5. Scottie Elise Reed
Scottie Elise Reed
“Is the sun always this loud?”
I crack one eye open—just a miserable sliver—and immediately regret the decision. The light pouring through the floor-to-ceiling windows is aggressive, unforgiving, and apparently personal.
Dean is slumped in the leather chair across from me, looking like a man who has lost a fight with his own life choices. He’s still wearing that tiny, glittery pink cowboy hat.
The blue lipstick Jenna aggressively smashed onto his face last night is smeared across his cheek and jawline, leaving him looking like a very depressed Smurf.
“Don’t talk,” I whisper. “Sound waves are violence. Keep your mouth shut.”
“I have a meeting on Monday,” Dean mutters, staring blankly at his own hands, entirely ignoring my plea. “I am a senior partner at a top-tier firm. I have a mortgage. Why is my face blue, Scottie? Why is there glitter on my soul?”
“Because Jenna is a domestic terrorist.”
I slowly—so slowly—push myself into a sitting position.
The movement tears my jacket out of Cash’s loose grip. He lets out a low, protesting grunt in his sleep, his hand twitching against the fabric of his jeans as he turns his head away from the light.
The room tilts. My stomach does a slow, nauseous roll. I reach up to rub my eyes, and that’s when I feel it.
A crinkle.
A weird, smooth, plastic sensation against my left wrist.
I freeze. My heart does a frantic, uneven stutter.
I look down.
My left wrist is neatly wrapped in medical-grade plastic film. Beneath the clear, sticky wrap, the skin is red, angry, and stained with a dark, blurred smudge of ink that definitely wasn’t there when I went out last night.
“Oh, fuck,” I breathe. “No. No, no, no. Tell me that’s a temporary tattoo. Tell me it’s a sticker.”
“What?” Dean asks, his bloodshot eyes tracking my arm.
He drops his gaze to his own hip, his expression shifting from confusion to pure horror.
He pales, tugging at the waistband of his trousers.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me. I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck, and apparently, I’ve been branded. ”
“What are you guys whimpering about?” Jenna groans. She rolls over, rubs her lower back, winces, and then blinks at us. “Wait. Hold on. My back feels like it’s been flayed.”
Ivy’s head pops up from the floorboards next to Callahan. “We actually did it? I thought that was a fever dream. I thought I hallucinated a needle.”
“I remember us standing in front of the wall,” I say, trying to force my brain to reassemble the jagged pieces of the night.
“I remember looking at the stencils. I remember telling the guy with the neck tattoo that we were making a binding historical pact of friendship. I remember being very, very passionate about it.”
“Okay, but what are they?” Ivy shrieks, which is a massive error, because she immediately clutches her temples and drops her head back onto Callahan’s chest. “What did we tattoo?”
“I don’t know!”
“I remember giving a very articulate, very drunk lecture on the Sixth Amendment while the needle was going in,” Dean groans, closing his eyes again.
“Scottie, you told me it was an honor. You said that this was the ultimate test of our soulmateship. You made me look you in the eye and promise to never regret it.”
“It is a test,” I mutter, holding my head. “We’re just failing it.”
“You were humming the Succession theme song, Dean,” Jenna says, her memory clearly returning. “And you kept asking the artist if he had a ‘lawyer-friendly’ font. I remember that much. He told you to shut up and pick a design.”
Before we can continue, a massive shadow falls over the living room doorway.
Brick is standing there, looking like an absolute giant in the morning light. He’s in a pair of gray sweatpants, his dark hair sticking up in a chaotic cowlick, and he’s holding a half-empty gallon of chocolate milk like a lifeline.
He looks down at the floor, his brow furrowing into a deep, intense line of confusion.
“Where’s Noah?”
Callahan stirs at the sound of Brick’s voice, blinking heavily as he sits up, his arm sliding off Ivy. “What do you mean? He’s on the couch.”
“He’s not on the couch,” Brick says, sounding genuinely distressed. “He was right here. He was so comfy. He’s not there anymore.”
“Brick,” I say carefully, “he’s a grown man.”
Brick looks genuinely wounded.
“That doesn’t mean he doesn’t need supervision.”
On the floor next to me, Cash finally groans, rolling over onto his back.
He blinks up at the ceiling, his eyes focusing, before he turns his head and looks right at me. A slow, thoroughly wicked smirk cuts through the stubble on his face.
He looks like he’s having the best morning of his life, which is deeply insulting.
“Morning, Sharky.”
He reaches out, his large, warm hand wrapping around my forearm. He pulls my wrapped wrist directly into his line of sight, his fingers calloused and steady against my skin. He stares at the clear plastic, then looks up at me, his smirk widening into a full, devastating grin.
“Damn. I didn’t know you were that obsessed with me. You went out and got branded? Did you get my portrait? Is it a realistic sketch, or did you go for the caricature?”
My face burns hot instantly. “I did not get branded, O’Connell! We don’t even know what it is yet! It’s probably a mistake. It’s definitely a mistake.”
“Sure, Sharky,” he chuckles. “Whatever helps you sleep at night. But if my name is on your skin, I’m going to need a photo of it. For my scrapbook.”
“Shut up!” I snap, and I punch him square in the shoulder.
It’s like hitting a slab of concrete.
“Seriously, where is he?” Brick asks again, pacing the rug. “I feel paternal about him, I can’t believe we lost Noah. He’s not street-smart.”
Before any of us can comment on it, the kitchen door swings open, and Kovács walks in.
“We have a problem. The side gate is wide open, and there are little hoof prints all over the patio. And a lot of poop. Like, a concerning amount.”
Ivy sits straight up, her eyes wide. “Hoof prints? What did you guys do last night?”
Callahan rubs his face with both hands, looking guilty. “Nico found a guy on Craigslist. We bought a goat. His name is Barnaby.”
“You bought a what?” Ivy says, her voice eerily calm.
Callahan winces. “A goat.”
“For what?”
“Morale.”
“You bought livestock for morale?”
“It seemed reasonable at the time!” Callahan defends himself, holding his hands up. “But then Noah started explaining the physics of the jukebox, and we got distracted, and… I think we lost him in the shuffle and then maybe Noah went to find him.”
“Search party,” I command, pushing myself up from the floor, ignoring the way my head throbs. “Dean, come on. We need to go find the human calculator before he gets eaten by Barnaby.”
“I’m coming,” Dean mutters, dragging himself out of the chair, the glittery pink cowboy hat still firmly secured to his head like a crown of thorns.
We all spill out into the blinding, high-noon sun.
Dean mutters something about a probability grid and veers sharply to the left, marching with grim determination toward the side garden to search for Noah and the missing livestock in complete solitude.
I roll my eyes and turn to head toward the back tool shed instead, but before I can take two steps, Cash falls effortlessly into stride right beside me, his shoulder brushing mine.
Walking hurts.
Breathing hurts.
But walking next to him while trying to pretend my body isn’t hyper-aware of his exact physical coordinates is an entirely different level of agony.
“I still think it’s my name,” he murmurs, his voice dropping into a lower register, entirely private between us. “Or maybe my jersey number. You want to place a bet on it? Winner gets to hold the trophy.”
“It is absolutely not your name,” I snap, focusing hard on the horizon.
He steps directly into my path, forcing me to a sudden, jarring halt on the grass.
“We’ll see, Sharky,” he whispers, his eyes locking onto mine with a terrifying amount of focus. “But if it says ‘I love O’Connell,’ I’m never letting you live it down. I’ll make it my wallpaper.”
“I hate you.”
“Liar,” he smirks.
Before I can formulate a retort, a rustle in the thick boxwood hedges nearby catches my attention. I freeze, my hand instinctively grabbing his forearm for balance.
“Look,” I whisper.
It’s Noah.
He is lying flat on his back in the mulch, wrapped tightly in six plush, stolen towels like a giant, confused linen cocoon.
“Noah?” I ask, dropping to my knees in the dirt.
He snorts, his eyes flying open. He blinks through his one remaining lens, looking up at us in absolute, dazed confusion. “Did we… did we find the goat? Is he safe?”
“We’re working on it, buddy,” Cash says, bending down and easily hoisting Noah out of the bushes by his armpits as if he weighs nothing.
“There was a goat,” Noah insists, apparently still drunk, as he points a shaking finger toward the old wooden tool shed. “His name was Barnaby. He had very soulful eyes. He understands the nature of the universe better than I do.”
“Go inside, get some water,” I tell him, guiding him toward the gravel path.
Once Noah stumbles back toward the main house, Cash turns his attention to the shed. “Well, Sharky. Duty calls. Let’s go apprehend a felon.”
We approach the shed. Cash cautiously nudges the weathered, creaky wooden door open.
There, sitting comfortably on a stack of burlap fertilizer bags, is a stout, brown-and-white goat. It looks at us, chewing rhythmically on a corner of what appears to be a discarded wedding itinerary.
“Barnaby,” Cash says smoothly, taking a slow step forward, his hands raised. “Come on, man. Let’s make this easy. We don’t want to do this the hard way.”
The goat lets out a sharp, defiant bleat and charges forward, darting straight between Cash’s legs with the speed of a professional athlete.
Cash lunges, his goalie reflexes kicking in, but the dirt floor is loose, and he catches his heel.
We tumble together into the soft, overgrown grass, rolling once before coming to a hard stop.