Hi,” I managed to say.

“Is… everything all right?” he asked, his tone kind.

“Yeah, yeah. Things are okay. In this moment, at least. They haven’t exactly been very good for the past few days.”

He hummed on the other end of the line, and I could feel that he didn’t know what to say. I sure as shit had no clue what to say either. I hadn’t planned any of this out, to say the least. I hadn’t even thought I’d be calling him until the moment I’d noticed the little green button, right there on my phone.

“ Hey, no, that’s not food, you little beast ,” I heard Landry saying quietly on the other end of the line, and I could picture it now.

“Is Sprinkle trying to eat your tulips?” I asked.

“He sure as hell is,” Landry said, and I heard a faint mew sound a moment later. “That’s right, you. Eat the cat food instead.”

“You feed him sometimes?” I asked.

“I buy him the best cat food in the store,” Landry confirmed. “Sprinkle eats like a king around here.”

I puffed out a laugh. “No wonder he likes you so much.”

Landry sighed. “Is that how I can get you to like me again, Jamie? Should I feed you some cat food, and then everything will finally fucking make sense to me again?”

Something lurched behind my chest. “Was wondering when you were going to yell at me.”

“I’m not going to yell at you,” Landry said. “I just don’t understand, Jamie. Your text hurt. It really hurt.”

I was nodding even though I knew he couldn’t see me. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “Landry, you have to understand. I landed, and then my mom hurt herself, and now we have so many more medical bills, and my roommates are a disaster, and my job just isn’t enough— I’m not enough, Landry. I can’t see what any possible future between us could look like.”

He cleared his throat on the other end, and the image of him breaking down on the night of the wedding flashed through my head. He wasn’t feeling that way again, was he? Was that even possible?

“It could look like me driving down and meeting you at the beach, for one,” he said, his voice sounding weak. “I can hear the breeze. I can hear the waves.”

I couldn’t even imagine what that would be like—him sitting right here with me, under the stars.

“It could look like me never even stepping foot into your restaurant or your home, if you don’t want me to,” he offered. “And it could look like me putting my damn arms around you again and getting to kiss you again, Jamie. You can’t even imagine how much I want to feel that again.”

My voice was wobbly and barely a whisper when I spoke. “I think I can imagine that,” I said. “I think I want it more than anything, if I really let myself.”

“Ninety minutes, Jamie,” he said softly. “I can be in Stellara Beach in ninety minutes.”

A wave crashed against the rocks near me. I pulled in a long breath, reaching a tipping point that I didn’t think I could come back from.

“I’m at Paintbrush Cove,” I whispered. “It’s a little beach off of Mira Street. It can be hard to park near here—”

“Ninety minutes,” Landry repeated again before hanging up.