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They just let him in.
That’s what Mafee keeps thinking on the train back to Brooklyn, because it’s easier than dwelling on Taylor’s gonna kill me for doing that or Axe is gonna make sure I get killed or fired or blacklisted for that or those new Axe Cap security people are strong as hell. All those beefed-up security measures and airtight non-competes Axe supposedly put in place that had Rudy out on his ass for showing up to the Mase Cap picnic, and he didn’t think to make it any harder for Mafee to get back into the building by bringing back the ID bracelets they had for the last year at Westport, or handing out key cards instead, or hanging his picture in the first floor lobby captioned DO NOT ADMIT THIS MAN.
Or maybe Axe did think of it, and he decided he wanted Mafee to barge in to yell at Wendy one day without having to ask someone to get the door for him, and Mafee’s been getting played for even longer and from more sides than he realized. Fuck. That would be just like Axe.
He gets off at York Street and leaves the station with that in his head instead, following him through the six blocks back to Mase Cap. What replaces it when he gets there is Taylor’s car is still parked out front. The odds aren’t good on him wriggling out of being dressed down tonight if they haven’t left the office yet. Maybe it’s better this way. Rip off the Band-Aid at the end of the day, get a naturally fresh start tomorrow.
Mafee goes inside — thankfully the building doors are unlocked; he’s having crazy luck in avoiding standing out in the cold — and gets in the elevator. It’s like some kind of short-term déjà vu, watching the floor numbers tick up and half-expecting to get yelled at or dragged out, or to have to yell at someone else. He has to reassure himself that Wendy won’t be waiting there on the trading floor when he walks out. Though he wouldn’t mind if Ben were there, happy to see him even when everyone around him’s out for blood. It tears him up sometimes to remember that Ben could have worked at Mase Cap too if he’d just said yes when Taylor asked. He deserves way better than being under Axe’s thumb.
The doors open on darkness. All the lights in the office are off; only the streetlamps just outside, and the lights in the elevator, keep it from being pitch-black. Mafee steps out, squinting, and the farther he gets from the closing elevator, the more clearly he can see the shape of a person, sitting on the floor, leaning against one of the support pillars.
“Taylor?”
Their head turns. Mafee moves close enough to flip the light switch on the wall.
Of course it’s Taylor sitting there, curled up in a ball, arms around their knees. The office is empty otherwise, not that he’d expected anyone to be at their desk running trades in the dark. “You know everyone else went home, right?”
Taylor looks up at him, and oh, shit, they’re crying. Have been for a while, too, judging from their red eyes and blotchy face. They look so young.
Asking if they’re okay would be stupid, so Mafee doesn’t do that. “Did something happen?”
Taylor looks across the room, toward where he came in. Mafee follows their gaze to the temp office Douglas had claimed for himself the past few months — unoccupied now, desk totally bare.
Oh.
Wendy and Axe, and their cronies and mind games, they did this, meant to do it all along. Forget all those stupid things he was worrying about on the way here — now his only regret is that he didn’t swing faster and hit harder.
He turns back to Taylor and offers them a hand up. They stare at it for a few seconds before taking it, wincing as they stand, probably from being bent in half like that for God knows how long. Then they drop his hand and go in for a hug, clinging as tight to him as they’d been to themself. He doesn’t do hugs much, and never thought Taylor was the type to initiate them, but he does his best, patting their back and pretending he doesn’t hear them sniffling.
Eventually Taylor breaks the hug and straightens up, looking a little embarrassed and a little dazed, too, like they’ve been clocked in the head. They should both leave. “You wanna get out of here?”
A nod from Taylor, who isn’t quite looking at him. Mafee’s gonna have to drive this thing, then.
He steps into their office just long enough to grab their coat, hanging from the desk chair, and their briefcase, on the couch. Taylor’s right where he left them when he returns, holding out coat and briefcase and receiving a blank stare before they reach out to take both from him. Mafee hits the lights as they slip on the coat; he heads to the elevator, and they follow.
In the elevator, Taylor stands close to him. He weighs the pros and cons of putting an arm around them, to try to be comforting, but doesn’t come to a conclusion before they arrive on the ground floor.
The custodian who’s mopping in the lobby looks pissed at them for leaving the building so late. Mafee nods apologetically, tries to be quick about getting out, and sighs relief once they’re crossing the street to Taylor’s car, before he remembers that they still have to leave leave. No telling whether whatever’s going on in Taylor’s head allows for navigating traffic.
“Do you want me to drive, or…”
Taylor pulls a ring of keys from one coat pocket and tosses it to Mafee; he catches it, barely. He sorts through the keys, unlocks the driver’s side door — manually, there’s no fob, which is a real pain — and discovers that trying to squeeze all six feet and two inches of him into the driver’s seat of Taylor’s Mini Cooper that’s adjusted to Taylor’s height is an even fucking worse pain. Feeling around the seat for some kind of lever that’ll slide it back only leads to him catching the levers that move the seat in every other way imaginable, and he spends so long at it that it takes a knocking on the passenger window to remind him that Taylor’s locked out of the car and waiting to be let in.
Mafee opens the passenger door for them. “Sorry.”
Taylor slides into the front seat and silently taps a handle under it. When Mafee finds its mirror image on the driver’s side, it moves the seat back. Amazing. This is the brain power they’re paying him for.
Weirdly, though, once he gets the seat to slide back until his knees are mostly unbent and adjusts the mirrors, he’s perfectly comfortable. And Deb wanted him to believe she was too tall for a Mini. Man, he hasn’t thought of Deb in ages — when Axe Cap moved to Manhattan, she’d decided to stay in Westport, and to end things with him, and he’d resolved to move past it. (He was just surprised it didn’t happen sooner.) Last he heard, she was applying to other shops, hoping to break into investor relations. Maybe he’s got a type.
The first light they hit stays red long enough for him to glance over at the center console, blink at the byzan-fucking-tine layout of controls, and press what he thinks is the play button. Something starts blasting that he’d guess is Rush, though he couldn’t say what song. Taylor reaches over, presses a few buttons, and it switches to some poppy Christmas shit that he’d never listen to by choice. But it’s Taylor’s car, and Taylor’s car radio, and Taylor’s soundtrack of choice for a breakdown, so he leaves it.
Brooklyn’s got good diners everywhere, the sorts of places that are named Tom’s or Clark’s or Joe’s and stay open late, so it’s a mystery even to Mafee when he parks across the street from an IHOP downtown like some hopeless tourist who’d be eating dinner at the Times Square Applebee’s instead if they’d stayed in Manhattan. And he’s been living here long enough that he shouldn’t be considered a tourist, or act like one. (Even if last year Ben was on his case for most of a week because he ordered a bagel toasted. How was he supposed to know toasting a bagel was a capital offense against the city of New York?)
When Mafee shuts off the car and gets out, Taylor looks a little confused. That turns into a lot confused when they spot the IHOP and realize Mafee’s headed for it. He can’t blame them. “I didn’t wanna just dump you at home. Figured we should get something to eat.”
Taylor kind of sighs at that, but they follow him to the crosswalk all the same.
Inside, the IHOP’s done up for Christmas, with a tree lit up in one corner and a sign front and center for their seasonal menu, based on that new Grinch movie. Mafee doesn’t really see the point of the movie — why try to outdo a classic? Jim Carrey’s a genius — but the Minty Who-Hot Chocolate they’re advertising is tempting.
He goes up to the hostess. “Table for two.”
“Sure, follow me,” she says, already weaving through the winding aisles. She leads them to one empty booth in a sea of them. So IHOP’s not too busy at night. Could be a good thing. Less likely anyone overhears whatever they’re going to talk about, if they do talk instead of keeping up the silent streak.
Mafee sits down on one side, and Taylor sits on the other, and the hostess goes, leaving them alone and face to face.
The silence sticks. Taylor’s eyes are still red, and the pure sadness that was on their face before is now a sixty-forty mix of sadness and looking like they want to kill him for bringing them here. Again, he can’t blame them. Other than maybe a steakhouse, this has to be the worst restaurant he could have dragged Taylor into, and today is a day for him endlessly disappointing them with his capacity to be an idiot.
“So,” Mafee ventures. “Uh… you hungry?”
Taylor’s head tilts as they look at him. They definitely want to kill him. This was a bad move.
A waitress appears at their table, bearing menus, and Mafee sighs relief. “Hi, I’m Jennifer, I’ll be your server tonight.” She sets the menus in front of them. Taylor doesn’t touch theirs; Mafee opens his up, landing on a two-page spread of the Grinch-themed dishes. “Can I start you off with anything to drink?”
“Yeah, can I get the Minty Who-Hot Chocolate?”
“Sure.” Jennifer scribbles that down on her notepad. “And for you?”
She looks to Taylor, pen poised. Taylor looks at her, kind of — a slight swivel of their head in her direction, a glance from the corner of their eye — but doesn’t answer her. Jennifer’s customer service smile is still in place, but it fades, sagging like a wax figure left out in the sun, the longer she waits for a response.
Mafee’s gotta jump in. “They’ll have the, uh…” What’s hot and vegan? “Coffee?”
“Regular or decaf?”
“Regular. And do you have, like, non-dairy creamer or something to add?”
“I don’t think so, sorry.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll get that started for you,” Jennifer says, already retreating to the kitchen.
Mafee picks up his menu. He wants breakfast food, no question about it, and no matter what’s on offer as a real dinner. The Who-Roast Beast Omelette doesn’t sound bad, but he doubts he can order another Grinch dish without feeling like a corporate shill. A breakfast combo is his best bet, then — striking that delicate balance of eggs, meat, and pancakes.
“Think I’ll get the Split Decision Breakfast,” he declares. “Looks pretty good. For me, I guess.”
Taylor stares at him and says nothing. Their menu stays unopened on the table.
“What are you gonna get?”
No response. If he doesn’t order for them, they probably won’t eat, which defeats the point of coming here.
He revisits the menu, now looking at it through the lens of what Taylor can eat. No eggs, no meat, no pancakes. Waffles and French toast are out too, he’s pretty sure, which leaves some sad-looking salads and side dishes, and the certainty that coming here was exactly as bad an idea as he’d thought.
“Are hash browns vegan?”
Taylor rolls their eyes at him, the way he hasn’t seen them do since they were an intern. Honestly, he’d missed it.
“I’ll ask the waitress,” Mafee says. “Hash browns and… the mixed fruit. Is that okay?”
Another nod given without eye contact, Taylor’s gaze sliding off him and onto the back wall.
Jennifer returns with two mugs, sliding the coffee to Taylor and setting down the hot chocolate in front of Mafee — God, it looks good, there’s a cloud of green topping floating on the chocolate and dotted with red candy hearts, exactly like the menu photo. “Are we ready to order?”
“Yeah.” He can’t be thinking about the hot chocolate right this second. “One thing, though, are the hash browns vegan?”
“Yes, they are.”
“Great. Uh, hash browns, seasonal mixed fruit, and I’ll get the Split Decision Breakfast with eggs sunny side up.”
Jennifer pauses with her pen in the air. “Just so you know, nothing in the breakfast is vegan.”
“Oh, yeah, I know. The vegan stuff’s not for me.”
Jennifer writes it all down, peeking over at Taylor about five times while she does. He wonders what she thinks the deal is with him and Taylor. Probably not the right answer of billionaire CEO having a bad day and their number one fuck-up employee. “If that’s all, I’ll take your menus…”
Mafee hands his menu to her. He reaches for Taylor’s, but they pick it up first, and he watches them watch Jennifer blink in surprise as she takes it.
Once she’s out of sight, Mafee grabs a spoon and scoops up his first mouthful of the hot chocolate, skimming some topping and a few candy hearts from the surface. It’s a step and a half up from Swiss Miss.
“Wow. Minty.”
Taylor shoots him a no shit, Mafee glare that he should have seen coming, sips their coffee, glowers at the mug as if it just suggested shorting Amazon, and sets it down. “I would have preferred water to black coffee.”
“I just thought you might want something hot,” Mafee says, then double-takes. “Hey, you’re talking!”
“Great catch.” Okay, so using their words doesn’t mean they’re now in the mood to suffer fools gladly.
“Sorry. I just wasn’t expecting it at this point.”
“And most non-dairy creamers aren’t vegan. They’re lactose-free but contain milk derivatives.”
“Shit, really? That’s misleading.”
“Yes, it is.”
Mafee taps the end of his spoon against the table. He’s afraid to ask, but he’s gotta ask. They can’t just talk around the whole reason they’re here. “What happened after I left?”
“Do you mean after you walked away from the conversation with my father, or after you left the building?”
“Both?”
Taylor folds their hands on the tabletop. “I explained to him that I needed to confirm that his highest priorities haven’t changed. He said he was leaving with his fin technology, and I told him he couldn’t. He left without it.” Their sentences are clipped, dispassionate. “The market closed. Everyone else went home for the night, which I had assumed you were doing as well. I… decided to stay longer.”
Mafee figures he’s supposed to extrapolate and then I sat down on the floor with all the lights off and cried until you showed up from that without Taylor having to say it aloud. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize.” Taylor wraps both hands around their mug but doesn’t pick it back up, just stares at the surface of the coffee. “Where did you go?”
“Uh.” He’d managed to forget that he’d come back to the office hoping not to confess just that. “To Axe Cap. To call Wendy out on her shit.”
“What did you say to her?”
“The SparkNotes version is I told her she’s a sick vicious phony. And a monster. And a garbage person, before security took me out. …Also I tried to hit Dollar Bill and challenged him to a fight in the ring.”
Taylor blinks. “That’s bold.”
“What, you think I can’t take him?” Taylor doesn’t crack a smile. Dammit. “In any case, I think I really shook her up. She isn’t gonna pull any of that crap again.”
“I would think so. I don’t have another family for her to destroy.”
Mafee reaches for a sympathetic comment and comes up embarrassingly short. In the ensuing silence, Taylor tries their coffee again. “Alcohol would also have been preferable to this.”
“I don’t think they serve alcohol at IHOP,” Mafee says, pathetically. Though Taylor doesn’t dignify that with a reply, he can imagine a few — yes, I’m aware or well, they ought to or another reason we shouldn’t have come here. He’s failing hard in the department of responding thoughtfully to Taylor saying unsettling things, so he just drinks his hot chocolate, crunching on the candy hearts every few swallows.
Taylor pulls a napkin from the dispenser. “How serious were you about taking on Dollar Bill in the ring?”
Mafee chokes a little on the hot chocolate, which fucking hurts with how hot it still is. He coughs for what feels like a minute straight before he can get an answer out. “I mean, I was pretty serious when I said it. Do you really think it’s a good idea?”
“If the proceeds go to charity? Certainly. Positive optics.” Taylor dabs at a few spots on the table. “And I wouldn’t object to seeing someone from Axe Capital take a beating for a change.”
More bloodthirsty than usual for Taylor, but these are unusual times. “Okay. I’m in.”
“Good. I’ll ask Sara to arrange it.”
Mafee eyes his own mug critically. “I should probably stop drinking this, right? Start thinking about getting in fighting shape?”
“You already ordered it. And a whole meal. You may as well drink it, focus on getting into shape after this.”
“Right. Make it a New Year’s resolution.”
The napkin twists in Taylor’s hands. “I was thinking we’d do this before the end of the year.”
“Oh.” That only gives him a couple weeks, at the most. “That should shake up the Axe Cap Christmas party.” Taylor shifts in their seat. “I mean, after the party a couple years back, Bill got bounced from a club for tossing quarters at the stage instead of dollars, and he threw some good punches while they were taking him out. Could probably do even better with real training —”
“Please stop talking about the Christmas party,” Taylor says quietly. Not an order, a plea.
“…Okay.”
Even in Taylor’s very first days as his intern, when they still needed him to make introductions to coworkers and give them directions to the vending machine, they had this quiet confidence about them, always knowing where they should be next and what they should do. (Hell, even more than him sometimes. Most of the time, if he’s being brutally honest.) It’d be a stretch to say that confidence is totally gone, but the effortlessness of it is — the cracks are showing.
“Hot plates coming through,” Jennifer says, rounding the corner with a serving tray. Taylor starts at her appearance and pulls their hands off the table. “Split Decision breakfast for you…” She sets a plate of pancakes and a full platter of bacon, sausage, eggs, and French toast in front of Mafee, dwarfing the small plate and bowl that go to Taylor. “Anything else I can get for you?”
“Two waters.” Hydration-wise, Mafee’s a total stranger to his high school self who drank a gallon of water every day he had lacrosse practice. No better time than now to start fixing that.
“I’ll get that for you right away.”
She goes. Mafee grabs a syrup dispenser from the table, pours what he’d call a totally reasonable quantity of syrup onto his pancakes, and slices them up, cutting off bites of sausage as he goes. (It’s late, and he’s hungry. Trespassing and attempted fistfights burn a lot of energy.) Everything’s hot, even the syrup, which is a welcome change from the freezing temps outside. He peels off his coat and dumps it on the bench next to him.
Halfway through the pancakes, and with both sausage links demolished, Mafee looks up and sees that Taylor’s food is untouched.
“How’s your stuff?”
Taylor just looks at him, leaning back in the booth, their arms folded.
“The fruit looks good,” Mafee says, though it doesn’t. Not vibrant enough.
Taylor picks up their spoon, slices a chunk of pineapple in half and eats one piece. “The pineapple’s out of season.”
“What about the hash browns?”
Another glare, and the spoon clinks against the plate as Taylor gouges out a chunk of potato. “It’s fine.”
“That’s good. Kinda wish I’d gotten them.”
“You can have the rest if you want.” Taylor sets the spoon down, parallel to the table’s edge. “I’m not particularly hungry.”
“Nah. I’m good.” Mafee dips one of his triangles of French toast into an egg yolk, super casually, as if that’s not worrying to hear at all and doesn’t sink his own appetite even a few bips. “So. Are you gonna… I don’t know, call your dad? Email him or something? Talk things out?”
“That would be pointless.”
“Don’t you think he wants to hear from you?”
“I think that’s the last thing he wants.” Taylor picks up their fork, only to balance it atop the spoon, jutting out beyond the spoon’s bowl so that the weight of it lifts the other end off the table. “He came to New York because he wanted something from me. He left because I couldn’t give it to him. That’s all that matters.”
“But you’re his kid. And you did the best you could. I know you did.” He can’t square Taylor’s own capacity to forgive, to offer second chances, with their dad being so unbending and them being so certain that he won’t bend.
“He doesn’t see it that way.” Their knife goes on the fork, precariously poised on the handle and tines. “In his mind, being his child means I should put his goals before my own, and failing to do so is a betrayal. No matter the reason.”
“That’s fucked up. You know that, right?”
Taylor looks up at him. The knife-fork-spoon pile teeters back and forth just out of their reach. “Yes. I know.”
Pain’s written all over their face, and Mafee knows he’s pushing too hard for answers, but he doesn’t know how he can help if he doesn’t understand. “If you knew all that… why’d you ask him to stay?”
“I thought he had changed. Convinced myself he had. When even Wendy could see from miles away that he hadn’t.” Taylor glances down again at the seesawing silverware and backhands the stack, knife and fork tipping over onto the tabletop.
Mafee bites his tongue and finishes eating his pancakes, two pieces at a time. He wishes he could say he first got a bad vibe from Douglas when he claimed to be the smartest person in every room while standing in Taylor’s shop, right outside the room where Taylor was sitting there crushed by his insistence that they weren’t trying hard enough for him. But he’d had reservations from the day they met, when he’d gotten stuck with showing Douglas around the office and listening to him toss out weird sideways digs at Taylor — no, at the picture of Taylor in his head that hardly resembled them. Taylor’s given Douglas second and third chances, surely more than Mafee knows about, and if they’re right about him this time, he isn’t returning the favor.
“Okay, look,” he says. “Clearly he sucks. You don’t need him. I’ll be your new dad.”
“You?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“You’re not even ten years older than me,” Taylor says, with the first hint of humor he’s heard from them in days. He might finally be doing something right here.
“It’s the principle of the thing, you know? I make jokes that no one else laughs at. I barbecue. I shovel the sidewalk when it snows. I could teach you how to punch someone.”
“Appreciated, but unnecessary.” They start to say something more, then stop and reconsider. “I think I’ve had more than enough father figures. I’m glad to call you my partner in business. And my friend.”
“…Are you in the market for an older brother?”
“No, thank you.” The rejection comes with a fleeting smile. “And I don’t know how well my sister would take being displaced as the oldest sibling.”
“I think she liked me fine at the company picnic.” She’d thanked Mafee for the medium burger he’d cooked her (“my husband always wants them well-done”) and for “being so supportive of Taylor.” Then she’d turned around and started hitting on Winston, which Mafee was apparently alone in finding hilarious.
“Of course she did.”
“How is she doing? I mean, if you know.”
“She sends me birthday e-cards and asks for my advice on employee stock options.” Taylor sets their fork, knife, and spoon on their discarded napkin. “To my knowledge, she’s thriving.”
Mafee clamps down on the knee-jerk reply of at least someone is. “I guess I’d also have to consult your mom about being your new dad. She might have something to say about it.”
The look Taylor throws his way suggests that wasn’t a better response. He’s not sure Taylor even has a mom — if she exists, they’ve never mentioned her. He knows what they say about assuming things: it makes an ass out of him and… well, just him. She could be dead. Or divorced. Or she never existed and Taylor’s had two dads this whole time and Mafee’s really been making an ass of himself by offering to be their new dad. Not that Douglas ever seemed like the kind to wrestle with Billy and Chuck to him, but he doesn’t want to lean on stereotypes.
“My mother…” Taylor goes quiet. Oh, shit, she is dead, or something else horrible, and Mafee’s plunging Taylor back into their funk.
“What is it?”
“I’d arranged an apartment here. For her and my father. Put down the deposit, bought furniture.” Taylor swallows hard. “She might still be making plans to come.”
That’s… not great. Mafee hadn’t thought of how this might ripple out to the rest of Taylor’s family. Seems like even with what they said about Wendy destroying their family, Taylor hadn’t either, until now.
He latches onto the first thing there he didn’t already know. “Wait, you got an apartment for them? By yourself?” He’d kind of come to think of himself as Taylor’s go-to guy for Manhattan real estate advice.
“No.” Taylor’s eyes are turning shiny under the fluorescents. “Wendy helped me.” Fuck. The SEC should fine him again for how criminally fucking stupid he is. “She knew what she was planning to do to me, and she lied to my face. Fed me bullshit about the cost of family —”
Their voice wavers on the last word, and their mouth tightens into a line, shoulders slumping.
“Hey, hey —” Mafee slips out of his seat and goes to Taylor’s side of the booth, sitting down beside them. This time he dares to put his arm around them, and they lean on him, letting out one long shuddering breath. “It’s okay.”
“It isn’t,” Taylor chokes out, and it hits him like a heart punch.
“Well, it’s gonna be.”
He feels, rather than sees, Taylor shake their head “no” against his shoulder.
And now, of all times, Jennifer returns with a glass of water in each hand, looking retail-cheerful until it clicks that one of her customers has switched seats and the other is crying. She starts to back away, but Mafee silently and frantically waves her over with his free hand, gestures to her to put the water down, and mouths “thank you” as she retreats. He’s gotta remember to leave her a decent tip.
Mafee slides one glass of water to Taylor and takes a long swig from the other. The two of them sit silently for a few minutes, and in the quiet Mafee can hear the music that’s being piped into the IHOP. Two songs in a row come on that he’s pretty sure both played in the car. Does everyone use the same Christmas playlist now?
That thought’s cut off by Taylor sitting up and lifting his arm off of them, looping it over their head and into his lap. They straighten their coat, which they’ve kept on this whole time.
“Do you want me to go back to my side?”
“Yes,” Taylor says, low and flat.
He does, taking his glass with him. Taylor picks up their own water and drains half of it in one go.
Another question comes to mind, but it’s one that involves Axe. Is bringing him up even in a wildly different context risky? Well, he takes risks every day. “Did you ever see that video from a couple years ago of Axe punching a guy because he drove drunk with his — Axe’s — kids in the car?”
“Yes.”
“I get it now.”
Taylor raises an eyebrow. “You’re taking parenting advice from Axe now?”
“No way, I’m not saying it was a good idea. I just get the impulse now, you know? Like, I understand why he did it, on an emotional level.” He’d thought at the time that it was just about being angry at someone for hurting your kids, or daring to run the risk of hurting them. More than that, though, it’s about being angry at yourself for not stopping it before it happened.
Taylor takes another long sip, keeping their eyes on him over the rim of their glass until they set it down. “If you’re still itching to punch someone on my behalf, maybe wait until you have gloves on.”
“Absolutely.”
Mafee’s eggs and bacon have gone cold; his used-to-be-hot chocolate is now tepid, and sickly-sweet. He finishes them anyway, because he wasn’t raised to leave food on the plate. Bits of the candy hearts stick in his back teeth.
When Taylor speaks, it takes him by surprise. “You said that when you talked to Wendy, she already knew about my father’s company.”
“Yeah. She knew he was in town and you were working on something together. Said she heard about it on Facebook.”
A look of scorn. “I didn’t encrypt my emails to my own father only to sound the alarm on Facebook.”
“Right.” He should have known then that the whole conversation was fishier than Wags’s favorite body sushi place. “Sorry.”
“Wendy may have had the resources and the inclination to strike at me personally, but the professional attacks — hunting out our partnership, bringing the Bureau down on our heads — would have taken Axe’s reach. They were hand in hand on this.”
“So he’s at the top of your shitlist too.”
“I want him dead,” Taylor says, so calmly that the words take a moment to get through.
“…You mean that as, like, a metaphor, right?”
Taylor lifts their fork and spears a grape. “If that makes you feel better about it.”
It doesn’t. “What happened to making peace? Being the bigger person and all that?”
“Brute force and cruelty are the only language Axe understands. He made that clear when he responded to an offer of peace by bringing the war home.”
“Right.” Axe has been trying to stomp Mase Cap for months because he took Taylor leaving as a personal attack. Makes sense that Taylor would fight back after Axe hit them with an actual personal attack. “Think we could short squeeze him on something? Pharmaceuticals —”
“Ordinary plays won’t be enough,” Taylor says. “I underestimated how far he’d go in order to crush me. I can’t make that mistake again. And I need to turn it to my advantage.”
“You got a plan?”
“Still forming one.”
Taylor picks at their hash browns, very contemplatively, he thinks. “Whatever you decide our next move is, I’m behind you.”
“Thank you.”
“Of course.” And he means it. But…
He’s loyal to Taylor, and it’s not just because they’re brilliant, or because they pay him more than Axe ever did. (Although, yeah, the money’s an important factor. Who else would make him a partner in their fund?) Working for them, most days, he can believe that it’s possible to succeed in this business and still be honest and good, and maybe take a few steps toward leaving the world better than they found it. That Taylor’s figured out how to win without anyone else having to lose.
There was a time when he believed that about Axe, too.
Jennifer reappears, the smile back on her face. “Anything else I can get for you two?”
“No, thank you,” Taylor says. Jennifer blanches a little at hearing Taylor talk, and Taylor frowns a little at her reaction. Shit, this is exactly how positive feedback loops start.
“Yeah, we’d like the bill,” Mafee adds, intentionally loud.
Jennifer puts the receipt and a pen down next to him. “Thank you, have a great night.”
She vanishes into the back of the restaurant. Mafee checks the damage — about forty bucks.
“You don’t have to pay,” Taylor says.
“I want to, though. Besides, you already sign my paychecks.” Mafee pulls out his wallet. “Figure we pay up front?”
“I’d assume so.”
Mafee takes out his personal card — maybe he could justify putting this on the company’s tab, but that’d be a supreme heel move after he promised to pay — and scribbles down enough of a tip to bring the bill to a hundred. When he gets up and puts on his coat, he almost misses Taylor taking out their own wallet and flicking through the contents under the table, and Ben Franklin’s dour mug on the bill they fold into thirds and tuck halfway under their plate. “You ready to go?”
“Yes.”
Taylor follows him to the cashier up front, who takes the receipt and swipes Mafee’s card like he’s Sisyphus and this is his boulder. (Is he using that right? Maybe he should ask Taylor. Later, though.) “Thanks for joining us at IHOP, have a great night.”
“You too, man,” Mafee says, supplemented by Taylor’s “Have a good night.”
It’s only gotten colder since they went inside, both out on the street and back in Taylor’s car. Mafee’s still got the keys, and Taylor’s not asking for them back, so he gets in the driver’s seat, remembering to unlock the passenger door this time. Taylor buckles up; he starts the car, which sends the radio blaring again too, and backs out with the utmost carefulness. If anything’s worse than parallel parking, it’s trying to get out of the spot where you parallel parked.
He makes a few turns and heads for the Manhattan Bridge. “You’re gonna have to remind me how to get to your place. Been too long since I’ve been there.”
“We should be going to your apartment.”
“Uh, why?”
“This is my car,” Taylor says. “My apartment should be its last destination. Unless you’re planning to drive me home and carjack me there.”
“Good point.” He’d nearly forgotten that he needed to head home himself. Coming back to the office and finding them had rerouted all his trains of thought to what does Taylor need? and left the other stuff, like getting to sleep at a decent hour tonight, waiting at the station.
Taylor turns down the radio. “I appreciate what you’ve been trying to do for me.”
“Really? You seemed like you hated it most of the time.”
“Both can be true. I’m capable of recognizing when something is ultimately for my benefit even if I personally dislike it.”
“I thought you could use the company.”
“You thought I was too unstable to be left alone.”
“No…” Just in his peripheral vision, Mafee can see Taylor’s looking skeptical, which is fair, because he doesn’t believe himself, either. “Well, yeah.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time.”
He’s not qualified to even touch that. “I’m glad it helped.”
“So am I.”
For a minute after that, it gets quiet, enough to hear the radio again. He thinks the song playing is that one about the shoes that he hates, though Ben always gets choked up over it.
They get onto the bridge, and traffic stalls. Typical.
“The guy that had to push a boulder up a hill forever,” Mafee says. “That was Sisyphus, right?”
Moving at about one mile per hour, he can safely look over at Taylor and fully absorb that they’re baffled by him asking. “Why?”
“I was just thinking about it. Wanted to be sure I was thinking the right thing.”
“You were.” Taylor straightens up in their seat, that way that means they’re ready for a mic moment. “Sources differ, but they generally agree that Sisyphus thought himself clever enough to outsmart the gods, and cheat death. And he did, for a while. But once he was dead, permanently, he was tasked with rolling the boulder uphill. And Hades’ own show of cleverness was to make it roll back down just before reaching the summit, every time. A cautionary tale for anyone who thinks they can outrun the inevitable.”
“Couldn’t he just… not push the boulder? Take a break?”
“Somehow that never comes up as a possibility.” At least Taylor seems amused by the idea. “He’s dead. No life for him to return to. If he doesn’t have the boulder, he has nothing.”
“Seems like the nothing would be better.”
“I don’t think so.”
This feels like a conversation that’s secretly about something else, one where he has no chance of figuring out that something else without reading Taylor’s mind. Like those analogy questions on the SAT, which he was decent at, actually, but with way more moving parts and no answers laid out for him. And he just wanted to know if Sisyphus was the guy with the boulder.
The car ahead gets back up to speed, and Mafee presses the gas, focusing on the road again. Overhead, the lights on the bridge rise and fall, tracing the suspension cables against the night sky.
The shoes song is over, thank fuck. He hears sleigh bells and cheering and recognizes Springsteen’s “Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town” cover. “You mind turning it up? I actually like this version.”
Taylor turns the dial. “Did you know he was only twenty-six when he recorded this?”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“That’s crazy. And he still kills it live.”
“You’ve seen him in concert?”
“On Broadway.”
“Ah. Haven’t had the chance to go myself.”
Mafee grips the steering wheel tighter, thinking about risk again. He wants to help them, and now, maybe, he understands. “In the show, in the middle of ‘My Father’s House,’ he talks about how his whole gimmick, of the working-class guy down on his luck, was based on his dad. And he explained it like, when there’s someone whose love we wanted, but we didn’t get it, we emulate them.” When he’d first met Douglas, he’d thought no one could be any less like Taylor. Then over the few months they’d worked together, there’d been maybe a dozen times where Douglas clasped his hands or stood a certain way or used a particular turn of phrase that rang a bell in Mafee’s brain, and every time, he went huh. I thought only Taylor did that.
“It was a difficult relationship, then?”
“Yeah. He said his dad was his hero and his greatest foe.” Taylor’s quiet. He hopes the important part of what he remembers really happened and isn’t just him filling in the blurry parts wrong from when his pre-show cocktails started hitting. “But later on he said his dad came back to him. Visited him right before his first kid was born, and admitted to not being good to him. And after that they fixed things up. Reconciled.”
He doubts Taylor needs any test prepping to work that analogy out, but it’s not until they’re off the bridge and on Canal Street, and Clarence Clemons is going to fucking town on his solo in the background, that Taylor answers. “That’s a nice thought.” A few moments pass. Bruce jumps back into the song. “We’d talked about celebrating Christmas as a family. For the first time in five years.”
“Oh.” Maybe, if he’s lucky, that conveyed the sudden weight of realizing that for them, spending the evening out with Christmas hanging heavy in the air must have been like slowly suffocating. He dares a quick glance over at Taylor; they’re staring out their window, away from him. “There’s always gonna be more Christmases.”
Taylor keeps looking out the window. “Sure.”
Too soon, Mafee’s building comes into view around a corner, most of the windows still lit up at this hour. He parks at the curb and gets out, leaving the door open for Taylor. They come around the front of the car to retake the driver’s seat, and he can pinpoint the moment when they comprehend that the steering wheel’s several inches farther from them than normal. “You’re the first person to move this seat in years.”
“Hey, I’m a trailblazer.”
Taylor reaches down and slides the seat forward. “Did you adjust the mirrors, too?”
“I did, and I know it’s annoying,” Mafee says, “but what if I didn’t adjust them and crashed your car because I had huge blind spots? I’m pretty sure that’d be worse.”
“Fair point.” When Taylor finishes fiddling with their mirrors, either satisfied or willing to settle, they give him the smallest of smiles. “All is forgiven.”
“Oh, good, I was stressing out.”
“Have a good night.”
“Take care,” Mafee says, because he really hopes they do, and there’s no way he can tell them to have a good night on what has to be one of the worst nights of their life. Taylor must get all that, somehow, from how they nod to him — a little grimly — before they shut the door.
The locks click, and the Mini starts up and vanishes down the block, and Mafee can’t shake the feeling that even with everything said between them tonight, Taylor hasn’t let him in.