Page 42 of Baby, It's Cod Outside
“So in addition to investigating corporate malfeasance and delivering the occasional softboy monologue,” Jackson says after a moment, “you are in luck, because I also happen to be a C minus speechwriter. My TA once described my final piece as ‘bland, uninspiring, and better suited to your journalism major.’”
Ben snorts. It’s wet and undignified. Jackson’s heart swells anyway.
“Honestly,” he says, “that’s kind of perfect for a corporate event. You wouldn’t want anyone actually taking interest.”
“Great,” Jackson replies. “You mingle with the guests. I’ll write the speech. All you have to do is stand there and read it.”
Ben wipes under his eyes with the sleeve of his suit jacket. “Oh, God.”
“I know,” Jackson says, sympathetically. “Still sucks. But at least it’ll suck with a script.” He tilts his head, mock-thoughtful. “Now, on a scale of one to ten, how much do you want me to reference the MarineSelect paperwork? One being ‘administrative errors were made, now please enjoy the vol-au-vents,’ and ten being a full slide deck entitled ‘Forger? I Hardly Know Her.’”
Ben shakes his head, but there’s color in his cheeks again. “Can you do a three? Like… politely suspicious energy?”
Jackson winks. “Three it is. Warm, wry, and full of plausible deniability.”
Ben reaches out and threads his fingers into Jackson’s. “Thank you,” he says. “For saying all that. For being here.”
Jackson lifts their joined hands, presses a kiss to Ben’s knuckles. “Trust me, there’s nowhere else I want to be.” BecauseBen’s in front of him, cracked open and glowing, and Jackson thinks, with absolute clarity:I would burn the whole world down just to keep this softness safe.
Downstairs, the doorbell rings.
Neither of them startles.
Jackson rises first. “Shall we?”
Ben turns to him, and it’s like watching a candle shield from the wind. Still small, still vulnerable, but burning clean, no longer on the verge of going out.
“Yeah,” he says. “Let’s do this.”
Chapter 22
Jackson
Jackson watches from the perimeter, drink in hand, as Ben wades through the crowd. He’s better at this than he lets on, maybe even to himself. He remembers names. Spouses. Which cousin just had surgery. He knows everyone from executives to floor managers to seasonal workers. Every time someone approaches, their whole face lights up to see him, and Ben lights up right back.
He’s a natural leader. Not in the showy alpha male sense that people usually mean when they say that. He wants everyone to succeed and he creates those conditions.
Which, of course, only makes Jackson angrier.
Someone in this room had set him up. Someone smiled at that sweet, earnest face and handed him a ticking bomb.
Jackson circulates too, multitasking on his own agenda: hitting the bar again, thumb-typing edits into the speech doc on his phone, snagging a goat cheese canapé every time a tray gets within striking distance. He clocks the guests, the conversations, cataloging faces and waiting for something to click into place.
Most of them he doesn’t know. A few, he does. Lou, the big guy who came to Ben’s defense at Salty’s, wedged into a navy suit that looks like it only gets pulled out of the closet for weddings,funerals, and this one specific holiday party. Tom McKenna, posted up at the buffet, hunched over the seafood platter like it’s his final meal. Jackson watches him pile shrimp high and hopes, sincerely and without remorse, that they haven’t been deveined. He’s earned a mouthful of shit.
It doesn’t take Jackson long to notice he’s also being watched. A redhead. Styled out of a boutique lookbook, four feet ten inches of judgment staring him down like she’s already picked out the weapon she’ll use to take him apart if need be. He places her instantly from the photo on Ben’s office corkboard.
He doesn’t make a move until the vodka soda’s in play. Then he slides up beside her at the bar, casual as anything, like this isn’t the most important social gamble of his evening.
“Jackson James,” he says, tone just this side of deferential.
She doesn’t take his hand. Just squints at him, all scrutiny. “I recognize you. You work for theGazette. You wrote that piece about my aunt’s pasta lunch program at the elementary school.”
“Of course, ‘Linguini for Literacy,’” Jackson recalls. “She let me sample the meatballs; I swear I saw God. He was holding a parmesan shaker.”
It curls, barely, one corner of her mouth lifting as if testing the air for amusement. “Are you writing about him?” She nods toward Ben, gaze gentling even as her voice stays sharp. It’s funny, in a way. Two iron-willed pugilists orbiting the softest man in the room.
Jackson takes a sip of his drink. “Only if he breaks my heart. Then it’s a tell-all memoir.”
