Page 21 of The Fate Factor

“Okay,” Kate says. “Start back. Did you flip the fuck out? Because that’s how I imagine you handling this.”

I scoff self-righteously and lie through my teeth. “Of course not. But mostly because I didn’t recognize him at first. He was pretty beat up and it was dark. But then he said my name and he called methe angel.”

She snorts. “Smooth.”

“He said it more than once, this guardian angel thing. That night was a big deal for him.” In a different way than it was a big deal for me. “He named his business after me. Or… the incident. His whole life changed that night, Kate.”

“He told you that?”

“Yes! And I googled him, obviously.” I pulled out my phone as soon as I dropped him at the bar—Jamie Bishop, Portland, Maine, click—and my screen filled with his face, unbruised, just as handsome. In addition to his personal Instagram—checkeredwith candids of him on the beach, dressed up downtown, on a mountain somewhere bundled in cold weather gear—and the brewery’s account with staged photos of pint glasses and taps, I’d also found a plethora of articles and interviews.

He’s quite successful it seems, turning a small microbrewing operation into a mid-scale craft beer business and a popular local taproom in the Old Port district. There were pictures of Jamie behind a row of taps, his arms crossed over his chest, hat backwards, and a huge grin on his face. Others of him in a dress shirt being interviewed for a piece on the future of craft beer. Article after article about the new kid on the brewery scene had appeared in my search, but the headline that stuck out the most read:In a city that boasts beer juggernauts like Shipyard and Gritty’s, local man Jamie Bishop is somehow keeping up and keeping on.

“Holy shit,” Kate says again like she’s forgotten the rest of her vocabulary.

“I know.”

“All of this time, you’ve been pretending that vision was some side effect of the alcohol and he’s been building his whole life around it.”

“I wasn’t pretending.” Except last night on the porch when I lied about remembering him. “It never happened again. Not once. What was I supposed to think?”

“That the universe is trying to set you up with a smoking hot, super successful guy, and you should probably say thank you!” Kate makes a sound like I am truly dense.

“A smoking hot, super successful lunatic! Kate, the man took a party game and made a huge financial decision based on it. He’s…” I wave a hand, searching for the right word. “Reckless! You know who would do something like that? My mother.”

“That’s not untrue, but it is irrelevant. We’re not talking about your mother here.”

“We might as well be. That kind of impulsiveness ruled my entire childhood. There’s no wayI’mfated to a guy like this.”

“The universe works in mysterious ways. What about him? Did he leave that cheating girlfriend?”

“I guess so. He seemed to be dating someone else, but she, ah, couldn’t come to the hospital, so I stayed.” Longer than I needed to if I’m being honest. But I’m not.

Kate throws her head back. “God, aren’t you the least bit curious, Noel? If not for the sheer hotness factor here? I mean you made out well if it’s true.”

Leave it to Kate to focus on the fact that Jamie is good looking. Beautiful, actually, with that careless hair and the dimples of a damn cherub… but that’s beside the point.

“There are a lot of handsome men out there who don’t cosmically belong to me, and we’ve already established that this one is bonkers.”

“Welp.” Kate folds her hands under her chin. “I hate to break it to you, babe, but you said it yourself: this city is like the size of a high school. You can’t expect to avoid him indefinitely. Something wants the two of you in the same space.”

Well, that’s foreboding.

I let my body slump forward, dramatically resting my cheek on the cool countertop. “Why is it that you don’t think I’ve completely lost my mind? This whole time, you never questioned this.”

She pulls one of the takeout coffees she brought from the tray and pushes the other toward me. “I was there that night, Noel. There’s no way all of us were imagining that, drunk or not. And besides, if this thingissome kind of mental breakdown…” she shrugs. “I still kind of want to see how it plays out.”

six

Jamie

Iftherewereanyjustice in this world, I’d be waking up this morning feeling like a kid on Christmas. I’ve been looking forward to launching this new beer for weeks—the biggest night of my career since I opened. I should be high on an upcoming night of hustling behind the bar, working until my muscles give out.

But instead, when my eyes blink open to the wedge of sunlight cast over my pillow, all I feel is the kind of pain that leaves you wishing you could just crawl out of your own skin and into a hole to die.

Considering the conversation I’m about to have with Wes? That doesn’t sound so bad.

By the time I got to the hospital, I knew I was going to be out of commission for more than a minute and that there was no getting around this conversation. I waited until I knew he’d be asleep, then texted him to confess that I’d fucked up—something that’s pretty high on my list of shit I hate doing. He replied with an urgent calendar invite for way-too-early o’clock. You’d think my own stepbrother would know better than to expect me to be coherent before ten.

---