#i’m gonna be a lawyer bitch

[anarcho-puppy]

hiya! welcome to my blog! i mostly just rb or post for myself soooo... don't expect much in terms of consistency lol.

my pronouns are he/him/his, xe/xem/xers, or it/it's; if you misgender me on purpose, you will be blocked >:P

alive but gay

i rb a lost of fandom stuff (basically just whatever media i'm currently hyperfixating on), but these are my favourite media:

DC (mostly batfam)

BBC Sherlock

Hannibal

ATLA (also kinda TLOK, but not as much)

Good Omens

OFMD

Marvel (debatable, not the new stuff, mostly just AOS)

Sense8

WWDITS

Jesus Christ Superstar (shut up, i’m a theatre kid)

The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (in relation to JCS)

The Dragon Prince

Amulet (i’m allowed to be a kid, okay)

Bluey (…very much allowed to be a kid)

HTTYD

ninjago

probs more, i just have a shit memory lmao

pls pls talk to me about my interests! send me asks!

just spent two hours organizing my blog so that i can actually find stuff... so here's a guide:

#puppy barks = og text posts, rants, etc. (basically just everything other than rbs, except threads i’ve added to and wanted to save)

#anarcho puppy (duh) = anarchist and an-com shit

#geo nerd puppy = history-related stuff (one of my SPINs)

#pub trans puppy = public transit-related stuff (another SPIN)

#puppy puppy = feral (sometimes) dog boy me

#poet puppy = started out as poetry but now it’s basically just me writing things

#arty puppy = my art and art rbs

#disabled puppy = disability stuff

#neurodivergent puppy = autism/ADHD shit

#nom nom puppy = baking/cooking/food stuff

#conlang puppy = conlang shit

#little puppy = agere/little me stuff

#faggot shit = uhm uhhhhh… yeah…

#mutual aid/gofundme = self explanatory (please donate or reblog!)

#my polls = polls (obviously /s)

#me = pics of me

#ask = my asks

#hehe = ...yeah i'm not doing so hot (memory loss, trauma, etc.)

#dc = self explanatory (#B, #NW, #RH, #RR, #R, #O, #steph, #cass, #duke, #alfred, #clark, #kon, #jon, #talia, #bernard)

#hozier = my MAN

#atla = avatar the last airbender (and spin-offs)

#sherlock = self explanatory

#tdp = the dragon prince

#hannibal = self explanatory

#go = good omens

#ninjago = self explanatory

#sense8 = self explanatory

#assortment of religious hyperfixations = jesus christ superstar, the last days of judas iscariot, etc.

#i’m gonna be a lawyer bitch = my latest hyperfixation; law, specifically landlord and tenant rights and responsibilities (an actually practical hyperfixation?? crazy… /s)

#covid safety = self explanatory and also really important

#L = iykyk

shut up, i know that there’s a shit tons of tags but it’s not for you; i don’t expect y’all to need a tagging system bc you’re probably not doing a deep dive on my blog, but i need to be able to find things, hence the excessive tagging system :)

DNI LIST:

zionist

racist

sexist

homophobic

transphobic

antisemetic

islamophobic

pedophile/"MAP"

self-described liberal

anti-communist

biden supporter

radqueers

transids/whatever the fuck you’re calling yourselves

etc.

yes, i know that dni lists won’t stop dirty, disgusting people from interacting, but it makes me feel better when i set clear boundaries.

and remember kids, i block LIBERALLY >:P

[peachversace]

when i tell you guys that lawyer reader sometimes pisses me the fuck off its an understatement LMAO like just shut your trap idiot omg.

[look-at-the-stars-tonight]

Called my aunt to wish her a happy birthday and we spent an hour discussing what I was doing with my life 😭

[apocalypticsinn]

.

[bataddictedloony]

Here’s a thought I had as I’m reading my first ever crime novel:

How many women and girls have died because of “not all men”?

Like, in the year of our boi 2024, I think we’ve cultivated a world where women know to keep an eye on men, in general, Just In Case. But how many women have been hurt or died because “not all men”? Even though the guy is acting odd and pushy - maybe he’s just socially awkward, doesn’t know how to interact with women well. Even though he’s asking her all the wrong things - maybe he just doesn’t talk with a lot of women, doesn’t have a lot of female friends. Even though his opinions and views are all red flags - maybe he just hangs out with the wrong group of friends and he needs more friends with different perspectives. Even though every single alarm bell in her instincts is going off - not all men are evil, there’s probably a reasonable explanation for why he’s acting like this, if i’m just nice to him he’ll show he’s actually really sweet, not all men, not all men, not all men.

[sharlsworld]

soft lauch? - 𝐜𝐬𝟓𝟓 ✽

✿ carlos sainz x influencer!reader (obvi)

✿ y/n and carlos try to soft launch their relationship but his millennial mind can’t comprehend the idea

✰ i got a little crazy at the end guys so i sincerely apologize for that also there’s a age gap…i’m sorry i’m obsessed with them sue me

🝮🝮🝮

definitelynotyn

liked by pierregasly and 113 others

definitelynotyn is it time to start soft launching?

carlossainz55 Mi corazón I need you to explain a soft launch to me again

⤷ alexandrasaintmleux everyone take a minute to pray for y/n

♥︎ by author

landonorris LONGGGGG over due

⤷ definitelynotyn we’ve just been waiting for the right time

francisca.cgomes soft launch us? fs

⤷ definitelynotyn let’s go over the captions

⤷ carlossainz55 Alrighty then!

⤷ pierregasly idc how many years go by i’ll never get used to this

⤷ definitelynotyn cry about it

⤷ pierregasly i will

charles_leclerc You would hope so after almost 4 years of dating

⤷ definitelynotyn it’s not our fault we can keep a secret sharl

⤷ charles_leclerc What’s that supposed to mean 🤨

lilymhe carlos sainz deserves to be locked up for going after my little kitten when she turned 18 😾

⤷ carlossainz55 Your just mad I got rizz

⤷ lilymhe obviously not that good if your girl is eating lunch with me rn

⤷ carlossainz55 @definitelynotyn Come home baby the kids miss you

⤷ definitelynotyn omw 😍

⤷ lilymhe damn…someone took my bitch

georgerussell63 Nah i’m waiting for the hard launch engagement post

⤷ carlossainz55 😏

alex_albon bros gonna catch a case 😭

⤷ danielricciardo He’s ready to risk it all

🝮

yn

liked by carlossainz55 and 6,924,085 others

yn so baby girl coded 🎀

charles_leclerc My eyes 😓

⤷ yn oh please spare me the dramatics

landonorris you two make me sick 🤢

⤷ yn all i’m seeing is a bunch of hating jealous bitches 🤧🥱

hoeforsainzzz guys…that watch looks pretty familiar

f1wags 👀👀👀

smoothoperator55 yk…i’ve spent some time memorizing the arms and hands of the f1 drivers and let me tell you…that’s gotta be carlos sainz 👁️👁️

ynstan4lyfe some of you guys need to except the fact that carlos and her are just friends and nothing more

carlossainz55 Lucky guy

this comment has been deleted

operatorsainz ik ya’ll seen that 🫣

danielricciardo How many times must I remind you that children are on this app

⤷ yn it’s not my fault if they see it the age requirement is 13 🤓

🝮

carlossainz55

liked by lewishamilton and 9,813,762 others

carlossainz55 4 years with you by my side ♥️

charles_leclerc Tell her to cut her claws it looks like you asked a bear to scratch your back

⤷ hoeforsainzzz HELLOOOO??????

carlossainzappendix HELLO THATS THE SAME PICTURE Y/N POSTED IN HER SOFT LAUNCH STHU

landonorris bless carlos and his millennial mind 😞

iliveforcarlossainz welp this definitely wasn’t on my 2024 bingo card

hearts4lando SHUT THE HELL UP 4 YEARS AND WE HAD NO CLUE?

flowersforyn sooo…we’re not gonna talk about the 8 year age gap?

⤷ alex_albon no his lawyers are on speed dial he was ready to risk it all

⤷ yn shut up albono

yn oh baby 😭

⤷ carlossainz55 Did I do it wrong?

⤷ yn yeah but it’s the thought that counts

maxverstappen1 Almost had it mate

alexandrasaintmleux whoever didn’t pray for y/n this is your fault

🝮

definitelynotyn

liked by schecoperez and 98 others

definitelynotyn why is bro tryna rizz me up

francisca.cgomes HAHAHA HES SO OLD WHO TYPES WITH AUTO CAPS

⤷ carlossainz55 Mature adults

⤷ definitelynotyn excuse me?

⤷ carlossainz55 I can never win

⤷ lilymhe HAHAHA THATS WHAT YOU GET FOR MESSING UP HER SOFT LAUNCH

charles_leclerc He actually was sweating like a bitch when he realized he posted the same picture

lewishamilton Roscoe misses his godmother he’s in need for a visit

⤷ definitelynotyn stop i’m coming over tmr

oscarpiastri 29 year old spaniard seen running around paddock looking disheveled and almost in tears after the realization hit that he ruined his girlfriends soft launch

⤷ definitelynotyn thanks for the update osc

carlossainz55 Babe please i’m on my knees begging forgive me

⤷ landonorris stand up carlos

⤷ definitelynotyn don’t you have a race to lose or something?

⤷ landonorris maybe in a different lifetime…you aren’t my bully 😔

⤷ definitelynotyn oh go cry me a river

⤷ landonorris i will

alexandrasaintmleux i wish charles was this down bad for me

⤷ charles_leclerc Girl………..

⤷ yn is what you are? 🤣🤣🤣

⤷ charles_leclerc You are my biggest hater

⤷ definitelynotyn proudly

🝮

yn

liked by haileybieber and 10,172,253 others

yn ruined my soft launch but it’s ok cause the D is fire 🔥 yeah, i said it.

carlossainz55 Mi corazón es tuyo ♥️

⤷ yn ♥️

charles_leclerc You guys should pay for my therapy since i’ve spent the last 4 years sleeping in the room next to yours

⤷ carlossainz55 Get ear plugs

ynlos ik those bitches are like bunnies 🫣

hoeforsainzzz y/n giving us a little snack 😩

ynstan4lyfe i would like to take back what i said on her soft launch

danielricciardo Your pr managers are quaking with rage right now I know it

⤷ yn i was gonna say something but then i chose peace 😇

⤷ georgerussell63 That’s a first

⤷ yn alright bro your entire existence is a meme calm down 🤣🤣

⤷ georgerussell63 I can always count on you to make me cry

🝮

carlossainz55

liked by lissiemackintosh and 9,019,723 others

carlossainz55 Dibs

francisca.cgomes WOAH THERE BUDDY

arthur_leclerc that’s enough instagram for the day.

landonorris my poor eyes

yn best pillow 😇

⤷ carlossainz55 Just for you

ynissocutiepatootie her side profile 😍😍

ynsmywife carlos sainz can’t handle allat

carlando this altered my brain chemistry

carlitossainz brotha don’t know what to do with allat

charles_leclerc Every time I open this app man I can’t escape it 💔

⤷ yn is that a little bitch i hear?

⤷ charles_leclerc You wound me

maxverstappen1 Wasn’t prepared for that

carlossainz55 All you bitches can stay mad

🝮

yns.asskisser

liked by oscarpiastri and 84 others

yns.asskisser Date night with the missus

yn WOOF WOOF MEOW 😍😘😋👅🤤 SMASH SMASH SMASH YOU CAN HAVE IT ANY DAY ANY WHERE ANY TIME

⤷ yns.asskisser I love u mami

yn do you want head?

⤷ yns.asskisser Always baby 😘

⤷ charles_leclerc JUST BECAUSE THIS IS A PRIVATE ACCOUNT DOESNT MEAN OTHER PEOPLE CANT SEE IT

landonorris aw you sick bastard

lilymhe what is it finna play…WOAHHHH

alexandrasaintmleux i miss the person i was 10 seconds ago

francisca.cgomes you and y/n put 50 shades of grey to SHAME

alex_albon so who’s coming to church with me and lily on sunday? 😇

⤷ pierregasly me and kika

⤷ charles_leclerc Me and alexandra

⤷ oscarpiastri me and lily

⤷ danielricciardo Me

⤷ schecoperez Me

⤷ maxverstappen1 Me

⤷ yukitsunoda0511 Me

⤷ lewishamilton Me and roscoe

⤷ georgerussell63 Me and carmen

⤷ landonorris me

⤷ joris__trouche me

⤷ lance_stroll me

⤷ logansargeant me

⤷ fernandoalo_oficial Me

⤷ yn ya’ll mad i’m getting my world rocked every night 🤪🤪

♥︎ by author

[egoistars]

HIT BRAKE! sae itoshi

(Sae needs to practice his goals and you… driving)

~3.8k words, humor, fluff, angst if you grab a magnifying glass, use of soccer instead of football (i have too much pride to do that), theyre so polar opposite they unfortunately come full circle and match each others freak

Sae Itoshi returned to Japan with several new things under his belt:

The ability to speak spanish (although his grammar structure can use some help from time to time)

An insane growth spurt

Probably shell shock syndrome

And the scariest new update to a chronic Resting Bitch Face that you had the displeasure of seeing thrown your way when you accidentally ran over his ball driving home. Maybe this is why most Japanese people rely on public transport instead of using their licenses

TWO was the number of times you had failed your driver’s test. Yes, you could always use the bus or ask your friends for a ride, but college doesn’t start for another few weeks and you’re determined by pure stubbornness to be driver certified before starting school. You think you’re doing pretty good so far: no accidents, no being pulled over, no getting cursed, and no one loudly complaining about your skills (no one has trusted you to drive them). The only thing you had left to master was parallel parking. 

It was a legacy in your family to be horrible at city parking.

One of your earliest memories was in the backseat of a rental car in a foreign country while your mother tried to park on the side of the street, only to get honked at by cars and drive against the flow of vehicles in a one-way zone. 

A bag of groceries lie in the trunk of your car as you drive to your family’s home. Humming along to the song softly playing through the radio, you slow down as you near the residential area, confident that this drive will end without a single thing gone wrong. Without speaking, you jinx your thoughts as you jolt when your car goes over a bump and a loud wheeze follows it. Turning your head to the side, your entire body freezes and your eyes go wide upon seeing the pissed off glare of Sae Itoshi, the infamous Japanese soccer player who just returned from Spain with a sexy tan.

With a shaky hand, you roll down your window and immediately start tumbling over your rushed apologies. You don’t even understand what you’re saying but you hope that Itoshi somehow understands. When he doesn’t react, which is what you expected but it hurts nonetheless, you immediately shut up and tumble out of your car before getting on your knees and seeing what you ran over. 

Your hand reaches and pulls out a deflated soccer ball, the entire thing flat with a large hole on the side from when it got run over by your car. You almost feel inclined to inflate it with the tears that are about to spill out of your eyes but the only realistic and socially acceptable choice was to give it to Itoshi and once again, apologize but with words that he and the average person can understand. 

Itoshi mumbles a “it’s okay” before taking the ball (can you even call it that?) a once-over. “I have more at home, I’ll just throw it out.”

“Holy shit I’m so sorry about that I can buy you a new one just please don’t sue me I can’t afford a good lawyer, I’m in student loan debt.”

“...why would I sue you?” he asks, his face slightly scrunched up in confusion. It’s not much different from his normal expression, just a slight crease of his brows but it makes all the difference.

“I didn’t mean to assume that you’re gonna sue me, please don’t sue me for assuming!” You think that you should begin to pack your bags and take out a loan to move to another country. It would be easier to be a criminal than to deal with a conversation with a guy who multiplies your humiliation. “I just thought that you might get your super prestigious and rich and wealthy and prosperous and exquisitely-copious-in-currency soccer team on my ass ‘cause I ran over one of their balls,” you nervously rambled. Your face heats up at every word and one Itoshi divides into two Itoshis and two Itoshis split into four.

“Are you schizophrenic? I thought you were normal back in middle school,” sixty-eight Itoshis say in unison.

Your body freezes, the now one hundred twenty-eight Itoshis all morphing back into one. “Wait, we went to middle school together?”

“Uh, yeah,” he blinks, this time looking even more awkward than you. “We were in the same class for two years straight and I sat next to you the semester before I left. I think I would remember the kid who slept through each period but still got all the answers right when called on.”

“Oh!” You perk up at the recollection of a scrawny red-haired boy from five years ago, one who would try to not-so-discreetly look at your worksheet answers and peek at your notes during class. “You’re the boy who would always copy off my work. I do remember you!”

“Is that all you remember about me?” If Itoshi were any other person, you’d say he looked uncomfortable but all he did was tilt his head a little more to the left and shift on his feet. 

“I mean, the only reason why you remember me is ‘cause I saved your academics without even knowing. Don’t think I didn’t hear our teacher whispering ‘good job’ to you while returning our tests and how you suddenly moved up in our class rankings.”

“Well you didn’t bother to hide anything when you were snoozing away so whose fault really is it?”

“You were gonna leave for Spain, anyway!” you point out, remembering being pissed off when hearing the reason why your seatmate left was because he was some kind of sport prodigy, basically having his entire future as a star secured at the age of thirteen.

“My parents would’ve killed me and held me by my feet if I flunked.” Itoshi grimaced, kissing his teeth and brushing his hair back as it had fallen over his eyes. His cheeks had returned to its usual color, removing the red flush of running and exhaustion.

“Huh, I guess I should be credited for your success. Spain should thank me.”

“Are we forgetting that I’m the one who plays the sport?” Sae’s voice came out harsher than he intended and cut through the playful atmosphere by the first syllable. His demeanor appeared unchanged but he felt himself tense. 

Conversation had never been strong for Sae, only ever talking when he needed to and the most of his words going to his teammates on the field or his little brother. His success was a sensitive subject whether he liked to admit it or not. Spain served as an eye-opener to the teenage boy, being left in a country where no one looked like you and no one spoke your language. The only thing he could rely on was a translator he barely trusted and the expressions of the people around him. 

When you don’t respond, Sae observes your face, noticing how you began to fidget with your fingers just as you had when you first stepped out of the car. You weren’t his previous coaches; you were just a former classmate who he happened to run into, or rather, you drove into. It was too late to laugh and he felt slightly guilty at freaking out someone that wasn’t his brother, an opponent, or a bothersome news anchor. 

“If you want to repay me for the ball, meet me at the sports store nearby.”

“Sorry, but I don’t really know where you’re talking about,” you sheepishly reply, wanting to sink more into the ground with every word. You decide that talking to athletes is more tiring than playing an actual sport.

“Give me your number, I’ll send you the address.”

You hand him your phone, hoping he doesn’t comment on the horrendously cracked screen protector that you had been telling yourself to replace for months. At the same time, you also want him to notice the small possibility of him offering to buy you a new one, taking advantage of rich people or whatever. “I can pick you up if you don’t mind.”

“Should I trust you to drive me?” he asks, carefully looking between you and your car with his turquoise eyes as if analyzing his opponents on a field, only, this was a residential street and the only other player was a balding middle aged man walking his dog. 

“I mean, you’ll be my first passenger so you can find out for everyone else.”

“If I get into an accident I’ll sue you for real.”

“I’ll try not to, I don’t have a job anymore and I’m going to college soon so even if I do please be merciful I swear I have good intentions.”

“Pick me up tomorrow at 11 and I’ll give you a review,” he decides, handing over his phone with the contact ‘Sae Itoshi’ at the top of your phone and the name of a sports store sent to your conversation. You ponder for a moment about asking for a contact picture but you’d like to stay alive for at least one more day so you bid him farewell and sit back in the driver’s seat, hoping he doesn’t hate your taste in music when you turn the radio back on.

—

The Itoshi residence is rather normal, differing from your expectation of a lavish mansion with fountains and fences of gold, given that Sae was a famous athlete and his younger brother Rin was known throughout the prefecture for being a mini Sae. The previous night when you had just finished brushing your teeth, your phone screen illuminated with the presence of a new notification: a text from the older Itoshi.

>make sure you don’t have anything planned for tomorrow

>i’ll need to try each ball out

>you did this to yourself

>shitty driver

A jolt of pain had struck your pride, crumbling your ego at the realization that he was, unfortunately, right about needing to sacrifice your entire afternoon to babysit a (grown) stranger whom you haven’t talked to in years; those conversations were brief, lacking any substance to consider them actual conversations. For a moment, the thought of bailing on him had crossed your mind, the idea of leaving him stranded at his residence while you enjoyed a night in, marinating before a tumultuous college career seemed insatiably tempting. 

Disaster struck when you Googled Sae Itoshi’s net worth, his bank account leading you right to his front doorstep.

“Don’t get into any car accidents,” Sae told you as he dipped his head down to step into the passenger’s side of your car. You were suddenly struck with a moment of insecurity; a wealthy athlete who could probably buy your family and your ancestor’s mummified corpses is sitting in your car and is probably rich enough to get away with murdering you for having half a particle of dust fall onto his lap.

You realized you zoned out when Sae cleared his throat, blinking a few times at you with an unamused expression and eyebrows furrowed in judgment. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, man. Just trying to remember the name of the place you mentioned. It’s a technique I use where if I think really hard in the same place I was when I thought of that thought, that thought I had thought of can reappear in my thoughtless mind.” You aren’t sure if you understand what you’re saying but you think you can get away with spouting bullshit if you use enough hand movements like a person on TedTalk.

“What the actual fuck are you saying?” Sae doesn’t seem to believe you but you’re an innovator—you simplify the problem down to something the average person (underling) can understand. 

“Can you give me the address again..?”

“You’re a freak.”

Sae picks up your phone, which was opened to the navigator app, and quickly typed in the name of the sporting good’s shop he had mentioned the day before. It was a small place, smaller than you would expect a star athlete to go to for equipment but you suppose it makes sense at the same time: less people, less paparazzi, less crazed fans, and a selection of items picked specifically for trained athletes. 

“So, uh, are you gonna make me pay for the ball too ‘cause I’m at least, like, five yen in student loan debt,” you sheepishly ask, hoping Sae can appreciate your humility in being a college student, taking a step forward in life by pursuing a higher education. 

“How cheap are you?” Sae scoffs, letting out a sound that started off as half of a chuckle but ended as a constipated grunt, making him sound like a diseased lab-grown goat that was raised by war-stricken alien society. You think Sae should become an experimental musical artist if soccer doesn’t work out, sorta like a fucked up version of Björk who’s slightly less musically talented and a total cunt instead. 

“I’m not cheap! I’m just curious. I brought my credit card just in case. I’m a responsible adult; this is all for budgeting and logging my payments or whatever else people do to save money.”

“You’re lucky you’re funny,” Sae comments as if it’s the most nonchalant thing in the world. For you though, you almost stepped on the breaks and begged him to repeat what he said. It would have been just another condescending compliment from anyone else but Sae Itoshi is notorious for not humoring anyone in the media and you quickly realized, even those in real life. Before you could doubt your memory, Sae opens his mouth again. “You lucked out on pretty privilege. All the bullshit you say would not slide if it came from any other person. I’m convinced the only social experience you have is talking to a mud wall.”

Any negative statement he had made went through one ear and directly out the other, keeping only the compliments for your brain to process. Without noticing, a giddy smile appeared on your face and to Sae, it was wildly masochistic the way you tolerated his foul personality and even relishing in his attention—no matter good or bad. He could almost pity you, deducing your attitude as a lack of self respect, but you somehow manage to surprise him every time.

“Nah, I think I had a lot of friends. I don’t know if we were actually friends but I knew their names so it’s probably good enough. Speaking of, there was this guy named Kota who I knew when I was seven and he seemed pretty cool until I caught him picking at his feet in the middle of class. Sometimes I wonder how he’s doing and if he’s still collecting foot gunk. But yeah, I think you’re just self projecting with the whole ‘no people, only soccer’ thing and moving to Spain with zero spanish skills. Damn, wait, that’s kinda sad. Shit, now I feel bad,” you take a look at Sae, searching for any sort of discomfort or offense but he simply shrugged. 

“It’s whatever, they all bothered me anyways. I was there to play soccer, not make lifelong friends. It’s not like I’m gonna stay in Spain forever. I’m back in Japan to renew my passport ‘cause I know I’m gonna come back eventually.”

“You’ve already made a name for yourself and you’re making insane money that can last more than a lifetime for the average person once your contract is over. It’s not gonna be long before you get onto the Olympic team for Japan. When you do make it on, you better thank me for making sure you kept on playing by bringing you to buy a replacement for a ball I ran over.”

You drove into a parking lot with two other cars directly in front of the sports shop. The building was in the middle of a small plaza, adjacent to an udon shop and a bar. It was undoubtedly an odd place for a sports shop to be and that might have been what caught Sae’s eye in the first place. In the window display, a tennis racket and a pair of soccer cleats are put on display and on the glass door, countless advertisements for events and brands are taped on, each barely correlating to the others.

Right in the corner of the shop is the checkout where an elderly man sits, scribbling something in a beaten journal. There is a stack of newspapers behind him, every issue marked with highlighted annotations and then neatly folded as if it were untouched. Sae greeted the man and turned to find someone else, this time, being a younger man who appeared to be in his thirties or forties. He gave Sae a warm smile and shook his hand, not as a business partner, but as an acquaintance. 

It’s here that you realize you’ll never be able to see the world the way Sae does. In your car he was just another boy in your neighborhood that you decided to get to know. But to others, he was Sae Itoshi, a prodigy who could conquer the world with just himself and a pair of cleats. Although his eyes are dimmed and his apathy anything but silent, his shine was lost to know one and when he boards a plane back to Spain while you settle into college, you think you’d be content calling him a shooting star.

Sae notices that you stopped following him and turns around in confusion, tilting his head to motion you to follow him. It takes a breath before you put your hands in the pocket of your jacket and tentatively follow him. It wasn’t until you walked into the store that you truly realized how out of place you felt and if it were just you and Sae, you might’ve thought to ask him what everything did. He’d call you a dense fuck and tell you that he plays soccer, that he doesn’t deal with anything else. You had even the smallest bit of shame so you kept your mouth shut and continued to trail after him, stealing glances at the stacked shelves until the employee came to a halt.

Before you was a wall, lined with four shelves of nothing but soccer balls, each decorated with the signatures of different brands and their series’.

“The guy said I can try them out in the back.” Sae tapped your shoulder and grabbed onto the fabric of your jacket, dragging you with him like a pet cat. “They have a lot of empty space there. You can help me carry everything I want to try.”

Agreeing turned out to be a mistake. In your arms you struggled to carry six different balls, with Sae dribbling one between his feet as the owner of the stop unlocked the door to the back where Sae would be testing things out. You felt like an overworked butler from some bad comic and in your head, you imagined yourself as a fainting princess—a damsel in distress being overworked by the evil kingdom in which she is supposed to be respected.

“Stop being dramatic,” Sae sighed, noticing your dejected pout and lost eyes. He could almost pity you if you didn’t look comically pathetic in the moment, almost adorable if he wanted to be slightly sentimental. “You can put them all down now. Just sit here and wait. Take a nap or something, you’ll be fine.”

The lack of standards you have would be an issue to address at a later date because the barely comforting words of the ever eloquent motivational speaker Sae Itoshi had you immediately perking up and cheering for him.

“Go! Go! You got this! Get that goal, ugly!”

“Who are you calling ugly? I could knock you out with this ball, you know. If you want to be supportive, don't be a freak.”

“Are you really gonna disrespect the only fan you have at the moment? What if I tweet about this and get you canceled or some shit?”

“Do you really think I care about that?”

“...no…”

“...”

“...”

“Whatever. Do what you want.”

“Kick that ball, little boy! You’re a prodigy! Number one soccer player in the world! Bend that net over!”

—

By the time Sae had finished shooting several goals and alternating dribbling between them at least five times, the sun had set and your throat was sore from bullshit cheering, half of which were incoherent sounds of moral support. Sae grabbed an unopened box of the ball he had chosen and denied a pump when offered one. When he placed the cardboard packaging onto the checkout table, your wallet was in your hand and ready to check out and pay off your debt to the Itoshi. 

However, you were met with a receipt in your hand instead and a farewell from the owner, bidding you and Sae a happy rest of your day. You quickly turned your head toward Sae, mouth agape as your brain twitched, trying to process if he was fucking with you or not.

“Do you want me to pay you online or write a check or what? Wait, why did you pay? I thought I owed you it? My complaining earlier was all joking. I literally popped your old ball. The least I can do is pay for a new one!” You rant, quickly taking your phone out of your bag to open up your banking app but Sae was quicker to take your hand in his and bring it down to where it was before.

“And I was fucking with you too, dumbass. Or are you too stupid to remember back in the car how I didn’t respond to you asking if you needed to pay? Start listening, will you?”

“I think this is the meanest act of generosity I’ve ever seen.”

“I’m not being generous, I’m telling you that you owe me something else.”

“What the fuck?” You’re perplexed by the audacity of this man. You hope his athletic career flops and every brand deal that he has gotten offered drops him. “Are you gonna start charging me an insane amount of interest like a loan shark? Dude, aren’t you rich?”

“I’m not asking for money.”

“Then what is it?”

“Go on a date with me.”

“Are you being for real right now?” You’re still perplexed by the audacity of this man. You’re perplexed by how his words are chosen to form the most foul sentences with sweet meanings. You’re perplexed by how out of all who know him, and all whom he knows, he would take an interest in you. But you’re a selfish person—if Sae Itoshi is offering his beauty and his awful personality to you, then you’ll take it with all your heart. 

You move to Sae’s side, putting everything in your hands into your bag and intertwining your fingers with his, a dumb smile planted on your face. As you skip to the car and swing your hands between the two of you, Sae Itoshi’s grin is highlighted by the golden glow of the setting sun. 

He really can’t wait to come home.

[rosie-read-that]

bad blood / scott miller x reader

summary: set after twisters. when scott initiates a lawsuit against javi and his new business partners, they choose to take you on as their attorney—no matter that you and scott were once high school sweethearts, that you still have his ring in your closet, or that things between you ended catastrophically six years past. this is business. no need to go down memory lane… right?

content warnings: f!reader, alcohol use, language, offscreen parental death, one open door scene (unprotected piv), couple angst, riggs is his own walking red flag, questionable legal ethics

word count: 21.6k (sorry, guys 😬)

author’s note: here it is! i tried to rein in the length, but clearly i failed ✌🏼 shoutout to @hederasgarden and @sailor-aviator for giving scott his fandom-approved surname. on a final note, i am not a lawyer, i took one (1) business law class in college, so don’t take my word on any of this and definitely don’t do stuff with your ex while he’s the opposing party in a case you’re working (but if it’s david corenswet, i meannnn… should anyone be blamed?)

PRESENT DAY OKLAHOMA CITY

Well-meaning, and with typical Arkansan practicality, Tyler Owens leaned back in his chair and said, “Javi, you need to chill out, man.”

Immediately, you knew it was the wrong thing to say.

“What makes you think I’m not? It's not like my entire livelihood is on the line or anything, so why would I not be chilled out?—Dammit!”

“Actually, lose the tie,” you suggested, having watched him fumble for the last five minutes. You were sure it was nerves that did it, not a lack of dexterity.

Javi sighed and let the two ends hang pathetically around his neck. “I thought I was supposed to wear one…”

“I think that’s only for court,” Kate put in, “like with an actual judge and stuff.”

“Maybe in the 1970s,” remarked Tyler under his breath. Javi glared. “Bro, it’s gonna be fine.”

“We should be out there, tracking tornadoes!” There was a mounted television in the little waiting area, playing a 24-hour news channel on mute. Javi gestured at the weather report. It was March, and Tornado Alley was looking active, “robust,” as the weatherman put it… not that your clients would know firsthand, seeing as they were stuck in a high-rise in the city instead of out in the fields of Sapulpa County. Kate and Tyler were watching the radar images with twin expressions of restless longing. Javi yanked the tie from his neck. “That son of a bitch knew exactly what he was doing, tying us up in meetings at this time of year.”

“Yeah, he did,” you replied. “I know it’s inconvenient as shit, but believe me, I’m going to do everything I can to get you back out on the field. There’s no reason for all three of you to be here. I mean, it’s the modern age: some of this could be a Zoom meeting.”

 “You think we’re gonna Zoom in the middle of a storm?” Tyler quipped. Kate turned to him with a chastising look.

She was clearly just about as done as her other two partners, but a lot more level-headed about the fact that they were being sued for everything they had. Which you appreciated. Suits between friends and former business associates had a tendency to turn into mud-slinging wars, and there was nothing you hated more than a client stuck in denial. Kate was the opposite. She was cool-headed, calm. A happy medium between Tyler’s annoyed outrage (“who does this guy think he is!”) and Javi’s frustrated melancholy (“guys, I’m sorry, this is all my fault”).

Right now, Javi was sinking well into the latter.

“Just remember we’re here for you, Javi.” Kate rubbed a soothing hand across his back. “All the way. We know this is personal.”

“Yeah, which means it’s gonna get ugly. I hate the thought of our company going under because I had shitty taste in business partners, you know?”

“Well, you don't anymore. That’s character growth,” Tyler pointed out. “Now, I’m no legal expert, but as far as I can see, he’s got no legs to stand on—”

You held up a finger. “Uh, that’s not entirely true…”

“—and he’s going to come out of this looking like a complete and total tool. Which he is! If he wants to spend all this time and boatloads of his uncle’s money on a belligerent witch hunt, then so be it.”

“You mean our time, our money,” said Javi.

Kate looked at you. “If this ends up going to court, is it likely he’ll win?”

You sighed. “Okay, listen.” You sat on the coffee table. There was no avoiding the sight of three pairs of eyes with varying degrees of hopefulness trained on you, hanging onto your every word. Javi you had known before, but after a brief acquaintance, you’d decided that you liked Kate and Tyler too, had even spent an hour or two watching Tornado Wrangler videos on YouTube, and, while storm chasing seemed, well, kind of unhinged, their enthusiasm was contagious. They were passionate, not in a purely thrill-seeking or overly scientific way. They actually cared. And you wanted them to win. “The whole point,” you explained, “is that we’re trying to avoid this going to trial. If you’re looking to cut down on the cost to your bottom line—not to mention how this could drag on for literal years—it’s best to reach a settlement before this ever sees the inside of a courtroom. Either way, things are going to get a little worse before they get better. But the point is a clean break, right? When all this is over, StormPAR will never have any sort of claim over you. You’ll be free to chase storms, build your doo-dads—”

That got you a trio of chuckles. Good, let them think you were a meteorological idiot; all the better to make them feel like a united front.

“—and it’ll be like Scott and Riggs never happened.”

“Sounds good to me,” Tyler said, that steely determination from his old rodeo days coming through.

Kate gave a nod. “No matter what, we’ll be okay”

Javi put his hand on your knee. “Thank you… for everything. I know this has gotta suck for you too.”

“Who, me?” you asked, feigning ignorance. “I’m fine.”

“Mm-hm…”

“Do I not look fine?”

“You look great,” Kate said honestly.

“Miller’s gonna shit his pants.”

“Tyler!”

“Hey, we’re up,” your assistant announced, her fingers not pausing for a second as she typed on her phone. Abby may have the social skills of a polar bear, but her organizational skills were top-notch and you relied on her predatory instincts. Plus, you were sure that her geometrically perfect French bob had magical powers.

Signaling for the others to follow, you made your way down a hallway bordered by walls banded in frosted glass, the sound of typing and muffled phone calls familiar and yet not. This was enemy territory. Having you meet here instead of at the offices of Conway & Fine was a calculated move.

Before entering the conference room, you took Tyler by the elbow. “Please just… try to behave yourself.”

Me? He pointed at his face.

“Yes, you! Don’t provoke him—as a matter of fact, don’t even look at him—don't piss him off unless you want to make this a hell of a lot worse for everyone. Capisce?”

“I’ll be the picture of civility.”

You shot him a skeptical look.

“I’ll be a gentleman!”

You glared. “Tyler Owens, I’m holding you to that.” Adjusting your power suit, you put on your best Professional Face. “Alright guys, it’s showtime.”

Through the glass, your eyes landed on Scott. The temptation to bolt left you breathless, though you couldn’t say whether you wanted to run towards or far, far away. You wouldn’t. You were all too aware of the people standing behind you, counting on you, while Scott himself had been a stranger to you for the last few years.

You owed him nothing; this was simply business, you reminded yourself.

Simply business.

He turned his head and spotted you, and kept his eyes on you as you opened the door.

TEN YEARS AGO PARK HAVEN, PENNSYLVANIA

You’d been working on the same calculus assignment for the last three-quarters of an hour, the sound of rain lashing against your window doing nothing for your frazzled nerves.  While math was by no means your obvious strong suit, you would have finished by now if you hadn’t spent most of it staring at the wall beneath your windowsill, bouncing your leg, tapping your pencil compulsively against the edge of your AP textbook and imagining all the ways in which your life could go horribly, unfixably wrong. An outcome that now seemed likely.

“You still have time, sweetheart,” your mom tried to say at dinner that night. She smiled at you and patted your hand. “It’s only March.”

“Exactly—it’s March!” you’d wanted to say, but bit your tongue. There wasn't any point; your mom would always believe you were capable of walking on the moon, which was lovely, you guessed. Or it would be, if all your classmates weren't overachievers and if a lot of them hadn't already received acceptance letters and stuck pennants to the inside of their lockers for all the rejects to see.

It was hopeless… you should’ve gotten an answer by now.

Tossing the book and papers away, you buried your face in your hands and tried to hold it together. The sleeves of your sweatshirt emanated a woodsy, clean smell, kind of like rain in a forest, and you breathed in deep to let it ground you.

Slowly, the intensity of the storm outside faded to background noise, no longer angry, insistent—it was only rain after all, only weather. You sniffed, feeling silly, and snuggled into the navy-blue sweatshirt, wrapping your arms around your knees. The gold lettering read NICHOLS ACADEMY ATHLETICS. On you, it was practically a dress, and you’d been living in it all week, ignoring Mom’s teases about how “you’re going to have to wash it at some point!” while your dad watched you pass by, saying nothing, only flipping the page of whatever biography he was reading, not wanting to comment or so much as reference your boyfriend of two years, who played center field on Nichols’s prize baseball team and from whom you’d stolen the sweatshirt after a date at the park.

Try as you might, your dad had never warmed up to Scott, but you thought it had more to do with an objection to Scott’s father rather than to Scott himself. The whole family’s trouble, he said once, prompting a fight that ended with you slamming your bedroom door and not speaking to him for two days, until your mom laid down the law and said she wouldn't have that sort of tension around the house.

He didn’t get it. Scott wasn't like his father—if anything, you saw the way his jaw tensed whenever he heard rumors (whispered, unless intended to get a rise out of him by a school rival) about the private club scenes, the drinking, the reckless gambling, the other women. Of course your straitlaced dad assumed the apple wouldn't fall too far from the tree, but you knew Scott. You trusted him. And, fine, so you were seventeen, but you knew you wanted to spend the rest of your life with him—it happened, didn't it?

Granted, this was why that damned letter was so important. It was the perfect plan… so long as Scott got into MIT, which seemed like a given, and you into Harvard, the culmination of four years of meticulous planning and candle-burning work. But what if it didn’t happen? Could your relationship survive the time and long distance? As much as you hoped so, you didn’t want to find out.

Out of nowhere came sharp rap at your window. Startled, you looked up to see a familiar face peering through the rain-lashed glass, and automatically you sprang to your feet. “Scott! What the hell were you thinking!” you hissed, mindful of your parents, probably in bed at this hour. He paused halfway through the window, pretending offense.

“Wow, okay, here I thought I was making a big romantic gesture…”

“You’re soaking wet! You could’ve fallen and broken your neck!”

As you lowered and latched the window behind him, trying to be as quiet as possible, he defended, “I’m a tree connoisseur. If anything, I’m a that-tree connoisseur and she’s never let me down before. Literally. Sturdy branches on her.”

He had a point there. The tree directly outside your bedroom window had played makeshift ladder to him over the last couple of years—not that your parents were any the wiser. If your dad knew, he’d go straight to the nearest hardware store and buy the ax himself. (What he would do with that ax, having never done a day’s manual labor in his life besides recreational fishing, was beyond you.)

You shook your head, watching Scott drip all over the hardwood. God, he was stunning.

And there was a chance you might lose him forever in a few months.

You felt the sting in your throat and behind your eyes. “I’ll go get you a towel,” you said, averting your face and turning towards the ensuite so you could get a few seconds to yourself. He caught you by the wrist and spun you into his body.

“Wait a minute, kiss me first,” he demanded, a cocky grin on his face. You managed to see a flash of it before his lips met yours. You closed your eyes in spite of everything, melting into the kiss, into Scott, because it was as easy as breathing and just as pointless trying to resist.

His cheeks were cold, his mouth warm. Coaxing. The pressure of his hands on your waist like an anchor in the storm. He was perfect for you. How could you belong with anyone else? It was impossible.

His tongue brushed your bottom lip, and it was a move so practiced, so instinctive, so perfectly well-known, that it made the fear swell in your chest again. You held onto the front of his rain-drenched hoodie, breaking the kiss. Your breathing was ragged. You felt you could burst.

“You’re insane,” you tried to cover, burying your head in his chest. “My dad will kill you if he catches you.”

He took a step back and tilted your face up, gently, by the chin. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” you replied.

“Tell me.”

Instead of answering, you made your way to the bathroom and got a towel out of the linen closet. You could feel Scott’s questioning gaze, but he waited, rubbing the towel across his head, brows knitted together as you hesitated, still trying to hedge. “I just—we have that exam next week and I’ve fallen behind on calc and I think I’m going to have to start over on my AP Civ end-of-the-year project, and my mom—”

“Your mom’s great,” Scott interjected.

“Why, d’you want her?”

He pursed his lips. As soon as you said it, you knew that it had sounded kind of bitchy.

“Fine, okay. She’s great, she’s just… trying to help.”

“Is this about Drexler getting her Harvard letter? Because it’s only—”

“It's only March. Yeah. That’s what Mom said. But I’m cutting it close, right? Some people got their letters in December, Scott—December!” You looked down at your feet. “I’m not going to get in.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Well, it sure feels like it!”

“C’mere.”

“No.” You shook your head.

“Come here,” he insisted, tossing the damp towel onto your bed and holding your arms loosely, his hands stroking up and down. No matter how much you held onto the scent-memory of him on his Nichols sweatshirt, nothing compares to the real thing. He made everything better; and if not, he made everything feel like it could get better, because he was Scott Miller, and the world bent to his charm or else. “You’re going to get in,” he said, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. “They’d be crazy not to have you.” And the thing was, despite being utterly convinced only two minutes before that the worst was inevitable, you wanted to believe him, wanted to convince yourself that everything would settle into place as it should.

Scott dipped his head to brush his lips against yours, a deliberate barely-there sweep that made your eyes flutter closed and your arms lace around the wide breadth of his shoulders. Scott’s hands traveled down your back, pressing into your hips until you were flush against the length of his body. You felt him smile as he let you deepen the kiss, and the little rumble of his almost-laugh pinged all the way down to your toes, warming you from the inside the way only Scott could.

As his mouth moved down to your jaw and then the side of your neck, you slid your hands down his chest and then stopped, feeling something other than the hidden planes of his stomach through the fabric of his dark hoodie. You pulled away. Scott’s face had frozen into a look of mild panic and his hands wrapped around your wrists, holding them loosely, which only made the alarm bells ring louder in your head. That was not the sort of face he would make if he was hoarding old receipts.

“Scott?” you asked. He looked away, exhaled, and let your wrists drop with a resigned expression. You reached into his pocket, pulling out a sheet of white letter paper folded into quarters, carefully and with Scott-like precision. “What…” you began, glancing at him briefly and opening the sheet.

At the top, in cardinal red: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

You might have gasped. At the very least, one of your hands flew up to your mouth. “Oh my God��� Scott…”

“We don’t have to talk about it now.”

“Scott! This is from MIT! You got in?”

“It's really not a big deal.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, his shoulders curved slightly inward.

Not a big deal? “Scott, shut up! You got in!” you exclaimed, aghast.

“You’re not upset?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” You set the letter down to the side, knowing he’d want to keep it—that so much as folding it and putting it in his pocket so he could make the ten-minute run to your house in the middle of a downpour must have been a minor sacrifice on your account. Because he wanted to tell you. Because he wanted you to be the first person other than his mom to hear the good news. “We’ve talked about this. This is your dream school, babe.”

“Yeah, well, it feels kinda shitty celebrating now.”

“Stop.” You reached up and gave him a peck on the lips, stroking his cheeks, resting your forehead against his. “I'm so freaking proud of you. You’re going to be the best, most kick-ass engineer.”

You looked into his eyes so that he’d know it was true, and for a moment you could tell he was letting himself feel the achievement—his shoulders relaxed, he caressed your hands gratefully, but there was something about his smile that signaled not all being well.

“I heard Mom talking on the phone with my uncle today,” he confessed.

“Your uncle Riggs? Down in New Orleans?”

“Yeah. She doesn't want me to know, but I heard her talking about college and…”

You placed your hands on his chest. “Is it that bad?”

He didn't like talking about it but you knew his father had made a few bad investments lately, and from your own dad, who had confided it to your mom in secret one night—not that he saw you lurking outside the kitchen, drawn by the mention of the name “Miller”—you were aware that he had made a truly catastrophic impulsive bet with some Swedish businessmen he’d been trying to impress. Add to that the drawn look on Mrs. Miller’s face whenever you saw her, and the overly sympathetic way your mom referred to “poor Pamela,” and you had enough evidence to assume that Scott’s father had royally fucked up this time. 

“They’ve been talking about selling the house,” he said with a dark look. “I think my parents are going to split up… for good this time.”

“Oh, Scott…”

“So who knows? I might not be able to go to MIT anyway—even with this.”

“Are you okay?” you asked, aware that nothing got his back up more than pity. But you had to ask.

He shrugged. “It is what it is.”

This was a side of him you’d never learned how to handle, not even after two years of dating. For all that he was an expert at making you feel like the world was yours for the taking, when it came to his own struggles, he was a tightly closed book. Instead of admitting when he was hurt or disappointed, he resorted to indifference and the kind of dark humor that could put you in a bad mood if you weren't careful.

Right now, all you wanted was for him to know that you were there for him. Nothing you could say or do would make Ray Miller grow practical common sense or an ounce of familial consideration—you weren't even sure that he knew your name, despite being Scott’s long-term girlfriend; he was hardly ever home, and never present even on the occasions when he was. But you could state the obvious, just in case he’d doubted it for a second.

“Hey, I love you,” you said to him.

“I love you, too,” he replied. “Now, no more shop talk—why do you think I risked my neck climbing up here?” And just like that, the matter was closed, the dark look disappeared, replaced by the telltale lowering of his dark lashes as he dropped another kiss at the side of your neck, his arms tightening around you, turning you so that the backs of your knees hit the edge of your bed.

“And here I thought your intentions were pure,” you replied, trying to downplay the butterflies in your stomach.

“Darling, there’s no such thing… especially when it comes to you.”

“What an idealist,” you rejoined, then fell quiet when he kissed you again. Without missing a beat, he lowered you onto the bed, hands gliding beneath your sweatshirt with apparent purpose. “Scott,” you protested, “my parents are across the hall.”

“So we’ll be quiet. Or we’ll get caught. What's the worst that could happen?”

“Um, you flying headfirst out that window?”

He pretended to think about it, then, by the warm glow of your bedside lamp, you saw his mouth quirk into a smirk before he dove towards your lips, eyes twinkling. “I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a price I’m willing to pay.”

PRESENT DAY OKLAHOMA CITY

“The damages your client is seeking are absolutely unreasonable. I would even say they border on the ridiculous—and, quite frankly, even frivolous!”

“Frivolous! Your client founded his new company with StormPAR assets—”

“His assets!”

“—accumulated during his tenure as a business partner to my client. Assets which came out of the pocket of Mr. Riggs as well, might I remind you!”

“We were equal partners!” Javi exclaimed, no longer able to keep his temper in check. You supposed the moment you snapped at Mr. Rankin, Javi figured the gloves were off.

Maybe instead of worrying about Tyler, you should've worried about yourself.

Rankin stabbed a finger at the files stacked in front of him. “Exactly, and Mr. Miller deserves to be compensated for the financial losses incurred from your breach of contract.”

Javi balked. “What, I can’t decide to leave my own company?”

“You can do whatever the hell you want, just not with my money,” Scott said in a dangerous monotone. For the last half-hour you’d been trying not to look at him, focusing instead on his middle-aged bespectacled lawyer, but to say you weren't losing your shit would be disproven by the Montblanc you’ve been fidgeting with since the meeting began. When he wasn’t glaring daggers at his former business partner, you could feel the power of his gaze, daring you to meet his eyes again.

“Oh, you mean your uncle’s money?”

“Javi.” You touched his hand in warning.

“You weren't turning your nose up at my uncle’s money when you were trying to found StormPAR.” Scott gibed. In your periphery, you saw Kate rubbing her left temple.

“Me? I thought we were partners, partner.”

“Like you give a shit! You jumped ship, Javi—you jumped ship, set up shop with the opposition, then hired my ex-girlfriend so you could get away with robbing us blind!”

You gritted your teeth. “Mr. Rankin, control your client.”

“‘Control your client’?” Scott spat out, leaning forward and turning the dial up to ten. “What the hell is wrong with you? What are you even doing here?”

“My job, Mr. Miller.” This time you did risk staring him in the face, ignoring the play of light on his cheekbones, the shape of his lips, the triangle of exposed skin at his throat that you used to know so well. “I work for StormLab. You might find my presence objectionable, but that’s neither here nor there as long as my clients choose to keep me on retainer. If you don't like it, you’re free to leave and we can negotiate with Mr. Rankin directly.”

He said nothing. Scott was never at a loss for words unless he was well and truly pissed, the force of his intelligence diverted into barely suppressed anger. You could've heard a pin drop in that conference room. His hands were on top of the table, tense, almost shaking, and the rise and fall of his chest was visible even to you. Against your will, your brain threw up images of those same hands holding yours, threaded through your hair, brushing gently against the small of your back; those same arms drawing you close; the same mouth smiling.

You cleared your throat, shuffled a few papers around, and once again addressed the general room and Mr. Rankin. “Now, if you turn to page 16, you’ll see that Mr. Rivera is willing to formally sell his share of StormPAR for less than he’s entitled—if both Mr. Miller and Mr. Riggs agree to desist in interference with StormLab, which, need I remind you, was founded two-thirds of the way with assets entirely independent from the former. If this action’s purpose isn’t frivolous, then Mr. Owens and Ms. Carter should be removed from this suit.”

“Like hell,” Scott interrupted, prompting Javi to fire back with:

“What, you think we’re not good for it? I’ll have you know—”

“You expect me to believe you started your little company on the merits of an NWS salary and a fucking YouTube channel?”

Out of the corner of your eye, you saw Tyler lean forward, ready to pounce. Rankin muttered, “Language,” and pushed his eyeglasses up his nose. You knew he was a personal friend of Scott’s uncle—you could also tell that he would rather be out on the golf course than in the middle of this friend-divorce and embarrassing squabble, one where his input seemed superfluous and his counsel went unheeded even by his client.

Scott went on, full of accusation. “You used StormPAR money, didn’t you?”

“If you want to request any financial disclosures…” you began.

“We’re talking.”

Bitch. “No, you’re berating,” you shot back.

Javi put his hand on your wrist. “It’s fine. Yeah—I guess if you want to look at it that way, if I was making a living off StormPAR and taking Riggs’s money, then yeah, technically my share of StormLab exists because of what we had.”

“Javi.”

“No. Fair’s fair and all that. I don’t want any part of it anymore. Hell, you can have it. But come on, man, don’t pretend you’re doing any of this because you’re broke. Even if I gave you half of whatever StormPAR’s worth, it wouldn’t make a difference. You’re mad that I left. I get it. Let’s settle this, you and me. Leave Kate and Tyler out of it.”

“You stole our data!”

Now, that couldn't stand. “He made the executive decision to share data with Mr. Owens’s team.” Sure, it was a technicality but it was a true technicality.

“Bullshit!”

You sighed. “Are we getting anywhere here, Rankin?”

The lawyer glanced down at his watch and shook his head almost mournfully. “It’s not looking likely.”

“Wonderful.” You stood up, gathering your things and motioning for Kate, Tyler, and Javi to do the same. “Well, we’re all very busy people and clearly meeting in-person is counterproductive. Shall we agree to make this a video call next time? My clients have places to be.”

“I’ll bet they do,” Scott mocked, staring not only at Javi but at his new partners for probably the first time all afternoon. “How’re your investors doing, by the way, knowing you’re getting sued for infringement, breach of contract and fiduciary duty…”

You wanted to strangle him. In a voice that matched him venom for venom, you turned to your assistant and said, “Did you get that on record, Abby? Please, keep going,” you urged Scott, “you might just win us a dismissal.”

After a moment of charged silence, you told your clients: “We’re done here.”

“You’ll be hearing from me,” said the reluctant Mr. Rankin.

You snatched the chrome door handle from Tyler. “Boy, am I looking forward to it.”

Outside, you didn’t stop until you’d turned the corner into another section of the office, not wanting to be within eyeshot of Scott when you gritted your teeth and let the mask of cool indifference fall.

“Well, that went…” Tyler trailed off, leaning against the metal doorframe of Copy Room 3. The smell of toner and ozone was strangely comforting, bringing you back to your professional self now that Scott and his stupid, handsome-as-ever face were out of view. That, and you were noticing that Tyler Owens in a corporate-adjacent setting didn’t sit well with you; you couldn’t decide whether it was the outdoor tan or the in-your-face belt-buckle that gave it away. Regardless, he seemed too big for the confines of a downtown law office.

“It went like a garbage fire,” you confirmed, “which means about as well as I expected.”

Kate crossed her arms. “So we’re going to court, then.”

“I’m going to keep pushing for him to drop StormLab from the suit.”

“That just leaves me,” Javi remarked, downcast, but still willing to take one for the team.

“I mean, Javi, dear, you did abandon the partnership without ironing out all the kinks first.”

“How was I supposed to know I needed to hire a lawyer?”

“Um, literally everyone knows you’re supposed to hire a lawyer,” said Tyler, “especially if you’re dealing with someone like Textbook Type A over there.”

Javi ran a hand down his face, then shook his head. “What can I say? I-I thought he was my friend.”

“I know.” You clapped your hand on Javi’s shoulder. I understand. “But sometimes all that does is make it worse.”

After a bit more commiserating you parted ways with the three, hanging back with Abby to touch base on a few points and clear up the rest of your schedule, which included a deposition in an hour-and-a-half and witness prep at 4:30. Understandably, you were in the mood for none of this and wanted nothing more than to retire to your apartment with a glass of red and a bowl of popcorn as big as your head à la Olivia Pope, but alas… you were trying to make junior partner.

No rest for the wicked and all that.

You released Abby for a late lunch and made your way to the bank of elevators after a brief pit stop at the restroom, side-eyeing the fancy automatic taps and the whiff of something hotel-like emanating from the vents. You’d have to tell the office manager at Conway & Fine to up your game.

Fishing your phone out of your bag, you pushed the elevator button and began scrolling through a frightful amount of emails—there were intraoffice communications and check-in requests from clients, a few items of junk not caught by the email filter, the latest newsletters from PennAlumni and the Oklahoma Bar Association, as well as an invitation to an old mentor’s golden anniversary celebration. You were in the middle of responding to this when Scott sidled up next to you, giving no indication other than the familiar scent of his cologne and the tap of shined leather shoes against the polished tile. Of all the bad luck…

“So what is this, some kind of a decade-old revenge plot?” he finally asked, disconcerting you with the fact that he was standing so close to you that you couldn't glance at his expression without craning your neck. “Maybe I should’ve expected it from you, but Javi? I didn't know he had it in him.”

“Go away, Scott. This is business.”

“Really, is that what you want to call it? He could've hired anyone.”

“Well, he chose to hire a friend.”

“Right…” A laugh. Dry, cynical. “And what's your excuse?”

You stared at the light above the door, willing it to flash green and put you out of your misery. “Believe it or not, my taking this case has nothing to do with you. Forgive me if I thought you could be a fucking adult about it—clearly I was wrong.”

Ding!

You walked into the elevator without looking back. As parting words went, you thought they passed muster. Except, instead of being a regular person and taking the next car, Scott followed you in, ignoring the outrage written plain on your face.

You looked at him as if to say, “Do you mind?” It was obvious that he didn't. Whatever composure he’d lost in the conference room had been regained now that it was just you, and him, and the shared knowledge that you would have avoided being alone with him if you could.

He stood next to you, towering. As the floor number inched downward from 22, you were all too aware of his presence: the Scott smell of him, the warmth of his body, and the brush of his dark linen jacket against your arm. You wished you handed discarded your own in the restroom; you needed armor, and while Scott had donned his as soon as he was able, he had caught you unawares, expecting him to play fair even when all the evidence of the last two hours had told you that “fair” was no longer in his vocabulary.

As if to illustrate the point, you felt him lean in, his voice the closest it had been in over six years. “You always did love making a show of taking the moral high ground. How’s the view, sweetheart? You must love getting the chance to look down on me for change.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Not bothering to contain your disgust, you stepped away from him, clutching your bag in a white-knuckle grip. For a moment you felt struck by lightning. There was a time when you knew the planes of his face better than your own—the slope of his nose, the variations of blue in his eyes; you knew the shade of his hair in every light; how to tell a false smile from the true. But this Scott… the one with the shuttered expression, the see-if-I-care set to his shoulders, “how’re your investors doing, by the way”… It wasn’t like those things came out of left field—Scott had always been capable of a certain amount of pride, petulance, vindictiveness, even. But it was like the best parts of him had been filed away, or else hidden so deep that you couldn't find nary a sight of them when you looked into his face. “What happened to you?”

You saw his jaw clench. “If you want to know, then you shouldn’t have left.”

8…

7…

6…

You took a breath. “That whole last year—you pushed me away and you know it.”

Instead of answering your honesty in kind, Scott hitched up his sleeve so he could glance at the time on his fancy Swiss watch, a present from Good Old Uncle Riggs on the event of his graduation from MIT. “Yeah, well, you made it easy.”

4…

3…

2…

The doors opened onto a vast lobby. Incredulous, you kept waiting for him to take his words back, to apologize, to so much as glance at you, damn it. When you saw there wasn't any point, you swallowed the knot in your throat, stepping out of the elevator car and feeling twenty-one all over again.

This time, he didn't follow you. He leaned against the back handrail, not reacting even when you mustered every remaining ounce of dignity to say, “Go fuck yourself, Scott.” Then you turned on your heel and walked away.

TEN YEARS AGO PARK HAVEN, PENNSYLVANIA

Once more on your bedroom floor. Scott sat at your back, his arms wrapped around you and his head bent over yours. “Hey, listen to me… we’ll make it work. I’ll call you every day.”

“With a full slate of classes? That doesn't make any sense.”

“I don’t care if it doesn't. Hey,”—he kissed your temple—“it’s you and me. That doesn’t need to change”

“You say that now…”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“Of course I do.” You sighed. “It’s the hot nerds I don’t trust.”

You felt him laugh. “You’re a hot nerd.”

“Stop it.” But you smiled anyway, probably for the first time since you’d opened the rejection letter from Harvard. Concerned, your mom had called Scott while you were holed up in your room, ugly-crying into the bedspread, and it was enough to make you regret having been so bitchy about her the week before. She really had been trying to help… not that it mattered now that Harvard had given you the hard pass.

It wasn’t like you had no other options—you’d have been crazy not to line up a contingency plan or two. But Harvard had been your dream since you could remember caring about college. It was your castle in the sky, the thing that kept you going through four years of grueling hard work, a neverending grind of AP and Honors classes, student clubs and extracurriculars. And still it wasn’t enough.

“We regret to inform you…”

Well, not as much as you regretted it.

As if reading your mind, Scott wrapped his arms a little tighter, his tone light when he said, “UPenn’s nothing to scoff at, you know. You’re upset because you got into an Ivy League?”

“An Ivy League in Philadelphia,” you protested.

You didn’t add “and not the one I wanted” because you knew, objectively, that he and your parents and Ms. Andersson, your favorite teacher, were all right. You were incredibly lucky to have gotten into the University of Pennsylvania—the campus was beautiful, it was close to home, and, like Harvard, it boasted its own fair share of Supreme Court Justices and legal luminaries. It wasn’t like your future was in complete and utter shambles. You would still have everything you wanted… except Scott.

You felt him shrug behind you. “So what? It’s just a five-and-a-half-hour drive—or an hour-and-a-half by plane if we’re desperate.” You shifted so you could shoot him a funny look. “I might have googled it,” he admitted, “right after you told me you got in.”

“Of course you did…” The fact that he had started making plans without waiting on Harvard made you feel better; it meant he had every intention of making it work and maybe you were the downer, seeing the situation as near-hopeless when, really, there had to be couples who didn't let physical distance stop them from being together.

Glass half-full. All you needed was a little faith, a little more optimism.

“At least we’ve got the whole summer,” you said, trying to implement this new, sunnier outlook.

You felt Scott stiffen.

“What?” You turned around properly, anchoring your hand on the side of his neck. You had a minor panic when he wouldn't look at you, and at the guilt written on his brow. “Tell me,” you said.

“Uncle Riggs wants me to spend the summer down in NOLA—something about getting to know me better. I think he must’ve worked it out with Mom. She’s finally put the house up for sale, doesn't want me around when strangers start traipsing through and asking about whether or not she’ll throw in the vintage furniture for an extra few grand.”

At last, after years of painful back and forth, the Miller divorce was imminent. True to Scott’s prediction, “poor Pamela” had hired an attorney and filed paperwork on the very week he climbed through your window. So far his dad had been uncharacteristically passive, perhaps figuring he had put his family through enough, or else fearful of the very same Marshall Riggs who had been summoned from the rafters to come through for his sister after a period of long estrangement.

It was Riggs who had retained Pamela’s ace divorce attorney, Riggs who agreed to pay most of Scott’s tuition. Spending a few months with him seemed like the least he could do. You were disappointed. But you understood.

“When do you leave?”

“Two weeks after graduation.”

“So we have a month,” you said. “That’s thirty days.”

“More like twenty-six… and three quarters.” He smiled the same wistful sort of half-smile that was on your face, and you kissed him, savoring the familiar taste of mint on his mouth from the gum he chewed out of habit.

“Then let’s not waste a second,” you answered back.

He placed a kiss on your forehead. “I love you.”

When he said it, it sounded like a promise that everything would be all right, and in spite of your worries you chose to believe him.

PRESENT DAY OKLAHOMA CITY

For the last ten minutes you’d had trouble hearing Kate’s voice clearly over the phone, but you figured it was to be expected since she was calling from the middle of nowhere (at least to your urban- and suburban-bred estimation), and really, after almost three months of similar experiences, you’d grown tired of plugging your ear and saying, “Kate? Kate? You’re breaking up!”

On the upside, your cognitive skills had to be getting a real workout from filling in the weather-induced gaps in your conversations. Case in point:

“—bad luck with the last two, but I—feeling—building in the east—”

“Yeah, her Spidey Senses are tingling!” you heard Javi yell in the background.

Kate laughed. “Go away!”

“Ask her if she caught the livestream!” Tyler said, no doubt from the driver’s seat.

It sounded like she had you on speakerphone, so you spoke to him directly. “Ty, need I remind you that I have an actual job.”

“Ouch! Did you hear that?—thinks we don’t have real jobs!”

“I did not—”

The clarity improved, and you could hear the sound of car doors slamming and voices cracking jokes in the background, which usually meant they’d returned to Kate’s mother’s farm in Sapulpa, where StormLab kept a satellite office in Cathy Carter’s barn. It was makeshift, but what you saw of it during one of Tyler’s Facetime calls had a rustic charm completely at odds with the glass-and-chrome offices where Herb Rankin worked.

Actually, now that you gave it a moment’s thought, not even Herb Rankin fit into his office.

“Listen to her, the Big City Bigshot slumming it with the rednecks,” Tyler went on, earning a few spirited hoots and howls from the other Wranglers.

“Kate is from New York!” you objected. You waved an arm in the middle of your dim-lit apartment as if anyone could see you, vaguely aware that you were holding a pair of chopsticks and had probably sent a strand of shredded cabbage flying behind your couch.

This assertion was too much for Javi to bear. “Excuse me! Kate is OK to the bone, New York’s just where she keeps her apartment.”

Kate laughed as she said something you couldn’t catch, then Tyler’s voice came, audibly close to the phone. “Hey, that reminds me, where’re you from, again?”

“Pennsylvania.”

“That is not a Philly accent.”

You were about to say that not everyone in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania sounds like Rocky Balboa when Javi replied, “That’s ’cause she’s from the fancy part of Pennsylvania—but we don't hold that against her.”

“Gee, thanks.”

Tyler asked, “Wait, you’re not billing us for all this shit-talking, are you?”

You let out a snort, picked up your phone, and held it close to your mouth. “You know, maybe I should, Arkansas.”

At first you couldn’t work out what the hell was going on when Tyler broke out in “It's the spirit of the mountains… and the spirit of the Delta… it's the spirit of the Caaapitol doooooome,” but by the time the other Wranglers pitched in, with all the gusto of a drunk karaoke night despite being stone-cold sober, you understood that you had been treated to a rare and hopefully never-to-be-repeated rendition of one of the state songs of Arkansas. A short while later you hung up, cheeks sore and still laughing to yourself. The silence in your apartment was deafening by comparison.

Sometimes, you called them just because you lacked company. There wasn’t much to report on the Rankin front—as much as you had tried to negotiate on Javi’s behalf for a less hostile resolution, Scott insisted on keeping Kate and Tyler in the suit and seemed determined to take their tiff before a judge if his terms weren’t met.

Even Rankin seemed fed up.

Maybe it was a bad idea, maybe it was the two glasses of wine you’d had with dinner or the post-ballad high. Maybe you wanted to be the one to make StormLab’s problem go away. Whatever the reason, after you put the dirty dishes in the sink, you found yourself calling the one person you swore you’d never speak to ever again.

For good measure, as the dial tone rang you poured yourself another glass. When he answered, you nearly choked.

“Can we talk?” you managed to ask, swallowing down a mouthful of Syrah. There was a long silence on the other end. You didn't know if he had your number saved, if he knew who had called him, or whether he’d recognized the sound of your voice. You remembered that the last thing you had said to him was “go fuck yourself,” and added it to the mental list of why maybe you shouldn't have called him after all.

Tyler’s impulsiveness seemed to be as contagious as a rash.

Scott answered: “Not without my lawyer present.”

Okay, fair. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. He sounded clipped, like he’d rather be lowered into a tank of leeches than be on the phone with you. You were reconsidering the wisdom of your actions when he asked, “What do you want?”

Your eyes darted around the living room. Thinking on your feet wasn't new to you, it couldn't be, in your profession. But a part of you knew you’d taken a stupid gamble in pressing the call button, and now that the die was cast, you had to make it count.

You opted for the aggressive approach.

“Rankin says you're being uncooperative.”

You could feel the animus on the other end. “No, he didn't.”

“It was implied. No one wants to keep drawing this out, Scott. So, come off it. What is it that you’re actually looking to get out of all this?”

If he opted to tell you to go fuck yourself, you figured it would be fair play. This really was business, and not having to look him in the eyes made it easier to feel the rush of adrenaline that came with making a risky move in the name of work. You knew that technically, and in the strictest interpretation of the word, reaching out to another lawyer’s client crossed the line into inappropriate, but you were also a couple years beyond green. If you could cut out the middleman and get Scott to come to the table in a serious way, it would all be worth it. And Rankin could go back to playing 9 holes without losing face in front of his old school mate Riggs.

You waited for Scott’s response with bated breath.

“I want StormLab run into the ground.”

The answer came as no surprise but his tone did. Dark, intense, almost as bad as one of the nights he snuck into your room after a fight with his dad. It was the one and only time you’d ever heard him say he hated his father—his lack of control, his thoughtlessness, his inability to keep his word. Afterward he’d pretended he never said it, or rather, he was careful to never bring it up again, but you knew he had meant it.

And he meant it now. He wanted to take StormLab down. He’d succeed over your dead body. Javi and the others were counting on you.

You moved the phone to your other ear. “Right, well… that's not gonna happen, so any other alternatives?” You could feel he was about to end the call, so you tacked on, “Wait, just… hear me out, okay? Forget about Tyler and Kate—this isn’t about them, really, this is about StormPAR. Compromise on this one thing and you have a better chance of being compensated for what went down last year. You and Javi can just… move on with your lives. On paper it's about money, right? Riggs’s investment? So let’s settle this as soon as possible.”

“You and me?”

“And Rankin,” you added, your conscience getting the better of you.

There was a pause before Scott repeated, “You and me.”

“I don’t…”

“That’s my final offer.”

Alarm bells of a different sort rang in your head. On the phone was one thing, but in person, alone? Could you really sit across from Scott and keep your cool?

You had to. More than that, you wanted to prove to yourself that you’d grown up since you were twenty-one, that you were assured and confident and could handle messy things like sitting across from your ex. There were many things you regretted from that time; the one you regretted most was a reluctance to stand up for yourself. What was Tyler always saying? You don’t face your fears, you ride them. Frankly, you still weren't sure what the hell he meant by that, but it sounded a lot like “put your money where your mouth is.” At some point you had to choose to take action.

“Okay, fine,” you said. “When and where?”

“You busy tonight?”

You scoffed, casting a glance at your open laptop and the piles of paperwork lying on top of the coffee table. “I’m busy every night.”

“Perch. In an hour. Don’t be late.”

THREE YEARS AGO PARK HAVEN, PENNSYLVANIA

As a rule you’d been avoiding your hometown for the last three years, ever since your breakup with Scott. It was easier to stay in Oklahoma, where the possibility of running into someone who knew the Millers or would ask “are the two of you still together?” was slim. After your father died, you started to regret being such a coward. So much lost time… although your mom kept telling you that your dad understood the need to have your own life and never held it against you.

You held it against you, and all the more when your mom decided to downsize and move in with a friend.

After requesting two weeks off you got on a plane to Philadelphia and drove south to Park Haven to help her pack. You stayed up late, wore holiday pajamas, filled your hand with paper cuts, and inhaled about four pounds of dust in the attic. It was nice to spend time with your mom. All the old grievances seemed minor in comparison with the massive changes that lay ahead. Always one for sentimentality, sorting through boxes full of clothes, keepsakes, and old mementos put your mom in an especially chatty mood, and you soaked everything in, not having realized before how little you knew about your dad. He was so reserved in life, so buttoned-up, with clear expectations of himself and others that you were surprised to learn about his stint in an amateur dramatics troupe, the year he tried his hand at playing the alto sax, his fear of geese.

“Geese?” you asked your mom.

“Yes, geese. Those fuckers are vicious!” Having never heard your mom swear before, you froze while elbow-deep in a box of photographs dating back to the 70s. All she did was shrug and finish the rest of her margarita while lightbulbs flashed on her navy blue Rudolph sweater. “What do you want me to say? Parents have secrets, too.”

“Well, I think this parent went a little hard on the tequila,” you said.

Your mom plucked a faded Polaroid from the box. “You know… he didn’t look it, but your dad was actually a lot of fun. We both were. Then… life gets in the way, you start caring about PTA meetings and getting the HOA off your back…”

“Fuck the HOA.”

“Right on! Can’t say I’ll miss any of those jerks.” She sighed, and with a little shake of her head, put the Polaroid back in the box. “Sometimes I worry—” She stopped herself and glanced at you nervously.

“What?”

“Sometimes I worry that you think about us, about your dad and me, and that you don’t see us as having ever been in love. Especially after you and Scott—”

“Mom,” you warned.

“I know, I know, me and my big mouth.” She held up her hands, chuckling to herself. Normally you’d seize the opportunity to change the subject, but you were thinking a lot about how you could’ve been a better daughter, all the times you shut the door in their face because you didn’t want to feel scolded or uncomfortable, because you weren’t interested in what they had to say.

Your mom was trying to respect your privacy. The least you could do was not leave her with the impression that you thought she had a “big mouth.”

You reached across the box and touched her arm. “That’s not what I meant.”

“All I mean is… I know you’re not dating.”

“How do you know that?”

She grinned. “Mothers have their ways. I just don’t want you giving up, is all. If Dad and I weren’t the model marriage—”

“What are you talking about?” you asked. “Half of my friends have divorced parents. And even if you were divorced, the whole ‘nuclear family or you’re a failure to society’ thing is so five-decades-ago.”

“Well, good! Because I was happy—I want you to know that. Maybe it wasn’t the sort of romance people write songs about—God knows your dad had his faults. He wasn't perfect. No one is. But when you love someone… it’s less about keeping score and more about what you build. Together.”

She looked off to the far wall, where their wedding portrait sat propped in its frame, ready to be wrapped in old newspapers and put away. You turned around and looked at it, too—at your mom’s curly updo and poofy skirts, the sleeves that looked like pool inflatables, at least to your modern eyes, at your dad before his hair went gray, the sheepish smile on his face like he couldn’t believe he’d gotten away with the steal of the century.

You’d gotten so used to its presence in the living room that you couldn’t remember the last time you gave it more than a passing glance.

Lit by an alternating flash of blue and purple lights, your mom’s face was cast in an otherworldly glow. Then the spell was broken, and she was your mom again in an ugly Christmas sweater, smiling fondly at an old memory to which you weren’t privy. “For some reason, we brought out the best in each other. That mattered to us more than anything we ever did wrong.” And that was that, a twenty-nine year marriage summed up in a few sentences.

You said, “I guess that does sound romantic… in a super-practical, boring, construction-analogy sort of way.”

She laughed and threw a wadded-up newspaper at your head.

“Dad never liked Scott,” you said after a while, rolling the ball between your hands.

“What makes you say that?”

You threw her a pointed look. Her expression said, Oh, alright.

“He wasn’t disapproving, exactly. He was worried about you. Who wouldn’t be? Your first boyfriend, your first love… I don’t think he was quite ready to see his teenage daughter all head over heels over some guy on the baseball team. And the Millers, well… they had their issues, as a family. Maybe your dad didn’t want you becoming collateral damage. But, oh sweetie,”—it was her turn to touch your arm, Rudolph’s nose squished against the cardboard—“it was never about Scott. When you told us you were engaged, we were so pleased for you! And then a few months later… just like that…”

You swallowed the knot in your throat. How much time would have to pass before you could think of Scott without a tidal wave of sadness hitting you square in the chest? Collateral damage, that was one way of putting it. “I guess Dad was right, after all.”

“He never said ‘I told you so,’” your mom pointed out, “and he never would’ve wanted to.”

You squeezed her hand. “Yeah, I know.”

A phone call from your mother’s friend Rose prompted a break in packing. She went into the kitchen to discuss sideboard dimensions, and you went upstairs, where you were slowly going through your childhood bedroom and putting things in boxes marked Keep and Donate, or else in bags to be discarded when trash day rolled around.

You were almost finished, the walls empty of medals and photos, the corkboard of mementos lying in the recycling bin outside. Already it felt like a bedroom that had belonged to someone else, and while you were sad to know that, after the house was sold, you would never step foot in it again, the process of taking things down one at a time had given you a sort of detachment. There were items, like the snowglobe your friend Tash gave you when she got home from a skiing trip in the Alps in the seventh grade, that you had once thought you could never do without. But now Tash lived in LA with her wife and kids, and you hadn’t spoken much since high school except for a few text messages now and then.

You’d decided to keep the globe but you knew it would live in a box in your closet, a relic rather than an everyday part of your life in Oklahoma.

Speaking of closets, you tackled the wardrobe next, marveling at how many items would be considered “trendy” now that the fashion cycle had taken a turn—or God forbid, “vintage.” There were stuffed animals shoved into the top shelf, your old 50 State quarter collection, debate club certificates, a landscape picture from your senior year mock trial, and a shoebox falling apart at the seams.

You took it to the stripped bed with shaking hands, knowing you’d been dreading this most of all but that it had to be done, so why not now.

After you broke your engagement off with Scott, you’d gone home to lick your wounds. This was before you found a job, before you decided to move to Oklahoma on the literal toss of a coin, knowing only that you couldn't stay in Pennsylvania and that you needed a fresh start. Left with no other options, home had been your best bet, even though the weeks spent living with your parents and avoiding their worried questions had seemed at the time like cruel and unusual punishment. When you moved out you had left something behind, hidden beneath seashells and baubles and silly notes you had passed during class, movie stubs, train tickets, an inexplicable piece of gum, the collar that had once belonged to Clover, your old childhood dog.

You lifted a school ribbon and found it: a blue velvet box with a golden clasp. Your heart pounded in your ears. You took a deep breath, let it out again before lifting the lid… and there it was, glinting in the light of late afternoon.

“Honey, Rose wants to know if you’d like to join us for dinner at her place!”

Box, ring, and all tumbled onto the hardwood. Though you were alone, your mother calling to you from the bottom of the stairs, you felt incredibly guilty. “I’ll be right down!” you yelled back. You got on your hands and knees and slipped the ring back in its cradle.

It felt dangerous somehow, like a live grenade. But you couldn't get rid of it. When you went back home at the end of the month you packed it at the bottom of your suitcase and it’d been living with you ever since, moved from closet to closet, unseen but never quite forgotten.

PRESENT DAY OKLAHOMA CITY

The jewel twinkled in your hand, an oval diamond surrounded by small clusters and set in a ring of yellow gold. It was one of a kind. Scott told you he found it at an antique jeweler’s who dated it to the summer of 1880; it was a genuine Victorian piece, and for nearly four months it had been your most prized possession.

The same foolhardy impulse that made you call Scott and agree to meet him made you dig it out of your closet, right after you spent twenty minutes agonizing over what to wear and the state of your hair. This isn’t a date, you kept reminding yourself. If anything, it might be a trap. He was, after all, Marshall Riggs's nephew.

Letting your lesser sense win out, you slipped the ring on your finger and watched it catch the light. It truly was a beautiful ring. And it was sentimental, as though its selection revealed a hidden truth about Scott.

Its weight on your hand, present and comfortable, calmed your racing thoughts and the nerves roiling in your belly. You kept it on as you dressed and got ready, then chalked it up to a desire for punctuality when you rushed to the elevator, through the lobby, and into your waiting Uber still wearing it. The driver’s presence snapped you out of your momentary lapse in sanity. They were chatty, and the more you talked about work and the weather and what you liked doing in the city, the sillier it felt to be wearing your ex-fiancé’s engagement ring. Before getting out, you stuck it in the pocket of your linen duster… which was also, admittedly, kind of a stupid thing to do.

(You blamed Tyler for all of it.)

Located at the top of a fifty-floor high-rise, Perch was a bar and restaurant with full views of the city and a James Beard Award-winning chef. The atmosphere was relaxed and unfussy, the lighting unobtrusive, and the cocktails reasonably priced. At the door, the vest-clad host directed you through the assemblage of diners and beyond a decorative glass partition to the tables reserved for business meetings, minor celebrities, and men who didn’t want to be seen with their mistresses. Scott was there in rolled-up shirtsleeves. You watched from a distance as he rubbed his stubbled cheek and his pointer finger came to rest at the seam of his lips.

You would not stare at his mouth or let your eyes linger anywhere on his person. This was business, goddammit.

But hell if he didn’t look good. You hated that after all this time you still found him maddeningly attractive.

“Seriously?” he asked, casting a pointed look at the portfolio in your arms.

“Well, this isn’t a social call.”

“By all means.” He gestured at the seat in front of him, mockingly formal. You glanced at the coupe waiting on your side of the table, a cheerful yellow with a perfect white foam on top and a twist of lemon peel. “I took the liberty of ordering your usual.”

You sat down and set the portfolio to one side, adopting an air of casual indifference. “Actually, it’s not my usual anymore.”

“Really?”

“But thanks anyway. So, from previous conversations with Javi—”

“What is this mythical new usual?”

“Are you kidding?” you balked, narrowing your eyes.

“No, I’m just curious.” He propped his chin in his hand. Maybe lying had been a petty move on your part but you’d be damned if he forced you to backtrack and you came out of this looking a fool.

“I hate to be the one to tell you this, but at some point you’re gonna have to learn to live with uncertainty. Anyway—”

“You don’t have a new usual.” Scott smirked. “It’s still a gin sour and you’re just being difficult.”

“Difficult… Wow, okay! We”—wagging your finger in the space between you—“are not together anymore, so these mind games you’re trying to play are highly inappropriate and also kind of a dick move—”

“A dick move!” he repeated.

“Yeah, a dick move! Which I know is, like, your whole personality now—”

“Is it?” he laughed.

“—but I’m trying to settle this like an actual grown-up and all you’ve done for three months is make that very difficult for everyone involved!”

He rolled his eyes. “This is such a fucking boring conversation.”

Incensed, you had the fleeting thought to throw your drink in his face, but people only did that in soap operas. “You were the one who wanted to do this in person!” you fired back, shrill and drawing the attention of a server who promptly beelined to a different table and pretended not to hear. Which only made you wonder what sort of clientele frequented her section.

“And you were the one who called me,” Scott pointed out, “not the other way around.”

His being right made you even angrier. You had thought you were prepared, that magically you’d be able to have a civil conversation that settled the matter in a way that left you with your pride intact and StormLab the clear winner on the side of good. Clearly, you’d miscalculated. “You know what… fuck this.” After downing half your cocktail in a single gulp, you gathered the portfolio in your arms and made to stand before deciding that, actually, you wanted to get a few things off your chest first so that abandoning your PJs would be worth it. “I am so over this whole… fucking… stupid… mess. I’ve had actual divorces that were easier to mediate, Scott. Whole marriages—and not short ones either! Just take the fucking shares! Please… take the shares and go back to Riggs and leave us all the hell alone. We’re tired, okay? This is just… so unbelievably tiring. And fuck you, by the way—yes, it’s still a gin sour.” You finished yours, figuring that if Scott was paying, you might as well.

And now I’m ready to leave, you thought.

But Scott had other ideas.

“You spoken to your mom lately?”

“What?” You gaped at him, wondering if you were losing your mind. Was he? Was there a dimensional shift happening that you weren’t aware of?

“Pardon the observation,” Scott went on, “but you don’t seem… well.”

“Are you being for real right now?”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

And how else could you mean it? was on the tip of your tongue. But the look on his face made you stop. No bullshit, no smug provocation. He was serious. Somehow, that was more unsettling than when he was fucking with you. It brought back too many memories.

“I was sorry to hear about your dad.”

He looked you straight in the eyes when he said it. You wanted to burrow into a hole in the ground—into him, if you were being honest. It didn’t matter how many years had gone by. A part of you was still twenty-seven and glancing at the door wondering if maybe, just maybe…

“Oh, I’m gonna need another one of these,” you whispered to yourself, stunned back into a seated position. The server came around and eyed your empty glass, asking meekly if you would like anything else. “I might as well,” you answered, sounding patently glum. All the while Scott kept a neutral expression, even waited until you had another drink—and a glass of water—in front of you, giving the server a soundless thanks before she scurried away.

Probably off to the kitchen to tell her coworkers about the crazy lady at B25.

“I thought about showing up to the funeral, actually,” added Scott when you had regained most of your composure. “But I didn’t know if I’d be welcome. Mom, being a firm believer in Emily Post, thought it’d be better if we skipped it. She sent flowers, though.”

“She what?”

“She sent flowers. Your mom never said?”

You shook your head. She must’ve been trying not to upset you. But you had been upset anyway, thinking about how Scott should’ve been there, how you had always expected him to show up and make things better.

All this time you had used his absence as yet another example of how little you must’ve mattered in the end. Which made no sense, because you were the one to break things off—and yet, that entire winter’s morning, you had bargained with yourself that if he showed up through those chapel double doors you would forget everything and beg him to take you back. It was too late for that. But knowing that he’d thought about going loosened a painful knot in your chest that you weren’t aware you even had.

You cleared your throat. “How’s your mom, by the way?”

“She’s doing all right. She’s part of a sewing circle, believe it or not.”

“Please tell me that isn’t a euphemism.”

“God, I hope not.”

You smiled involuntarily, picturing Pam Miller in her sweater sets and pearls. “I’m glad she’s doing okay. Your dad…?”

He picked up his drink, a Macallan on the rocks. It was his uncle’s drink, too. “I haven't heard from him in years. Guess neither of us ever saw the point.”

“Scott—”

“How’d you and Javi become an ‘us’ anyway? He never said.”

Fair enough. It made sense that he wouldn’t want to talk about his dad, let alone with you. But talking about Javi? When an hour ago he had admitted to wanting to bankrupt Javi’s company?

“I’ll be on my best behavior for the next”—he looked down at his watch—“fifteen minutes. Promise.”

“I don’t know, I think it’s better if we table all the personal talk,” you hedged.

“Better for whom?”

“Better for my clients. And better for me, too. We’re not friends.”

“We’ve never been friends,” Scott pointed out.

“Exactly. So why lie and pretend like we are?”

“Call it a term of this negotiation.”

“Scott…” Already this night was going nothing like how you’d planned. Your defenses had all the strength of a thin paper bag; he was in front of you, all dark-haired, blue-eyed, 6’4” reality and you weren’t unaffected. You wanted to keep talking to him, make the moment last… and all the more because you knew it had to end at some point. Scott would never be yours—not again. You’d made your peace with that a long time ago. But he has a right to know. Maybe if you could convince him that there was no grand conspiracy against him, he would be more amenable to Javi’s offer.

This is business, you reminded yourself. Redirect, bring it all back to StormLab.

“Fine,” you decided, settling in to tell the story of how you and Javi first met. “It happened maybe a year after I moved to Oklahoma City… I was out with a new friend and she took me to this bar after dinner to meet a bunch of people, one of whom was Javi. We get to talking, he tells me all about this new company he’s starting with a friend of his, says it’s a lucky coincidence or maybe fate having a twisted sense of humor because—”o

You broke off. You hadn’t considered how to broach this particular detail in the story. Obviously, Javi had no idea at the time how messy your backstory with Scott was. He had only thought to poke fun at his friend and seemed delighted to have solved a long-standing mystery for himself.

“So you’re the girl!”

“Come again?”

“The girl, you know. He has a picture of you in one of his old notebooks from college. What a small world!”

“What?” Scott prompted. You felt your face heating up and took a sip of water to hide it. You couldn't well omit the rest having already begun, but the knowledge that Scott had kept a photograph of you, whether by accident or otherwise, made you flustered then and it flustered you now.

You settled for: “He said he recognized me, and that he thought we might have a friend in common. Obviously, he meant you. He was dating one of Christa’s friends at the time—”

“Rachel.”

“Yeah. So he’d show up, be around… You know how Javi can be.”

“Like a persistent terrier.”

“Sounds like your kind of business partner.”

Scott looked away.

Not wanting to push things further in that direction just yet, you explained, “I work a lot, so it’s hard for me to make friends. Javi seems to make them wherever he goes. It’s nice having people like that in your life, to open you up, remind you there’s more to all this than billable hours and senior partner tracks. But we never talked about you. Not until this whole thing happened.”

“What thing did he say happened?”

Tread carefully now. Scott was watching you intently—if you said the wrong thing it might start a new argument between you and make his relationship with Javi a hell of a lot worse. In polished business-speak, you recited: “Just that you had a fundamental disagreement about the direction of the company.”

Your reward was a skeptical laugh.

“Also, that he might have left you on the side of the road during a tornado… which he feels bad about, by the way.”

“Not bad enough.”

“Scott, you can’t really want to ruin him, can you? I mean, this is Javi we’re talking about.”

“That’s not part of this discussion.”

“Okay?” you shot back. “I don’t remember agreeing to that condition.”

“You’re still at this table.”

“And that can easily be fixed!”

“All right, calm down.” Maybe it was you in danger of starting another fight. Scott, holding up his hands in a show of good faith, said, “I thought we were playing nice here, being civilized, acting like adults… What else have you been up to?”

“You want to know about my life?”

“Like I said, I’m curious. And seeing as this is a momentary parley, I plan on making the most of it.”

Again, you took in his face in search for any signs of subterfuge and found none, only the barest hint of levity in his eyes at your willingness to argue. It reminded you of the old days, when Scott would delight in teasing you for the sole purpose of seeing what your reaction would be. “Fine. But it’s going to be quid pro quo,” you demanded. “Call it a term of this negotiation.”

His mouth curved into a smile. Then he held out his hand across the table and waited for you to take it before saying, “Term accepted, counselor.”

In the end, playing nice with Scott turned out to be a lot easier once you’d established a few ground rules, mainly the stipulation that either of you could say “pass” if you weren’t willing to answer a question.

You went through the whole gamut of discussing your first jobs after college, gossiped about the old Park Haven crowd, the who-married-who and the who-got-divorced of it all. It turned out that, like you, Scott hadn’t returned to Pennsylvania much in the last few years. StormPAR kept him traveling through the Great Plains for most of the spring and summer, and during the rest of the year he lived in New Orleans, where Riggs and his mother lived. You got the sense that his life revolved around work, and that StormPAR, while not the be all and end all of his professional fate, had been an important part of it until Javi called it quits. You figured this explained, in part, why he took the loss so personally, and though you kept your thoughts to yourself you lamented that his one attempt to branch out for himself and away from his uncle—if you could call taking a major investment from Riggs “branching out”—had gone badly.

Either way, by the end of the evening you felt you’d been a little hasty in believing the old Scott had left the building for good. You exited Perch in higher spirits, glad to see that the night was clear and that the air felt good on your cheeks. When he asked if you were getting a car, you shared your desire for a long walk and he responded with mild horror until you explained that you didn’t live far. “Maybe twenty minutes? Thirty at most.”

“I’ll walk you home,” he insisted. You didn't argue because you were secretly pleased. The only thing you had to guard against was the urge to take his arm as you used to do. You felt giddy with it, which you were sure had to be the alcohol, but it was also the fact that Scott was here, in the flesh, that you were cracking jokes and sometimes even pulling smiles from his otherwise deadpan expression. You’d forgotten how that could make you feel like you’d won the jackpot.

“I’m sorry, I know you’re going to take this the wrong way,” you prefaced while walking backwards on the sidewalk, “but I have a really hard time imagining you as a storm chaser.”

“Excuse me!”

“I mean…” You stopped and full-body gestured. “I mean, look at you!”

“What?”

“Even your slacks are pressed!”

“Objection, why are you studying my slacks like a degenerate?”

“Don’t make it weird,” you replied, and fell into step beside him, if only to keep him from seeing that you were embarrassed by the implication that you might’ve been checking him out. “All I meant to say was—”

“That I don’t look like a rugged adrenaline junkie? Maybe ‘Rodeo Clown’ is more your thing these days.”

“Don’t—Tyler’s actually quite decent, you know.”

“But you knew exactly who I was talking about.” Scott snapped his fingers as if to say, Gotcha! as you ruefully shook your head. Something about Tyler Owens tended to evoke a Neanderthal-like competitiveness in certain men—Scott, being competitive by nature, fell for it all too easily.

“This is me.” You pointed at your building. It was a relatively new construction with climbing greenery and pop-out balconies where you’d lived for a year-and-a-half after a not inconsiderable raise, and the reason why you worked sixty hours a week.

“Can I come up?” Scott asked.

You whipped your head so hard that your temples throbbed. “That’s…” A no good, awful, terrible, ill-conceived, perilous idea?

Scott seemed to find your distress highly entertaining. “Jesus, would you relax?” he said. “I’m not asking to tuck you in—unless, if there’s someone—”

“There isn’t,” you hurried to say.

“Oh? How come?”

The knowledge that the man with whom you were formerly engaged was inquiring as to the current state of your love life with all the breeziness of do you have the time? was enough to make you believe in karmic punishment. “Like I said, I’m busy,” you managed to eke out, which only made him lift his shoulders as if to say, Then, what’s the big deal?

Scott Miller was good at that, getting his way.

“Fine,” you caved. “But only for ten minutes! Fifteen, tops!”

“Scout’s honor.”

In the elevator car you stuck your hands in your pockets, searching for your keys only to find the cold hard metal of your engagement ring. You looked guiltily at the oblivious Scott, who was staring at the floor display with a contented expression and was none the wiser about your having worn it earlier in the night like some kind of weirdo. Should you give it back? At the time he’d wanted nothing to do with it, but was keeping it the proper thing? Was it good for you to even have it?

At last you found your keys at the bottom of your purse. You opened the door, trying to remember how well you’d tidied after dinner as he walked in, inspecting everything. You watched as his gaze traveled over the open-plan kitchen and living area—the work files, magazines, and old mail stacked on various side tables; the midcentury beechwood couch you got for a steal at a secondhand warehouse when you first moved; the shelves, filled with books and framed photographs and trinkets you’d brought from home; and the view from your window, which wasn’t nearly as spectacular as the one from Perch, but it faced west, and if you were home during golden hour you could see the other buildings lit orange and gold.

“Yeah, this is exactly how I pictured it,” Scott mentioned at last.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, it’s just… you,” he answered. Your stomach turned to knots. He made you feel seen like nobody else could, not least of which because you’d let him back when you were younger and less guarded. Your heart kicked wildly in your chest, urging you to go to him, go to him, explain everything, get him back, because he was the one. Then Scott looked away, pointing at a sad fern that sat on a pedestal next to your mounted TV. “You still can’t keep a plant alive worth shit.”

“Rude,” you fired back, grasping at levity in order to shove the other thoughts away.

Scott drifted back to your bookshelves, seeing a few paperbacks he must’ve recognized from your old room at Park Haven. “And yet you keep trying. Do you actually use any of these?” he inquired, motioning towards the half-dozen board games you kept piled on an open top shelf. There was Clue and Monopoly, Candy Land, Sorry!, Scrabble and Life.

“Sometimes,” you replied, “when I have friends over. Which hasn’t happened much this year, if I’m being honest.”

“Let’s play.”

You laughed. You didn’t believe him. He pulled one of the boxes out and took it to the coffee table and all you could do was stare, incredulous, as he took his jacket off and rolled up his sleeves, actually sitting on the floor and looking expectantly at you to join him.

“You want to play Life with me?” you challenged. “Doesn’t that seem a little…”

“And you call me uptight.” He waved you over, determined not to take no for an answer. “Come on, hotshot, live a little.”

Despite your better judgment, and after a moment’s panicked hesitation, you lowered yourself next to him. He still smelled the same, like rain and sandalwood and pine. You wanted to curl into his side and feel the rise and fall of his chest beneath your ear, like you’d done on the nights he spent hidden away with you in your room. You had never gotten to live together; all you had were countable memories of waking up next to him and thinking, One day… one day we’ll have this every day.

As he set up the board, all you could do was stare at his hands.

SIX YEARS AGO NEW ORLEANS

Marshall Riggs greeted with you a double-kiss at the door, one on each side of your cheeks. Then he held you at arm’s length so he could look you up and down. “Would you take a look at that,” he said to Scott, “pretty as a picture! I suppose this is the part where I welcome you to the family?”

It was midsummer in Louisiana, on the hotter side of balmy and with the cicadas out in force. Shortly before you graduated Scott traveled to Philadelphia and asked you to marry him. Saying yes had been a no-brainer. You were in love, had put up with four years of distance and near-breakups, and now here was the culmination of all your compromise, communication, and hard work. For a second there you’d thought it would end badly; you were both in highly-intensive undergrad programs, there was only so much you could hash out over phone and video calls, and you were young. The question of “do we really want to make a life-changing decision at twenty-one?” had crossed your mind. But upon further reflection you realized that the answer was yes—had always been yes. And Scott seemed to agree.

In the absence of his father, “meeting the family” entailed paying court to his Uncle Riggs, a man you had spoken to a few times, at holiday parties and summer outings hosted by Pam, now settled in New Orleans and much happier than you’d known her before. But all those other times, you’d met Riggs as Scott’s girlfriend. Now you were his fiancée, with a fancy law degree and a diamond ring and everything, and while you would’ve preferred keeping your distance you knew this was important to Scott—that Riggs was important to him.

So you put on a smile and indulged the old man. Do it for Scott, you said to yourself. You’ve come this far. No point faltering while you were at the winning stretch.

You bowed your head. “Thank you for having us, Mr. Riggs.”

“Please, just Riggs,” he laughed. “Or Marshall—but only my ex-wives call me that.”

You soon found he had a way of twinkling his eyes that made you feel like you were sharing a joke. As he pointed out the features of his home—the old tapestries, the mural commissioned by Candice, his second ex-wife, the wall he knocked down because he wanted to “open up the space”, and his plans to expand the front garden, which, as it was, made the house look like it was in the middle of a tropical rainforest—he regaled you with stories about the people he knew, going off on tangents and bringing it back to the topic at hand. He was genteel and witty, and though he carried himself with Southern indifference there was no doubt he had power: he cocked his head, and a woman in an apron appeared with a tray of mint juleps; Scott held onto his every word; and when you were led into a dining room that might’ve fit forty or fifty at least, it was taken as a matter of course.

He pulled out your chair and sat you at his right hand because it was “the place of honor,” and Scott smiled encouragingly. You were doing so well.

You only wished that you could feel it.

“So, you want to be a big-deal attorney,” Riggs announced, digging into a perfect roast chicken. “What kind? Criminal?”

“Oh, no,” you replied. “Civil all the way. I’ve got a few offers but I want to shop around, make sure I’m making the right first move.”

“The right first move!” He pointed his knife at you. “I like that. By any chance, are you a chessplayer, sweetheart?”

“Can’t say that I am. My family are more into board games, really. Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick?” you explained.

He got a kick out of that. But he was partial to chess. “Opening moves—if you look at the big picture, they don't seem all that important. But well, in that case, why the hell’re there so many of ’em? Napoleon Opening, Greco Defense, Bled Variation, Balogh Defense… Sometimes how a thing starts dictates how the rest of it’ll unfold, from midgame all the way down to the end. If you're gonna do something, might as well do it right the first time or so I always say. Don’t I, boy?” He turned to Scott for confirmation.

“Yes, sir.”

“Yessir…” Riggs chuckled, spearing a roasted sprout. The ends of his bolo tie shifted on his neck. A turquoise the size of an acorn sat between his collar, and he was dressed to the nines—for your benefit, the guest of honor’s.

Nevertheless, there was something of the austere in his eyes. You couldn’t shake it when he put down his fork and sat back, looking from you to Scott, nodding like a king about to give his blessing to a pair of kneeling courtiers. “Pretty as a picture…” he repeated. “Look at you both—young, on the cusp, and none too hard on the eyes, if I do say so myself. A real golden couple on our hands! To opening moves”—he raised his glass—“may we always know when to make the right one.”

You raised your glass to be polite.

Scott leaned across the table. “Before you ask, yes, he is always like this.”

His uncle laughed, clapped him on the shoulder, and called for “champagne! To my nephew and his beautiful bride!”

As the night wore on, you convinced yourself that any discomfort was all in your head. You worked your way through three dinner courses, all impeccably cooked, and by the time the doberge was served you decided that you had judged the man too harshly. Sure, he was old-fashioned, but he was also jovial, polite, and he clearly doted on Scott.

“How nice it is to spend some quality time,” he remarked when Scott left the table, saying Pamela was on the phone. She wanted to know what plans you had for the rest of the week, whether you were still on for the garden fête on the 25th, and what dates you were considering for your engagement party, whether that would be here or in Pennsylvania, but I really do think you’d better do it here.

“I’ll just be a few minutes,” he said to Riggs, leaving you alone with his uncle. Now he had focused all of his attention on you, the full glare of his eye-twinkle and magnetic allure. He wasn’t a handsome man; it wasn’t about his looks—which were well past their prime—but about the knowledge that he could get almost everything he wanted simply by wanting it.

“It’s a shame we never did this sooner,” he went on. “Why do you think that is?” You shifted guiltily. The truth was, Riggs had always made you a bit uneasy. He had a reputation as a difficult man—ruthless, exacting, guileful, hard to please, and he liked doing business in the gray, always legal but never quite on the up-and-up.

Over the last four years, you may have avoided him on the grounds of self-righteous principle, but you couldn't admit to that if you were trying to leave a good impression.

You hedged, “I’m afraid law school doesn't leave much time to spare.”

“Very true… Not that I would know—it was always too much book learning for me, I’m a man of action,” Riggs explained, sipping his whiskey and looking happy as a clam. He had polished off two slices of cake earlier, but only because we’re celebrating. “Now, my nephew… he’s a bit o’ both, isn’t he? Either way, he’s got too much of his mother in ’im.”

You frowned, wanting to say a word in defense of Pamela. Riggs waved you off. “Don’t mind me, I’m just a silly old man with too many opinions. It tends to rub people up the wrong way—don't think I haven't noticed!” Another laugh, another narrowing of the eyes that could have been humor but which you felt like a lightning strike down your back.

He knows and you’re making something out of nothing struggled for dominance within your head, and still he kept on talking, forcing you to pay attention and leave the question unresolved.

He pointed in the direction where Scott had gone. “That nephew of mine—I don’t have any children of my own, did you know that? It never happened for me. Four wives and nothing to show for it—imagine that! But that boy… good thing his father never knew what to do with ’im—smart as a whip he is, and like a dog with a bone once he’s got an idea in his head. That part I’d say he got from me,” he said with a chuckle, wagging his finger in the air. He gave your hand a few avuncular pats and then kept it there, meaty and warm.

“I can see that you love ’im… I can see that you really love ’im. What bright, young, sensible girl wouldn't? You should see him ’round the office! He breaks hearts left, right, and center wherever he goes—a real catch, my secretary always says, and she’s been with me since Scott was yea-high. He’s got his mother’s looks, which I’ll say not to sound too self-serving, heh!” A slight tug on your wrist. You kept your objections to yourself, saying, He’s just a strange old man. As your discomfort grew, stretched to its very limits, he removed his hand and was back to being an innocuous grandfatherly man again. He seemed a little sad, wistful, even. Almost frail.

“I don’t know what I would do without him,” said Riggs, staring at his empty plate. “I really don't. Oh, here! before I forget—I have something for you.” He reached into the inner pocket of his cream suit jacket, extracting a long envelope which he slid across the table with a paternal expression, his gaze warm. You began to object, and, “Go on, now!” he insisted. “I don't hold with false modesty! Nothin’ but a waste o’ time in my book. Open it! Call it a graduation present to help you get started. Scott said your old man was taking some time off from his job, feeling under the weather.”

You opened the flap to find a check with more zeros on it than you could’ve reasonably imagined, payable to your name and typewritten in official font.

“Mr. Riggs, this is…” Your hands shook, you felt too hot in the enclosed dining room. Where was Scott? What was taking him so long? You slid the check in the envelope and tried to push it back to Riggs’s side of the table. “There is no way I can accept this,” you said. “It’s too much money, and while I appreciate the gesture—”

“Nonsense! It’s my pleasure and I won’t hear no can’ts or won’ts about it! I want you to know how well Scott’s been doing here since he finished school. He’s flourishing, all my business associates love him. I can’t possibly make do without him now.”

“I don’t understand,” you said, a pit growing in your stomach.

Once more Riggs pinned you with that twinkle in his eye. “I think you do, a smart girl like you. A man should sow his wild oats while he's young. I had a pretty young wife when I was his age. Marjorie, her name was. My first. It's true what they say—you never forget your first… By God, she was beautiful! and we had all these plans… so many plans! Dreams, really. But mine were always just a little too big for her, you understand, and at first that didn't matter much—we were in love. But then… the kids never came, and Marjorie had too much time on her hands—at the very least, she had more time on her hands than I did, that’s for sure! That gets to a woman sometimes.

“I know you won't have that problem, big city lawyer and all,” he said to you, as if in you he had the fullest confidence and he was speaking about other, less distinguished women. “But really, even if Marjorie’d been an ambassador to the United Nations she’d still have had a compunction about something or other… Ambition’s a hard pill for most folks to swallow.

“Now, you seem like a nice girl… really, I like you plenty! But let’s talk facts here for a minute. You are not the girl for Scott—not when he’s trying to become the man that he’s trying to become. The boy’s got the instincts of a killer. Really! All I’ve gotta do is stand back and look at him! But you, my dear, you’re nothin’ like him. You’ll never be. For most of my life, I thought the perfect woman would be someone to ‘balance me out,’ as they say. It’s taken me almost fifty years to find out that ain’t nothin’ but bullshit made up by Hallmark or whoever to sell us some cards. There ain't no use fighting one’s true nature. You and Scott are doomed to fail—if not now then in five years, if not in five then in another ten! You’ve seen the cracks, haven't you? He’s not the boy you met in Park Haven. He’s becoming his own man. He doesn’t need you anymore.”

You were almost too stunned to speak. Between the casual misogyny, the callous worldview, and the envelope that lay between you on the table like a coiled snake, you felt like you had left reality—there was no way this conversation could be taking place with Scott just in the other room.

“Let me get this straight,” you began, willing your voice not to shake, “you’re offering me money to break up with Scott because you think I’m not good enough for him?”

“No, no, no!” Riggs drew in close to you and took both of your hands, his face earnest and pained. “You’re getting this all wrong. I’m not some mustache-twirling villain trying to thwart the course of true love! You’re a wonderful girl, I’m sure Scott’s been very happy with you. But everything has its season. The time for moons and Junes and Ferris wheels is over. You can leave him to me now.”

“With all due respect, you’re out of your mind!” You slid your chair back, making an angry scrape along the tile. Riggs closed his grip around your hands.

“Sittdown before you wreck the boy’s life.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Did Scott ever tell you about his old man? How he squandered the family fortunes and left him and Pamela all but bankrupt? Now, me, I’d have done the decent thing—put a pistol to my head for all my sins—but the man has his pride, though I don’t know where-all he gets it from. You see Pam now, up in her French colonial sunning her face and drinking cocktails like the belle of the ball?” He pointed to his chest. “I did that. Scott’s shiny new diploma from M-I-T? Right again! Now, I don't believe in somethin’ for nothing. Everything in this here world has its cost, sweetheart. Everything. I have invested in that boy—not just money, but my blood, sweat, and tears! I won’t abide a loss. I won’t abide it.”

“Scott isn’t an investment,” you shot back. “He isn't yours to own.”

“And yet it would seem he’s worth more to me than he is to you. If he marries you, he and Pam won’t see another cent from me even if I have to drive past them through the gutter. I’m telling you I would throw my own sister out on the street for him—my own flesh! Can you say the same? Could Scott? Would he choose you over his poor, silly mother? Now, I highly doubt that.”

The crazy thing was, he seemed genuinely aggrieved by this predicament of his own making. In his face you could see him imagining the scene—him in his black town car, driving past Pam. And yet he remained immovable. Either you gave up Scott or he would make good on his threat.

It was callous, immoral. I have invested in that boy.

The sound of Scott’s shoes came up the hallway. Riggs folded the check into your hands and said, “Don't make a scene. Think about it.”

“What did I miss?” Scott stopped to kiss the top of your head before resuming his seat. You felt nauseous, your hands clammy around the paper you hid in your lap. To you, Scott seemed like he belonged in another world, another time—a Before-Time.

As you tried not to cry, Riggs smiled at him broadly and said, “Oh, nothing much. But I have a little present for you.”

He pulled a box from the bottom of his seat, crimson leather and beautifully stitched. Scott lifted the lid. Inside was a silver Patek Philippe, the watch he would wear when you saw him six years later, sitting across from you at a conference table with a strange coldness in his eyes. He showed it to you, beaming with pride, and while you couldn't remember what canned response you gave, you did recall that he pulled Riggs into a hug, and said, “Uncle, you really shouldn’t have…”

PRESENT DAY OKLAHOMA CITY

For nearly an hour you and Scott sat on the floor of your living room, playing at marriage and midlife crises and how many babies you would have, which on any other occasion would have made you hysterically laugh or, as Javi said on the night you met, remark upon the universe’s odd sense of humor.

But you were strangely levelheaded. If anything, you felt slightly out-of-body and yet entirely in your body, if that made sense.

You were aware of every piece put on the board. You watched the spinner turn in a rainbow of colors, the clack of the spokes sounding faster and faster before it slowed and then drew to a stop. You felt the couch cushions at your back. Scott’s shoulder brushed against yours sometimes, when he reached for one of the tiny bright pegs that went on top of the tiny bright cars. It felt like you were inside of a dream, and because dreams didn’t matter and had no consequences unless you let them, you started to ease into surrealism.

You played the game, and gradually your body began to relax. This was familiar to you—Scott taking it way too seriously, you poking fun at the furrow between his brows, the way you alternated between cold-hard strategy and chaotically negligent gameplay just to see a reaction flicker across his face. He stretched his legs out beneath the table, threw an arm across the seat-edge of the couch; sometimes, you would recline further back and your neck would touch his arm. You did it a few times, feeling embarrassed at first. But when you saw he didn’t mind, you let your head fall back, waiting as he picked a card.

Something was building beneath your skin. You felt restless, and a little reckless. Despite the law you laid down at the restaurant, you couldn’t stop your gaze from lingering. It lingered everywhere: on the hollow of his throat, the shape of his nose, the play of light across his cheeks, his mouth, the spaces where his white shirt gapped between the buttons and you could see his bare chest underneath. Oh, you’re in trouble… you said to yourself, and yet it didn’t matter. You didn’t care. This was a liminal space, a void where you could be honest and unafraid of the truth.

Even when Scott caught you looking, all he did was look back. He let the tips of his fingers touch yours when sliding a card from your hands, knocked his knee against yours. There was a time—or maybe you imagined it—when you felt his hand stroke your shoulder and you almost did something out-of-line. Because there was a line, blurred, but it existed; you kept within the bounds because you knew it was the sole condition to prolonging this state, so you bought owner’s insurance and traded in stocks, changed careers, had twins, repaid a loan (with interest) and made your slow and steady way to retirement at Countryside Acres.

At the end of the game, after all the remaining play money had been counted, it was Scott who said, “Looks like I win,” and all you said was, “Why am I not surprised?”

Then you glanced at the clock. “It’s late.”

“And we haven’t killed each other. How’s that for a détente?” Scott began putting all the parts away, pulling the pegs out of the cars first, sticking each one inside its appropriate little plastic bag. You would’ve thrown them straight in the box and not had a care in the world about it, but you liked that he did.

It was a Scott thing—patient, methodical, kind of annoying, and mostly well-intentioned. You sat back and watched him do it.

“Wow… they teach words like that at MIT?”

“They tried it out with our class—apparently, word was going ’round that STEM nerds lack empathy.”

You smiled. “Now where would they go and get an idea like that?” His eyes flicked down to yours. Having finished, he went back to reclining against the couch, one arm draped over his bent knee.

His gaze on your skin felt like a physical touch, and when it stopped at your lips, a shock of heat went through your body, from the crown of your head down to your toes. You watched him swallow. The urge to kiss him was vicious, urgent and unrelenting, and when you saw his mouth part, his tongue emerging to wet his lips, you thought, Now now now, but then Scott stood so fast he almost upset the table.

“I should go,” he managed to say, his voice ragged. He sought sightlessly for his discarded jacket, found it lying over the top of the couch, and he couldn’t escape fast enough. Frustration rolled off him in waves.

“Scott!” You scrambled to your feet. You might have touched the very edge of his sleeve, but he held up his hand to stop you coming any closer.

“This was a mistake.”

You went stock still. The spell was broken—this was no longer the dreamworld where nothing mattered, this was the Real World. The one where everything had been broken, not least of which because of you, and it was all a mistake. Calling him had been a mistake, meeting him had been a mistake, thinking that you could control anything you felt about him had been a mistake.

And now there was this: Scott raking his hands through his hair, turning in the middle of the room, almost a decade’s worth of anger and disappointment and confusion and, why not, maybe a little hatred thrown into the mix.

“You never trusted me!” he threw in your face. “And I mean never—even when we were in high school, especially not in college—”

“Why are you talking about college?” you demanded, your voice rising to meet his.

“Every time I called, it was like you were expecting me to tell you it was over. Every girl I so much as spoke to when you came to visit—”

“I was eighteen! What the fuck do you want me to say? That I was insecure and kind of an idiot? Yeah, no shit! I thought we’d moved past that!”

“No, we didn’t move past it because it never changed! Maybe it stopped being about other women, but then it was about work, about the time I spent shadowing at my uncle’s company. Do you have any idea how exhausting it was to keep having to convince you that I was all in? And what, somehow we went from that to ‘you’ve changed, Scott, I don’t think I like who you are anymore, Scott’—?”

“What the fuck? I never said that!”

“The night we had dinner at my uncle’s—the night you left! And again in the elevator—”

“Can we not do this?” you plead. “I thought we weren’t going to do this. We agreed!”

“Well, maybe I'm changing the terms.”

“Then this ends right here.”

There was silence. You knew it was coming, and yet it still hurt like a freight train hitting you square in the chest when he looked you in the eyes and said: “What else is new?”

You flinched. You felt your whole body recoil, your eyes sting. Your fault. The one who couldn’t stand up for herself, couldn't commit, who ran at the first sign of trouble. You and Scott are doomed to fail. Riggs had laid down his vision for the future and you had believed him, had chosen to believe him more than you had ever believed in Scott, or in yourself.

You’re not the girl for him. You’re nothing like him.

Hadn’t you always told yourself the same in the darkest recess of your mind? Hadn’t you, in truth, been just a little bit relieved when you packed your things and moved back to Park Haven, play-acting ended, no more trying, no more waiting for the other shoe to drop?

“I’m sorry.” Scott took an immediate step towards you. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.”

“Yes, you did,” you shot back with more vitriol than you intended.

“Don’t do that—don’t pretend to know how I fucking feel.”

“You forget, Scott. I know you.”

“I thought the whole point was that you didn't! That I was so… unrecognizable!”

“Well, you are!” you exclaimed, shouting again. “Suing Javi? Trying to take down his company? Being Riggs’s, what, fucking loyal dog—”

“Oh, spare me the hysterics…”

“Did you say it?” you cut in. “Did you really say you didn’t care about that town full of people?”

Scott froze. You watched his jaw clench, and you knew in that moment that he'd been counting on Javi’s discretion on that score.

If your intention had been to preserve any goodwill between them, that was all going up in flames now. Hell, after tonight, you and Scott might be incapable of being in the same room together, let alone working towards a peaceful resolution to a civil suit.

“You weren’t there,” he ground out. “There were other things going on.”

“Did you say it, Scott?” It was obvious that he had. The shame kept him from saying another word when you finally stepped around the coffee table. “But God forbid I say a word against Marshall Riggs, the undoubted patron saint of Tornado Alley. I'm sure his real estate empire only exists so he can share his considerable wealth with the downtrodden and needy!”

“What do you want me to fucking say? Do you want me to apologize for who my family is? I'm sorry if you find my uncle objectionable, but he is the only reason I ever made something of myself—you ever consider that? I’d be nothing without him—nothing! You think my father could have lifted a finger? Riggs is the only reason Mom and I made it through that summer. I owe him everything! So he makes business decisions you don't agree with—”

You scoffed.

“—but Javi knew exactly where all that money came from. He wasn't duped, I didn’t trick him… he made a choice. He made a choice! And then, what, Kate Carter comes along and he grows a fucking conscience? Give me a break…”

“And where the hell is yours! You think I give a shit what Marshall Riggs does? I care about you, you fucking idiot! Are you really going to stand there and tell me you’re happy? That it… that it feels good to know you’re suing your best friend, that you seemingly have no other friends, that you’ve hitched yourself to your uncle and the most you can say is you’re doing it out of obligation? You used to want more for yourself, Scott!”

He laughed at that. Rubbing his hand across his mouth, he regarded you with a derisive humor.

“Tell me, how’s the trust fund going? Your dad—he was always a pretty shrewd investor, right? and your mom’s family… they’ve got those boutique hotels along the eastern seaboard, the ones that get their pictures in the magazines and all over social media? It’s pretty easy to talk about wanting more for yourself when your father didn’t sink your family prospects on a deck of cards. I do what I have to do. Not that you’d ever understand.”

Money—had it been this big of an issue the whole time? Had you ignored it all the years of your relationship? Money… and jealousy of your father, Scott’s resentment towards his. You felt so blind, so stupid. The “cracks” Riggs had referenced had been there all along, and instead of talking about them you had stuck your head in the sand, worried that if you said the wrong thing all your insecurities would be proven right. That Scott would leave.

Scott… Did you ever stop to consider the damage that leaving him alone with Riggs might cause?

“You only think you can’t make it without him,” you dared to say. “But he doesn’t care about you.”

“What, not like you do?”

“No,” you affirmed. “Not like I do.”

Scott frowned at you. He appeared almost childlike, vulnerable. A boy calling “no fair!”, probably with Riggs’s voice in the background saying, Life isn't fair. “You don't get to do that. You don’t get to do that after all this time… you—you fucking left!”

“He offered me money. Did he ever tell you that? How he tried to buy me off to leave you? You talk about my trust fund, and it’s true—I grew up lucky, but we never had Marshall Riggs Money. There’s rich and then there’s capital-R Rich, the kind you only get when you’ve turned being a ruthless son-of-a-bitch into an art form.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Yes, you do. I can see it in your eyes—you know I’m telling the truth. I never liked him. What's more, he could tell I didn't like him, and he couldn't have that… no, not Riggs. He’d gotten used to you being his right-hand man and he wasn’t about to lose you. So he waited until you left the table—”

“I’m not going to listen to this.”

“—he waited until you left the table,” you repeated, almost toe to toe. You forced yourself to continue, even in the face of Scott’s patent distress. You couldn't live like this, not anymore. Keeping secrets, taking the biggest share of the blame. “‘If he marries you, he and his mother won’t see another cent from me even if I have to drive past them through the gutter,’” you recited. “Those were his words. I’m not lying to you—I wouldn't, not about this.

“He was never going to let us be together. Obviously, I didn’t take the money, but he was dead serious about his threat. And I was angry. I thought if only you’d stood up to your uncle before, if you weren’t blind to what he really was, I would never have been put in that position. So I took it out on you. I blamed you. And I said things…”

You faltered, remembering the night you returned to the hotel. You couldn’t stay, not with Riggs’s check in your pocket and the memory of his hand gripping your wrist. But Scott didn’t understand. He didn't know what had made you so upset, why you were throwing your clothes into your suitcase and talking about flights and returning his ring and about how it was time you stopped pretending. And, yes, you took to heart what Riggs had implied about other women. You weren’t picky. You weren’t careful. You just had to leave.

You were ashamed of it now. The knowledge of how you’d acted lodged in your throat like a stone you couldn’t swallow down. Scott remembered it, too. His eyes flickered this way and that, recalling, wondering how much of it was true.

“I said things to you that I wish I’d never… that I still think about, and I still regret, because I love—” Your voice broke. You placed your hands over his chest, then cradled his face, willing him to believe you, willing yourself to be brave. “I still love you, Scott. I love you. I should’ve told you the truth, but I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“No… you left,” he said weakly, bracing his hands around your wrists.

“I know I did… I know, but he can’t have you.” You kissed his mouth, once, twice, as many times as he allowed, and all the while you said the things you should’ve said that night in New Orleans. “I won’t let him have you… not this time… not again.”

Scott turned his head and the heat of his tongue met yours.

One second he was all coiled tension and the next he was all over you, walking you back towards the couch, kissing a trail down your neck, one hand tangled in your hair while the other was already up your skirt matching his strokes to the curl of his tongue. He laid you down on the couch, settling between your thighs, and even clothed the weight of him felt familiar—the pass of his hand up and down your leg, the way he liked to tease you by wandering just close enough to where you wanted before pulling away, distracting you with a searing kiss or a shallow roll of his hips.

In the past, there were times when he would draw it out for hours, taking you to the brink and back until you were sure you wanted to curse him.

At a friend’s New York wedding, he made you come three times before he entered you, and you weren’t too proud—now, with the real Scott on top of you, all over you, soon to be in you if there was any justice in the world—to admit that you had replayed that night in your head sometimes when you were lonely. When a bad day at work or an ill-advised night of drinking too much ended with you trying to chase sleep on the heels of an orgasm that was never as satisfying as the ones you got with Scott.

Even when you managed to make yourself come—really come, that full-bodied electricity-followed-by-deep-silence feeling—you had been all too aware of his absence. What was the point, you had wondered, if you couldn’t curl up next to him or listen to the steady flow of his breathing or hear him sigh into your neck when he wrapped his arms around you and went to sleep? What was the point if, upon waking, you wouldn't have Scott and his early-morning voice, the clarity of his eyes, the smell of the coffee he made in his stupidly expensive espresso machines? (God, you missed that coffee.)

It was Scott… it was only ever Scott.

The couch was a perilous place to be doing any of this. You weren't sure that he fit in it, for one, and for another, you were mildly worried about the potential costs of fixing a broken midcentury piece of furniture. Oh, well, you thought, life’s too short. Not bothering to undress, you pushed aside articles of clothing, hands bumping into each other, scraps of fabric pushed aside, belt buckle rattling as it landed on the floor, until finally he surged into you, gripping the side of the couch and burying a curse against your neck as you stretched around him.

He slid a hand below your hips and fixed the angle. The sex was hurried, messy and it had nothing of grace; it was imperfect and rather cramped, really, but all that mattered was how he felt. He felt like home. As you came, he entwined his fingers around yours, and then he finished, trembling, prolonging a wave of pleasure that took your breath away.

Don’t go, you want to say into his heaving chest.

Somehow, he turned you on your side so you could stretch along the couch. He wrapped his arms around you, stroking feather-light touched along your arm as his breathing slowed. You felt tired, hollowed out, but not in a bad way. In a quiet-before-the-storm way, when you can smell water in the air and the breeze picks up, and the world sits on the cusp of being new.

“I miss you,” he confessed, his voice barely above a whisper.

“I miss you too.”

After that, there was a silence so long it made you think he’d dozed off, but then he spoke again, painfully honest and a little scared. “I don't think I can do what you need me to do. I’m not… that’s not who I am anymore.”

“I think you are,” you said back. “I think he’s who you’ve always been.”

THREE WEEKS LATER

You were enjoying a rare weekend off from work. Figuring you could do with some real time off the clock, you’d let the office know you’d be holding all work calls and emails until Monday. Abby’s eyes had nearly popped out of her skull in a rare show of feeling, but after the emotional turmoil of the last few months, you knew you needed to walk around the city, have a massage, touch some grass, maybe eat a pint of ice cream in front of a frothy period drama—a true-blue staycation.

The morning after you and Scott slept together, you’d agreed that it was in everyone’s best interest to let things be. He needed time to think about a few things, and regardless of your shared history, you were still Javi’s lawyer. You distracted yourself by doubling down on other cases. It helped that dealing with Mrs. Richardson-Burkhardt and the four Barone siblings was as eventful as watching an HBO television series—between the scathing one-liners and last-minute twists, there was little bandwidth left over to think about Scott.

And yet you always managed.

For better or for worse, Scott had always been good at making you hope for things. Even when you wanted to err on the side of caution, expect the worst and thus avoid disappointment, just the fact that he loved you made you feel like anything was possible, like you could make things happen.

“We brought out the best in each other. That mattered to us more than anything your father and I ever did wrong.”

At a department store downtown, you watched across the way as a young couple studied a tray of rings at the jewelry counter, diamonds sparkling in the light. The woman grabbed her partner’s arm and pointed at one of the selections as if to say, “That one!”, and for a moment they were in perfect sync. The salesman offered up the band with elaborate flourish, the groom-to-be took his bride’s hand, slipped the ring on her finger, and they admired it together, the play of white gold on her black skin.

The woman beamed. So did he.

“Looks like we have ourselves a winner,” the pleased salesman declared.

After lunch and an overpriced iced coffee, you arrived home with a gift for the Travises’ golden anniversary party, a pair of gold-accented crystal champagne glasses you hoped would survive the flight. It would be nice to see your mom again, to reunite with your old college friends, and revisit old haunts.

The thought of going home no longer filled you with dread—for which, even if nothing came out of your night with Scott, if he decided that upending his life was too much for him to handle right now, you would always be grateful. For years, your idea of a worst nightmare was running into him and having the truth spoken aloud, plainly, and for both of you to hear. Nothing will ever be as bad as this, you told yourself.

But it was a half-lie. Not seeing him again would be worse.

Already, you felt his absence like a hollow in your chest.

On the kitchen counter, you saw that your phone began to ring. “Javi, how’s the weather looking?” you asked, putting him on speaker as you poured yourself some water.

 “She’s a fickle mistress, I’ll tell you that! Hey, I just wanted to let you know… Scott called this morning. He says he’s dropping the suit.”

“Oh?”

“You don’t sound too surprised. Any of that you're doing?”

“No,” you replied, picking up your phone, “that’s all Scott. I haven’t spoken to him in weeks, actually.”

“Well, he sounded different. Still Scott, but a shorter stick up his ass, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I know a part of how everything went down was my fault—business is business, as my Ma always says. I sold him my share of StormPAR, which means I also have to pay back some of the money we took from Riggs. That’ll hurt like a—well, you know… I’m not the guy’s biggest fan these days. But if I don’t have to hear the name Marshall Riggs ever again, I’ll count myself lucky and say it’s a price well-paid.”

“And Scott?” you ventured to say.

“Honestly, I think he’s done with the whole thing. Sounds like he’s closing up shop, which makes sense. He’s a damn good engineer but kind of hopeless as a chaser.”

You laughed. “Yeah, I guess I can see that. Are you okay?”

“Me, or me and Scott?”

“Both.”

To Javi’s credit, he took a few moments to actually think about it. “Yeah, I’m good. You know me… I never stay down for long. Man with a thousand plans. Me and Scott? Man, I don’t know about that one… I did leave him by the side of the road. Ruined one of his immaculately pressed shirts.”

You snorted. “God forbid.”

“Yeah, God forbid. Listen, if it were up to me, I’d just let bygones be bygones. Life’s too short, you know. Shit happens… I don’t want to be a guy who burns bridges over money.”

“Yeah, I get that.”

“What I mean to say,” Javi spoke over a sudden burst of wind, “is that if Scott ever wants to give me a call, I’ll answer. You can even tell him I said that.”

“Me?” You set your glass down with a clatter, heat rising to your face.

“Yeah, you! I’m not an idiot, hotshot, that history’s not gone ancient yet.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Mhm… Anyway, the wind’s picking up. Kate’s off reading her dandelions.”

“You know, I kinda wish I could see her doing that…”

“Watch out, we might make a chaser of you yet!” Javi crowed.

You shook your head, said, “I wouldn't hold my breath,” but you were smiling. The sun streamed through your open windows and anything was possible.

Once Javi ended the call, you stared at your phone, wondering… And then you decided to be reckless one more time. Call it a calculated risk, you thought instead. You held the phone up to your ear and listened to it ring. The dial tone sounded a few times, and then it stopped.

He’d answered.

“Scott, it’s me,” you said, trying to relax the thrumming in your heart.

There was a pause and then you heard his voice: “Did Javi tell you?”

“Yeah, we just got off the phone.”

“Open your door.”

You made a face, glancing at the screen and holding it against your ear again. “What?”

“Open your door, UPenn!”

You dashed to the entryway, patting your hair, blotting your face, wondering if your shirt was wrinkled. When you pulled the door open, you saw Scott in full view, in the middle of the day. Not wearing white. The blue of his shirt brought out his eyes, which looked tired but less burdened, too.

He seemed lighter, if not happy then trying to get there.

“Thought I’d skip out on being a sore loser this time.” He gave a half-shrug.

“I don’t know, Miller… from here it doesn't seem like you're losing.”

He smiled at the floor, almost shy. And when he looked into your face you saw the boy you fell in love with at Nichols Academy, the one who took baseball too seriously, who loved Hemingway and your mom’s apple crisp, the one who sang bad Sinatra and got into fights and thought James Watt was something of a god. It was like the worst of the last few years had gone away, leaving only space for something new to grow, to be built—together.

“All I want is you,” promised Scott, taking you into his arms.

You stuck your hand in your pocket, extracted the ring you’d kept there for almost a month like a talisman, like a good-luck charm, and held it up to Scott. He stared at it, and then at you, with something like shock.

Something like awe and wonder.

“Don’t you know? You've always had me.”

And in that hallway, Scott Miller, a man who’d never cop to having a romantic bone in his body, spun you around and kissed you and wouldn’t have cared if your neighbor at Apartment 424 had noticed or if one of his investors appeared. Maybe there was something to Tyler’s corny catchphrase, after all: If you feel it, chase it—no matter the odds, no matter the obstacles in your path, because feeling it was purpose and inspiration and direction when you lost your way.

It took you a while, but you understood it now.

[aestheticaltcow]

Two Months

Carmy really fucked up, but maybe he can prove his worthiness and get his girls back.

MDNI 18+

The Bear Masterlist

Previous part Next part

Carmy sighed when his call went to voicemail after a few rings. He pushed a hand through his hair and listened to your voicemail message, “Hey baby- I just wanted to know if I could see Mia. I know you don’t want to see me, but I need to see her… if you could just bring her by the restaurant, that would be fine. I just want to hold my daughter. Uh- yeah. I’m sorry, I’m a fuckin’ dumbass. Please just give me five minutes to explain everything. Let me know. I love you.” he hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair. He stared up at the ceiling as he thought about you and Mia. It had been a couple of weeks since he’d seen either of you, and he just needed his girls again. 

“Asshole. Sign here.” Natalie barked at Carmy as she entered the office with an ordering forum. She shoved the papers at him before crossing her arms over her chest. “Natalie, I get it okay. I fucked up. My wife kicked me out of our house, I’m living in a shitty hotel, and I haven’t seen my daughter in weeks. I’m not in the fucking mood to deal with your bitching.” Carmy replied, glaring at his sister. She rolled her eyes, “You turned out so much like Dad.” she laughed, yanking the documents back. Carmy huffed, “Fuck you.”

“Right back at you, Carmen,” Natalie said, slamming the door behind her as she exited the office. “You okay, Sugar?” Richie questioned softly, noticing the anger in her eyes. She rolled her eyes and pushed past him without saying anything; being in the same vicinity as Carmy was irritating. Whenever she saw his face, she thought of Mia and how Carmy had repeated their father's actions. Natalie sighed when she got into her car, “I’m sorry you had to hear that, baby… let’s go get your brother.”

~

“Hey, Carm- everything okay with Y/N?” Richie awkwardly asked as Carmy was doing prep for that night's dinner service. “What do you think fuckhead?” Carmy snarkily responded; Richie rolled his eyes and decided to match his energy. “Well, she texted Tiff asking for her DIVORCE LAWYER’S info.” he leaned against the counter with a shit-eating grin. Carmy slammed his knife down and pushed past Richie to go into the alley. “That was fucked up, kid.” Tina scolded as she exited the walk-in. Richie shrugged, “I was going to be subtle, but he’s being a little bitch.” 

Carmy closed his eyes, fighting back tears when Syd showed up for prep. “Hey Carmen, are you okay?” she asked, stepping closer. He shook his head and let out a puff of air, “Y/N’s gonna leave me- I fuckin’ deserve it, but I want my wife Sydney. She won’t even fuckin’ talk to me, but she’ll fuckin’ divorce me? It’s bullshit.” Carmy cried to her. Syd stood there for a moment to collect her thoughts. She swallowed before sitting down next to him and pat Carmy’s shoulder as she began to explain her point of view on the situation, “You fucked up, Carmen. But you love Y/N and Mia- just go. Go home. I’ll cover tonight. Go talk to your wife.” 

Carmy took Syd’s suggestion. He wasn’t sure if you’d let him in or even talk to him, but he knew he should at least try.

~

“I don’t know Natalie. I just… I mean- I’m gonna sound like a dumb bitch, but maybe I could?” you groaned into your phone as Natalie was about to answer the doorbell rung. “Hey Nat, can I call you back in a bit? Someone’s here.” you waited for her passive agreement and hung up. You put your phone in your back pocket and went to the front door. You felt your stomach flip when you opened the door to reveal Carmy standing in your doorway. He was an unshaven mess, with messy curls and dark circles under his eyes. “Carmen? What are you doing here?” you questioned, bracing the door, hoping it would prevent him from entering your once-shared house. “You’re divorcing me?” he asked on the brink of tears. You sighed, “I asked Tiffany for her lawyer's information- that’s all.” 

“Y/N, you can’t leave me without giving me a chance to make things right.” Carmy pleaded. You sucked your teeth, “Carmen, I really don’t want to talk about this right now… Mia’s asleep, but you can come in and say goodnight if you want.” you offered as you pulled your sleeves over your hands. Carmy nodded furiously, “I-I, ye-yes, please.”

Carmy stared down at Mia’s sleeping body. She was splayed across her crib in a green onesie with a pacifier to match. Carmy swallowed as he watched her legs twitch. “She doesn’t like sleep sacks anymore?” he asked softly. You nodded before answering, “She decided it was her own personal hell a couple weeks ago, so now she’s a big girl.” 

Carmy laughed softly and put his hand on Mia’s cheek. She squirmed and leaned into his hand, “I love you, princess.”

You walked Carmy out of the nursery and into the hallway by the front door, “Can we talk?” Carmy asked, trying not to burst into tears and lock himself in the nursery. You nodded, “Okay. What do you want to talk about?” 

Carmy swallowed. “I know you hate me, but I need to see Mia.” He took a quick breath before continuing, “Y/N, please don’t keep my daughter from me. I’ll give you whatever you want. I just need to see my daughter.” Carmy sniffled as he wiped his eyes. 

Guilt. When you saw the hurt on his face, you knew what you had to do. “Next time I need someone to watch her, I’ll call you.” you offered, Carmy grinned and thanked you before starring at you with the same love and admiration he always had. He turned to walk back to his car but stopped in the middle of the yard, “I love you. I’m gonna win you back.” he pushed a hand through his hair before shoving them in his jacket pockets. You rolled your eyes, “Bye Carmen. Drive safe.” 

~

The flu hit your office like a semi-truck. Everyone got sick, including you, and taking care of a sick baby proved more complicated than you’d thought. No one could help you, so reluctantly, you called Carmy to come be with Mia that night. He was over the moon but tried to play it cool, you saw it through immediately. It was sweet in a cheesy, trying too hard kind of way.

“Hey baby, I brought you pastina soup and Tylenol.” he grinned, handing you a paper bag, “Thank you, Carmen.” you were short with him. Carmy noticed but chopped it up to you being sick, “I can make you some tea.” he offered as you walked back to your bedroom. “I’m fine, Carmen. Please just watch Mia,” you said over your shoulder before closing the bedroom door behind you. You wanted to be mad at him, but it was hard when he was so thoughtful… and handsome. He cleaned himself up since the last time you saw him.

Carmy sat back on the couch, making funny faces at Mia. She squealed and grabbed the air in Carmy’s direction. “I missed you so much, princess.” he laughed as he brought her up to his chest; he rubbed her back as she tried to hug him. “Okay, let's check on Mommy and then make some dinner. Daddy missed his favorite sous.” Carmy explained as he got up. The two walked down the hallway, Mia babbling away as Carmy adjusted her in his arms. He bumped the bedroom door open with his hip and saw you peacefully sleeping. He stepped into the bedroom and grabbed the trash from your side table. Mia grumbled as the two of you exited the room; Carmy chuckled and kissed her temple. “I know, princess. I wanna snuggle with Mommy too, but she doesn’t feel well… and hates me, but we’ll figure it out.”

You abruptly woke up around midnight when you heard talking through the baby monitor. You stumbled out of your bedroom and across the hall to the nursery; the door was askew, and as you approached it, you more clearly heard Carmy’s voice. He was laying on the floor next to Mia’s crib, “My little Mia… I wish you could stay this little forever.” he whispered as he put his hand up to the crib gate. The sight alone made your heart yearn for your family to be back together. You knew what you had to do.

~

“And that princess is how you make scrambled eggs, the right way.” you laughed when you overheard Carmy’s cooking lesson. You walked into the kitchen and saw Carmy plating up scrambled eggs, “Hey.” you greeted as you got a mug from the cabinet. Carmy grinned in your direction, “Mornin’ baby. Feelin’ better?” 

“Feelin’ waaaaaaay better,” you started, “Thanks for coming over to take care of her. I really appreciate it.”. Carmy leaned against the counter, “I’m her Dad- it’s my job.”

“You’re a good one… I don’t know where you’ve been staying, but if you want, I uh- I made up the guest room if you want to come home…” you explained, “I feel like I’ve been keeping Mia from you, and that’s fucked up.” you rocked on your heels hoping Carmy wouldn’t assume this offer meant you wanted to get back together. He nodded immediately, “I would love that.” Carmy was giddy at the idea of getting to be with Mia every day again- it also gave him an opportunity to win you back.

It had only been a few days since Carmy had been back home, and he jumped right back into the daily hustle and went above and beyond what he usually did. Carmy changed his schedule and managed to do a lot of his restaurant owner duties at home so that he could be with Mia more. The house was clean, the pantry was stocked with all your favorite snacks, home-cooked meals, and a very happy baby, and it drove you crazy.

“I just- this man is driving me insane.” you ranted as you sipped your margarita. It was girls’ night out with Syd and Natalie. You were two margaritas in and deep in your feelings. “I should just forgive-” you were cut off by Natalie exclaiming, “NO! You can’t just forgive him, Y/N. He’s a fuckin’ idiot for even thinking about being with another woman. It makes all his ‘you make me a better man’ vows bullshit. Our Dad used to do the same shit to Donna all the time- and she just accepted it! Then he left her. I don’t want Carmy to do the same to you- he already fuckin’ started doing it.”

You were taken aback by Natalie’s ranting and raving; you’d known that Carmy had a difficult relationship with his Dad, but you hadn’t known the full extent. You looked at Syd, wanting her to weigh in on the situation, “Carmy’s an asshole, but he’s your asshole. He loves you. He loves Mia. I don’t know if he’ll do it again - if my partner pulled something like this on me, I think I’d hear them out.”

It was almost 10 when Carmy had finally managed to get Mia to fall asleep. He was exhausted after a long day, but when he’d gone into your bedroom to get the baby monitor, he couldn’t help but notice a satin black thong sitting on the top of the laundry hamper. He stared at the underwear for a moment before shaking his head. He wasn’t going to take his wife’s dirty underwear. Carmy walked toward the door before pausing and going back to the hamper. “I guess I am that guy,” he scoffed, grabbing the panties and putting them in the pocket of his sweatpants. 

Carmy lay in bed leaning against a pile of pillows, scrolling through the private folder on his photo app. “There it is…” he mumbled as he tapped the video before putting his headphones in. “You promise no one else will see this, right?” your voice flooded Carmy’s ears as he pushed his sweats off. “Of course not, baby.” he reassured you as your hands reached for his zipper. He watched as you bit your lip and unzipped his pants. Carmy groaned as he watched you give him a blow job. Carmy took the underwear he’d stolen from your bedroom and started stroking himself. The sensation reminded him of when he’d tease you before relentlessly fucking you into a crying mess. 

“Oh fuck-” Carmy exhaled as he felt his orgasm approaching. He swiped to the next video of riding him. Carmy salivated at the sight of your bouncing tits. You were moaning his name as your movements got more frantic, “Cream all over my fuckin’ cock, baby.” 

“That was a fun night,” you said startling Carmy, he dropped his phone before quickly covering himself with a blanket as you stood in the doorway. You giggled at his reaction, you were just going to ask how Mia was before going to bed but catching Carmy masturbating with your underwear… blame it on the alcohol but you wanted a taste.

“I uh- I didn’t hear you- hear you come inside.” Carmy stumbled over his words as you fully entered the guest room. “No need for you to be embarrassed, Carmy…” he watched with wide eyes as you moved around the bed to sit next to him on the bed. You sighed and pushed the blanket off his lap to expose him.

You pushed your hand up Carmy’s thigh, making him swallow hard. “What made you so hard, baby? Were you being a little perv… jacking off with my dirty panties… watching a video of me sucking your cock?” you mewled as you ran your fingers along his thigh. Carmy nodded as he stared into your eyes. You giggled and grasped the base of his length. He croaked as you started to stroke him, “You like that baby?” you asked cocking your head to the side, staring up at him. He nodded as he let his head fall back against the headboard.

Carmy whimpered as you ran your tongue along the bottom of his cock. You swirled your tongue around his leaking tip, making him swear under his breath. As you took more of him in your mouth, his whimpers turned to whiny moans. You pulled away with a pop. Carmy stared down at you, watching a string of saliva connect your lips to the head of his cock. “Does that feel nice, baby?” you asked as you returned to pumping your hand around him. “So-so nice,” he replied, touching your cheek. You smiled as you pushed it away.

“But, why should I suck your cock if you’re gonna let just any woman off the street suck it?” you asked. Carmy shook his head, “Only-only you, baby-y.” he shuddered.

“Only me? Tell me, Carmen, who does this cock belong to?” he was putty in your hands as you slowed your pace. “You, baby, only you.” he groaned, “Prove it.” you challenged.

Carmy buried his face in the crook of your neck as he slowly pressed into your entrance as you lamented at the familiar sensation. You held onto Carmy’s shoulders as he started thrusting his hips in a steady rhythm, “Hmm, Carmy…” you hummed as he hungrily kissed your neck.

“I don’t deserve you baby…”

Tag List @namjoons-crabssss @sl-ut @thottae @cuddlehye @prurose @1184p @chaoticfanficfanx @ok-boke @literatureluster @bxtchopolis @americanprometheuss @buckystwilight @earth-elemental18 @thebearlily @siren-melodies @thel0v3hashira143 @innercreationflower @unpoqu1todetodo @thehouseofevangelista @pizzaspirits @aleemendoza2425-blog @visualbutterflysworld

[goldsainz]

SOMETHING I’M MADE FOR — one shot.

pairing: max verstappen x reader

MASTERLIST.

PART 1.

taglist: @lorarri @noncannonships @whatthefuckerr @lpab

NOTE: this is part 2 to “what was i made for?” honestly i love the direction this took… i feel like i always say this but, this is not meant to reflect real people or try and replicate any real life scenario (other than my personal ones ig), so pls don’t think that this is me hating max, bc i truly don’t. yes, i stole the song from lana (our godess) this is probably my “silliest” fic... idk but i liked the chaos of it!

yourusername has posted an insta story!

liked by harrystyles, carlossainz55 and 3,647,852 others

yourusername watercolor eyes. tomorrow.

view all 54,718 comments

ynfan21 we will be streaming!

ynfan22 AAHHHHH

lizzobeeating AHHH 💙💙

liked by yourusername and 90,418 others

ynfan23 CARLOS WTF R U DOING HERE

maxfan21 i’m scared af

⤷ ynfan24 first official break up song…

ynfan25 if this is like wwimf i will be sobbing

ynfan26 max fumbled so hard omg

maxfan22 GET BACK TOGETHER. NOW.

ynfan27 mother looks so good😩

ynfan28 i hope max always regrets the day he lost her!!!

liked by landonorris, kyliejenner and 4,871,605 others

yourusername happy me, happy life

view all comments

ynfan31 not her changing the saying “happy wife, happy life”

⤷ ynfan32 living for the max shade

ynfan33 oh he fumbled HARD

maxfan31 max how are you doing?????

maxfan32 the reference to “happier than ever”😭

danielricciardo #Real

⤷ ynfan34 DANIEL WTF

ynfan35 NOW THAT YOURE SINGLE MARRY ME PLS

maxfan33 send thoughts and prayers for max

ynfan36 happy for y/n but i’m still mourning them😭

francisca.cgomes you were always my gf, not his

⤷ yourusername we’re the real it couple

⤷ pierregasly No, no, no!!! We are not doing this. Leave my girlfriend alone, Y/N

⤷ yourusername no❤️

ynfan37 I MISS MY PARENTS

liked by nyckdevries, kellypiquet 479,813 others

maxverstappen1 I was always better solo.

view all 7,198 comments

maxfan41 OMG??? MAX’S SHADY ERA IS HERE???

maxfan42 nah not the response post😭

ynfan41 boy byeee

maxfan43 supporting him is getting even harder now

redbullracing The #1 and only!

⤷ maxfan44 admin blink twice if you were forced to do this

ynfan42 anyways y/n is better and 1000x more talented🥱

maxfan45 not him pretending like didn’t lose the baddest bitch he will ever know

landonorris You’re gonna act like you weren’t absolutely sobbing yesterday?

⤷ maxverstappen1 Calling my lawyers. Now.

⤷ landonorris Gonna make sign an NDA?

⤷ maxverstappen1 😐😐😐

[polysucks]

“It’s nOt rEaLisTic!” “RhAenYra dOesNt kIsS wOmeN!” “AlicEnT woUlD nEvER TrY to mEdiAtE wItH RhaeNyra lIkE thAt!”

Says who? The maesters? The Maesters who trained at the Citadel? The Citadel that is vehemently against The Old Gods? The Citadel that renounces any use of magic, especially blood magic allegedly*? The Maesters that record kept for the Targaryen rule? You know, the Targaryens? The ones that can control dragons due to ancient blood magic? Maester Gyldayn who straight up makes notes in the margins about rumors and how some “facts” in Fire and Blood might not be true? These maesters? The Maesters that we know to be 100% honest all the time, and only ever do right by the people they serve, never get involved with politics, and never have personal biases and opinions? The Maesters that NEVER withhold information and knowledge from the people they are bound to serve? The Maesters that follow STRICT ethical practices? Those Maesters?

Alright. So, what if the maesters are 100% honest all the time? (Don’t even come at me with “but Mushroom1!1!1!!1” wtcho goofy ass. he’s not a part of this) you think all the occupants of the castle aren’t aware of the eyes that watch their every goddamn move? These white haired bitches got personal paparazzi following them everywhere. You think the only lying, sneaking, whispering, bribing, and hiding occurred during Viserys’ reign? Oh, just these two seasons? You ever wonder why no secretaries or janitors from Area 51 don’t come forward for a Shane Dawson “””documentary”””? Well, the Targaryens didn’t have access to lawyers and NDAs. Nah. If someone was gonna spew, or a guard saw something they shouldn’t have? Liberate head from neck. Chadgor The Coomer made this point evident.

Yall look silly out here not thinking any of this could be realistic. (Despite the obvious changes from the source content—I’m looking at you Benioff and Weiss. I’m coming for legs)

[human-space-heater]

incorrect quotes: spiderman across the spider verse part 4

Miles: Are you alright with constructive criticism? I don't want to sound mean. Gwen: No, go ahead. I want to hear it. Miles: It sucks. Gwen: That's not constructive criticism.

Peter B : I'm usually that person who has no idea what's going on.

Kidnapper: I have your partner. Miles: What? I don't have a partner... Kidnapper: Then who just called me a lowlife bitch and spit in my face? Miles: Oh, you have Hobie. Tell him dinner is getting cold

Miles: Where are your parents? Miguel: What are parents? Miles: That’s just about the saddest thing I ever heard get said.

Gwen: ....Thou shalt not marry each other, for thy art both sinful... Peter B : I just wanna fucking marry Miguel!!

Hobie: If you get in trouble, I'm gonna be like... a lawyer to you. Ok? Pavtir: Okay. *later* Miguel: Pavtir! Sit down on the chair, you're in trouble. Hobie, whispering: Deny everything. Pavtir, loudly: That isn't a chair.

Hobie: Why were you up yesterday until 3am? Pavtir: How did you know I was up until 3am? Peter B : We could hear you clapping to the FRIENDS intro every 25 minutes.

[the-iceni-bitch]

𝒰𝓃𝓉𝒾𝓁 ℐ ℒℴ𝓈ℯ ℳ𝓎 ℬ𝓇ℯ𝒶𝓉𝒽

Relationship: amazon!lawyer Natasha Romanoff x petite!curvy female reader (Big Red and Peach, NLLYL AU)

Words: ~5.2k

Summary: You and Nat don’t even realize how badly you need each other until you finally meet. But even then, you don’t take the plunge without meddling from your asshole friends.

Warnings: explicit language, explicit sexual content (f/f sex, f receiving oral sex, multiple orgasms, mommy kink), idiots in love, meet cute, slow burn, drunk awkward flirting, age gap (not explicitly stated but it’s there), size difference, fluff, SMUT!! 18+ ONLY!!

A/N: YAAAAAHHH! They are adorable and stupid and sweet and I need all of you to love them as much as I do, they are so precious. This new branch of the NLLYL AU is gonna kill me, just wait until we meet Thor…

I am no longer doing taglists so if you want to stay up to date on all the latest filth, follow my sideblog @the-iceni-library and turn on notifications!

You grumbled to yourself as you downed another shot of tequila, glaring at the bottom of the glass and then at Sam when he tried to walk away with the bottle.

“Hey… uh oh.” Darcy’s smile fell when she wandered up to you and saw the look on your face, eyeing Sam warily when he poured you another shot and shrugged at her. “I was hoping to meet that date of yours, where’d he wander off to?”

“Dunno.” You took another shot and frowned to yourself as you adjusted the front of your costume. “But some leggy blonde bitch was with him.”

“Oh no…” Darcy decided to forego the ‘told you so’ for now since you were drunk, but she had warned you that dudes that were willing to admit they might have overlapped the relationship they had before with yours probably shouldn’t be trusted. “Fuck him, honey.”

“Fuck all men.” You toasted no one and tossed back another shot, nodding to Sam when you slammed your glass on the bar and leaning on Darcy pretty heavily as you waited for him to refill you. “Except you, Sammy, you’re great. And so is Bucky. That big sweetheart.”

“Uh-huh.” Sam reached out whip fast to catch you before you toppled off your bar stool, sighing when you giggled and tried to disguise a heave as a cough. “Maybe you should slow down, baby girl.”

“Hey.” You scowled adorably as you pawed at his chest, slapping his cheek in what you had meant to be an affectionate pat before sighing deeply. “You wanna end up on my shitlist? No? Then keep ‘em coming. Where is Bucky?”

“He’s over in the hall but maybe…” Darcy hissed when you started wobbling away, chasing after you as you sang to yourself and shooting an exasperated look at Sam. “Baby, you need to drink some water.”

“I’m fine, shut up.” You saw Bucky and clapped, pushing Darcy away when she attempted to corral you. “Hiya Buck! I missed you.”

“Did you… wow.” Bucky caught you when you stumbled, chuckling when you breathed a tequila thick cloud right in his face and giving you a moment to find your feet. “I think you took the drunk pirate costume a little too close to heart, honey. Where’s your date?”

“God, it’s like being at a party with my parents.” You rolled your eyes and tried to remain steady when you felt the shots starting to really hit you. “Probably sucking the face off some blonde bitch, we’ve decided he sucks.”

“I’m sorry, honey.” Bucky tweaked your nose when you blew a raspberry at him, turning his head when someone walked up and making you huff at the lack of attention. “Hey Nat.”

“Hi Buck, brought you another beer.”

You were fully prepared to tell whoever was taking up your much needed Bucky time to fuck off, but then you came face to… chest with the most incredible set of tits you’d ever seen in your life. There was only a moment for you to drunkenly scold yourself for that thought, because then you were looking up and up and up and…

“Wow, you’re pretty.” You forgot all about Bucky, grinning sloppily and almost careening over so your face really was in those amazing breasts before her hand was on your waist and you were giggling. “Really really pretty. Why haven’t I met you?”

“Oh, Bucky’s been hiding me, I’m shy.” Nat grinned at her friend over your shoulder when you tried to bat your eyelashes at her but it didn’t quite work since your eyelids were drooping, shaking her head when he gave her an inquisitive look and steadying you with a firm grip on your shoulders. “But he’s been hiding you too, I think. Look at how fucking cute you are.”

Your laugh almost hurt your ears, it was much more shrill than you had intended, a cackle really. Nat didn’t seem to mind though, beaming at you when you slapped her chest then apologized for feeling her up while you tried to step even closer to her.

“Stop, you can’t call me cute.” And she smelled amazing, she was like the warrior princess of your dreams. “Not when you’re walking around like a fucking wet dream. Seriously, why haven’t I met you?”

“Cutie, you’re gonna make me blush.” Nat shushed you when you giggled even more, taking a glass of water when Darcy handed it to her and holding it up to your lips. “I’ve just been busy. Now, why don’t you be a good girl for me and drink some water?”

“Mmmm, you call me a good girl and I’ll do whatever you want.” You gulped down water as she looked at you expectantly, leaning into her touch and sighing heavily when she took the glass away. “Oh my god, let’s go do karaoke!”

“Good morning!” Darcy dropped the greasy burrito bag in front of you and chuckled when you heaved and buried your head in your arms. “How are we feeling today?”

“I shouldn’t be at work.” You winced when you picked your head up and the lights made your brain throb, grumbling as you pulled your breakfast out of the bag and started unwrapping it. “Why did you let me have tequila?”

“You forget that no one ‘lets’ you do anything.” Darcy sank into the chair next to yours and logged on, still giving you that shit eating grin that you hated. “All of us tried numerous times to get the tequila away from you and you always tried to scratch our eyes out. How much of last night do you remember?”

“I remember Troy being a fucking douchebag, setting up at the bar, and then…” you froze with a mouthful of burrito when panic started to set in, heat flushing through your whole body as you barely remembered to swallow your food and images from last night flashed through your head. “Did… did I hit on Bucky’s best friend?”

“Oh, you did more than that.” You didn’t even notice Darcy’s chuckling, too horrified at yourself to smack her like you normally would. “You serenaded her. You practically gave her a lap dance while you sang ‘Do You Wanna Touch’, I have it on video if you want to see.”

“Nooooooooo…” you were going to run away and become a mountain hermit, you could not believe you had made such an ass out of yourself in front of probably the most beautiful woman on the planet who was so much older than you and tall and put together and that was it, your life was over.

“Yes, it was a great time, everyone enjoyed it.” Darcy gave you a pat on the back when you sobbed and banged your head against the desk. “It’s fine, everyone will call you Joan Jett for a couple of weeks and then one of the guys will do something stupider and they’ll forget all about it.”

“But I won’t forget, oh my fucking god!” You vaguely remembered the gorgeous redhead helping you into your Uber and smiling at you when you told her you were going to climb her like a tree and call her mommy, and suddenly it felt like your burrito was about to come back up. “How the fuck am I supposed to face Bucky?!?!?”

“Hi Joan!” Damn it, it was like you’d summoned him, at least his smile was tinged with sympathy when he handed you a bottle of Gatorade. “How’s your head?”

“Who cares, Bucky!” You wanted the ground to open up and swallow you. “Please tell me I didn’t sexually harass your friend to the point where she never wants to see you again.”

“Nat? Don’t worry about her, she had a great time.” You couldn’t decide if that should make you feel better or worse. “Said if all my parties with coworkers are like that she’s gonna have to try to make it to every single one of them.”

“Of course she did.” You hated your life, you were going to give up drinking and sex and only get your enjoyment from food from now on. “Who wouldn’t have a good time watching someone make an absolute buffoon out of themselves while they’re shit faced? Please tell me I never have to face that woman?”

Bucky was about to reassure you when the door behind him opened suddenly and you squeaked and dove under the desk, looking over his shoulder and sighing when Nat was there. She looked relaxed and incredibly pleased with herself, nodding at Bucky when he sighed with exasperation and coming to lean on the counter right above where you were hiding while she chuckled as you asked if she was gone yet.

“Hey, cutie?” Nat was trying not to laugh too much when you squeaked again then whined when the table thumped after you cracked your head against it. “Sweetheart, I think you might be missing your wallet.”

You were, you hadn’t been able to find it this morning and ended up hopping the turnstile so you could make it to work on time. Nat was giving you what you could only describe as a look of warm amusement when you finally crawled out from underneath the desk to face her, she was so gorgeous, and you looked like warmed over vomit, this was potentially the worst day of your life. She was holding your wallet between two fingers as she smirked at you, watching you closely while you took it from her and biting her lip in a way that didn’t make you feel anything.

“Where did you find it?” She was freaking you out, you couldn’t get a read on her.

“Hmm, you gave it to me.” You had shoved it down the front of her costume, but seeing how small you looked right now made her think it might not be the best idea to bring that fact up. “You said you were going to give me your card and told me to call you, then gave me the whole wallet.”

“My card? It’s not the nineties.” You hated your life. “Thank you for bringing it back, you could’ve just given it to Bucky, though.”

“But then I couldn’t have seen you again.” That smile was going to knock you on your ass, she was so unnerving. “And I’d take any excuse to see a pretty thing like you.”

“Shut up.” You rolled your eyes and scoffed when she winked at you, what a fucking tease. “Don’t flirt with me, I already feel like shit.”

“That’s not what I want, sweetheart.” She couldn’t get enough of that sassy look on your face, just wanted to eat you up. “You should feel good all the time.”

“Bucky, tell your friend I have to work.” You tried not to feel too warm and bubbly when she kept grinning at you, play flirting was not what you needed right now. “But thank her for bringing my wallet back.”

“You are so very welcome, sweet girl.” She shook her head as she straightened back up. “Pretty as a peach. Let’s go get some coffee, Barnes. You ladies want anything?”

“No thanks.” Darcy still had that damn grin on her face once they were gone and now you were itching to smack her. “Um, why were you rude to someone who was clearly hitting on you?”

“She was not hitting on me.” You snorted as you started digging back into your burrito and focusing on your screen. “Have you seen her? She’s an amazon sex goddess, she’s not going to hit on me.”

“You… oh my god, you’re so fucking stupid.” Darcy wanted to bang her head against the wall, you were too stubborn for your own good. “She’s into you.”

“No she’s not.”

“She is, you fucking moron.”

“She is not, you balloon chested bimbo.”

“Hey!” Darcy balled up a tissue and threw it at you, sticking her tongue out when you scowled at her. “That was mean, you lollipop guild reject. And yes she is.”

“You wanna tell me what exactly you’ve been doing these past few months?” Bucky frowned at Nat when she tried to act like she was paying attention to the game behind him and sipped her beer innocently.”

“Not quite sure what you mean.” She knew exactly what he meant, but she wasn’t going to admit to anything when he was giving her that stern father look.

“Uh-huh.” Bucky loved her, but getting the woman to open up was like trying to crack a walnut with his bare hands. “Don’t think I’ve seen you around the precinct so much since I started there.”

“I’m just helping my clients.” She should’ve ordered vodka if she knew the conversation was heading this way. “It’s my job.”

“Every single client that comes through the 82?” Bucky tapped the bar top while she still avoided his gaze. “Because I seem to remember Matt and Maria handling most of them, since you’re the face of the firm.”

“Excuse me for taking a more hands on approach.” Nat managed to flag down the bartender and finally ordered her vodka. “I’m a philanthropist.”

“You’re full of shit.” Bucky rolled his eyes when she just shrugged. “You need to spend so much time at the front desk every time you come in?”

“I have to fill out paperwork.” She sipped on her new drink and sighed as she finally turned her attention to him. “And it’s nice chatting with the girls.”

“Both of them?” He tried not to grin when she blushed and stared at the bottom of her glass, reaching out to cover her hand with his and giving her a small squeeze. “Natasha, you haven’t slept with anyone in two months.”

Nat hated when Bucky looked at her like that, like he knew all her secrets better than she did. Of course she’d been hanging around the precinct and flirting like an idiot, she couldn’t stop thinking about you. Feisty, sassy, ‘take no shit from anyone’ you. Everything about you was so fucking cute, especially when you gave her that massive fucking attitude whenever she flirted with you. All she wanted was to pick you up and kiss you stupid to get you to quit running that smart mouth. She thought she’d done a good job of hiding her feelings, though.

Damn Bucky for being able to read her like a damn book.

“That doesn’t mean anything.” It meant everything, she loved sex, but she didn’t want to have it with anyone else. “I’m busy.”

“Would you quit lying.” Bucky leaned forward and bonked her head with his, smiling when she pouted at him and kissing her cheek. “You have big feelings for the little lady, so why don’t you admit it and finally ask her out?”

All she wanted was to ask you out, but it fucking terrified her.

Which was ridiculous. She could have anyone she wanted with the crook of her finger. Men and women fell on their fucking knees for the chance at just one night with her. They would eat out of the palm of her hand and they would thank her when she sent them on their way with just a cup of coffee and a fancy pastry in the morning.

But you?

You weren’t interested. Every time she flirted you would just dismiss her and tell her you had too much to do, even when you called her beautiful. You would always call her mean for being such a tease and tell her the only reason you let her get away with that shit is because she was so gorgeous. Even after so many months she hadn’t worn you down at all, which was kind of cute, but also ridiculously frustrating. All she had managed was to glean some small kernels of personal information from you and hold onto them like they were the most precious things in the world, because damn it, she wanted to know everything about you.

“It’s just nice right now.” Nat rested her head on Bucky’s shoulder and blew out an exasperated breath. “If I don’t ask, she can’t say no.”

“That’s what you’re scared of?” Bucky kissed the top of her head when she nodded. “Holy shit, babe. I don’t think you’ve ever even considered rejection a possibility, this is one for the books.”

“Shut up.” Nat scrunched up her face when he wound his arm around her and gave her a squeeze. “She’s so fucking cute, it freaks me out.”

“Yeah.” He took a sip of his beer while he thought things over, rubbing her shoulder absentmindedly and chewing on his lips. “You’ve gotta ask though, I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

“You’re in such a fucking snit.” Darcy frowned at you after you snapped at her for nothing, rolling her eyes when you just sniffed and ignored her. “Just because your crush hasn’t been here in a whole week, you giant sap.”

“I’m not a sap, shut up.” You huffed and crossed your arms under your breasts with a pout. “I’m PMSing.”

“God, you’re a liar.” She tapped her fingers against the desk irritably when you just kept up the petulant facade. “You want to see her, you’re mad she hasn’t been around, admit it.”

“I. Said. Shut. Up.” You wanted to kick her under the desk, she was so annoying. “I admit nothing.”

“Ugh, whatever, brat.” Darcy turned away from you when someone came up to the desk, grinning when she saw it was Bucky and ignoring your grumbling. “Hiya Bucky! Why hasn’t your friend stopped by in such a long time? It’s annoying my girl, and she’s starting to piss me off with her attitude.”

“My friend… Nat?” Bucky smiled and snuck a peek at you when Darcy nodded, the petulant look on your face a reminder of the friend they were talking about who was also ridiculously stubborn. “She was out of the city for a case, but she’s back now.”

“Oh really?” Darcy did not miss the way you straightened up a little at that, keeping her focus on Bucky while you tried to act like you weren’t listening. “Will she be stopping by anytime soon?”

“She’s actually coming by for lunch and should be here…” both of the meddlers grins got even wider when the door opened and the redhead walked in, ignoring her intrigued stare and turning back to each other. “Speak of the devil. Yours gonna quit being so snotty now?”

“Probably not.” Your squawked ‘snotty?’ was not acknowledged, Darcy still focused on Bucky and decidedly fed up with you being such a stubborn ass. “Don’t think she’ll quit being such a whiny little asshole until yours actually goes on a date with her.”

“Well, Nat was supposed to go out for drinks with me Friday but, gosh, I just remembered I have to wash my hair.” Now Bucky was ignoring Nat when she sighed indignantly. “So her night just freed up, isn’t yours off work?”

“Yes she is.” You were making so many offended noises but Darcy was past caring. “Seven o’clock should work well. Gimme her phone.”

“Yep.” Bucky managed to snatch it out of Nat’s hand before she could react, unlocking it and handing it to Darcy while she grabbed yours and did the same. “I’ll make sure she texts.”

“Me too.” Darcy winked when Bucky gave your phone back to her, waving when he ushered Nat out before she had a chance to protest then turning to beam at you while you just blinked stupidly. “You’re welcome, dumbass.”

Nat had been staring at your door for three minutes.

Her nerves were being ridiculous. This was just a date. She went on dates all the time.

But this was with you.

It had taken a day for her to finally text you the word hi, then another day for you to text her hi back. And then it was like the floodgates had opened. The next three days the two of you were constantly talking whenever you had a moment, finding out everything about each other that you could and Nat smiling whenever a notification popped up like she was a fucking schoolgirl. She was utterly infatuated with you, it was freaking her out. And she loved it.

She finally knocked, holding her breath while she waited for you and grinning when she heard you trip over something and curse. As soon as the door opened she felt like her heart was going to burst through her chest, you looked so fucking beautiful.

The look on her face was making you feel faint, like your tongue was too thick for your mouth and your brain couldn’t function while you gazed up at her and tried not to swoon. You couldn’t believe it was actually happening, that the last few months hadn’t been some colossal joke at your expense. This woman actually wanted to go out with you.

“Hi.” Her voice sounded so fucking sexy, she was going to kill you.

“Hi.” You couldn’t think of anything else to say, licking your lips and trying not to whine when she growled softly.

Next thing you knew you were pinned to the wall in your tiny little entryway with the plushest set of lips you’d ever felt smashed against yours, barely registering your apartment door slamming closed as you whined at the way your toes were barely brushing the floor as Nat wound her arms around your waist. Even when she started kissing down the curve of your neck, you could still hardly breathe, whining when she purred against your skin and trying to focus your eyes but failing miserably.

“Wait, Nat.” You whined when she ducked even lower to gently kiss along the tops of your breasts, gasping when she gave you a hungry look as she sucked a bruise against your skin. “Don’t we have a reservation?”

“Yeah… yeah we do. You say the word and we’ll go right now.” She smiled when you whimpered as she stood back up to her full height, resting her forehead against yours and breathing deeply as she settled her eyes on yours. “But the only thing I want to eat right now is that warm, wet prize between your legs, pretty thing.”

“Oh… wow.” You were pretty sure she was going to kill you, but you were absolutely fine with that. “We can stay.”

“Good girl.”

Natasha pressed her lips to yours and swallowed your yelp when she lifted you to wrap around her, her fingers digging into your hips while she carried you over to the couch. Her grin grew even wider when you let out a surprised huff at her dropping you onto the sofa, your breath getting shallow when she climbed on top of you and slipped her warm palms up your thighs and under your skirt.

“God, you’re so fucking soft.” She curled over you again and sucked on your lips until you moaned, slowly peeling your dress off you and biting her lip when you were finally bare to her gaze. “Beautiful.”

“Shut up.” You couldn’t help but giggle when she laughed at you trying to act coquettish while she had you at her mercy, sighing when she just kissed you and running your fingers up her spine. “Do I get to see you too and call you pretty?”

“When I’m done with my meal.” Nat bit your lip playfully before starting to kiss and lick every inch of your breasts, sucking on your nipples and tugging at them with her teeth while you could only make pathetic noises. “Wanna taste every fucking inch of you.”

“O-kay.” You hiccuped when she nuzzled at your stomach and squeezed your hips with a groan, your eyes fluttering closed when she trailed kisses along your curves. “Sounds great.”

“Mmhm.” She growled playfully and bit your thigh before smacking the side of your ass. “Flip over.”

You did what she asked, slowly rolling onto your stomach and whining when she grabbed two handfuls of your ass and squeezed. Then she smacked it again and you could have screamed, you throbbed so hard, her lips and teeth and tongue marking your sensitive skin until your eyes rolled back in your head.

“Nat…” you whimpered when she kept rubbing your ass and purring against your skin, arching your back and spreading your legs as she pulled your cheeks apart so she could stare at you. “Oh fuck, don’t stop.”

“Never. Fuck, you smell so good.” Nat buried her face between your thighs and groaned when she breathed you in deep, dragging her tongue over your slit agonizingly slow so she could taste all of you. “Jesus Christ, fucking peaches.”

There was no answer you could give her except a desperate mewl, letting yourself sink into the cushions when she slid her tongue inside your cunt and curled it. You feel like you were already losing your mind, panting like an idiot while she rubbed her nose against your cute little asshole and digging your fingers into the couch while she tongue fucked you until your whole body felt like one big spring that was wound too tight.

Your pussy was so fucking wet, Nat couldn’t seem to work her mouth fast enough to suck up everything that was dripping out of you, even with her lips wrapped around you so she didn’t miss anything. And the fact that you could hear all the obscene wet sloshes and slurps was not helping, your muscles spasming wildly as you felt it building up insanely fast.

“Fuck… oh fuck.” All you could do was let out a thin, high whine when you fell apart, your cunt fluttering against her lips and gushing into her mouth while she groaned at the taste of your cum. “Mommy…”

“Shit. You had me thinking you were never gonna actually say it, peach.” Nat grinned against you and hummed as she kept kissing your pussy like she could live off it. “Knew you’d be a good girl for mommy, knew this pussy would be so sweet for me. Why don’t you fuck it on my face, pretty girl? Make a goddamn mess out of me, mommy needs it.”

Yeah, she was definitely going to kill you. You reached back and buried your fingers in her hair as you started grinding your ass back into her face, biting the pillow under your face and whimpering when her tongue flicked against your clit. Then her thumb teased against your asshole and your brain broke, your hips writhing wildly when she sucked on your clit until you almost came before she pulled back with a wicked grin.

“Knew you’d like that, just look at you.” Nat bit her lip when she watched your little hole wink at her as she spat on it, her thumb circling the tight ring of muscle slowly and listening to your pathetic sounds as she kept flicking her tongue over your slit like a tease. “These are all mommy’s holes now, peachy girl. Gonna spoil the shit out of you.”

The way you gasped when she slid her thumb into your ass and started flitting her tongue around it was making Natasha clench, her thighs squeezing together when you shoved your hips back even more and yanked on her hair so she was practically suffocating you. She didn’t realize how much she was going to enjoy you completely losing it for you and using her just so you could get off, deciding very quickly that she was going to need to turn you into a mess all the time.

You were going to come again. All the buildup and how fucking sexy she sounded when she moaned and slurped and spat and just, all of it. Damn her and her incredible mouth and how fucking hot she was. And damn you for turning into such a fucking melty mess for her, though who could really blame you for that.

“Mommy please.” You whimpered when she kept fucking your ass with her thumb as her other hand began playing with your clit and you couldn’t help but kick your feet as you felt yourself teetering on the edge again. “Please, wanna come for mommy, need it.”

“Mmm, mommy needs it too, pretty baby.” Nat nipped at the soft skin that was twitching around her thumb while her other hand pinched your clit until you squeaked. “Come for me, sweet girl, let mommy drink from this perfect little pussy, oh my fucking god.”

You almost screamed when she ducked low to suck on your swollen clit, pulling on her hair and screwing your eyes closed while your body started shaking uncontrollably. Nat groaned when you started gushing all over her face, wrapping her mouth around your soft lips and swallowing everything you gave her with a low moan that sent a shiver up your spine. She loved that you couldn’t stop moving against her face as you rode it out, determined to be able to watch your face the next time she made you come and every single time after that.

Her lips spread in a slow smile when you kept shivering as she pulled back from your sex, moving her hands to knead your cheeks deeply while she rested her head against your hip and watched you ride it out. You couldn’t do anything except chirp and let your body sink into the couch, barely having the energy to turn your face and peek over your shoulder at her while a sloppy grin split your face.

“Hiiiiiiii.” Again, you couldn’t think of what else to say, especially since your brain was still mostly offline after two incredible orgasms that were better than anything any man had ever given you.

“Hey baby.” She couldn’t stop smiling as she crawled up your body and nuzzled at your cheek, purring happily when you let out a small sound of satisfaction and wrapping her arms around your waist to hold you as close as possible. “My sweet girl. I do feel a little bad about us missing dinner, but I couldn’t control myself.”

“Listen, that’s fiiiiiine with me.” You let her flip you onto your back and pulled her face to yours so you could lose yourself even more in kissing her. “You can kill me with orgasms tonight and it will be a very happy death.”

“You might be fine with that, but I’m not.” Nat chuckled into your mouth when you just gave her a pitiful little whimper. “Sorry, I’m kinda addicted to that pussy now, sweet peach. I’d get all bummed out if I didn’t have access to it for the rest of my life.”

“Oh, well.” You were not used to this level of attention, and it was even worse when you were in such a state of euphoria. “That’s okay too.”

“Good.” She pecked you once more before sitting up over you, gushing you when you whined at the lack of contact before winking when you swallowed audibly at the sight of her body when she pulled her dress over her head. “Now, should we take a bath before or after I rub my pussy all over yours until I come inside you?”

[allurilove]

What if reader had more money then anyone in the school though 🥹

Yearbook guy can’t threaten her or use his power because she has more. It would actually be funnier if everyone knew she had some money but not the extent of her wealth and if he tries something she uses her connections to teach him a lesson. Like personally reporting him to the school board or the principal. What is he gonna do? Also I find it funny how men try to get women to be submissive because they have money but she actually has more than his family lol. I can imagine him continuing to pester her and since telling him he looks like he’s a cheater didn’t work she just calls him a broke bitch with bad art skills. He should’ve paid for an art teacher instead of that horrible cologne.

WHAT IS HAPPENING?? It’s like i just unlocked a whole swarm of yearbook guy haters LMAOO I legit just cackled while reading that. Do yall really hate him that much? I mean it’s totally understandable, BUT DAMN. So glad I’m not him rn.

Yandere Classmate

(Yearbook guy)

“I never claimed to be a good artist darling.” He shrugged. He sighed as he pulled up a chair out of thin air, and he sat down as you berate him.

“I’m aware of my limits. There’s only so far I can go with a face like this.” Your classmate sighed.

He gingerly rubs his hand that you smacked. He shouldn’t have tried to silence you, and you were quite more feisty than he thought. He rolled his eyes as you threatened to call the cops on him with the evidence you had on him, and he wasn’t that phased. Jail can’t keep him away from you forever. Unless he does get life, but his lawyers were pretty good.

You could report him all you want. His father and the principal are close friends, they go golfing together. Your classmate wonders if anyone would believe you anyways, he’s tempted to actually just let you be a blabber mouth.

“So what if you’re richer than me? That just gives me more of a reason to be with you, I mean think of the life we can build together.” Your classmate raised his brow, “Say, why don’t you let me formally meet your parents. How about that, hmm?”

[worldofheroes]

It’s the Glasses

ethan hunt x fem!reader

summary: your lawyer gets you out of a sticky situation… and then back into one.

warnings: 18+, angst, language, unprotected sex

wc: 1.1k

a/n: based on this request! It has a little more angst than I intended but here we are 😂 I also had reader say Ethan’s name so much I didn’t realize lol. Hope y’all like it!

“I’m not going to tell you anything. Get me a lawyer,” you tell the men in the interrogation room.

The men sigh, and then leave the room.

You fidget in your seat, the handcuffs being too tight on your wrists.

The door to the room opens again.

“Well your lawyer just showed up,” one man says.

“What? You got me a lawyer already?” you ask.

“He says you’re a client of his.”

The door opens further to reveal Ethan, dressed in slacks, a white shirt and a vest… and is he wearing glasses?

“Right,” you sigh. “Thank you.”

The door closes, leaving you and Ethan alone.

“What are you doing here?” you ask Ethan.

“What am I doing here? I’m saving your ass,” Ethan says, sitting down across the table from you and taking his glasses off.

“You look good in those glasses,” you smirk.

Ethan rolls his eyes. “I’m gonna get you out of here.”

“You better, this is your fault.”

“It is not my fault!”

“Just get me out of here, Ethan.”

Ethan nods and leaves the room. Minutes later, the men come back, with Ethan behind them.

“It looks like you’re free to go,” one of them says.

“What?” you ask.

“You got a good lawyer,” the other says as he uncuffs you.

Ethan gestures for you to leave the room, which you do.

The two of you get into a car, and Ethan starts driving.

“How did you do that?”

“I told them you were a brat and not worth their time,” Ethan smiles.

“You little…” you say, punching Ethan’s arm. “I am NOT a brat!”

“Sure.”

You sit back in your seat, crossing your arms.

“If that’s not brat behavior, I don’t know what is,” Ethan teases you.

“Stop!” you whine.

“Okay, okay,” Ethan replies.

A silence falls between the two of you for a bit.

“You seriously liked the glasses?” Ethan asks out of the blue.

“What?” you reply, taken aback by his question.

“The glasses. You liked them?”

“Fuck, Ethan.”

“What?”

“Yes, I liked the glasses,” you sigh.

“Yeah?”

“Ethan, I know what you’re trying to do.”

“What am I trying to do?”

“I’m already fucking turned on, you don’t have to get me there.”

Ethan chuckles. “Alright.”

He pulls into a parking spot at the hotel. Turning the car off, he shifts in his seat so he can look at you.

“Ethan.”

“All I did was save you and wear these glasses,” he says, putting the glasses back on.

“Let’s just get to the room,” you mutter, getting out of the car.

You and Ethan have a complicated relationship. Not only are you about 20 years younger, but being in the field all the time leaves little to no opportunity for dating. And, the natural consequence is the two of you getting sexually frustrated.

You hate to admit it, but you didn’t mind the nights you hooked up with Ethan.

Upon entering your room, you find that there’s a single queen.

“Great,” you mumble.

“Hey, relax, okay?” Ethan steps behind you, rubbing your shoulders.

You close your eyes and take a deep breath. You’re safe, you don’t have to be running on adrenaline.

“Good girl,” Ethan whispers, gently kissing your ear.

“Ethan,” you sigh.

Ethan hums against your skin as he kisses down your neck. You feel the glasses press into your skin as he moves his way down.

“You’re really using those glasses to your advantage,” you mumble.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“You son of a bitch.”

“Watch your language.” Ethan nips at the skin where your neck and shoulder meet.

“Ethan,” you sigh again.

You stay there for a moment, allowing Ethan to continue to give you hickeys along your neck.

You turn around to face Ethan.

“What?” he asks you.

You shrug, starting to undo the buttons of his vest.

“You’re bad, you know that?” Ethan says.

“Mm,” you reply. “But I’m not the one who showed up in a slutty lawyer outfit.”

“This is not slutty.”

You loosen his tie.

“This looks slutty to me.”

“You made me look slutty.”

“You didn’t stop me,” you smile, leaning up and kissing Ethan.

He wraps a strong arm around you, pulling you flush against his chest.

“Ethan,” you breathe.

Ethan studies your face before he leans in and kisses you again, this time a little harder.

He bites your lip, making you moan. As your mouth opens a little wider, Ethan’s tongue dips in, dancing with yours.

At this point, you’re a horny mess. You practically rip his tie off, and you hastily unbutton his shirt.

Ethan tosses the glasses to the side as he gently lays you down on the bed.

“No more glasses?” you pout.

“They’ll just get in the way,” he mumbles as he takes your shirt off and begins to kiss your bare skin.

You sigh as Ethan kneads one of your breasts, and sucks on the other.

“Ethan,” you moan, “please just get to the point.”

Ethan chuckles. “Needy girl.”

“Fuck, I told you those glasses turned me on.”

“I didn’t realize it would turn you on this much.”

You whimper as he brushes his hand past your own throbbing center.

He swiftly takes yours and his own pants off, followed by underwear, leaving both of you completely naked.

Your hips buck up towards him, wanting him to make his move.

“Okay, okay,” he says softly.

You watch him as he gathers saliva to coat his hard cock and give it a couple strokes.

He lines himself up to your entrance and slowly pushes into you.

“Fuck,” you moan, closing your eyes.

“You’re so fucking tight,” Ethan growls as he very slowly works his way in.

Your walls stretch to accommodate his size. Soon, he bottoms out against you.

“Shit,” Ethan sighs, hanging his head. “You always feel so fucking good.”

“Fuck, Ethan.”

Ethan nuzzles his face in your neck, kissing it.

You grip his shoulders, moaning with pleasure.

“Good girl,” he mutters.

As he continues, you feel the familiar sensation of your orgasm building.

“Ethan,” you whimper. “Ethan, I’m gonna come!”

“Mm, I like the sound of that.”

“Fuck!” you exclaim as you come on Ethan’s cock.

“Shit, y/n,” Ethan says, hips stuttering as he comes in you.

Ethan practically collapses on top of you.

“Ethan,” you giggle, kissing his cheek.

Ethan rolls off of you and pulls you into him.

“All of this because of the glasses?” Ethan asks with a chuckle.

“I can’t help it,” you smile, kissing him.

“This is some good information.”

“You’re gonna use this against me, aren’t you?”

“I might.”

“Fuck off, Ethan!”

“Mm, no,” Ethan smiles, kissing your head.

“You idiot.”

Ethan laughs again. “I think we should clean up and go to bed.”

“What an old man.”

“You know you’re rude, right?”

You smile and kiss him again. The two of you get up and shower before crawling back into bed, where Ethan pulls you against his body.

The sound of Ethan’s heartbeat lulls you to sleep, content in his arms.

[pretending-ican-write]

Cowboy Up - Pt.9

This all of S1E2. Enjoy! I'll see y'all in a couple of weeks for the next part. Lemme know if you wanna be added to the tag list!

Pairing: Ryan (Yellowstone) x Dutton!reader

Previous part - Next part

---

A few days had passed since Lee’s funeral and life on the Yellowstone was starting to return to normal.  Y/n was next to Rip against the fence of the round pen watching as Kayce’s horse put John into the sand.

“That is some gift,” the foreman commented.

She watched uncomfortably as the stallion careened around the pen and into the gate before successfully unseating John again.

“That’s one rank son of a bitch right there.  You ought to take him chest high in the river see how much buck he’s got then,” Rip suggested.

John shook his head, “this is a job for a young man with rubber bones.  That horse will make a hand out of someone.”

“Don’t recall him exploding on Kayce like that,” she commented pointedly when she pushed off the fence to collect Jimmy for his unfortunate job.

All the hands had gathered around the round pen to watch the scene that was about to unfold.  On either side of y/n were Ryan and Colby who did not share her concern for Jimmy as he was duct taped to the saddle.  In her head she was already planning on how to tell her brother what was going on with his ‘gift’.

“20 on the horse,” Ryan bet.

Colby added his own bet, “I got 40 on the wall.”

Y/n rolled her eyes at them and punched them both in the arm.  She caught the roll of tape that John threw their way and ran it through her hands nervously.

“I’d expect some resistance,” Ryan commented sarcastically, causing his girlfriend to groan.

Jimmy looked over at them, “define resistance.”

A level of unease settled in the pit of y/n’s stomach as she watched as the stallion twisted himself in knots in an attempt to unseat Jimmy.  Ryan placed a hand at the small of her back, rubbing to comfort her.  She smiled gratefully at him before pulling out a cigarette to light.

“I do not miss being low man,” he joked as the horse continued to throw shapes.

John looked over at them, “low man’s what turns you into cowboys, it’ll make him one too.”

“I don’t recall you ever getting strapped to a horse tryna kill you when you was low man Ry,” y/n teased.

Colby gave her shoulder a shove, “you wouldn’t have noticed if he was ‘cause you’d have been too busy staring at his ass.”

“Shut the fuck up Colby.  Dad is right there he’ll hear you,” she hissed.

After a short while, the rest of the hands returned to their jobs around the barn, leaving just John and Rip against the round pen fence.  Y/n rode out past the corral with Lloyd to check on the herd, a horrible feeling in her gut about how it might end.

-/-/-

An hour or so later, y/n had returned from checking cattle to see that Jimmy was still strapped to the stallion.  At least it seemed to be coming to an end as he was no longer broncing the whole way round and just cantering.  After putting Comanche away, she returned to the round pen to join Ryan and Colby on the fence.  Ryan adjusted himself so that his arm was behind her back which she leant into.

“Well you’re almost a winner,” Colby said, looking at how the horse was starting to flag.

Ryan watched on, “day ain’t over yet.”

Y/n looked over to where Jamie had joined her father and Rip by the fence.  He was clearly in ‘lawyer mode’ and watched as they exchanged words before heading to the barn to continue their conversation.

“You gonna see what that’s about?” Her boyfriend asked.

She shook her head, “I’m not getting involved in any of that stuff.”

The boys left her alone on the fence where she watched Jimmy carefully, waiting for the horse to finally stop out of exhaustion.

Eventually, after what seemed like far too long for y/n, and several cigarettes later, the stallion finally came to a halt in the centre of the round pen.  She rushed off the fence to help Rip undo the tape around the stirrups and caught Jimmy when he collapsed off the horse.  

“You good?” She asked when they reached the side of the round pen.

Jimmy coughed, “I think I might be dead.”

“Welcome to cowboying,” y/n joked, “this whole fucking thing was uncalled for though.  Poor horse never gave Kayce any problems on the rez.”

He looked at her confused, “Kayce?”

“My twin brother, the most outcast Dutton.  He lives on the reservation with his wife and my nephew. Apparently the horse is some sort of gift but I can’t see how,” she explained.

She followed Jimmy back towards the barn, opting to take out the colt she’d been working with to see how he was coping with everything.  The familiar routine of grooming and tacking the horse up helped soothe the anger under her skin.

When she passed John still stood at the round pen she spoke, “I’m taking this one out.  Might miss dinner, don’t wait up for me.”

Y/n didn’t wait for her dad to respond, instead mounting up and taking off towards the mountains.

-/-/-

A few hours later, y/n had found a spot by the creek to sit and watch the sunset.  The colt had responded well to the work she’d been doing with him and was currently grazing close to her.  As she sat facing the mountains, listening to the creek and noises from the forest, y/n thought through the chaos of the last few weeks.  She felt exhaustion deep in her bones, the loss of Lee sinking in.

Her thoughts were disrupted by the sound of a horse picking its way through the grass to her spot by the water.  She looked around to see Ryan dismounting, leaving his horse to graze by the colt.  They didn’t exchange any words as he sat down beside her, they’d spent long enough together that he didn’t need to ask how she was to know all that was going through her mind.  Ryan slipped off his jacket and put it round her shoulder.  Y/n slipped her arms into it, reveling in the warmth and smell of his cologne wrapping around her.

“Seems you’ve worked your magic on him,” he said after a little while.

She nodded, “told you he just needed to work out how to trust himself.  He’ll make a good ranch horse in a few years.”

“You eaten anything since breakfast?” Ryan asked, knowing she would be avoiding the main house.

Y/n shook her head, “told dad not to wait up for me.”

He stood up, brushed the grass off his jeans and held his hand out to her expectantly.  She raised her eyebrows at him curiously but took his hand anyway, allowing herself to be pulled up.  They made their way to where the horses were quietly minding their own business and mounted up.

“Race you back to the barn?” Ryan challenged.

Y/n smiled, “you’re on.  I’ll warn you though, this boy has got some speed in them.”

Without waiting for a countdown, she clicked the colt forward into a lope and Ryan laughed, taking off after her.

-/-/-

After having dinner in the bunkhouse, y/n was sat at the table with Lloyd playing solitaire.

“Your father not gonna question why you’re having dinner and spending your evenings with us not up at the house?” He asked.

Y/n looked up from her cards, “it was part of the deal when I moved back in that he doesn’t get to question where I spend my time.  This is where my friends are.  Besides, the less time I’m in the same room as my sister the better for everyone concerned.”

She was distracted from their conversation by Ryan exiting the bathroom with his towel around his waist.

“You ain’t exactly subtle there darling,” Lloyd teased her, “everyone gonna know if you keep ogling him like that.

Y/n laughed, “after 8 years being subtle about my ogling I think I’m entitled to stare at my boyfriend if I want to.”

Their game of solitaire was disrupted by Fred pulling Jimmy off his bunk and pulled his shirt down to reveal the still healing ‘Y’ on his chest.  She made to interrupt the exchange but Lloyd gently pushed her back into the chair to deal with it.  Ryan headed over to her, dropping into Lloyd’s empty chair and draping an arm over the back of her chair.

“I’m not a fan of you being here while Fred’s around,” he voiced, “guy’s an asshole.”

She smiled at him, “sounds very overprotective of you Ry.”

“Waited years to voice it out loud sweetheart, can’t blame me for it,” Ryan pointed out.

They sat in quiet for a little while, Ryan pointing out where a card could go every so often but otherwise just enjoying being in each other’s company.  When she’d finished her game, y/n gathered her stuff and bid goodbye to the hands to return to the house for the night.  Ryan grabbed his jacket to walk her back.

“I didn’t ask before but I’m gonna now,” he started, “are you okay?”

She took a deep breath, “no.  I don’t know what I’m feeling but it certainly isn’t okay.  It feels like everyone else has moved on from him dying already.  They’re all so focused on burning the world down that it feels like they never actually stopped to mourn, y’know?  For 8 years it felt like he was my only ally in that godforsaken house and now he’s just… gone.  And I never got to say goodbye or tell him how much he meant to me.  Now I never get to have a conversation with my big brother again.”

“Oh sweetheart,” he hugged her tightly when they stopped in front of the house, “that’s a lot going on in that head of yours.”

They parted ways and Ryan watched her close the door behind her before he headed back to the bunkhouse.  Y/n headed through the house to her room, stopping in the living room when she saw the fire was still going on and John was sat with a glass of whiskey.

“Everything okay dad?  I told you not to wait up for me.”

John looked over at his youngest daughter, “not exactly.  It looks like we’re gonna have to cremate Lee.

“Just one question, do the ends justify the means?” She asked.

He sighed at her loaded question, “it’s to protect Kayce.”

“Whatever it takes to protect him,” y/n responded, “I don’t want to know anymore that could incriminate her.  Lee would understand why especially after all these years.  It’s about time you protected Kayce too.  Goodnight dad.”

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