Josh

JOSH

If you had a chance to find out the exact date you were going to die, would you want to know?

It’s a rhetorical question that I don’t have to answer because I already know when my day is.

Today.

Yup, mark the calendar, folks. December 19 th of this very year is the day I, ua William Van De Bogart (it’s a mouthful, I know. Fingers crossed they’ll be able to fit it on the tombstone.) am going to say adios to this planet.

Sayonara, Mother Earth. It’s been nice knowing you.

I lean forward and press my palms against the plexiglass that separates me from the driver. “Do you think you can maybe go just a tiny bit faster?”

The cab driver, Lou, sends me a quick look over his shoulder before he waves toward the windshield. “Bro, we’re in a traffic jam. There’s a trunk in my face and a hood in my ass. What do you want me to do here? Fly?”

He laughs heartily at his own joke.

It takes me a moment to dismiss the vivid mental picture his words have created in my overactive imagination. “You could try and squeeze between cars?”

“This ain’t no motorcycle, buddy.”

I slump back into my seat and give a defeated sigh. Yeah. That death thing I mentioned earlier? That’s almost certainly going to happen.

A look outside the window isn’t very promising. It’s dark. It’s raining. All I can see in front of me is a sea of red brake lights with no end in sight, and I’m still about twenty blocks from my destination. And I’m already ten minutes late.

Gabriel is going to kill you. He’s going to kill you until you’re dead, and he’s going to be all obnoxious and pompous and holier-than-thou about it.

I grit my teeth. It’s the image of Gabriel’s smug face in my mind’s eye that gets the fight back in me.

I throw a twenty at Lou. “Keep the change,” I call before I slam the door shut and dart into the rain, lugging the massive suitcase after me. It’s fucking freezing, and it only takes about ten seconds before I’m completely soaked. Nevertheless, I run, passing people left and right, water dripping into my eyes as I go. I’m too busy to wipe it away, and it’s not like it even matters considering how hard it’s coming down.

The weather is making it really difficult to get into the Christmas spirit right now.

I make it to the office in a little less than fifteen minutes. Yes! I made it. A half hour late, but I made it. Not that Gabriel the Great is ever going to let me forget about the fact that I kept him waiting, but at least I didn’t stand him up so… silver lining? I doubt Gabriel will see it like that.

It takes forever for the elevator to arrive, and once I get a look at myself in the mirror, I groan out loud. Oh yeah. I look like a real winner. A red-faced, wet-dog-looking, on-the-brink-of- freezing-my-balls-off winner. My socks make squelching sounds as I walk down the hallway, and water drips into my eyes from my eyebrows. My jacket, T-shirt, and jeans are plastered to my body, and I can feel water running down my back from where it’s dripping off my hair and into the collar of my shirt.

It’s dark everywhere but in our office. And by our, I mean Gabriel’s and mine. Because naturally we have to share. No matter how hard I try, I can never seem to get away from him. It’s uncanny, really. Since middle school, he’s been a steady presence in my life, and not a friendly one.

We’re reluctant acquaintances, mostly because we don’t get along. Not really. It’s not like we get into fistfights or screaming matches. Nothing like that. It’s just that we both have the same fundamental flaw—we’re too competitive. Which means we clash. A lot. It’s been going on for more than a decade by now, this silent understanding that there’s only one top spot and not enough room on the platform to share. No win is too insignificant, as evidenced by the fact that Gabriel once told me he was faster because he was born an hour earlier than me, because yes, by some twist of fate, we also share a birthday. July twenty-fourth.

We didn’t grow up together. I don’t know what Gabriel was like in kindergarten or in elementary school, but I like to imagine he was wearing a tiny suit and doling out disapproving looks even back then. Like a miniature version of his current self.

In eighth grade, he transferred to Middleton, which is this hoity-toity private school in Manhattan that I was also attending because that’s what Van De Bogarts have always done. There’s a goddamn bust of my great-grandfather in the courtyard. Yeah. We’re one of those families.

I’d like to say I disliked Gabriel on sight. That there was something about him that rubbed me the wrong way on a fundamental level and that was that.

But no.

It was much worse.

I was mesmerized.

He was the most serious fourteen-year-old I’d ever seen, and I just needed to know what his deal was when he avoided everybody else at school and kept his nose buried in his textbook all the time.

At its core, it’s a classic story. Boy meets boy. Boy approaches boy at lunchtime. Boy gets tongue-tied because the other boy doesn’t say hi back and doesn’t even crack a smile. Boy blurts out something stupid: “So how are the scholarships to this place these days?”

It wasn’t meant to be an insult, more of a very awkward conversation starter because I didn’t know what to say, and the principal had made a big deal of the fact that Gabriel had earned that scholarship, and what an incredible achievement it was, so I figured he’d be proud of it.

Wrong!

Gabriel took it as a metaphorical glove slap across the face. From that day on, his new mission in life was to be better than me. Higher scores on tests and quicker laps in PE were all accompanied by smug looks and a muttered, “Not so bad for a scholarship kid, huh?”

All I’m saying is that give a boy a derisive smile enough times and eventually he starts to fight back. And be smug in return. And develop a taste for rubbing it in whenever I was better at something than Gabriel. By the end of high school the rivalry had grown into a full-on war.

I thought I was done with him after we graduated, but my first day in college, freshman orientation, there he was again. Our eyes met across the room, a silent challenge was issued via a slightly raised, smug eyebrow, and the war continued.

You’d think we’d have grown up since then, but we really haven’t. Everything I do has one purpose: to be better than Gabriel García. And to appease my grandparents and be worthy of the Van De Bogart name, but that’s a whole different can of worms I am not about to pry open right now.

Anyway, what it comes down to is that he rubs me the wrong way, and I do the same to him. Mostly we vacillate between painful politeness and sniping at each other.

Case in point, the moment I step inside the office, he raises his head and gifts me with one of his patented stony looks. “How nice of you to finally show up.”

Deep breaths, ua. Deep breaths.

I hold my hands up. “I know. In my defense?—”

“You’re twenty- four minutes late.”

I don’t know why he has to say it like that. Does the four somehow make it worse? Would twenty minutes late be acceptable, but that extra four minutes is the straw that breaks the camel’s back?

“Yes,” I say, because, well, this time he actually does have a reason to be pissed at me, and unlike some people, I can own up to my mistakes. “I got stuck in traffic. Rush hour.”

“It’s New York. It’s always rush hour. Want to know a handy little trick to arrive on time?”

“No.”

“You leave earlier.”

“I appreciate the pearls of wisdom.” My calm reserves are quickly depleting. That’s just the effect Gabriel has on me. His I-never-do-anything-wrong attitude is highly unwelcome right now. It’s also unwelcome every other day, but it’s especially unwelcome right now when I’m soaking wet and cold.

He lets his gaze slide over me, wrinkling his nose while he’s at it. “You’re wet.”

He says it in a disdainful voice that makes it very clear being wet is a sin equal to showing up sweaty or with snot dripping out of your nose.

I roll my eyes. “Thank you for pointing it out. I didn’t even notice.” I make a real show of wiping the rainwater out of my eyes. “For your information, I’m wet because I had to run to get here. And I did it all for you.”

He nods toward my feet. “And now you’re dripping all over the floor.”

“Yeah, well, there’s not much I can do about that, is there? Unless you want me to go and stand underneath the hand dryer in the bathroom for the next three hours.”

“Don’t you have a change of clothes?”

I stare at him in exasperation. “Why would I have a change of clothes here?”

He just sighs, goes to his desk, and pulls out a bag. In a second, he holds out a crisp white button-down that, by some sorcery, isn’t even wrinkled.

We’re both interns at Rasmussen & Cromwell, one of the top law firms on the East Coast. It’s prestigious and highly competitive, and scoring an internship here is a big damn deal. Figures both Gabriel and I had the idea to apply when that coveted position became available. It also figures that they couldn’t seem to decide between the two of us and offered us both internships.

There’s the promise of a job out of it once we graduate in the spring. Only for one of us though, so we’ve both been obsessively trying to prove ourselves, which means any personal life I might have had has been a distant memory these past two months because school and this place take up all my time.

It would be nice if I could wholeheartedly say it’s worth it, but the truth is?—

“Are you going to take it or am I just supposed to keep pretending to be your personal coat hanger?”

I quickly take the shirt and pull my own wet T-shirt over my head. It lands at my feet with a wet plop. I button the dry shirt. When I look up, I find Gabriel staring at my chest with a frown.

“What now?” I ask with a sigh. I swear to God, if he has something smug to say about having better abs, I’m going to commit murder.

He jerks his head up. “What do you mean?”

“You’re glaring.”

“I’m thinking,” he says. “Oh, I’m sorry. Are you not familiar with the concept? See, it’s when your brain processes or reasons before you act.”

“Uh-huh. Look, I know I’m making the shirt wet, but you can’t honestly tell me you didn’t connect the dots and realize it wasn’t going to stay dry.”

“A simple thank you would suffice.”

“Hold your horses,” I mutter as I adjust the collar. My sweatpants are still uncomfortably wet, but half of me is warm, at least. Would I prefer that it was the half with my balls? Of course. But you can’t have everything in life.

“Thanks,” I say once I’m dressed.

He nods in acknowledgment then turns back to his desk.

“All right. Since you so considerately decided not to show up at the right time, I already did the decorating, so we can go. You’re welcome, and you owe me one.”

I raise my brows at him. I’m late, sure, but he did everything already in twenty- four minutes? I have my doubts.

“Okay, well, I have stuff here, so let’s take a look and see if we can add it somewhere. I did lug it all the way here from my place, after all.”

He closes his eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath. It’s a move I know well. Mainly because he makes me do the same thing a lot.

“By all means.” He points to the door.

I grab my suitcase and drag it out of the office. There’s a space on the floor above that’s rented out for parties, conferences, and things like that, and that’s where the office Christmas party is going to take place.

“Did you bring lights?” I ask over my shoulder. “I don’t think it’ll be very Christmassy otherwise.”

“I know we’re in charge of decorating, but it’s an office party,” he calls after me. “We don’t have to go overboard. You know just as well as I do why we both volunteered for this crap. We’re basically canceling each other out with this. Neither of us gets extra points for this now. And it’s for a freaking office Christmas party. People won’t care.”

I’m ignoring the grumbling. It’s Christmas time, and I unapologetically love it. The lights, the decorations, the music—all of it. But most of all I love the people. Everybody’s so happy during the holidays that it makes me feel less lonely.

I reach the conference room and push the door open. I’m not sure what I was expecting when Gabriel said he’d already done the decorating. I guess I was prepared to see something halfway decent? Something most people would be sort of okay with? And technically, that’s what I get. It’s not bad, per se, but it’s… it’s really underwhelming. There are a few strings of lights, some candy canes, and red and green ribbons. I mean, it’s fine. Fine. But that’s all it is.

I turn around. “That’s it?”

His jaw hardens, and he crosses his arms over his chest. “Yes. It’s an office . We don’t have to impress anybody here.”

I tilt my head to the side. “Hold the phone. An office, you say? And here I was sure I was in IKEA. You mean these chairs aren’t for sale?”

“Funny.”

“Tragic is the word for this,” I say as I turn back around. “And IKEA is most definitely better decorated.”

He watches as I unzip the suitcase, his arms crossed over his chest, an exasperated look on his face. “I used the stuff Robert gave me. That’s how they do things around here. There’s no need to go overboard. It’s not like we’ll be here for actual Christmas. It’s a waste of everyone’s time.”

“Can you stop repeating that one sentence? I get it. Office. Christmas. Keep it simple. Yada, yada, yada.” I point to the lone candle in the middle of one of the tables. “That, by the way, isn’t simple. It’s sad.”

“I’d stop repeating myself if you’d just listen to me for once in your life. And it’s not sad. It’s just minimalist.”

“Which is coincidentally one word that doesn’t apply to Christmas.”

“Maybe so, but again, we won’t be here for the actual holidays. We’re all going to our own homes where we’re free to decorate whatever we want as opulently as we want.”

“Would it kill you to cooperate just a bit?”

“It’s an office Christmas party,” he says for the hundredth time. “Nobody actually enjoys these things.”

“Not with that attitude they don’t.” I start taking out the lights and placing them on the table. Gabriel observes silently, which is a nice change.

“You have enough lights to deck out Times Square,” he finally grumbles.

“Good. Then it’ll be impressive.”

Gabriel looks at the ceiling and mutters something unintelligible.

I walk over to the doorway and take a look around to really get the feel of this place and all the possibilities these walls hold.

And then I get to work.

“We should do something fun at the party,” I say as I grab a table, drag it to the center of the room, and climb up on it to rig the first string of lights. I’ll zigzag them across the ceiling, and it’ll look magical.

“Fun?” Gabriel repeats slowly, like it’s a word he’s never used before. Sounds about right.

“Yeah. Otherwise, people will just drink and be bored. We should have an activity. Like… we could have a Christmas-themed escape room.”

“No.”

“Come on. It’d be good for morale and team spirit.”

“There are fifty people coming to this thing, most of them with a plus one. It’d have to be a hell of an escape room to keep everybody entertained.”

“Yeah, okay.” I concede after a bit of thinking. “How about a cooking class?”

“The kitchen nook downstairs is a fridge and a microwave. What kind of dishes are you expecting to make? Popcorn? I think we can all figure that one out on our own.”

“A costume party, then.”

“Do you just enjoy torturing yourself? Voluntarily?” he asks in his best exasperated voice.

“Lip-synching contest?”

“I’ll shoot myself now.”

I press my lips together and silently count to ten. Do not take the bait. Do not take the bait.

He sighs. “I asked Robert what they usually do at their office parties. They drink. They dance. They make questionable decisions. Somebody sleeps with somebody they shouldn’t. Robert’s money is on Shane and Kayla. That’s it. It sounds good to me. Can we maybe, just maybe, not mess with the system?”

“Sometimes it’s good when somebody shakes things up a bit.”

“Or, here’s an idea, you can do all those lip-synched cooking-show murder mysteries with friends and family on Christmas Eve like a normal person and not make everybody else suffer.”

I snap my mouth shut and ignore the sting in my chest. It’s fine. So completely fine.

“You know, as delightful as your company is, you can leave. You don’t have to stay here just for my benefit,” I throw over my shoulder.

He raises his left brow almost imperceptibly. Just enough to reinforce what we both already know. Leaving is giving up. Leaving is me winning. He’s not going anywhere.

A shame.

We work in silence, him handing me lights, me stringing them up. I go a bit overboard even for my taste just to annoy him. Frankly, it’s bordering on gaudy, but the expression on Gabriel’s face makes it all worth it. When I finally climb off the table, Gabriel takes a slow look around. I wove the lights into a net that covers the whole ceiling, and I covered the wall of windows to our left with lights and Christmas ornaments while I was at it.

“It’s like Dyker Heights and Rockefeller Center had a baby and the kid barfed all over the room,” Gabriel says with a grim expression.

I send him a sickly-sweet smile. “Good. Just what I was going for.”

He mutters something under his breath. I ignore it. He can grumble all he wants, I don’t care.

“Test run,” I say excitedly when I head to the outlet on the wall.

I take a moment to create some anticipation.

And push the plug in.

I expect magic.

Nothing happens.

“Wow. Festive,” Gabriel deadpans.

I ignore him as I glance at the rows of lights above my head. “It must be one of the splitters,” I mutter to myself.

“You sure it’s not just the fact that you dragged them here in a wet suitcase?”

“The outside was wet. The inside was fine. Do me a favor, though? Stand there and do nothing. Please. I really don’t need you to fuck anything up.”

He raises both hands in front of himself. “Of course not. Wouldn’t want to interrupt the master. Go on. Show me how it’s done.”

I check the splitters and the connectors, but there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong anywhere. Gabriel is smirking in the corner.

Asshole.

“Need help?” he asks after about twenty minutes.

“From you? When I close my eyes, I can still see Mr. Baton twitching that one time you electrocuted him. No offense, but I choose life.”

“ I didn’t electrocute him. He was touching a live wire, for fuck’s sake. And I was fourteen!”

“Suuure,” I drawl. “A live wire. I imagine that’s what you’re going to say to the police once you’ve fried me to death.”

He lets out an irritated sigh. “Do you enjoy being needlessly stubborn? Just let me have a look so I can fix whatever’s wrong and we can go home.”

“It’s barely eight o’clock. How much beauty sleep do you need, exactly?”

“Well, Richie Rich, some of us have obligations and could use the energy.”

I send him an impatient look. “I know how much you enjoy the sound of your own voice, but is there any chance you can be quiet for a second so I can concentrate?”

“I don’t think it’s my voice that’s the problem here.”

“Forgot who I was talking to. Of course, you’re never the problem. It’s everybody else.”

He sighs and gets up. “Just let me see.”

He’s right next to me when I spot the bulb and the broken wire sticking out next to it.

“I got it,” we say at the same time. We both immediately start moving until we’re facing off on the opposite sides of the table.

I narrow my eyes at him. “Step back and let me work. I don’t need you breathing down my neck.”

“You’ve already wasted hours of my life on this. Just let me handle it.”

“I didn’t force you to be here.”

He forces a smile. “Of course not. What I meant to say was, you’ve already done most of the decorating. Let me pitch in with this.”

Fat chance of that happening. Let me pitch in. Sure. And then he can later gloat that it was him who made the whole thing work. Not on my watch.

We exchange a brief look, and then we’re both scrambling to get on top of the table first.

“I’ve got it,” I say, but he’s already in my way, arms up, ready to go.

“Now who’s breathing down someone else’s neck,” Gabriel grumbles when I almost tackle him to the floor in my haste to get to the broken bulb first.

“Oh? You don’t enjoy that?” I turn my head to the side and blow hot air into his ear. He jerks away from me, and I let out an evil cackle.

It’s a wide table, so he has plenty of room even after I push myself up next to him. A pity. It would’ve been nice to see him fall off. Preferably onto his stupid, smug face.

“Can you take your hands off my face? I can’t see a fucking thing,” he says through gritted teeth.

“You take your hands off my face.”

“You’re impossible!”

“High praise from the most annoying person on the planet!”

“I can’t wait for this internship to end, so I won’t have to deal with you anymore!” he says.

“Oh no! Who will erase my will to live if you’re no longer here?” I shoot back.

He hip checks me out of the way, and I stumble, but I regain my balance in a second and push him away.

“Stop pushing me,” he snaps.

“You started it!”

We both reach up at the same time and grab.

The world goes black.