THANKSGIVING DINNER WASN’T TERRIBLE.
Or maybe it was terrible and I hadn’t noticed because Rosie LeBlanc told me that she loved me, several times, and I was going to put a diamond on that finger. It was an impulsive decision, but then anything worth doing usually was. When you think about it, anything passionate—lust, love, violence, hatred—is spontaneous. Why not this?
I would have been perfectly happy marrying her on that night we took the elevator up together and I had Kennedy and Natasha by my side. I simply didn’t know it was a possibility. Now that I knew, I was going to put that shit on lock as quickly as possible. Vicious was wrong. He always said I loved the variety too much to settle for one girl. But the truth was, I never loved any of the women in the catalog enough to stop browsing. Once I found what I needed, I dropped the habit of Tinder and threesomes and fucking strangers in sordid bars so I could get off on the danger because casual fucks didn’t make the cut anymore. And unlike alcohol, I didn’t miss it one bit.
Anyway, yeah, dinner was okay.
We ate, talked, did the usual family shit. Rosie’s parents still nagged her about moving back to Todos Santos, even after I confirmed that I wasn’t a total douchebag. That didn’t seem to pacify them, but at least her dad stopped looking at me like I was sodomizing her on an hourly basis.
After dinner, Jaime summoned all four of us and we took Vicious’s Jeep north to L.A. Face-to-face board meetings were always in an office. We couldn’t risk losing our shit in public, which happened more often than not when the four of us shared the same space.
Things got intense in the vehicle before we even broached the topic that brought us all together. I was behind the wheel because I was the only guy who hadn’t had a drink. Vicious sat next to me, looking glum. He must’ve had a general idea what we were going to ask him for—put two and two together, I’m sure—and Trent and Jaime were in the back, talking football.
“How’s Luna doing?” Vicious asked Trent sometime during the last seven miles on Interstate 5. Everybody shut up immediately, and Trent cleared his throat, looking between Jaime and me in the rearview mirror.
“Not terrific.”
“How come?”
“She doesn’t eat. Doesn’t talk. Doesn’t walk.”
“Does she know how to walk and talk?” I’d give Vicious one thing, his voice wasn’t hard or rough. Plain conversational.
“She does,” I intervened. “I saw her walking last time we were in Todos Santos in August.”
“Wanna know my angle?” I saw Trent from the rearview mirror scratching his head on a heavy sigh. “I think she’s depressed. I’m not sure what’s happening yet, but we’re having it checked out.”
“Trent’s mom is in Chicago.” Jaime’s eyes met Vic’s in the mirror. “She is helping him out with Luna for the time being, but his dad can’t leave here. He has his own mother to take care of.”
The complexity of life met me in an odd place. We were going to grow old someday, too, and I wondered how the hell I was going to be there for my own folks. Because I definitely wanted to be there for them. Which reminded me that I still had to visit my dad tonight after this was all over in L.A.
We parked in Vicious’s parking space and went into his office. Everything was minimal, cold and impersonal, just like him. When we switched branches a year ago, I refurbished the whole thing and put in new furniture and a bright green wall just to piss him off when he came back.
Now every time he saw the color green, he thought of me.
Vicious and Jaime took a seat on the black leather couch overlooking Vicious’s glass desk. I plopped down on the desk, tucking my hands into my pockets. Trent stood in the center of the room, his hands folded over his chest. We all looked at Vicious. And Vicious looked pissed off.
“Well?” He lifted one eyebrow, even broodier than usual. “Go ahead and fucking ask for it. You’ve been dying to, and you can’t wait to see my reaction, right?”
“You need to switch branches with Trent.” My voice was cut and impersonal. I was always the one to go against Vicious. I think Jaime was helpless when it came to this fucker, and Trent harbored the real dark shit none of us ever experienced, so he ought to slaughter him if they talked about it directly and Vicious refused his request.
“Not gonna happen.” Vicious hitched a shoulder, lacing his hands behind his head and making himself comfortable. He flung one of his legs over the other and looked about as chilled as a motherfucker could be under the circumstances. I leaned forward, a nonchalant smile on my lips.
“We’re not asking. We’re giving you time to wrap your head around it and pack a bag.”
Maybe I was too forward, but there were special circumstances in this case. I was talking full-blown, fucked-up situation, and Trent needed to be here more than Vicious did. That, we all agreed on.
“Jesus fuck, Cole. Don’t you have a bottle of liquor to drown yourself in? There are actual grown-ups having a conversation here.” Vicious’s words were venom spreading through the room as he chuckled.
“One more comment like that, and a bottle of something will be shoved in your ass,” Trent said, jumping to my defense.
“Listen to the guys, Vic.” Jaime pursed his lips. “I think you know Trent has the right to be here.”
“I have just as much right, Jaime. Trent has a baby. I have a baby on the way. We both need to be next to our families.”
“You have Millie. She can take care of the baby.”
“And be away from her family? After all the time she has already spent away from them? Yeah, not doing this to her. No matter your motivational speech, which, by the way, is horribly lacking.”
“You were the one who did this to her, fucker.” I laughed. It wasn’t even hostile. I was just wondering what the fuck went on in that sick head of his. His backward logic fascinated me. Vicious yawned as he took out a fat blunt and lit it, inhaling deeply. I didn’t smoke all that much these days—blame Rosie, the number one party pooper in America—and was dying for a few hits, but kept mum.
“Doesn’t matter what happened. I’m not moving away. You all knew that before you came here. But Trent is welcome to come back.”
“Who is going to manage Chicago?” Jaime frowned. “The tooth fairy?”
“We can hire an outsider,” Vicious suggested.
“Fuck that. I work seventy-hour weeks breaking my back so that some stranger can step into what we created and rule it?” I snorted out. “This is our empire. We reign it. We lead it. No outsiders. That was the rule when we incorporated it.”
“It was going to happen sooner or later, Dean.” Vicious sounded so calm, which was difficult for me to comprehend. “How much longer do you think you can keep going the way you do? Rosie is bound to get sick,” he said, and Jaime stood up, ready to yell at his sorry ass, and Trent took a step toward Vicious, too, but I held my hand up, still bracing myself against the glass desk. He continued. “It’s true. Why the fuck are you guys trying to sugarcoat it for him? Rosie will get sick eventually. I saw what state she was in last year. And Millie told me she always gets worse in the winters. Or even if she doesn’t get sick, you’ll still want kids, right? A family? A wedding? All the fancy shit. I know you do, Dean. I fucking see you with her, man. You’re going down, hard. Think you can put the same amount of hours in at work a year from now? Two years from now? You’re fucking tripping, man. Here, maybe this will make you think straight.” He got up and passed me the blunt, and I took it, closing my eyes as I let the rancorous smoke crawl into my throat.
Fuck, I missed it.
“And, Jaime.” Vicious continued, pacing across the office now. He planned it all along. Knew that we were going to corner him. Sly bastard. “Don’t you want to move back to Todos Santos? Have Daria grow up with Luna and my kid and Dean’s kid and her grandparents? Don’t you want that?”
Jaime growled. “Are you going somewhere with this speech, Martin Luther King, Jr., or are you just rubbing it in our fucking faces?”
“Going somewhere,” Vicious assured, sauntering over behind me to his desk and flipping his laptop open. “So the last six months had me thinking. Between the wedding, my future kid, what happened to Trent, Jaime living on the other side of the world, and Dean dating a girl with enough health issues to last a fucking lifetime,” he said casually, typing on his keyboard. “Why the fuck are we working our asses off? We’ve already made a sick amount of money on top of what we were born with. More than we can ever spend. I feel like we’re making something truly straightforward extremely complex. I, for one, don’t care for this lifestyle. I want to spend time with my wife, I want to fuck her three times a day like I used to, I want to work out more, to stress less, to go on longer vacations, and to live. Unlike the majority of the world, I actually can. So why am I here? Why are we all here?”
He was starting to make sense, but the concept he was offering was insane. Fiscal Heights Holdings was our baby. We got very far very quickly with our hedge fund company. Mainly because we worked twenty-four seven. The idea of not working, or working less hours, taking less responsibility, never crossed my mind.
“So, you want to retire? Be a philanthropist at the tender age of thirty?” Jaime asked.
Vicious dragged his laptop so we were all looking at a Wikipedia page without a picture. Jordan Van Der Zee.
“Fuck no. I’m still going to work, but maybe two, three times a week. The rest of the time, I will indulge. The rest of the time, I will act like the god I was born to be.”
“Bad high.” Trent pointed at Vicious, rolling his eyes. “You talk like Napoleon on crack. Why are we looking at this man, Vicious? And more importantly, did you forget that I wasn’t born into money? I can’t spontaneously decide to quit.”
“You’re already a millionaire,” Jaime barked at Trent, and that meant that he was actually considering Vicious’s idea. Whatever Vicious was offering, Trent was against it. Jaime pro.
This made me the deal-breaker.
“Millionaire or not, I’m not interested in retiring at thirty,” Trent spat every word, his eyes narrowed slits. “I don’t have a wife, and I don’t have a girlfriend. I have a daughter, and right now, she’s going through a ton of issues. I need a distraction, an outlet. And fuck,” he kicked the coffee table underneath him, and the thud rang in our ears, “am I the only bastard around here who enjoys working?”
“You can still work,” Vicious stressed, pointing at the screen. “This dude is buying out all of the investment companies around this area. He started with San Francisco three years ago and worked his way down to SoCal. Multi-fucking-billionaire. Forbe’s darling boy. Savvy as hell, and, let’s not forget—his deep pockets like us. A lot.”
“We know who Jordan Van Der Zee is.” I put a lid on his speech. “You’re not the only one to pick up a business magazine once every full moon, Vicious, but thanks for the useless info.”
I went to Harvard. So did Van Der Zee. Not at the same time, obviously. He was much older. But he was a legend there, because he was one of those rare self-made people. You know, worked his way up from a scholarship in an Ivy League university, interned, busted his ass, and became a mogul in his own right. I watched a documentary about him after I graduated from business school. Dude came from a Dutch working-class family. His father was a shoeshiner, for God’s sake. “Do you wanna sell out your shares? Is that it?” I probed.
“I want to sell most of them, and I suggest you do the same. Let’s sell out, keep fifty percent of the shares between us. We’re at a point where we can negotiate a very good deal. If Trent still wants to work, he can. I do, too.”
“I’m not retiring,” I said.
“Me neither.” Jaime’s voice was unconvincing.
Vicious looked between us all and smiled. “Then why don’t we expand Los Angeles and all work here?”
“Let’s start with the obvious reason—he’ll want to buy us out with fifty-one percent shares.” Trent leaned his massive shoulder against the wall. Vicious tsked.
“That would be the obvious thing to do, right?” Pretty much. It was Business 101.
We all stared him down impatiently. Vicious grinned.
“But as I said, he is savvy. He wants to control us enough, but doesn’t really give too many fucks about FHH. He’d buy fifty sharp.”
I knew then and there that the fucker had already drafted a contract with him. He sounded too cocky to make this sort of assumption. The looks Trent and Jaime gave me told me that they knew it, too.
“This shit can take months, even years to negotiate,” Jaime argued.
“Van Der Zee had already asked if we wanted to meet him.” Vicious continued, and all eyes darted to him.
Passing him the blunt as I coughed on a chuckle, I asked, “How long have you known that we were going to ask you this?”
“Enough time to make adequate plans.”
“Fucking fucker came to you first, how come?” Trent grabbed the blunt and inhaled, his eyebrows bunched together. Vicious tipped his head back and blew rings of smoke to the ceiling, his eyes hooded and evil.
“I’m in California. He’s in California. I handle the legal shit here. Who cares? You’ll get what you want, Trent. Time to wipe that miserable expression off of your goddamn face.”
We all looked between each other. I was smiling, and I didn’t even know why. No one promised me that Rosie wanted to move back to Todos Santos. In fact, she loved New York, which was why she lived so far away from her parents. But the ability to give her that option made me unreasonably happy.
“I’m in,” I said.
“For the right contract—and money—me, too,” Jaime added.
Trent blew out air, laughing. “Luna’s gonna be a Cali girl.”
Vicious grinned. “Let’s fucking do this.”
What makes you feel alive?
Being loved. Wildly. Under the open sky. Under the pouring rain. Under a spell that never, ever ends.
“No offense, Rosie, but I don’t want anyone to leave me,” Dean said when I confronted him about asking Emilia to never leave. At the time, I thought it was because he was a cocky douchebag. Now, it was crystal clear.
He had abandonment issues.
He had abandonment issues, and Millie abandoned him.
It made me irrationally mad at my sister, but also grateful that she did.
Flopping on the bed after Thanksgiving dinner, I thought about the afternoon, about that kiss in the rain—like we were in The Notebook and he was Ryan Gosling and I was obviously delusional—and started giggling. The giggling turned into coughing, which wasn’t that surprising.
But then, the coughing turned into blood.
Spitting a lump of bloody phlegm, I stared at it in the tissue in front of me for long seconds, unblinking.
The decision to keep this to myself was immediate. There wasn’t much point, anyway. Dean and I were heading back home in a few hours. He was in Los Angeles with his friends, and the last thing I wanted was to throw my whole family into high gear and make them drag me to a nearby hospital. Dr. Hasting used to see me at crazy hours, days and weekends. I could always get to her in New York if it happened again.
I rolled in my bed, side-to-side, unable to get some much-needed sleep. I coughed some more. Then sniffed some. Changed positions to try to figure out the best way to breathe without the mucus blocking my airway. And it was ironic, that my need for Dean was suffocating not him, but me.
No matter how much I enjoyed our love declaration, my body didn’t appreciate that it was in the rain.
He told me he loved me.
It brought to me the kind of glee money could never buy. But this happiness was also dunked with dread. Because I knew that someday—someday soon—I was going to die. Die in the middle of this beautiful life he had planned for us.
Would I leave him, a widower in his thirties, with kids to take care of? Would I let him take the fall? How many hearts was I going to break, and why did I stop fighting the need to prevent myself from breaking them?
He told me about Nina.
That was the other reason I couldn’t sleep. He tore my heart right out of my chest, and I had no idea how to put it back. Only Dean had this spell over me. The ability to make me feel like I was completely crushed, yet elated in the best possible way. I heard the door to my room creak and coughed into a worn tissue. Squinting my eyes at the material, I detected more dark spots of blood, my shoulder sagging on a sigh.
Thanks, reality. I had a fun ride today, but you just had to ruin it.
“Mill? Shut the door after you. It’s chilly.” I croaked again.
The door was pushed all the way open this time. Dean walked in, his body bigger than my fears and doubts. He slipped into bed while his clothes, shoes, and coat were still on and pulled the cover up to tuck us both in, then turned around and spooned me from behind. I glanced at the clock on my nightstand. The red numbers said six o’clock in the morning.
“What are you doing?” I clutched the toilet paper in my fist and buried it under the duvet before he could see it. He couldn’t know. He would want to take me to the ER, and I hated ERs. Emergency rooms were where your soul went to die so that your body would keep functioning.
“No point in getting undressed when we leave in an hour,” he murmured into my ear, pressing his hard-on to my ass. He sounded too sleepy for sex. Surprisingly, I wasn’t disappointed. I felt like hell, and sex with Dean wasn’t something you could wing or half-do.
“How was the meeting?” I rasped.
There was a pause before he answered. “Good.”
“Is Trent moving to Todos Santos?”
“Eventually. And in time, so will we.”
“Excuse me?”
“Priorities, Rosie. They change. We’re changing, too.”
“You sound like them,” I accused, though I wasn’t as mad at Dean as I was at my parents.
“No.” He clasped my chin between his fingers and turned my head for a soft, slow kiss. The kind of kiss you give your wife on your wedding day, not to the girl next door you occasionally screw. “I sound like me. And I don’t give a fuck about what they want. But I know that you’re in New York for the wrong reasons. You can have your independence here, too. The only power people have over you is the amount you give them.”
I swallowed, changing the subject. “Did you stop at your dad’s?”
“Didn’t have time. Dropped Trent off ten minutes ago at his parents’ house. He’ll have to wait. Why are you awake?”
“I had a lot to process today.” Not a lie. That seemed to appease him. I stifled the rest of my coughs to avoid producing more blood. When we finally got to the airport, I locked myself in a restroom.
And coughed. And coughed. And coughed.
When I landed back in New York and called Dr. Hasting, her receptionist said she had a family emergency and was out of town. She urged me to go to the hospital for a checkup.
I should have done that, but I wanted to push reality’s boundaries just a tad more, thinking what could possibly go wrong?
The answer was everything.
Everything could go wrong.