Winner: The Mathesons Book 4

by Declan Rhodes

  After a short pause, Benji said, “It’s been great talking, but I need to go for now. Christian’s standing up against the counter with his arms folded over his chest. I think he’s ready to bake the cookies, and I made him wait. I’m picky about the size and spacing.”

  “Well, that’s okay. I’m busy here, too. Eat an extra cookie for me. I wish I were there to grab one. Those are my favorite. Say hi to Christian, too. I hope to meet him someday soon.”

  “I could get him on the phone. Boston’s a long way away.”

  “No, not that. I need to travel to the East Coast one of these days. I’m still a Southern California boy at heart, so it can’t be in the winter.”

  “You’re always welcome here. Christian is always happy to sleep on the couch when there’s a guest. Have a great night, and thanks for the call. Love you, Jamie.”

  “Love you, too, Benji.”

  As I hung up from the call, I stuffed the phone into my pocket and looked around my loft apartment. It was in a stellar location near downtown. My oldest brother, Mason, helped me pick it out when I first moved to Dallas. He said, “I know it looks big now, but once you get all your furniture in place, that will tone the size down quite a bit.”

  He was right to a point. The twelve-foot-high ceilings still made the space look huge, and I had a large, empty area in the center of the open concept. I thought that another massive sectional sofa would fit with room left over. At the moment, I felt that I would happily settle for something a little smaller filled with the sounds of a companion, either human or with four legs. My lease didn’t allow dogs.

  Two-and-a-half years back when I first moved to Dallas, I thought I’d finally shed any kind of family bonds that held me down. Truly on my own for the first time, I was ready to set the city on fire.

  With substantial financial support from my parents, I partied on the weekends and sometimes brought home two different guys, one for Friday night, and one for Saturday. They were usually gone by 8:00 a.m., and I had a free weekend day to recover and get ready for the next night out.

  It was a good life, and it was even stable by comparison with my brothers when Benji stumbled into a reclusive life, and Tate was still reeling from his breakup with Simon. Now, with Tate and Simon on the way to marriage and Benji happy as a clam with Jax, it felt like I was running a mile on the track with my brothers, and I was half a lap behind with less than half the race left to go. It was high time for me to make a move and start closing that gap.

  Gloria’s warning at work was an apt one. I talked a good game about my stellar reputation. I learned that from Mason. If I said something often enough—no matter how ridiculous—it was likely to turn out to be true. Unfortunately, I knew that recently I’d acquired more than a just few spots of tarnish that flattened my glow. Honest thoughts told me that the slight discoloration was in danger of turning to rust.

  I’d been late so many times in the past year that I lost count. When I said that I would make the time up, that was an accurate statement. I always did, but I also knew that punctuality was impressive to the bosses that ran Star One. Habitual lateness looked like I didn’t care.

  Grabbing my laptop computer off the desk by the door, I settled onto the leather sofa in the living room space I carved out of one corner of the loft. I flipped open the top and pulled up the private employee section of Star One’s website.

  An ID page on Angelo Moretti filled the screen. He had a community college degree from the Dallas area, and he’d participated in a handful of juried art shows. That was the sum total of the relevant information listed.

  I stared at the photo. Angelo wasn’t so hard on the eyes. I wasn’t certain that he was gay, but that would be my first guess if I met him on the street. Fortunately, he looked different from the standard gay barflies. So many of those guys were variations on one theme. Severely lacking in personality, they could have been robots created by Benji out in Boston.

  I knew that Angelo was different. I hoped he was talented, too. Star One wouldn’t have hired him if he didn’t have impressive basic art skills.

  I pulled up my email client and decided it was time to set up the work meeting. I could have waited until the next morning, but my impulse to tackle the issue was strong. I typed and edited the message three different times until I had something very simple and direct.

  It read:

  Hey Angelo,

  I know that it’s not technically work time, but I thought I’d go ahead and send a quick message. We need to get together and start rolling with our competition campaign. I’ve heard from a couple of the guys that they already have their basics roughed out. They’ve got slogans and the first slots in the storyboard set up. How about lunch tomorrow, and then an option to meet in the afternoon?

  Jamie

  I hit the send button, and then I picked up the remote to turn the TV on. A few minutes later, I rose from the couch to retrieve a drink from the kitchen. Before I was halfway there, I heard a tone. Surely not.

  When I returned with a bottle of beer in hand, I saw that Angelo answered. He was ready for the meeting, and he even suggested a deli a couple of blocks away from our offices. The explanation for his choice was the sentence, “We’ll have more privacy.”

  4

  Angelo

  I pushed back against my dad’s recliner and let it pull my feet up off the floor. He was still busy in the restaurant downstairs acting as host for the evening while Mom kept an eye on the kitchen. It would probably be 11:00 p.m. before he climbed the steps to the family apartment.

  Tony and I helped earlier in the evening, but we had the rest of the night off. I handed him the TV remote and opened my laptop to check email and social media.

  Tony said, “I’ll watch something we both like ‘cause I’m a good brother and all.”

  “Don’t worry about that. I’m checking messages here, and it won’t be long before I head to bed. I’ve got a long day of work ahead tomorrow. Watch what you’d like.”

  “Do you know when I wish I were born?”

  Tony rarely stopped talking. Mom often claimed that he said, “Hi,” the moment he emerged from her womb and hadn’t stopped since.

  I said, “No, I don’t think I do.” Without looking up, I asked, “So when do you wish you were born.”

  “Oh, around 1955. I think all these 60s TV shows are nuts. I’d love to have seen them when they first came out. The music is fascinating, too—all of that psychedelic stuff. The movies were pretty wild. James Bond started then…”

  “And they would have drafted me.”

  “Aww, shit, that sucks,” said Tony. “I never think about things like that.”

  I looked up from the screen for a moment and watched my brother. He was wearing his fuzzy slippers again with a hot pink t-shirt and tight fitting neon-green gym shorts. His comfort with himself was inspiring. I couldn’t wait to see him mature into an adult.

  Tony glanced at me and pointed at the TV screen as soon as he noticed that I was paying attention. “It’s like that. I wish I had some kind of special power to stop time and take care of anything that I’d screwed up before everything started moving again. Wouldn’t that be amazing? I’d have a lot fewer problems. That’s for sure.”

  I heard the word problem and looked up. I always wanted to be the first in line to support Tony. “Did you say you’ve got problems? Is there something going on that you need to talk about?”

  He shrugged it off. “Why don’t we talk about when you’re going on your next date? There was a girl at table five tonight who had her eye on you during the whole dinner. She was pretty and probably around your age. How long’s it been? I don’t want my big brother turning into an old, grumpy bachelor.”

  I hadn’t dated a girl since my sophomore year in high school, and even then I knew that it was the wrong thing for me. I didn’t come out to anyone until I left home for college, and I had my first experiences with other men there. When I came back home, I wasn’t dating anyone, and I didn
’t see a reason to cause any family disruption by exploding a personal bombshell. They all assumed I was straight.

  I said, “I’m too busy for dating right now. I’m not in high school anymore. I have to work. That fills up a lot of space in my life.”

  “Why are you so engrossed in the computer all the time these days? Maybe you’ve got a profile out there on one of the online dating sites, and you didn’t tell me. Are you reading hot messages right now?”

  “No, I just got a message from Jamie Matheson. He’s the guy I’m working with on the company competition project. I think that qualifies as opposite of hot.”

  Tony suddenly turned his head and ignored the TV. “You didn’t tell me! Isn’t that the guy you were dreading? Isn’t he the one you’ve complained about in the past? You told me he got a free ride into the company, and you thought he was likely to end up with a corner office without having to do any work at all.”

  I sighed heavily as I read the message. “Yeah, that’s the one. Looks like he wants to have lunch tomorrow.”

  “How’s it going working with him so far?”

  “We haven’t started yet. How are we supposed to come up with a winning project when I can’t stand to look at that self-satisfied smirk on his face. And he’s too pretty. Damn, I’m getting all worked up, and I haven’t even agreed to lunch yet.”

  “He does seem to get my big brother worked up,” said Tony. “Usually, you’re totally Mr. Mellow. My friends wish they had a brother like you. I hear all their stories about brothers that are losers screwing around with their lives and getting kicked out of jobs. At least they figure out what not to do by watching their older siblings.”

  Tony continued on about himself. I appreciated that he didn’t focus on me. “It might be a little boring, but I hang out with the good kids. Someday, we’re going to take over the world.”

  I closed the laptop and decided that I’d answer Jamie’s message right away. I asked Tony, “Don’t you have anybody in your classes that looks great but you know underneath the smile and the clothes there’s a snake that’s willing to strike out at anybody they think is in their way? And all they care about is their own ideas and getting to the top of the class ahead of everybody else.”

  “Oh, man, yeah, but in this case, it’s a girl. I think you just described Morgan Gridley. We call her the preying mantis. That’s prey with an ‘e,’ so the meaning should be obvious.”

  I laughed out loud. I loved my little brother. He was cuter than me, and he was funnier, too. Someday he was going to be a millionaire selling his work in upscale Manhattan galleries. Then Mom and Dad could sell the restaurant and retire to Florida or wherever they wanted to go.

  “So, are you going to lunch with him tomorrow?” asked Tony.

  “I haven’t decided, but I want to get the answer back to him quickly.”

  “Not that you want my opinion, but I say yes.”

  I looked at my little brother. He was confident in his answer. “You reached that conclusion quickly. Why do you say that?”

  Tony leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “I know guys like Jamie can be slimy, and it can be horrible to try and work together, but what’s wrong with hitching yourself to a rising star? If he’s so good at climbing the ladder, why don’t you scootch up close and make sure you get a good look at how he does it? Then you can take off and zip right past him. Leave him in your dust.”

  “Because I don’t like the way he does it.”

  Tony shook his head. “You think you don’t like it. I bet you don’t know for sure.” It was time for a story from my little brother. “There was this guy named Shane in eighth grade with me. I pretty much despised him, but we had to work together on a project about the American colonies in Virginia.”

  I scratched my head. “Is this little diversion going somewhere? Right now, I don’t see the connection between Williamsburg and the Pop Orange soda that we’re trying to advertise.”

  Tony held up a hand. “Hang with me for a sec. I’m getting there. It is relevant. You’ll understand.”

  “Okay, so there was Shane…”

  “Well, our project turned out to be awesome. We got an A+ from the teacher, and you know those are rare for me. I get a little distracted. Anyway, the rest of the class immediately started to question how we did it. They accused Shane of getting his parents to do the work for him.”

  I said, “I hope they didn’t.”

  “No, what happened was Shane knew everything about the Virginia colonies. His family went there the summer before, and he was fascinated by all of it. I mean nuts about it. Shane had all of these brochures, and he didn’t have to read Wikipedia or anything like that. It was all in his head already. I learned a lot working on that project.”

  I tried to follow Tony’s reasoning. Sometimes it was a winding path to his point. I asked, “So what you’re saying is you think that maybe Jamie has something special that got him where he is that’s legit. Did I hear that right? Maybe it looks like he’s getting a free ride, but he’s actually the real thing?”

  “Uh, yeah, something like that, I guess. If he’s going to get all the attention anyway, why don’t you climb up by his side and make sure the spotlight finds you, too?”

  Tony’s comments did make some sense, but I still doubted the legitimacy of Jamie’s claims on his job. I knew that it would be hard for me to trust him.

  I said, “The other part of your story is the fact that Shane had access to other stuff that the rest of the kids in your class didn’t. It reminds me of Jamie being part of the family that runs the Matheson and Greene agency. They’re big players. I’d know a lot more about advertising already if I grew up with that.”

  “Matheson and Greene…aren’t they the company that did those ‘California Wild’ TV commercials? Those are awesome.”

  My jaw dropped. “How do you know that? Who goes around looking at the company behind a commercial campaign, and yeah, they are.”

  “Oh, I saw some of the images when the commercial came on TV, and I was curious about how they did them. I don’t want to do my art with only an old-fashioned brush and canvas. I’m going with technology, big brother. So I check out the tools used to create the work I like.”

  “Pretty damn smart. So, yeah, he’s got that in his background.”

  Tony nodded slowly. “I think that’s all the more reason to stay close. Maybe he’ll like working with you so much that he’ll invite you to California to see how a big company works.”

  My little brother was making some very valid points, but I was still stubborn inside. I didn’t trust Jamie Matheson, and I told myself that I only needed to tolerate him for two weeks. We’d finish our project, do a decent job, and then I could move on.

  I answered Jamie’s message and agreed to lunch. As I hit “send,” I thought about what his handsome face would look like as he read my message. I cringed when the thought of a smile spreading across his face gave me a woody. Glancing across the room, I hoped Tony didn’t notice. I was safe. He’d already moved on to focusing on the TV again.

  Tony pointed at the screen. “See, just like that! The whole world has stopped while she figures out how to get out of her latest mess. I do need to learn how to do that. I’d make the world a much better place. Usually, the good ideas are coming along right behind the bad.”

  5

  Jamie

  Angelo’s choice of the diner for lunch was a good one, but I wasn’t sure why he chose it. Looking down at the bowl set in front of him, I thought that he was like a rabbit grazing in a garden patch. I’d ordered my favorite—a pastrami sandwich on rye. My older brother, Tate, introduced me to the joys of pastrami when he returned home to Los Angeles after living in New York City. The sandwich arrived with the meat piled high and each slice of bread slathered with grainy brown mustard.

  I sighed. “Now that’s a man’s sandwich.”

  After my pronouncement, I glanced across the table to gauge Angelo’s reaction. He pretended that he
didn’t hear me and stabbed a hunk of romaine lettuce with his fork. As he took the next three bites, he didn’t look up from the table. Finally, sipping at his glass of iced tea, Angelo raised his head and scanned every person and place in the restaurant except me.

  I got the message loud and clear. I’d insulted him, and he wasn’t going to give me the satisfaction of knowing that he heard me.

  I was in for a long lunch meeting. For a moment, Benji’s personality entered my mind, and I wondered if maybe Angelo was just shy. Perhaps he wasn’t rejecting me. It was possible that was my assumption based on what I was likely to do.

  Benji had a hard time making eye contact when he first met new people. If the initial conversation went well, it didn’t take him long to warm up. If I ever needed proof that I was right about my twin brother, I could point to the fact that he eventually ended up in bed with Jax, the guy he was scared to meet in the first place.

  I cleared my throat and decided to make a valiant attempt to kick off the conversation. “So, are you on a diet or what? That’s one big bowl of green stuff.”

  My question and comment drew a reaction, but it wasn’t verbal. Angelo stared across the table at me and tilted his head slightly to the right. The expression said, “Are you kidding?”

  I started to backtrack. “Oh, damn, are you? I apologize if that’s the case. Still, I can’t see why you would be ‘cause you’re not fat.” My comment was truthful. Angelo didn’t look particularly muscular. It was hard to tell for sure beneath his baggy clothes that didn’t fit quite right, but I didn’t notice a belly bulge.