Page 24 of Baby, It's Cod Outside
“Oh, hey, any luck yet with those weird fish?”
Ben blinks.Weird fish?He shoots a questioning look at Jackson. His mind grabs at something from the interview.
“Still working on it,” Jackson says, voice mild but a little clipped, his eyes suddenly fixed on his coffee.
Billy, oblivious to the shift in atmosphere, punches Jackson in the shoulder, hard enough to make him wince. “Well, keep me posted. I’ve got money on it being some kind of government thing. Or aliens.” He beams at Ben, letting him in on the joke. “Although, I think JJ might be one of the space invaders. It would explain some things.”
Ben forces a smile, unsure what to do with any of that.
Satisfied with his exit line, Billy breezes off with the coffee pot to top off the fishermen at the counter, humming cheerfully as he goes.
Ben watches him disappear into the back, then slowly turns to Jackson. “What was that about? With the fish? I hadn’t even thought about…”
Jackson’s posture shifts, just slightly, but enough for Ben to feel the space open between them.
“Our fish?” Ben asks, heart picking up speed. Ben thought this was about waste. Oh, God, was there something wrong with their product? “Is that why you came to Whitaker Seafood?”
“Ben—”
“You said you wanted to help me,” Ben whispers. He hates how naive he sounds.
Jackson leans back, gaze turning out the window, expression unreadable. Closed off in a way that makes Ben’s chest tighten. “You’re worried I’m going to fuck you over for a headline,” he says flatly.
Ben doesn’t deny it. He can’t. There’s a low thrum of panic starting in behind his ribs, quiet but insistent, like something in him is already preparing to take the hit.
Jackson sighs, the sound resigned, weary. “You’re not wrong to wonder. You’ve given me more than enough to take you apart, if that’s what I wanted. A questionable disposal contract and your name all over it.”
The words fall between them like a wall. Not cruel, just true. Terrifying. Because Jackson’s right. Ben’s given him too much. More than he should have.
And still, he wants to believe he was right to trust Jackson.
Jackson seems to see it.
“I’ll tell you something I don’t usually share.” Jackson’s voice stays quiet, but the weight behind it shifts, denser now, stripped of any irony. “Back in Boston, I had a lead come across my desk, practically dropped in my lap: big charity, LGBTQIA+ youth nonprofit, serious allegations against the director. Embezzlement. Fraud. The evidence I was handed looked airtight.”
Jackson stares through the harbor, through the morning, slipping back to a time he never really escaped. “I was tired, Ben. I was just so fucking tired. Burning out. Drowning in deadlines and the pressure to keep delivering.
“I didn’t dig deep enough. I reached out for an opposing quote, didn’t get a reply immediately, slapped on ‘has not responded to requests for comment as of publication.’ I certainly didn’t double-check the source the way I should have. But I… I didn’t care, not enough; it was a good story, a hell of a hook, and I told myself it was clean enough to run. That it would hold.
“It blew up. Exploded across every outlet that syndicated us. Tanked the charity organization’s reputation in under forty-eight hours. And it should have felt great, but it didn’t. It took metoo long to realize that the reason it didn’t feel right was because it wasn’t.”
He pauses. His jaw tightens.
“It was fake. All of it. Cooked up and handed to me on a silver platter by a bitter ex-employee. They used me, and I let it happen because I wanted to believe the worst.”
Jackson’s voice cracks slightly, not loud, just raw and devastated. Ben wants to reach for him, to offer something, anything, but Jackson’s so far inside it, it’s like he’s forgotten Ben is even there.
“By the time we printed the retraction a month later, it didn’t matter. The damage was done. Money went elsewhere. The charity folded not long after. And the director? He was clean. Honest. Just trying to help kids who needed it. I screwed that up, in about a dozen cynical little paragraphs.”
Jackson breathes into the silence that follows, steady but not effortless.
“That’s when the insomnia started,” he admits quietly. “Not out of guilt, exactly. Just… not knowing what kind of person I’d become.”
Ben doesn’t speak. He just listens, the way Jackson had listened to him the night before, without flinching or pulling away.
“My editor told me it was on all of us,” Jackson goes on, almost absently now. “But he didn’t care. Not really. He just moved on to the next thing that sold papers. Like it was just some sort of lesson for us. Like we didn’t break something forever.”
At last, he turns to Ben. There’s no defense left in him, just something wrecked and completely unguarded. “I could’ve stayed. But I knew the danger I’d become. I didn’t want to be that kind of journalist anymore.
