Wedding Bet (Fixer Brothers Construction Co #8)

21. Jamie

21

JAMIE

I slammed my car into park, my back lurching against the driver’s seat a little as I stopped outside the store where Chase had been grabbing food.

I loved it when my brother visited California—but he always brought a little bit of chaos with him.

Beautiful, fun chaos, but chaos nonetheless.

“Get in, get in, we’re late,” I said, reaching over to pop open the door for him. He was rushing out the front doors, arms full of grocery bags and food containers.

I grabbed the stack of two pies and a box of pastries sitting on my passenger side seat, carefully placing them in the back of the car. Chase added his own stuff to the back before finally sitting down in the passenger seat, letting out a big breath of air.

“Okay, I’m in, let’s roll,” Chase said, leaning over to give me a quick side-hug before putting on his seat belt. “Landry is probably already at Mom’s. She’s probably already three stories deep into talking his ear off about the neighbor.”

I snorted, throwing the car into drive again and heading off. “She’s probably three tangents deep. Starting with a story about the neighbor, branching into a story about local birds, then branching into a story about how things used to be in 1992, or something.”

Chase laughed, settling in as we cruised down the street. “It’s been way too long since we had a proper dinner party at Mom’s, hasn’t it?”

“Years,” I said. “We’re too busy. I’m tired of being busy.”

“Tell me about it.”

I nervously tapped the steering wheel with my thumbs at a red light. For the last few days, I’d been in high gear planning out the dinner party. It was the first time Landry would be seeing Mom’s house, and I kept veering from excitement to nervousness and back again about twenty times a day.

It had been four weeks since the night at the beach. Chase and Adam had already gone on their honeymoon. Chase had decided to come out for a quick weekend trip to California to spend some quality time with me and Mom after the chaos that had been the wedding week.

I couldn’t believe it had all only been four weeks ago.

For me, it had been four weeks of cautious optimism, of opening myself to the possibility that someone—someone fucking amazing —might actually want me for real.

But as each week passed, I’d only found myself getting more hopeful about Landry. I kept waiting for something bad to happen, but only good things seemed to be happening with him in my life.

Landry’s life was colossally different from mine, but he found a way to make everything seem normal. He’d driven down to visit me multiple times, and I’d caved, letting him pay for my gas to drive up to his house twice in LA. He’d already had to make two short business trips back to his house in Denver, but each time, he showered me with a steady stream of photos, little videos, and texts throughout the day, showing me the little moments of his life even when I couldn’t be there. A picture of a pastry. A selfie of him in front of a museum. A selfie of him in front of tons of boring-looking paperwork. And each night, even when he couldn’t be in California, he made sure to have a video chat with me.

I loved the little snippets from Colorado, and I was shocked to find that I even missed the cold and the snow.

I’d fallen in love with it during the wedding.

“Did Landry seem nervous at the prospect of this dinner party at Mom’s?” Chase asked as we rounded the corner onto Mom’s street.

“Shockingly, no,” I said. “Landry wants her to like him, which is quite frankly adorable, but he said he liked meeting her at the wedding.”

“He certainly seemed good when he met you ,” Chase said, and when I glanced over at him, he was wiggling his eyebrows up and down at me.

“Oh, shut up.”

“Hot hotel hanky-panky,” he teased. “God, you would get lucky with a guy named Lucky. He’s like your Prince Charming.”

“Landry is not my Prince Charming,” I protested. “We had to talk through a lot of things at the ski resort to get where we ended up.”

Chase laughed. “Sounds like nothing but beautiful backdrops and cozy, fireside conversations to me.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “Not exactly, but… maybe a little,” I admitted. I parked the car outside Mom’s house, checking the time. “Okay. We’re actually only fifteen minutes late. Let’s go rescue Landry.”

We grabbed our big haul of food for the dinner party and made our way to Mom’s front door. One of Landry’s cars was already parked in the driveway next to mine, and I tried to ignore how strange it was to see the sleek, black, expensive Mercedes in front of Mom’s modest little bungalow house.

“We’re here,” Chase called into the house as we pushed through the front door.

“In the back, kids!” Mom’s voice came from past the sliding door that led into the yard. We set down all of the food in the kitchen and made our way out.

And I saw Landry, paintbrush in one hand and small paint can in the other, reaching up to paint a portion of the white wood siding that lined the back of the house.

“Hey, sweetie,” Mom said, coming in to give me a hug.

“Evening, Mom,” I said, furrowing my brow. “Can I ask what in the hell Landry is doing with a paint can in his hand?”

“Oh, I needed touch-ups on the top of the wood panels,” Mom said as she gave Chase a hug. “Landry’s tall. I had to ask.”

“She’s put him to work after being here for ten minutes,” Chase said, grinning.

“God,” I said, feeling a heat creep up to my cheeks. “Mom, I could have easily done this for you with a ladder.”

“Oh, it’s easy,” Landry protested. “I’m happy to help your mom.”

Just as he said it, a glob of white paint dripped down from the brush onto his nice pants.

“Shit, Landry, your pants—”

“Don’t worry about it,” he reassured me. “It’s fine.”

“By the way,” Mom said, leaning in close to my ear. “What a man. I knew he was handsome from the wedding, but he’s so kind and helpful, too. You did very well for yourself, Jamie.”

Now my cheeks were molten. I raked my fingertips through my hair. “I’m very happy.”

My mom’s blue-green eyes glimmered as the skin around them crinkled with her smile. “All right, Landry, it looks lovely,” she said. “You’re relieved of your painting duties. Let’s go eat, shall we? I hope you like roast chicken.”

“Love it. I can’t wait to try yours.”

Landry set down the paint and brush, checking his fingers for paint droplets before bringing me into a hug. He kissed the top of my head, squeezing me close.

“I’m sorry, again,” I whispered.

“I mean it, I’m more than happy to help,” he said. “Your mom is a hoot. She told me about a stray cat that’s been coming into her yard, and I told her all about Sprinkle.”

I couldn’t keep a grin off my face as he turned to Chase.

“Hey, Landry, when you’re back in Colorado,” Chase said, “I’ve got some places in my house in need of paint touch-ups, if you want to head over there.”

Landry laughed. “I’m finally learning the real reason you guys are so happy I’m dating Jamie now, huh?” Landry asked. “Paint projects.”

“At least you’re good at it,” Chase joked. “I’m going to help Mom get started on the roast.”

He headed inside and for a moment it was just me and Landry out back. The sun was just starting to set, and after a long day at work and then scrambling to get food and get over to Mom’s in time, I let myself breathe.

“It feels so good to finally be here,” I told Landry. “I can tell Mom likes you, and not just because you helped with the paint, by the way.”

He had a look of innocent happiness on his face. “You really think so?” he asked. “I know I’m still pretty new in your life, but I really do want her to like me.”

“You’re already in the good zone,” I said. “God, when I told her I was officially dating you, she must have asked me about fifty rapid-fire questions.”

Landry wrapped his arms around me from behind, rocking on his feet a little as he gave me what I liked to call a “backpack hug.”

“Well, you’re doing great, too,” he murmured behind my ear. “I know introducing a new boyfriend can be nerve-wracking.”

A fizzle of energy shot through me.

Boyfriend .

“Landry,” I said quietly. “Do me a favor and say that last sentence again?”

“What?” he said. “Introducing a new boyfriend can be nerve—oh, shit.”

He released me from his arms and I turned to face him. “Yeah. That one.”

A momentary look of panic passed over his face. “Did—did I say that too soon? Is this another dating convention I’m behind the times on? I’m sorry if you weren’t ready for that kind of label.”

“Boyfriend,” I said, letting a slow smile pass over my lips. “I thought I was the one who was going to have to fight to call you that. I thought it was going to slip out one day, and you were going to be upset, and we’d have to take it super slow.”

He puffed out a quick laugh, his gaze dancing from my eyes to my lips. “It just seemed like a natural thing to say.”

“And I absolutely,” I said, pausing to press a small kiss to his lips, “ love it, boyfriend.”

He hummed, pulling me close. “Thank God for that,” he murmured. “Because if I couldn’t be your boyfriend, I think I’d just call it quits on dating forever, thank you very much.”

“Let’s go inside and help Mom and Chase before I steal you away and ride into the sunset forever, okay?” I said, giving him one last squeeze on the hip.

I walked back inside with Landry—my boyfriend , not just a guy I was seeing. It turned out that he was equally as helpful in the kitchen as he was with a paintbrush. Mom quickly regaled us with a story she’d heard from a woman at the post office that morning, all about a Boston Terrier that had somehow learned to sing.

By the time we all sat down around the old dining table to eat, it felt like Landry belonged there. Somehow, it was the most surreal of all of the things I’d experienced with him.

The snowglobe had been ours.

The wedding had been emotional.

And a few weeks ago, at the beach, I’d felt like I was in a dream.

But this was something altogether different: just Landry, a part of my everyday life, sitting at the table with the two most important people in my life, and nothing felt one bit out of place. As Chase joked with him about yoga classes they’d both taken with Emmett back in Colorado, I got choked up for a moment, realizing what my life had started to become.

This was my life. And it wasn’t anywhere near perfect, but that didn’t mean Landry thought I was any less worthy of a relationship. Right here, and right now—not when I “finally had everything figured out.”

And that meant more than even the most perfect snowglobe moment, frozen in time.

My everyday world was something beautiful.