Page 28 of Baby, It's Cod Outside
It’s painfully naive and somehow also one of the best goddamn things about him.
“My closest friend at the plant handed me the binder,” Ben continues. “Saw it. Processed it. Didn’t flag anything.Technically, it could be her.” He frowns. “I mean, it’s definitely not. But that’s kinda where I’m at.”
There’s another long pause. Then, reluctantly, Ben adds, “It could be Tom McKenna.”
Jackson immediately tucks that name away. That’s the plan. Dismantle the frame-up first, then go after MarineSelect.
“He’s our Logistics Supervisor,” Ben explains. “He undermines me constantly. Small things, sidesteps, jokes. ‘Accidently’ leaves me off emails, reroutes decisions through other managers, throws in little comments like ‘we’ll see what leadership says,’ when I am leadership. On their own, none of it sounds like much. But it adds up. And every time I think about calling him out, I start wondering if maybe I’moverreacting. Like that’s the point, like he wants the reaction.” He picks an invisible piece of lint off his sleeve. “I can’t prove anything. But it feels like he’s working overtime to make me look incompetent without ever saying it out loud and when I asked him about the disposal weights he seemed eager to brush me off.”
Jackson doesn’t respond right away. His fists curl against his thighs, his whole body still. He hates picturing Ben undermined that way; he knows the guy well enough already to understand how it would torture him.
Ben, brought up to please, to perform, to endure without complaint, has just been taking it.
Jackson keeps his voice steady, barely. “You think he’s the one sabotaging you?”
“I’m not sure,” Ben says, quiet now. “It would almost be easiest if it was him. I already know he hates me. At least he wouldn’t have been lying to my face.”
Jackson’s hand twitches with the urge to reach out and offer comfort, the urge to burn this place to the ground and help Ben start over with a better goddamn blueprint.
Instead, he pulls the brown Klaussen’s bag from under his arm and sets it down on the one clear corner of Ben’s desk. A different kind of offering.
“Brought you lunch.”
Ben stares at the bag in faint confusion. “Jackson, it’s three in the afternoon.”
“And?” Jackson shrugs, gesturing vaguely at the state of him. “It’s clearly my turn to carry the ‘functional’ title right now. I figured you for a guy who doesn’t eat when he’s stressed.”
Ben gives a tiny, rueful smile. “Accurate.”
Jackson unpacks the containers from the bag. “I have a soup and salad combo, and a reuben sandwich. Wasn’t sure which you’d prefer. You’re welcome to both if you want.”
The tension that was in Ben’s forehead doesn’t disappear, but it eases a fraction. “The soup and salad, please. I think I’ve done enough emotional processing through carbs for one day.”
“More carbs for me, then,” Jackson says, smiling faintly as he slides the food across.
They eat quietly. The only sound is the occasional scrape of plastic utensils, the faint rustle of wax paper. Jackson looks around Ben’s office with new eyes.
There’s a potted plant in the window, leaves browning at the tips but somehow stubbornly alive. Next to it, a framed, faded photo. It’s another ribbon cutting, but in this one, Ben looks elated to be there. He’s no more than seven, wielding scissors almost as big as he is alongside someone who couldn’t be anyone but his mother. Same shade of golden blonde hair, same wide open blue eyes.
Ben catches him staring. “My mom. She was just this, like, incredible force for goodness. She did all this work around food insecurity programs and education access and marine sustainability research funding.”
“She sounds incredible.”
“She was.” Ben looks at the photo for another heartbeat. “She had this huge heart. She just went wherever it told her. Truly, late for everything and always disorganized but it was like it was because she needed to get to everyone and she knew she didn’t have enough time.”
It’s clear that Ben’s taken up the mantle. The corkboard is pinned thick with preserved thank-you notes from the town’s charities: the food bank, the Rotary club, the Silver Shoals’ branch of Habitat for Humanity. Center is a snapshot from the local soup kitchen, Ben smiling next to a petite, fiery-haired woman with matched aprons and grins. It’s all painfully sincere, not an ounce of irony in any of it. Ben’s best effort is clear everywhere Jackson looks.
The desk, though, Christ, the desk is something else entirely.
It makes a certain kind of sense, that Ben’s response to crisis would look like order. Jackson would bet good money it’s how he was raised: work harder, longer, make sure nothing slips by.
Which is why, covering every square inch of his workspace, he’s built this shrine to desperation disguised as control. Color-coded tabs, printed emails, stacked invoices. Jackson runs his thumb over the pages of a ledger Ben’s clearly combed through line-by-line, annotated margins thick with notes. Every single scrap on MarineSelect he could find, paperwork stacked like sandbags against a flood.
It’s a cry for help, and Jackson gets the sense he’s the first one to answer it in a while.
“I was going to send it over to you once I had it all organized,” Ben says apologetically.
“What you’ve put together here is incredible, Ben.”
