Page 5 of Finance Bros

I shake their hand. “Ryan Vale. He/him.”

“Pleasure. We’ll introduce ourselves again once everyone arrives, but this is Piper, Miguel, and Bailey.” Georgie points out the three others seated at the table.

Piper is a young white woman in the lethally good looking blonde category with high cheekbones, and an oval face. She’s wearing a pale silk blouse buttoned all the way to the neck. Miguel looks to be on the shorter side. He’s thin with bronze, hairless skin. He’s sporting a sleek man bun over tender brown eyes. He’s dressed as I am, in a well-tailored suit, though his is a deep forest green with a floral pocket square. A statement.

For me, Bailey stands out the most mainly because she doesn’t stand out at all. She’s also white with dark, frizzy hair pulled into a bun, thick eyebrows and no makeup. She’s wearing a suit jacket, but I get the immediate impression she’d rather be working from home in sweatpants. Her expression is as sour as I’m afraid mine is.

There aren’t any more pronoun surprises—Bailey’s a she/her who I don’t think cares much for he/hims. I sit next to Miguel, opposite the women and a seat away from Georgie, who says, “We’re expecting four more. Feel free to be thinking of any questions you all might have for me or Jonathan.”

Normally, I’d use this time to scroll my phone. I’m not here to ask questions. I’m here to listen and learn, but instead, I take out my notebook and pen. Next into the room is Jia pronounced with a long I. She looks mixed to me, Black and white with pale brown skin and natural curls piled high on her head. She’spretty with minimal makeup—her eyes are fringed with long, dark lashes. She has a bubbly laugh and a big smile. Her slender body makes her seem taller than she is when she sits next to me and gives me an excited grin. I do my best to smile without looking like a serial killer.

I’m writing down names, and it helps that everyone else comes in one at a time. Nathan is next. He’s gotta be at least six-five. His suit is off-white, which I could never pull off, but he’s a Black man with a shaved head, and so it works. He seems a little thrown off by Georgie’s pronoun intro, which makes me wonder what part of the country he’s from, but he’s a good sport about it when Georgie laughs and tells him he’ll get used to it.

The last two people to enter the conference room come in together.

It’s rarely a relief when I see someone I know. I burn bridges like they’re meant for kindling. But it’s not the cute redhead Lisette who’s got me immediately turning my head back to my paper and pressing a thumb beneath my watch on the pulse point of my wrist in an effort to will myself to remain seated and show no fear—no emotion of any kind.

Because it’shim. The golden boy of Thousand Oaks High. The best friend I couldn’t keep. The bully of my worst nightmares.

The man I swore I’d move heaven and earth never to see again. Definitelynotthe love of my fucking life.

My former stepbrother.

2

MALCOLM

Professional. Stay professional. Act like you’ve got no idea who he is because it’s not like he looks anything like someone you’d ever associate with anyway.

I’m sitting next to a butch lady named Bailey who smells like she bathed in coffee grounds, which puts me out of Ryan’s direct line of sight. If he looks at me, I’ll notice, and I’ll shut it down right then and there. For the purposes of getting through the next three months and landing a job at this firm, I don’t fucking know him. Never have, don’t plan to.

This is fucking unbelievable. The horoscope Kaylin read to me this morning over FaceTime should have been my first clue to brace myself for something like this. It sounded like all the bad ones do—the position of the planets would be clouding a “certain issue”, and I might have to make “difficult decisions.” I told her I didn’t need that kind of negativity, and she argued that it wasn’t bad—like how getting the Death card in a tarot reading is supposedly a good thing?

I was already nervous enough about today. I felt better when I ran into Lisette in the elevator—she and I were in grad school together. I also know Nathan. We played basketball in aninformal summer league I joined last year before quitting after two weeks.

Ryan is a major blindside, though. The last time I saw him, he looked like he was preparing for a long career ringing up groceries at a Trader Joe’s—not like a Tom Ford model at one of the most prestigious internships in California.

I’m not thinking about it. As far as I’m concerned, he’s not here.

When the roundtable introductions begin, I’m less listening to anyone else, more practicing my own in my head. I’m Malcolm Walsh. I went to Stanford where I also got my MBA. I want to get rich by making other people richer. No, not that—I’m here to learn from the best and build a career that’s not boring—no—a career that challenges me.

Ryan’s melodious tenor of a voice knocks my thoughts clean off the rails.

“I’m Ryan Vale. I’m twenty-four. I grew up around here, but I went to school at Portland State. I helped run a club where I taught other students to build out their savings accounts by investing in stocks, 401K style. Mixed risk, mixed yield. Talked a bunch of people out of crypto. I like the idea of making wealth possible for anybody no matter what their income or education is.”

I find my mouth hanging open slightly, and I close it immediately. As he spoke, memories surged. The way my dad and his mom had their worst fights about money, and the look of terror when I told my father I wanted to go to Stanford. And further back to the minimalist birthday parties with homemade cakes, totally unlike the parties the other kids would have at indoor play areas with bowling and rock climbing and laser tag—all-you-could-eat pizza and huge, pretty cakes.

Our parents weren’t broke or anything—there was always food on the table, and the lights only went out during storms,but my dad’s an economics teacher, and his mom’s a nurse, so we weren’t rolling in it either.

Georgie responds to Ryan’s introduction. “You’ll enjoy this summer then. Nathan?”

I stare at my former stepbrother while he’s looking down at his notebook. I can’t get over how different he looks from three Christmases ago. That dude was tatted, shaggy, skinny, and reeked of weed. He lookedexactlylike what anyone would picture when they hear someone goes to Portland State. Today, his nearly black hair is in a slick, expensive cut styled away from his face. All his tattoos are covered by his perfectly cut suit, and he looks almost—normal. He’s not skinny anymore, either. He’s not bulked up like my friend Jake who looks ridiculous, but Ryan’s filled out his six-foot frame like his weight finally caught up to his height.

He glances up, and the flash of his dark hazel eyes startles me into looking quickly away, even though he isn’t looking at me. Given the fact that he didn’t mention me in his intro, I’m gonna take that as permission to proceed as if he and I are total strangers and didn’t share parents for more than a decade.

Nathan makes a joke that has everyone but me and Ryan laughing. Too late, I add my laugh, too, but it comes out sounding awkward and fake. I need to sharpen up.

My intro goes about how I planned. I manage to only “um” once, and I don’t sound like a totally mediocre white guy, although I don’t think Bailey is convinced. I can feel her judgmental side-eye as much as I would be able to feel if she suddenly leaned over and started licking my face. I want to tell her she’s not my type either, but I know how well that would go over at this firm.

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