“This is my thing, Moffy. You can’t have it.”

We’re at a 1920s speakeasy-themed bar. It’s nearly empty. I sit on a round leather stool, and my best friend rattles a silver cocktail shaker on the other side of the counter.

Jane’s mixology instructor is an actual bartender, dressed in a fedora, bowtie and suit vest. While he slices limes next to her, I catch him scrutinizing her, then me. Not pretending that this conversation doesn’t interest him.

I focus on Janie. “I’m not trying to take your thing,” I say seriously. “But maybe we can try to find a passion together seeing as I am passionless now—”

She snatches an ice cube from a bucket and tosses it at me.

I dodge with a smile.

“You have a passion,” she says. “It’s just been disrupted for the time being.”

I’m aware that charity exists beyond the company I built. I can still attend functions and donate money and time. But I’m not looking to head a corporation.

“I don’t want charity to be a job,” I tell Janie. “I’d rather not set an alarm to it.”

For the longest time, I’ve chased responsibility, and I won’t stop running towards my family—I won’t slow down for anything. But with Farrow, I’ve experienced what it’s like to just take it easy, to exist and breathe, and when it comes to work life, I want the simple enjoyment.

Not a CEO position. Not managing a hundred-some employees.

“It’s official then?” Jane asks, setting down the shaker. Frilly sleeves of a shirt stick out from her Cheetah-print tee. “You won’t return to H.M.C. Philanthropies?”

“It feels official,” I say with a nod.

A smile pulls her freckled cheeks. “In that case, you most certainly must join me in our quest to find a passion—”

“No, you were right,” I interject. “This is your thing.” I’m not sharing in Jane’s Quest for Passion because she’ll be so determined to find mine, she’ll forget her search. I see that in how excited she is for me—I can’t do that to her.

Jane looks like I punctured her grand, elaborate plans for eternal life friendship. “Moffy.”

I feign confusion. “I could’ve fucking sworn I’m supposed to be your super amazing, unbiased taste-tester for all the nonalcoholic drinks.” I gesture to the bar. “Is my drink invisible?”

She smiles softly. “Fine. I’ll be solo until you change your mind.”

Last month, Jane finished her online degree and graduated from Princeton. Her deadline for finding her passion ended with the diploma. She was supposed to give up her search and become the full-time CFO of H.M.C. Philanthropies. But when I was ousted, she quit her position.

It’s an upside that I don’t forget. Because Janie as a CFO of any company sounds like a royal circle of hell for my best friend.

While Jane rattles the shaker again, I catch Thatcher risking a glance at her from the very end of the bar where he’s been standing guard on-duty.

I’ve been nice to Thatcher in the past. But Fuck Him with capital letters blares in my head on repeat. Fuck Him for punching my boyfriend. Fuck Him for thinking I’d cheat and hookup with my new bodyguard.

Fuck Him.

I drill a glare into his forehead, and he sees, rotating more towards the entrance. If he feels any sort of regret, I can’t tell. He just looks stern to me.

I rest my hand on my tight shoulder.

“Jane.” Jack Highland calls out to my cousin. The exec producer has a knee on the stool next to me. His frayed shorts and tank look more Long Beach style than Philly, and while he grips an expensive camera, he directs the lens at Jane. “Are you afraid that if your passion involves alcohol, the public might think it’s insensitive? Considering both of your uncles’ history of alcoholism?”

My head swerves to Jack. “Going with the hard-hitting questions there, Jack.” He’s filming us for We Are Calloway, and sometimes I forget he’s recording. Until the questions start rolling in.

Jack never shifts the camera off Jane. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” he reminds her. “But this is naturally what people will think.”

Jane places a martini glass on the bar. “The public will always have an opinion,” she answers to Jack. We rarely speak into the camera unless it’s a sit-down interview. “So I can’t let them decide what my passion should be. Even when it’s easier pleasing other people, I need to try to be true to myself.”

“Plus,” I say to Jack and check my texts. “She loves beer.”

“Oui,” Jane smiles. “La brasserie est la semaine prochaine.” The brewery is next week.

No new texts.

I was hoping for an update from Farrow. And I’m strangely all caught up on family group messages. No unread emails. No notifications.

It’s almost like I have all this free time and no job.

Even my brain is making pitifully sad jokes. I’m an heir to multiple Fortune 500 companies. If I wanted to not work for the rest of my life, I could. My troubles are insignificant. You don’t need to tell me.

Jack translates French on his phone app and then asks, “If you’ve scheduled a brewery next week, do you already think mixology will fail?”

His questions will appear on TV with closed captions. The audience is led to believe a random producer is talking. No mention of “Jack Highland” will be on screen. You don’t know his name unless you search on IMDB.

The docuseries is cinéma vérité style. Where we acknowledge that we’re being filmed and talk directly to the producer.

Janie copies an earlier demonstration from the bartender and pours mint-green liquid into the martini glass. “I’m just following the numbers,” she says to Jack. “My success rate is zero percent. Chances are I need to have other options lined up.”

Jane plops a cherry and slides the glass to me. “Okay, give it to me, Moffy.”

She means my opinion, but the bartender interprets this differently. He makes a choked noise, then coughs to hide it.

I narrow my eyes while he wipes his hands on a dishrag.

Thatcher angles towards us again, arms crossed and out of camera shot. He glares at the bartender, who remains the only stranger in the speakeasy bar. He already signed an NDA.

All the buttoned booths and wooden tables are empty.

“That was not sexual,” Jane says to the bartender, beating me to the words. “You thinking it was—that says more about you than me.”

He fixes his fedora, cheeks reddened. “I’m sorry. I really don’t believe you two are…” He cringes, and he won’t even look at me.

My jaw is cut like sharp marble.

“I know it’s just a rumor,” he adds. That confirmation is a good indication that our FanCon tour helped.

Jane smiles more kindly than most would.

I exhale and motion to the guy. “We’ll move on if you do.” And I’d like to move on.

So would Jane. She wipes the wet counter around my nonalcoholic martini.

“Yeah, definitely,” he nods and apologizes again to my cousin before asking her what drink she’d like to make next.

“A dirty martini,” she says.

He reaches for a bottle of gin on the shelf and starts spouting off instructions.

My phone buzzes, and honest to God, my heart flutters like I’m in the fifth grade receiving a valentine from a crush.

It’s my boyfriend.

One week.

It’s been one week since he returned to his residency at Philadelphia General, and my brain translates a text as Farrow gifting me a piece of red construction paper shaped into a heart, glitter glued to it.

Fuck.

My.

Sappy.

Brain.

But I understand my semi-infatuation. Farrow and I haven’t spoken or seen each other since he left for an excruciatingly long shift at the hospital.

He said he probably wouldn’t even get time to text. Something about double shifts, low staffed. I don’t get how any of it works, but it’s been twenty-nine hours since I last heard from him. I’d be lying to say I haven’t been counting.

Twenty-nine hours without talking.

Twenty-nine hours without touching.

And with a high sex drive, that last one has me pent-up and resorting to jerking off more than usual. I typically try to come every day or else it feels like my balls are going to explode. Even on the FanCon bus, I managed to masturbate when Farrow and I couldn’t fuck.

Being horny—it’s nothing new for me. Being horny and having a boyfriend who’s not around all the time—that is new. I trust myself fully, and my hand is a decent alternative.

But I’ve never fantasized more about him than I have when he’s gone. I’ve replayed the first time he topped me on loop.

I tune out the bartender’s dirty martini instructions and pop open the text. Scanning the words, my spirits burst like the pop of a balloon.

Before I type a reply, another text pops up.

“Est-ce que ça va, Moffy?” Jane asks while measuring gin in a shot glass. Are you okay, Moffy?

“It’s Farrow.” I set my elbow on the bar, phone in hand. I reread the text. “He’s going to be late.” I look up. “Jane—”

Gin overflows her shot glass. “Merde,” she curses and sops up the spill with a dishrag. She flashes me a consoling look. “There’s a seventy-two percent chance your drink may cheer you up, old chap.”

I smile and reach for the martini. Just as another text pings.

My chest tightens. I quickly respond: no worries I’ll save u that drink

Lately I haven’t bothered typing out the correct spelling of “you” and I’ve stuck with just the letter. He’s gotten onto me about it a couple times, and it just makes me want to do it more.

I’m about to add “can’t wait to see u” but then I think about how it’ll make him feel. Maybe concerned. Like I’m sitting here pining for him and not living my own life. I can survive without Farrow around me all the time. But I do feel his absence.

I overthink the text. Typing and deleting and typing and deleting.

I take too long because Farrow replies first.

Fuck. I clutch my phone harder. Thinking. I don’t know how to do this. Large intense gaps of zero communication. We barely even used to text because we were with each other all the time. It’s weird to think back to the day he became my bodyguard. I couldn’t even imagine my childhood crush in my life 24/7, and now, not having him is a struggle.

And I’m overthinking again.

My phone rings. Great, Farrow is calling me.

But I’m selfishly glad he did. I think it would’ve taken me a solid millennium to type out a text.

I put my phone to my ear and reach for my mint-green drink. “I was texting you back,” I say before he can speak. “I’m sorry, man. I don’t want to take up your time or distract you—”

“Maximoff,” he cuts me off. “If I didn’t have time to call you, I wouldn’t have called you.”

I nod a couple times to myself. Alright. “How are you doing?”

“Good. Shit has finally slowed down.”

“I thought you liked the high-intensity stuff.”

“Not at the end of a shift.” He’s quick to ask, “You okay?”

“I’m alright. Just drinking this drink here…” I take a sip of the martini and as soon as the liquid hits my tongue, my cheeks pucker. Jesus Christ, Jane.

She notices. “Oh no. Too sour?”

“Yep.” My cheeks hurt.

“I’ll make you another.” She swipes my martini glass out of my hand.

On the phone, Farrow tells me, “I’m glad you’re having fun, wolf scout.”

I wish you were here. I rub my lips together before replying. “All the fun in the damn world. It’s a regular rager here,” I say dryly. “I’m planning on trying shrooms next. But the non-drug kind. Like a Cremini mushroom, maybe a Portobello.”

I can practically feel his eyes rolling before he laughs. And as the sound fades, the line goes quiet; the silence is like a raw, aching thread of longing.

“I miss you,” I admit out loud.

“I know you do,” Farrow says, like an ass.

I groan, but I’m not able to shelter a fucking smile. At least he can’t see it. “I meant I don’t miss you at all. I haven’t been thinking about you for even half a second.” It’s hard to even joke. It hurts.

“That’s too bad,” Farrow says. “Because I’ve missed you.” His words are tender like I can’t touch them. I shouldn’t. Voices muffle in the background on his side. Quickly, he tells me, “I need to go, but I should be finished here in thirty minutes. See you soon.”

See you soon.

“See you.”

We hang up. I refuse to look at my watch as a countdown to his arrival. I already catch myself doing it once.

And once is enough.

Luckily, a great distraction bounds through the entrance.

Sullivan arrives from the pool, wet brown hair soaking the shoulders of her jean jacket. “Fuck, sorry I’m late,” she apologizes to Jane. “I didn’t want to leave until I beat my morning time.”

“Butterfly?” Jack asks, panning the camera to Sulli.

“Backstroke today.” She claims the stool next to me, not flinching at the single camera. The FanCon tour helped ease her in. I’ve been on the docuseries since I was three-years-old, Jane since she was six, and for Sulli, this’ll be her first time. And she’s twenty.

I notice how Sulli watches Akara and Jack fist-bump into a hug in greeting, and she hangs her head and focuses on braiding her wet hair.

A few days ago in the Meadows treehouse, she told me about how Akara and Jack are becoming good friends, and she’s been feeling weird.

“I’m not sure why,” she explained to me, hugging a beaded pillow.

“Maybe you’re into him,” I speculated.

Sulli frowned. “Him, who?”

“Akara,” I said.

Sulli laughed. “No fucking way…Kits is like…” She stared up at the treehouse ceiling, handcrafted paper flowers cascading off wooden beams. “…he’s Kits.”

The way she said that reminded me of me. And how I couldn’t make sense of my feelings for Farrow and what he meant to me, in my life. I just knew he meant a whole hell of a lot.

“I think you’re into him, Sul,” I said.

“I’m fucking not.” She chucked a pillow at me, and when I threw it back, she repeated strongly, “I’m not, Mof. If I thought I was, I’d fucking tell you.”

I didn’t expect her denial. “What about Jack then?”

She frowned more and shook her head before groaning into the pillow. I rubbed her back, and we started talking about swimming.

At the speakeasy, I think about that moment in the treehouse. Especially as her bodyguard rests against the bar, out of the camera’s frame.

Akara tells Jack, “The time was Sulli’s personal best.”

My cousin ties the end of her braid. “It’s still too fucking slow, Kits. I couldn’t even qualify with that time.”

“But backstroke has never been your thing, Sul,” Akara reminds her. “It’s a good time.” He saunters around the camera and ends up standing beside Thatcher Moretti further down the bar.

And I spot my new bodyguard.

He’s been at a wooden table guarding the entrance. Sky-scraping tall, bulky, bald, bearded, and the former bodyguard to Loren Hale.

My dad requested that Bruno Bandoni be transferred to my detail. He told me, “You don’t need to deal with a new inexperienced bodyguard, bud. Take mine.”

Thanks to my dad, it’s been an easier transition. But there’ll be times where I search for my bodyguard. Expecting to see that widening know-it-all smile and the cocky raise of his brows.

Instead, I meet a stringent severe face, and the wind dies in my sails.

I turn to Sulli who stretches over the bar and snatches a cherry. “Why are you swimming backstroke?” I ask since she used the word qualify. She’s not competing anymore, so I’m confused.

“I need a goal,” Sulli tells me.

I go rigid. “What?”

Jane looks between us and pops an olive in a martini glass.

“Moffy—”

“You have a goal. The ultra,” I say toughly. “It’s been your goal for months, and that’s not fucking changing.” It’s not changing because of me.

Sulli bites the cherry off its stem. “The course can be fucking dangerous solo. It doesn’t feel like a good idea to do it alone, and my dad’s bad knee can’t handle the terrain—”

“Sulli, I’m running this marathon with you,” I say, adamant. Not backing down. “I’ve already started training.”

She coughs on a cherry. “What? You’re in a sling, Mof.”

Jane shakes her head at me like I’m a disaster to myself.

“I can do a lot in a sling.” I’ve spent most of my free time in a gym. My hamstrings and quads are sore from the nonstop leg days, but I’m strengthening every muscle until I can work on my right arm and shoulder. “And I ran a mile yesterday.”

Sulli looks horrified.

“Alright, it was a walk, not a run,” I clarify. “A PT was there so I wouldn’t kill myself.” I recognize that I need another person in the room to stop me from overexerting myself.

And I’m not proud of my lack of self-restraint.

Sulli contemplates this now. “You really think you can run a 250k?”

250 kilometers in 7 days. That’s 155 miles.

In Chile.

For Sulli.

“I promise I can.” I nod repeatedly.

Sulli hesitates before nodding back.

Jane slides over the dirty martini. “Here, Sulli,” she says. “I’ve named this drink You Can’t Say No To A Stubborn Maximoff.”

Sulli smiles. “Yeah, fucking feels that way.” She tilts her head to me and holds the martini. “You know you’re as hardheaded as my dad.” She cringes. “Fuck, sorry, I didn’t mean—” to compare me to him.

“It’s alright,” I say truthfully, and I catch Jack’s warm smile behind the camera.

I know how much I’m like Ryke Meadows, and I’ve been reaching a place where I can be proud of the similarities. I no longer feel like who I am is a knock against my dad. And I’ve realized something.

My dad raised me to be like Ryke. Because he loved his brother more than he loved himself.

That’s the hard truth. Because I just wish I could reach back in time and tell my dad that he’d have a son who loves him so goddamn much, and then maybe he’d realize that he’s worthy of being loved too.

Sulli sips the dirty martini.

“How is it?” I ask while Jane shakes another nonalcoholic one for me.

“Strong.” Sulli smacks her lips together. “But most drinks taste fucking strong to me.” She goes in for another sip.

“Good sign,” I tell Jane while Sulli gulps the liquor.

My best friend smiles brightly and procures a clean martini glass.

Sulli rotates slightly to Akara. “You want to drink, Kits? I can get a temp bodyguard for the night. You can go off-duty.”

Akara fixes his earpiece. “Not tonight, Sul. But I appreciate the offer.”

She faces the bar, lost in thought, and then she takes another sip.

Jane polishes a glass and makes a concerted effort to angle away from Thatcher. About this time, she’d be chatting to her bodyguard and tripping over her words like she normally does around him. I almost feel badly that she’s lost someone to talk to, even if he doesn’t say a lot back, but then I picture the welt on Farrow’s face.

And my sympathy dies.

Thatcher braves another glance at Janie, and his hand slides over his hard, scruffy jaw. The longer he looks at her, the more frazzled my best friend becomes.

She fumbles with a shaker. “Thatc—” Her voices dies in a croak, and she clears her throat. “That drink”—she motions to the polished glass—“is…empty. But just wait, Moffy, it’ll be dreadfully beautiful.”

“Je n'ai aucun doute,” I say. I have no doubt.

All I know is that Janie deserves the best, and Thatcher is one of the only names on my very short shit list. He’s not the fucking best.

He’s far from it.

On impulse, I glance at my wristwatch. Thirty minutes have passed, and Farrow still isn’t here.

I just hope he’s okay.