10. Snickers, Moby-Dick, & The Yale Sweatshirt
TEN
SNICKERS, MOBY-DICK, & THE YALE SWEATSHIRT
JANUARY 2039
DURING CHAPTER 37 IN SINFUL LIKE US
We listened to "Nothing Else Matters" by Miley Cyruswhile writing this bonus scene.
Character List:
Jack Highland - 27
Jane Cobalt - 23
Maximoff Hale - 23
Charlie Cobalt - 21
Joana Oliveira - 19
Bodyguards:
Oscar Oliveira - 31 Omega (Current Client: Charlie Cobalt)
Farrow Keene - 28 Omega (Current Client: Maximoff Hale)
Tony Ramella - 28 Epsilon (Current Client: Jane Cobalt)
Thatcher Moretti - 28 Omega (Current Client: Xander Hale)
O’Malley - 27 Epsilon (Current Client: Beckett Cobalt)
Paul Donnelly - 27 Omega (Current Client: Xander Hale)
Akara Kitsuwon - 27 Omega Lead (Current Client: Sullivan Meadows)
Quinn Oliveira - 21 Omega (Current Client: Luna Hale)
**
OSCAR OLIVEIRA
“COME ON THE TRIP, Joana. You can be my plus-one, Joana. You’ve never been to Scotland before, Joana. Don’t you want to spend time with your big bros, Joana? It’ll only be a week, Joana,” my baby sis mimics me with a deep, nasally voice. “Twenty snowed-in days later…” She tightens hand-wraps around her wrist with forceful frustration.
I lean on the banister while she’s seated on the carpeted staircase, stuck inside the chilly Mackintosh House. It’s early morning, and I went to her room to check on her—and I found her here. White boxing gloves at her side while she wraps her hands.
I tell my sister, “If you want to imitate me, you can go less hard on the Kermit the Frog voice.” Jo almost laughs, but I power on. “And let’s not forget that you accepted the invite in two seconds.” I touch the Yale letters of my sweatshirt. “I didn’t need to grovel or use handcuffs to drag your ass here.”
Her lips rise into a fleeting smile.
She knows I’m referring to Beckett Cobalt, who was legitimately handcuffed on the plane to Scotland. But I don’t want to breathe out his name in front of my sister. Alluding to him is already way too much.
Beckett has been staring at her enough this trip, and I’d rather not push Joana into the New York scene that he’s a part of.
She can find a different friend group. Something less…that.
Jo loops the wrap between her fingers, then looks at me pointedly. “I actually wanted to come, so yeah, you didn’t have to drag me here.”
Before the trip, I FaceTimed Joana and told her that Maximoff Hale was letting all of us bring plus-ones, and I wanted to know if she’d like to go to Scotland with us.
Jo sounded shocked. “Really? With you and Quinn? To Scotland? What should I pack, big bro?” I saw her fling a suitcase on the bed. “This is like a work thing for you, so Maximoff Hale is going?—what other family members are going? How many Cobalts? Hales? Is Sullivan Meadows going? When is it?”
She wanted all the details, but only after she already accepted the invite.
Underneath all the teenage attitude this morning, I understand why she’s been disgruntled.
She missed her fight in London. That wasn’t part of the plan, and our dad will no doubt have something to say to me when we return home.
Why’d she go with you?
I knew she shouldn’t have gone to Scotland.
You should’ve left her here, Oscar.
She already missed training days, for what? Just to be stuck there?
He’ll ramble off in Portuguese, muttering frustrations, and I’ll try to reason with him. I just hope he’s not hard on Jo. He’s way too hard on her already. It’s not like Rodrigo gifted us the power to control the motherfucking weather.
“Just so you know, I wouldn’t take back extending a plus-one to my baby sis”—I hold her gaze that softens—“I wanted you here. Quinn wanted you here.”
She considers this, pushing curly pieces of hair off her shoulder. “Don’t tell Dad because he’ll be all like priorities, Joana Raquel Sousa Oliveira,” she mimics our dad’s deeper voice, “but I wouldn’t take back joining you guys. Even if I regret missing the fight, I’m not going to regret being here.”
Her words alleviate a great weight I didn’t realize I’d been feeling. Thought that pressure was just from hunger. I inhale deeper, and I bend down a little to squeeze her shoulder.
She smiles more up at me.
I tell her, “It’s possible Dad might not even give you a five-minute lecture.” Probably just two-minutes. “You know that he wants us all together.” Which is why he ended up relenting when Joana said she was joining me and Quinn.
His sons and his daughter, all together.
“Dad wants us all together doing the family trade,” she says as I take my hand off her shoulder. “There’s a difference, you know, Oscar.”
Boxing.
I made the first steps in another direction, and my baby bro followed me. For sure, it’s not the future our dad saw or wanted.
She works on her left hand-wrap. “If I can get over it, then he should too. There’ll always be another fight. I don’t know if I’ll ever get this much time with you and Quinn again.”
I begin to grin. I feel the same as Joana. This is the most time I’ve spent with my sister in…what might be years, and that’s mostly my doing.
I don’t go back home often.
“You should have this,” Jo says, reaching around her waist to something she placed on the stair. She shows off a Snickers bar.
Hunger annihilates the shock, and my stomach clenches and growls. Good God I want to eat everything under the sun.
Am I dreaming?
Last night, a giant Dorito graced me in my sleep, so I might fucking be.
But “is that a real Snickers?” is a stupid question that I don’t ask. Hunger has not turned me into a complete idiot. Something I know I’m not.
Jo is wielding gold inside our depleting rations.
“Where’d you get that?”
“My backpack. I forgot I brought it until this morning. You should take it. You look like you’re going to chew someone’s arm off.” She tosses me the Snickers, and while I’d love to shove the entire candy bar in my mouth, I can’t.
She’s my baby sis.
I want her fed first.
“You eat it or save it for another day. We might be here for another two weeks.” I can handle the stressful, pressure-cooker conditions we’re under, even if I’m starving and hangry in them.
“I’m not the pouty grump when I haven’t eaten.”
She’s shy of saying like you, so I sling back, “Sounds like we’re dumping the Snickers on Moretti’s lap.”
“Yeah, I don’t think his grumpiness is from hunger. He always looks surly.” She points at me with the Snickers. “Unlike you.”
I eye the candy.
“Tempting yet?”
“No,” I say seriously. Though, yeah, I’m internally salivating.
“This is for the benefit of the whole house.”
I don’t doubt that I can be crabby when I’m hangry. But I can also tap into patience and professionalism. I’ll be one of the last people to throw a tantrum, especially in front of clients, and she’ll realize that the longer we’re here.
To appease Jo (and my growling stomach), I point at her. “Just one bite.”
She smiles.
And then I peel the wrapper and take a single, mouth-watering bite of chocolatey goodness.
Heaven.
I just went there.
See you later, fools.
I open my eyes after chewing, and Joana is full-on laughing. “Please tell me that’s not what you look like when you’re doing it.”
I cough a little. Appetite gone. Please tell me I didn’t just hear my teenage sister mention my O face. She’s nineteen now, but there are boundaries. I toss the candy bar back. “That was a Snickers face.”
She’s about to toss the candy bar to me again, and I hold up a hand. “Keep it?—”
“Oscar—”
“I said I’d take a bite.”
She seems surprised. Like she thought I wouldn’t have self-control and I’d end up eating the entire Snickers. I’m a lot of things that she hasn’t completely seen, and maybe that’s on me again. For not being around. Or just being so much older than Jo.
Thirty-one.
Thirty-one and single as a Pringle. I’ve liked that for me. Singledom. But the moment I think it, a guy flashes in my head. His long lashes, a smile hitting his eyes and his lips. Charismatic.
So charismatic, I keep thinking about him even when we’re not in the same room together. Jack Highland is stuck in this house with me and everyone else. And he’s been the best distraction from the blizzard, from the impending chaos that being trapped with this many motherfuckers brings, from hunger and aggravations. He’s the beacon of light when the days start to darken.
So yeah, he’s been on the mind.
My mind.
I focus back on my baby sis. “Give the rest to Quinn if you don’t want it.”
She jumps to her feet and holds out the Snickers. “You should give it to him then.”
He might not accept the candy bar from me, I want to tell Jo, but she’s so expectant of me and Quinn fixing what we crumbled this trip. He punched me outside the Scottish pub. Joana got between us and tried to mediate.
Not my shiniest moment as their big brother.
In my silence, she says, “It’ll be like a peace offering.”
“We’re fine.” I nod to Jo. “We already made up.”
“Did you?” she asks with hope.
“Yeah.” I nod again.
It’s not a lie. Quinn and I are good. We’re moving on. But we didn’t exactly rehash the fight. We just buried it with everything else, and even I can see the pile is growing higher and higher.
I don’t even know how to dig into it, so I don’t.
Once Joana relents and says she’ll give the Snickers to Quinn, I extend my arms to my sister. “Venha dar um abra?o no seu irm?oz?o favorito.” Come give your favorite oldest big bro a hug.
She wraps her arms around me. We squeeze, and as we part, her nose crinkles. “Is that you or me?”
“Is what me?”
“You stink,” she tells me pointedly.
“I don’t stink,” I say with confidence. “Must be you and your House Fit groupies running around here, sweating. Leaving your stink behind.”
Call me a florist.
Because I smell like a motherfucking flower.
Joana considers this with a half-shrug. “Whatever. It could be House Fit.” She picks up her boxing gloves, seeming distracted at a noise down the hall.
“You good on asthma meds?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
Good.
I nod to her, and then she says goodbye, planning to go shadowbox. She saunters along the hallway and disappears from my sight.
While I head downstairs, I sniff under my armpits.
The only odor I smell is Greatness with a capital G. Smiling, I’m about to check out the kitchen when I hear rustling in the parlor…and music.
Piano.
My lips flatline, and I reroute my steps to check on my client. Peeking into the parlor, I find Charlie hunched over a piano, his fingers dragging dully over the keys. Like it’s intuition and boredom that guides his hands there.
His sandy-brown hair is a tousled mess. He even pulls at the strands now, and when he sees me watching, he takes this sharp, shallow breath. Purple tint is shadowed under his eyes.
He’s not sleeping well. He’s been struggling staying cooped up with no exit in sight. That much has been clear to me.
Seriousness strains my muscles. “Can I get you anything?”
“Out.” He intakes another tensed breath. “Nothing you can give me.” He swings his feet over the piano bench and stands up. “I’m stuck. Perpetually.” The haunted look he wears is enough to send a trigger of alarm through my spine.
Nothing good is going to happen the longer Charlie Cobalt is stuck inside a house that he can’t escape. He paces.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
He’s my client. He’s the twenty-one-year-old Cobalt that I spend day-in, day-out with, and to help him avoid reaching a breaking point is the strategy.
I slip further into the room and examine the bookshelf. “You read this one yet?” I pluck out To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.
“Twice.” Tugging at his hair again, he eyes the window and the snowy white landscape. Tugging again, he comes up to me. “What’s your favorite?”
“On this shelf…” I crouch down to scan more of the hardback spines. “…probably this one.” I pull out Moby-Dick by Herman Melville.
“Why?” Charlie wonders, more interested. He takes the book from me, but I can tell he’s already read the pages. He barely thumbs through them. Just waits to see why I’ve enjoyed the novel.
I’m about to respond when a head pops into the parlor.
Donnelly nods to me. “Boss just called a meeting. Seems urgent.”
To my client, I say quickly, “I’ll see you later. Take care of yourself, Charlie.”
He nods and tucks the book underneath his arm.
I’m not a buddy-guard. I shouldn’t be having book clubs with my client, but I’m actually interested to hear what he thinks of Moby-Dick and we have all the time to kill here.
Walking to the kitchen with Donnelly for the emergency security meeting, he quips, “Daddy Oscar, checking on his children.”
I hate being called daddy. Donnelly laughs at my soured face, and I retort, “I might be the oldest here, but that just means I’m the wisest motherfucker.”
“Okay, Grandpop.”
We both laugh until we take our seats around the circular breakfast table, the kitchen drafty and cold. Seventeen people have been living in this house. Eight are bodyguards. Two are my family. One is my client.
Akara is MIA right now. At the table, I count Donnelly, my handsome ass, Thatcher, Redford, Quinn, O’Malley, and Tony. We’re waiting for the SFO lead. Severity hangs over everyone, and I glance back in the direction to where I left Charlie.
He can’t handle being in one place for this long.
Before the meeting begins, we all talk about breakfast and rations and end up splitting a single bowl of oatmeal.
Eight ways.
I try to savor every morsel of mushy shitness.
When Akara enters the kitchen, everyone’s done eating but him. He takes the final seat, sets the sat-phone on the table, and unzips a wet jacket. “Here’s the deal, guys. The village’s inn is a ten-hour hike on foot, and the owner said she has enough provisions to house six people if we can make it there.”
Six people are getting the hell out of here.
As the meeting goes on, I pay attention to logistics, and I have a say in who ends up on the hike.
Charlie.
Charlie has to leave.
He needs out today. Not tomorrow, not weeks from now. Today. But I’ll take whatever timeline Akara is offering. If he wants me to join Charlie on the trek, then Joana has to come with us. I’m not leaving my sister. She’s attached to me this trip.
So I’m not shocked when he chooses Farrow and Thatcher to accompany Charlie, Luna, Beckett, and Sulli.
I trust Farrow and Thatcher will take care of my client, even if Charlie is a royal handful.
I can’t leave Jo. She just said that she doesn’t regret coming on the trip because she’s with me and Quinn. I can’t abandon her for Charlie.
Once the meeting ends, we’re all more tensed. We just itemized and prioritized clients and friends based on who’s nearing a break down.
I head into the living room with a trail of bodyguards, and a tall, sculpted Jack Highland catches my eye and instantly fills my entire gaze. Like a cliché moth to a flame.
He’s seated on the fireplace hearth. Basking in the warmth. But he notices the incoming line of bodies.
I watch this twenty-seven-year-old ex-collegiate swimmer, current exec producer, stand off the hearth. He’s offering the warmth to us.
I start to walk towards the foyer and pass Jack, and there’s zero percent chance I’m not saying something. “Where are you going, Long Beach?”
The smile in his honey-brown eyes, the one I imagined, lifts to my gaze.
I add fast, “You move one muscle from that fire, you’re going to turn into an icicle.” I flash him a grin. “I already see your weak California blood crystalizing as I speak.”
His smile grows as he lowers back to the hearth. Almost imperceptibly, his eyes do a one-two dart down my build.
Is he checking me out?
“Not all of us have warm sweatshirts like you,” he says brightly, smoothly.
So he’s just checking out my clothes then?
Jack openly gives me a once-over.
My blood warms like I’m next to him. Seated by the fire, and I grin more as he says, “You willing to part with it?”
He wants my sweatshirt?
At this exact moment in my life, stuck in this house, I don’t care if he thinks he’s flirting or if he believes he’s not flirting or if we’re on some strange flirt-loop.
I’m loving the distraction.
The exuberance.
The grins.
Without hesitation, I pull off my Yale sweatshirt and lightly chuck the clothing to Jack.
“You sure?” Jack asks, already two-seconds from pulling his arms through the holes.
“For sure.” I’ve never been more sure about anything right now. “It’s already in your hands, Long Beach,” I say with a laugh, especially as he wastes no time to claim my sweatshirt as his, pulling the fabric over his head.
In a single beat, a wave of dread crashes into me.
Does the sweatshirt stink?
No.
No.
“Soft.” Jack grins, fixing the collar. “I can see why you wear it all the time.”
“It smells better than it feels too,” I throw out.
Jack reels in my line and sniffs the collar.
My ass is sweating bullets, and I know it’s not just because I’ve walked a little closer to the fire. To him. “Like fresh flowers.”
“More like oak,” Jack says, eyeing me up and down again. “Some type of strong hardwood.”
I laugh into a bigger grin. “Hickory. Walnut?—”
“Can you smell it from that far away?” Jack teases, and I swear he’s a second from patting the hearth beside him. Or at least eyeing the open seat.
Somehow, someway, my hesitating ass loses the opportunity. Because Akara beats me to the spot. He lowers on the fireplace stone.
Not realizing he just cockblocked me from a flirt-fest, my boss shakes off the last remnants of melted snow from his shoulders and asks Jack, “Hey, Kong or Godzilla?”
“Godzilla. No question,” Jack says.
“What? Kong is way better, man.”
And they go off on a light-hearted movie conversation. I back away, not taking the chance to see whether Jack would’ve pulled me into their orbit. Knowing him and his infectious way of making people comfortable and appreciated, I bet he would’ve.
But I yawn. Slept terrible last night. And I should clock in a nap. So I head upstairs. Rest my head on my pillow. Try not to play “what if” in my mind.
What if I stayed?
What if Akara never showed up?
What if I asked to kiss him?
Too complicated. He’s said he’s straight, and to uncomplicate an already complicated situation that we’re all stuck inside, I need to let things be what they are.
I drift off for a while, and I wake up to shouting.
Footsteps clamoring.
Adrenaline jolts me up, and I lose some time fighting with an old doorknob that’s jammed shut.
“Come on.” I rattle the thing.
Finally, it gives way, and I race down the stairs and into the living room. What I find outside of an abandoned boardgame of Clue: a tear-stricken Jane Cobalt, Thatcher Moretti—with his hand firmly planted on his mouth and the other around Jane, Maximoff Hale with his arms crossed and staring at the kitchen, and then my oldest friend.
Farrow Redford Keene, who looks absolutely, motherfucking murderous. I know him well enough to know that someone had to have gone after Maximoff.
Charlie.
It’s the only person that makes sense. But then why is Jane distraught and Thatcher as still as stone?
I’m cemented in gravity, in the weight of this fallout, and I ask my friend, “What the hell happened?”
“Charlie happened.” He combs a hand through his hair.
Maximoff uncrosses his arms and runs a hand across Farrow’s shoulders, but Farrow is already tenderly touching the back of his neck.
Before I ask for more details, Farrow explains, “He exposed the twin switch.”
The bottom of my stomach drops.
Tony and O’Malley are supposed to believe Thatcher is Banks on this trip. We were all in on the ploy.
And Charlie blew it up.
Charlie.
He went after his sister’s boyfriend. He must’ve gone after Maximoff in some way too, and I empathize with them but I can’t help but sympathize with my client. I’m torn between the two.
He’s going through something that many of us can’t understand. But it doesn’t give him a right or a pass to hurt other people.
“Where is he?” I ask.
“Kitchen,” Jane answers first with a croaked voice. “He’s with Beckett.”
I nod. Beckett will talk some sense into him.
I scan the living room, and though I’m searching for a person, my gaze falls to the copy of Moby-Dick.
I pick up the book, and as I glance to my right, I’m not surprised that the fireplace hearth is empty. Void of Akara. Void of Jack Highland.
But damn I’m always hoping to run into that beacon of light.