Page 9 of Baby, It's Cod Outside
Immediately, he clamps down on a rogue, exhilarating thought.Nope. Definitely not. You do not get to picture that smug, irritatingly handsome face right now.Jackson James has absolutely no place in any version of Ben’s future, thank you very much.
Then his stomach growls so loudly it practically vibrates the seatbelt. He remembers his abandoned turkey sandwich, shoved back into the breakroom fridge when he left to go deal with the cod line.Okay, maybe this is less of an existential crisis and more that I’m just hangry.
Bendoesfeel better once he’s at home in sweats, shoveling in last night’s leftover stir-fry, plopping down in front of the TV. He catches a glimpse of himself in the screen’s reflection and it’s one of the most painfully single things he’s seen. Maybe Dad has a point. He unlocks his phone, deciding it can’t hurt to browse.
He nearly chokes on a noodle when the first match that pops up is Jackson James. With a startled yelp, Ben flings his phone onto the carpet. “Oh, come on,” he groans, pressing his face into a throw pillow for a solid five seconds.
It doesn’t take long before he fishes his phone back up, though; Ben’s self-control has all the structural integrity of a wet tissue.
He scrolls through Jackson’s dating profile with a guilty fascination. The pictures definitely aren’t helping to settle his pulse; there’s Jackson on every page with those dark, clever eyes, and that knee-buckling smile. It leaves Ben feeling fifteen years old again, all clumsy adrenaline and stomach-twisting self-consciousness.
It’s more than just the good looks. There’s that easy confidence, the way Jackson carries himself like he’s completely at ease with the world around him. It’s everything Ben has spent most of his adult life wishing he could feel. Seeing it come so naturally to someone else is equal parts undeniably attractive and deeply, deeply annoying.
He swipes to another photo: Jackson perched casually on the steps of Quincy Market in a subtly checked suit, flashing a stylish hint of ankle and that same arresting grin. It looks like it could belong in a fashion editorial instead of a candid shot snapped by a friend. The slow-burning arousal is enough to make him lock the phone’s screen with a sharp tap, pointedly shoving it between the couch cushions.Stop it.
Since unwinding is obviously off the table, he instead pivots straight to the next worry on his endless mental checklist, that weird truck from earlier. Ten seconds later, he’s typing ‘MarineSelect Waste Services’ into the search bar of his laptop.
Their homepage is sparse. Too much gray space: minimalist logo at the top, address and 1-800 number at the bottom, no information except for a two paragraph blurb promising ‘sustainable disposal solutions.’
Ben clicks through each section in turn.Services.Contact.About Us.The pages are all equally barren, just bland buzzwords and a handful of reused stock images: a dumpster, a group ofsmiling employees, a gloved hand gripping a waste drum. The single promising ‘Learn More’ link just loops him unhelpfully back to the homepage.
There’s no big red flag, but the lack of actual substance bothers him. But surely any meaningful issue would have been weeded out during screening?
Still, he searches Google one last time, trying a few extra keywords, ‘MarineSelect scandal,’ ‘MarineSelect lawsuit,’ but comes up empty. No reviews, no press releases, nothing. Outside of its official website, MarineSelect might as well not exist.
With a frustrated sigh, Ben closes the laptop and retrieves his phone from its exile in the couch cushions.Should’ve stuck with the dating app.
A yawn slips out before he can stop it. Ben rubs his eyes and shuffles toward the bedroom, promising himself he’s done chasing mysteries. But he’s already thinking about tomorrow’s waste logs. Just a quick check first thing in the morning, he decides.
“Stir-fry was supposed to fix all this,” he mutters, flipping off the last lamp and plunging himself into darkness, trying to shove MarineSelect and a certain dark-eyed reporter out of his head for the night. But as he flops into bed, he’s pretty sure neither of them is done haunting him yet.
Tuesday
Chapter 8
Jackson
One of the nice things about a career as a reporter is that combing through someone’s entire public footprint doesn’t count as ‘stalking’ when you’re calling it investigative journalism. Which is exactly how Jackson justifies this morning’s sojourn to the Gazette’s basement to scour the archives for intel on the Bens Whitaker.
Mort’s nephew, who Jackson’s pretty sure has never once left the sub-level during working hours, is supposed to be organizing and digitizing years worth of print news. He has been at this job with no discernible results for several years. Jackson finds him hunched over his phone at the desk, scrolling his never-ending For You Page. Jackson clears his throat loudly, noticing a flash of Chase’s gyrating torso in the kid’s feed. Lord, help us.
“I need everything we have on the Whitaker family,” Jackson says, pitching his voice down a notch to sound official.
“Sure, man,” Mort’s nephew says. He is pretty sure the nephew has a name, but Mort only ever seems to refer to him as ‘the nephew.’ The nephew gestures vaguely toward a particularly dank corner, then goes right back to watching short clips at full volume.
“Thank you so much for your help,” Jackson murmurs dryly, sidling past him. He rummages through the dusty file catalog, jots down some references, then wheels around the microfiche station with a resigned sigh.Microfiche. Christ, I used to have a real job.
He fires it up, squinting at the screen as years of local headlines flip past, forming a strangely intimate glimpse into Ben Whitaker III’s life. Birth announcement. He’s a cute, chubby cheeked baby. A mention in middle school: Ben winning a science fair with some kind of environmental project. Jackson smirks at that detail. He won regionals, took fifth place at state. Then, a short blurb about Ben placing third in a freshman-year track event. Not exactly a star athlete, but respectable enough to make the leaderboard.
After that, there’s a more formal article about the dedication of a hospital wing named for the Whitaker family. Accompanying it is a photo of a teenage Ben standing stiffly beside his father at the ribbon cutting, looking politely unhappy about having to appear in public at all.
It’s the same year Ben’s mother’s obituary runs. Cancer at forty-two.Jackson has a momentary flood of sympathy; no amount of money can shield someone from a loss like that, even if not all of us can afford a hospital wing. He briefly imagines a teenage Ben navigating that grief under a community spotlight.
From there, the archives transition mostly to Ben’s father, a man who never met a camera he didn’t like. Articles about business expansions, philanthropic gestures, endless quotes about “sustaining Silver Shoals’ prosperity,” all punctuated by his polished, camera-ready grin. His son inherited some of his good looks, but not the ease with which he deploys them.
But Ben himself disappears out of the local press. A few childhood milestones, one tragic loss, and after graduation, basically nothing. He’s in the background of a few pictures,perhaps that’s how he prefers it. He may not like what happens next.
Sensing he’s wrung the archive for all it’s worth, Jackson leaves the claustrophobic basement behind. Upstairs, he clears his desk, props his feet up, and embarks on therealresearch: scrolling through socials. Ben’s Instagram is set to public—small-town openness or maybe he just doesn’t realize how easily prying eyes can find it.
