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SEPTEMBER 9, 2022

Haskell

Oh my god, it hurts so bad!

Haskell was holding her sides, tears streaming down her face, she was laughing so hard. Next to her, Nemo sat, both hands filled with marshmallows, and he was making all sorts of melodramatic, pantomime trash-talking faces and gestures at the red-haired Rapunzel across the table from him. Flame, TB’s girlfriend, who also held two fists filled with the spongy sugar concoctions, made faces right back at him, only hers were like a twelve-year-old boy, her eyes crossing. Haskell was sure that she’d be sticking her tongue out at him except that the eight marshmallows currently in her mouth were preventing that from occurring.

“Nemo! Dude, do not encourage her!” TB threatened. “Somebody take those away before one of them chokes to death.” TB attempted to wrestle the marshmallows in her fist out of her hands, but Flame was tenacious and seemingly unbothered by the giant’s attempts.

Demon agreed, “Yes, please, I don’t want to be doing the Heimlich on her. He’ll kill me with a spork.”

Kubrick, sitting in Waters’ lap at the foot of the table, blew a raspberry at Demon. “Alpha funsuckers. That’s what you all are.”

“Rule six, Kubrick” Waters growled. Then he kissed the side of her head.

“Oh, for the love of Pete… Seriously? I don’t have any money on me for the Rule jar.”

“Guess she’ll be paying in sexual favors tonight,” Midas quipped to Steel.

“Total Brontosaurass over there is just grumpy cuz he’s already out of the game.” Kubrick pelted the man in question with a marshmallow.

Midas laughed. “Not only are you out, big guy, but you were the first one out. With your big mouth, how could you not get past four marshmallows? Bruh, the dog could beat you at that number.”

“You know, it’s not surprising he lost so early.” Haskell looked at everyone at the table with a completely serious expression on her face. “Dinosaurs need to be marshmallow-free. It’s why they died out. They can’t digest fun.” Haskell popped a marshmallow in her mouth, chewing innocently.

There was an explosion of laughter, resulting in TB throwing a marshmallow at Haskell, a smirk on his face. She tossed one back good-naturedly. Suddenly, a flurry of marshmallows flew from all angles of the table, resembling an epic snowball fight. Alliances were quickly formed. Kubrick dipped her marshmallows in barbecue sauce before throwing them, which basically turned the snowball fight into paintball. People were ducking under the table, using the chairbacks as shields, and reaching up blindly for ammunition. Scheherazade was barking at the marshmallows as they flew through the air and ran around the table, pulling on people’s shirts and pants to keep them from attacking her dad. Meanwhile, Steel belly-crawled, completely unseen, to the foot of the table and managed to upend Waters out of his chair to steal his marshmallow stash when his own ammunition ran dry.

Haskell had eaten most of her marshmallows, so she opted to turn her chair so that she could curl her small frame up behind the high back and stay out of the mess. Her stomach and sides were beyond hurting from all the giggling, but her head and eyes were always drawn to the blond man at her right. Even with a mouth overstuffed with the fluffy treats, he was beyond gorgeous.

Her smile was tempered suddenly by Da’s voice in her head.

He’s no good for your heart. Don’t get distracted, child.

Once everyone had run out of ammunition, and Haskell noted it had taken a while for that to occur as there were a lot of marshmallows on the table, everyone surveyed the fallout. The room looked like a literal war zone, barbecue sauce everywhere, like blood, with the conference room table as the front lines.

“God’s going to have a total shit hemorrhage if he sees this.” Kubrick grinned at everyone. She must have felt the trickle of barbecue sauce trailing down from her eyebrow because she started to reach up to swipe it away. She was prevented from it by Waters leaning over to lick it off.

“No worries, babe. We’ll just send you to him when the cleaning bill comes. He never gets mad at you.” He gave her a loud smack on the lips .

There was a snort to her right, and Haskell turned just in time to see Nemo involuntarily spitting a volcano of liquified marshmallow out of his mouth and onto the paper plate in front of him because he was laughing so hard. He grabbed the bridge of his nose. “Ow. No laughing with marshmallows in your mouth. It hurts when they try to come out of your nose.”

The room of people erupted into laughter as Flame, chewing through a mass of sticky marshmallow residue in her mouth, jumped up from her seat with her arms in an upraised vee position. As the tiny woman whooped and hollered her victory in the pudgy bunny war, Haskell noted there was something incredibly at odds with the ethereal woman, a mouth full of white goop, running around the table as if she’d won a gold medal in the Olympics. There were marshmallows stuck in her long red hair, and Haskell was pretty sure there were several in the cleavage of her corseted top. Luckily, the woman had kicked off her heels earlier because Haskell didn’t think anyone would have been able to run in the five-inch monstrosities without turning or breaking an ankle.

As Flame came around behind them on her victory lap, Nemo snuck out of his chair, curled an arm around her waist, and threw her over his shoulder. “That’s it, you little pudgy bunny cheater! I’m claiming my reward!”

Flame was laughing so hard now she was hiccuping uncontrollably. “Nemo, put me down!” she screeched.

“Nope. You cheated!”

“How could I have cheated, you goof? My mouth was full. I didn’t make you laugh. Blame it on Gem!”

Nemo slid Flame off his shoulder, where she was quickly collected by TB, his large frame dwarfing her foot-and-a-half shorter one. “Gem?” he rumbled.

“Yeah. Gem. She’s a jewel thief, right? Gems! And when she laughs, her blue eyes are so bright, they sparkle like sapphires in the light.” Flame shrugged. “She needs a nickname anyway. Gem!”

TB chuckled. “Why do I have a feeling your next female main character is going to be a shifter cat who steals diamonds and is named Gemma?”

Flame turned around in his arms, her hands sliding up his forearms to curl around his biceps. “Hmm…” She pretended to think. “Do you think that would make a good main character?”

Tenderly, the man picked a marshmallow out of her hair, where it was trapped by all the flyaway strands. “Just make sure she understands what kinds of books you write before you use her likeness, physically or in print.” He dropped a kiss on her upturned nose, then threw the marshmallow on the table. “All right, pudgy bunny champion, it’s time to get you back to your computer. You’re about 3k short of your 10k goal today, and if I want any hope of time with you before I leave, we need to get you back at it.” He looked at Waters. “I’ll be back to help clean up once I get our gold medalist behind her laptop.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Waters waved him off. “See you in the morning.”

TB nodded his thanks and hefted Flame up over his shoulder. When she squawked, he simply gave her ass a smack and headed for the door. Smiling, Flame waved goodbye to everyone from her upside-down position.

“Now she’s in trouble.” Kubrick snickered.

“Somebody’s looking for a punishment,” they heard TB rumble as he stepped out into the hall, to which Flame retorted, “It’s not punishment when it’s a funishment!” The group listened to the couple as they continued to banter back and forth all the way to the lift. Haskell surveyed the room and saw everyone smiling to themselves as they went about starting to clean up.

Nemo flopped down into his chair at the conference room table and dug for the last rib on the plate in front of him. After rooting around and finding a plastic knife, he began to trim the meat off the bone.

She watched him work. Hesitating because she worried how he’d interpret the observation, Haskell bit her lip. The words flew out before she could stop them. “You’re really fond of Flame.”

“Yep, I am.” Nemo tore the last chunk of meat off the rib bone and tossed it in his mouth. He winked at her as he finished chewing and washed down the food with a sip of water from his bottle.

For a moment, his smile was tempered with something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. It wasn’t regret or even sadness. Just something poignant.

“She was partly my responsibility when she was taken,” he admitted, “so I feel extra responsible for her. TB was head over heart for her, so that made her even more important.”

“That’s sweet.”

She watched as Nemo wiped his hands on a clean napkin, then turned sideways in his seat. The next thing she knew, his hand was turning her face in his direction. “What’s going on in that head, kitty cat?”

“I just…” She looked around the room, nonplussed as to how to communicate what she was seeing and feeling.

Someone had called the local barbecue restaurant and ordered enough food for an army. Ribs, chicken, brisket, pork… and those were just the meats. Corn on the cob, seasoned potatoes, coleslaw, buns, biscuits with butter and honey, and several kinds of potato salad. When someone wanted something to drink, they just walked a short way down the hall to the office’s break room, where there were pitchers of sweet tea, bottled beer, bottled water, and about twelve kinds of soda. It also looked like a paper products factory had ex ploded because there were hundreds of plates and napkins everywhere.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve just… I’ve never had this.”

“This.” It wasn’t a question, but he was clearly asking for more information.

“This.” She gestured around them, still unsure how to put it in words. “Friends that pour into a room and create a demilitarized zone with marshmallows and barbecue.”

His smile went ear-to-ear. “Family,” he corrected.

“My family was not like this.”

“Not a blood family. The family you choose. Blood family is important, sure. But ‘this,’ as you call it, is of more value than anything on Earth. And, of course, you have it,” he scoffed.

“No, I’d remember something like this.”

His hand reached up to tug an unruly curl. “You have it now,” he said quietly. “No matter what, these people will always love you.”

She looked at him with incredulity. “Why?”

“Because I do.” His smile was smaller now but no less genuine. He tugged the curl again, then shifted gears so rapidly her head spun. He reached for the bone from the last rib he’d eaten and handed it to Scheherazade, who gnawed it daintily in her spot between Haskell and Nemo’s chairs.

“Nemo!” she gasped, attempting to grab the bone.

“Relax, kitty cat. It was a plain one. No sauce or seasonings. She’ll be fine.”

“But—”

He stayed her hand. “It’s fine. I took her off the streets of Sallum. She can eat a lot of things technically dogs shouldn’t since she was living off garbage to survive when I found her. But I wouldn’t tempt fate because of that. I take care of my girl. ”

And he did it again. Made a comment that sounded like one thing but really meant so much more.

Child, do not fall for that shite.

Nemo pushed back his chair and began to pile garbage up. “Let’s help with cleanup, then we’ll take Zade for a walk, yeah?”

She nodded.