“Reegan? What are you doing here?”
A man with shaggy midnight black hair and a familiar set of grey eyes- the two key traits inherited by all the men in the Cordova family- stared back at me blankly, clearly not in the best mood.
When I opened my door this morning, I hadn’t expected to see my younger brother standing outside my apartment. With only a five-year age gap, we never had a bad relationship, especially since he had no desire to take over the family business, but he wasn’t one to visit others.
He worked as a freelance hacker who would’ve stayed inside his house 24/7 if it wasn’t for my mother’s mandatory weekly family dinners. As such, he stood just half a foot shorter than me at only 6 feet tall, with a much leaner build than my own from sitting around at his apartment all day.
“I didn’t want to come, but-” Reegan was abruptly cut off when an arm was suddenly thrown around him, and a familiar brunette popped up in the doorway.
“I thought we should hang out together this weekend. You know how Reegan never leaves his room, and you never stop working, so I thought it would be good for us to go out. Halloween just passed, so they should be decorating downtown with thanksgivie stuff, ” exclaimed an overly energetic Benedict.
I gingerly slipped his thermos out of his hand, wincing from being punched in the face with a ridiculously strong pumpkin spice aroma. “And, you’re not allowed to have any more sugar for the rest of the morning.”
He pouted and dragged my brother into my apartment, completely uninvited, as if it was his own home. “Then see it as a conciliation present after how rudely you blew up at me.”
I arched an eyebrow in question. I thought that he had already forgiven me after I dropped off some sweets at his office last week.
Ignoring my questioning look, Benedict continued, “There’s a farmer’s market popping up downtown with all sorts of specialty items. Perfect time for both you and your brother to do some grocery shopping.”
“I don’t have time to-”
“I could just order-”
Walking across my apartment as if he owned it, Benedict cut both of us off with a sharp glare, “You guys live as if you are still in college, ordering out all the time. It’s honestly shameless and quite unhealthy. I don’t know how your mother deals with the two of you.”
He turned away with a swish and started rummaging through my closet.
I stared at him in confusion, wondering why a fully-grown man was digging through my clothes regardless of whether or not he was my closest friend.
Finally escaping from Benedict’s grasp, Reegan tiredly slumped onto my sofa, grumbling, “Don’t even bother stopping him. He did the same thing to me this morning.”
I sighed as a clump of clothes was thrown onto my chest. Catching what appeared to be a thin beige sweater with some black pants, I walked into my bathroom to change, figuring that there was no point in arguing with Benedict about clothes.
He was… how do you say… a bit more on the feminine side of things in the sense that he liked playing dress-up and finding picturesque sweet shops.
Once I exited the bathroom, he tossed a thick coat toward me and started dragging both my brother and me out of the apartment, barely giving me enough time to lock up my place. He brought us down to his car, which was haphazardly parked in a fire lane.
After my brother and I reluctantly got into his car, he zoomed out away from the building, braking and accelerating with jerk movements all the way up to downtown NYC. By the time we arrived at the farmer’s market that he spoke of before, Reegan was nearly about to puke in the back of his car. Luckily, he managed to at least make it to a trash can before emptying out his stomach, making Benedict wince at the sound of vomiting.
I sighed as I gave Benedict the side-eye. “I’m driving on the back way.”
Benedict nodded obediently in agreement.
When Reegan finished hurling, he walked back to us, giving Benedict such a harsh glare that any other man would’ve already been buried six feet under with a mere glance. “You owe me lunch and a drink to wash this taste out of my mouth ASAP.”
Benedict nodded timidly and hid behind me as if he could use me as a shield, grumbling, “Why are the Cordova boys always so mean to me…” With a final huff, he strode off to the east side of the market, probably going to search for said drink for Reegan despite his grumbles.
The moment that Benedict disappeared out of sight, Reegan snapped up from his hunched position and hissed at me, “Why must you stay friends with that thing? I feel like I’m always getting the short end of the stick whenever we go out with him.”
I chuckled as I walked over to him, giving him a hand up and off the ground. “He’s just… eccentric, I guess… But, he’s honestly quite clever when it comes to business, so don’t be too harsh.”
Reegan grumbled under his breath as he took my hand. Once he straightened up, he glanced around, taking in our surroundings for the first time after arriving, as he brushed himself off. He paused for a moment before noting, “People are staring at us. I know that I just vomited in public, but that’s not normal right? At least not to this degree?”
I had gotten used to stares from going out in public as the head of Cordova Industries, so I barely even noticed it anymore. But, the majority of the people at the farmer’s market had blatantly stopped in their tracks, forming a mini semi-circle around us. Staring, pointing, and whispering about us to each other.
As the head of Cordova Industries, my pictures were taken every once in a while for the front page of newspapers or magazines, so it wasn’t hard for them to notice a familiar face. However, due to my brother’s shut-in tendencies, most people didn’t know what he looked like, but it didn’t take much of a brain to recognize the highly similar features shared between us, which was probably why they were staring more than normal.
I sighed and tugged him out of the mass toward a less crowded area of the farmer’s market. Stopping momentarily at one of the stands, I plucked out two hats and two pairs of sunglasses for us. “Here.” I handed Reegan one set. “It won’t stop all the stares, but at least it will be harder for people to recognize us.”
He grumpily put the hat and sunglasses on with me. “This is why I didn’t want anything to do with the family business.”
I rolled my eyes and waved for him to follow. “Stop complaining, and let’s go. Benedict just buzzed me, telling me he found a place for us to have lunch.”
He hummed mindlessly and followed me as we made our way to the east part of the market. Luckily we managed to slide past others without being spotted and made it to the cafe in record time.
A small chime echoed through the relatively empty cafe when we opened the door. The interior of the cafe was covered in fake vines and all sorts of nature-related decorations to give off a calming vibe. It wasn’t exactly the type of place that my brother or I would personally venture into, but it was definitely right up Benedict’s alley.
I followed my brother as he made a beeline toward one of the window seats, plopping down across from Benedict, who was already sitting there was a pile of menus and what appeared to be a couple of napkins that already had phone numbers on them.
Shaking my head, I shrugged off my overcoat and sat down between the two. In less than a second after sitting down, Reegan tossed the menu onto the table and pointed to two items on it, “I want this and this.”
Benedict sighed at his request. “Yes, yes, I know. I can’t believe I’m treating a member of the Cordova family even though you people make ten times more than my monthly salary in a single day.”
Glancing up from my own menu, I mused, “If you’re on that track, then I’m sure you wouldn’t mind treating me as well.” I closed my menu and tossed it onto the other one. “Just get me the same thing as Reegan.”
Benedict’s eye twitched as he stuffed his nose back into his menu, most likely being overly dramatic and sulking about how no one cared about him.
Ignoring his antics, I turned my attention to my brother, who only had eyes for his phone. He seemed to be typing out some message ever, which was quite unlike him. He usually ignored everyone’s message unless it was work-related and generally only used his phone to play games to pass the time whenever he was forced on an outing like today.
He had a soft smile on his lips as his eyes traced back and forth across the screen. Only an idiot would not be able to tell that he had feelings for whomever it was on the other side, and unluckily enough, Benedict didn’t fall into that category.
Benedict unmanneredly leaned his entire body across the table as he tried to catch a glimpse of Reegan’s screen and chirped inquisitively, “Who are you texting?”
Leaning further away from the ever-so-nosy Benedict, Reegan grumbled, “Nobody.”
“It can’t be no one if you are actually responding to their messages. Come on, just tell me already. I’m practically your second older brother.”
Reegan’s face scrunched up in disgust. “Don’t ever say that again. I don’t want to be related to you in any way.”
Before Benedict could pester him any further, the waiters arrived with armfuls of our dishes, making Benedict pout as he plopped back down in his seat.
Reegan happily stuffed his phone back into his pocket at the sight of food, starting with taking large gulps of his milkshake.
The rest of lunch passed relatively calmly as my brother continued to ignore Benedict, pretending that he didn’t exit despite the man’s incessant pestering.
The food was pretty good and the cafe wasn’t too loud. The only downside of the meal was how people from the farmer’s market had started to gather both inside the cafe and right outside the cafe’s window when they started to recognize us, glancing at us with no subtly at all.
Even though I made peace with the fact that people would always treat me like a piece in an exhibition, I still didn’t like having that many eyes on me. Didn’t they have anything better to do with their lives?
By the end of the meal, I was itching to go home, but Benedict was reveling in the attention and insisted on taking a stroll through the market instead. After throwing a few hundred dollar bills on the table, generously overtopping, he dragged us out of the cafe to one stand after another.
The market was so stuffed with people that I could barely keep my eye on both my brother who was straggling behind and my friend who wouldn’t stop darting off in every which way. In less than ten minutes from exiting the cafe, I had already lost both of them to the crowds.
Standing much taller than the average person, my eyes drifted across the tops of people’s heads, looking for them to no avail. I would’ve given up in any scenario and just gone home by myself, but Benedict had taken my keys and my wallet as a preventative measure.
I sighed as I wandered along the market, hoping to catch sight of at least one of them.
The crowd had become so dense that I could barely make out individual figures, but there was one thing that did catch my eye.
There was a little boy with dark black hair struggling through the crowds all by himself. No one took any notice of his little figure and only continued to brush passed him without any care. Even though he barely came up to their hips, he was still frantically trying to stop one of them, any one of them, to no avail.
When he finally broke out of the crowd, my eyes widened when I was met with a pair of familiar violet eyes.
Liam?