Just as she was about to ask Sephy’s opinion, her friend’s phone dinged loudly from where it lay in between them where they sat cross-legged on Ripley’s living room floor. Clarice Starling, a little startled by the noise, also lifted her head in interest before settling it back on her paws again. 

Ripley, however, was not as easily disinterested. She kept an eye on her best friend and, upon seeing a dopey smile spread across her face, she grinned too.

“That wouldn’t happen to be Bradley, would it?” she teased in a sing-song voice.

In response, the blonde in front of him slammed her hands down on the table with enough force to massacre the prettily frosted cupcake that had once been whole in front of her. Now, it was a flattened mess, crumbs flying in all directions - although most of them had decided to take up residence on Bradley’s Black Panther t-shirt. He let out a low moan of displeasure before looking back up at the offender.

Blue eyes blinked back at him and chubby hands raised once more.

“No,” he warned Jenna, who continued to stare at him with evil intent before mashing her little baby fists against the cake again. All the while her tiny eyebrows had puckered together in what everyone in the bakery had declared to be her ‘signature Bradley impression’. Apparently her imitation of his own furrowed brow whenever he was mildly confused, upset or frustrated was dead-on, but he couldn’t see the resemblance. Or maybe he just refused to.

“C’mon, man!” he chided the infant as she began smearing frosting all over the table, pink buttercream getting far too close to the edges of his Poe Dameron comic for his liking.

“It’s called artistic freedom,” Kit said as she bustled by them, the tray she carried piled high with empty cupcake wrappers, remnants of the 7th birthday party that had been making noise on the opposite side of the bakery earlier. Jenna had grown agitated by the sheer volume of them, up until Bradley had been elected to swoop in and distract her while her mom and Sephy continued to work. Jenna, suddenly placated by the arrival of her mama, began gurgling happily. Kit reached down to tickle her daughter under her chin before she lifted her head to smirk at Bradley.

“And she’s not mocking you. She’s just practicing her craft. She’s gonna be an actor like her Daddy.” Bradley opened his mouth and Kit’s face immediately flattened into a collection of unimpressed lines. “No, you can’t meet him.”

It hadn’t been the first time that Bradley had begged to meet Lo Fields and it probably wouldn’t be the last, but he doubted Kit was going to relent anytime soon. Apparently she’d only ever let Bradley fangirl over her husband “over her dead body”.

“Kit,” he pouted. “That stinks.”

He watched as she pulled a face, nose wrinkling. Then she grimaced.

“No, that’s just life. But something does stink.”

It was then that Bradley caught the same whiff Kit had cottoned onto moments before. A ripe, pungent smell that instantly had him screwing his face up. He tugged quickly at the collar of his t-shirt to hike it up over his nose as if that would keep the stench at bay. Eyes watering, he coughed out a gag that had Kit rolling her eyes at him.

“Quit being so dramatic, it’s just a dirty diaper,” she scolded him. She looked down at the tray in her hands and then at Jenna who still seemed happy as a clam and unaware that she was stinking up the place. Instead, she continued to scoop more frosting into her mouth as her mom looked around for somewhere to put the tray.

“I still need to take this through the back. Bradders, could you-?”

“Take the tray and not the baby? Absolutely!” he said, chair scraping back. He was on his feet in an instant, whipping the tray out of Kit’s hand and immediately backing up from Baby Chernobyl. He ignored Kit’s loud scoff as well as her warning that wasn’t even allowed to go into the kitchen. The last thing he wanted was to run the risk of being anywhere near a vicinity that could leave him as the prime contender to change Jenna’s diaper. Instead, he all but fell through the swing doors into the kitchen, foot clumsily catching the corner of one of them as it swung shut again. It was enough to trip him up and cause a commotion as he did his best attempt at an impression of Goofy in his bid to stay upright. A well-placed “Gawrsh!” would have helped him nail it but he was too busy watching Sephy.

She was pottering around the kitchen, too focused on her work to even take note of Hurricane Bradley tornado-ing his way in. Which meant it gave Bradley time to just watch her, a luxury he was never afforded. If he ever spent too much time looking at Sephy, she always caught him and narrowed her eyes and questioned why he was staring, which always led to him making up some sort of lie about there being something on her face - a stray crumb, a piece of fluff. On one occasion a booger, which had mortified them both. Not only did he try not to let himself get caught looking at Sephy, but Bradley also refused to watch her movies either. It felt like a violation of her privacy in a stupid way. He knew it was dumb. There were very few people he knew that hadn’t seen Persephone Blake in a movie, but even still. He supposed he didn’t like the idea of him watching her onscreen when she was unaware of him doing so. He’d already encroached on her privacy enough in the past, even if she didn’t know that; he didn’t want to run the risk of doing that again. It made him feel sick, like milk was curdling in his stomach.

Eventually, he cleared his throat.

“Hey,” he greeted her. “Kit told me to bring this tray through to-”

Before he could finish, the tray slipped from his hands and crashed into a bowl of flour on the table. It flipped over, sending up a cloud of white dust that coated Sephy’s whole face.

Immediately, Bradley’s own face paled - possibly enough for them to match in pallor.

“You know, we’re gonna look back on this and laugh one day,” he said quickly, already backing away like people told you to do when you encountered a grizzly bear. “We’re gonna look back and we’re gonna laugh and be so glad you didn’t immediately kill me for doing that, because where would we be if you did that? ‘Cause you know that was an accident, right? You know I didn’t mean to do that. You know I usually leave it up to Ripley to make you look all… cadaverous. So it’s so important that you don’t fly off the handle and yell at me, right?”

Guilt washed over him as he thought of Annie, who’d been keeping him at arms length ever since the revelation he’d been spending their favourite holiday with another girl. No matter where Jax was in the world, he had always made a point of coming home to Annie so that he could spoil her rotten. They’d spend the holiday curled up under blankets, watching When Harry Met Sally, or his best friend would put on her prettiest red dress and he’d take her out. Jax knew, perhaps more than most, just how lonely Annie could get, and this time of year only seemed to exasperate it. Her Dad adored her but also sheltered her, which meant dating was generally a no-go. And because Annie was one of the most beautiful people he knew, inside and out, he never for a second wanted her to be lonely.

Scrolling through his Instagram, he was relieved, and a little tickled, to see Elias’ face plastered all over Annie’s feed, as well as her story. It alleviated a little bit of pressure on his chest to know Annie wasn’t alone.

“Didn’t think he had it in him.” Jax mumbled, his thumb double-tapping over Eli’s face. Although, if he knew Annie, he could almost be certain she had been the one to make the first move. Either way, he was sure Eli was over the moon to have the girl of his dreams on his arm.

“What was that?”

Lifting his head, Jax noticed his uber driver had his eyes trained on him in the rearview mirror, having mistaken Jax’s words as meant for him. The man flushed a little in embarrassment, shaking his head as his driver moved his eyes back to the road.

“Just talking to myself, sorry.” Jax apologised in his soft, Australian lilt. Running his clammy hands over the fabric of his jeans, Jax thought about Sephy. Lovely, agreeable, funny Sephy, who’d said she\d spend the day with him despite the fact he was certain she could have any man, any man at all as her Valentine. And why was he nervous? It would be funny, if it weren’t so pitiful, that the one Valentine he got to show off happened to be a woman he wasn’t even really dating.

For about the fourth time in their short drive, Jax felt the other man’s eyes on him.

“Sorry to ask, man. You look so familiar to me, are you Jax Otto?” he asked, a smirk playing at the corner of his lips.

A high, nervous laugh fell from Jax’s lips as he shoved his hands in his pockets, fumbling around for his phone. Not for the first time, Jax wondered exactly what had given him away. Sometimes it was that people couldn’t recognise Jax outside of his race suit, outside of the car, even. Other times people heard the accent, the dark crop of hair, the too-nice clothes and made the connection, much to Jax’s dismay.

“Uh, yeah. That’s me.” Jax stated, trying to inject some enthusiasm into his voice. As Jax grew more nervous, however, the man behind the wheel grew even more animated.

“Oh, man! I can’t believe I’m driving Jax Otto, wait till my wife finds out - she loves you, Jax, just loves you.”

The city whooshed by as Jax nodded good-naturedly, tapping out a text to Sephy to let her know he wasn’t far now.

“Tell your Mrs I say hi then, won’t you?” Jax said, leaning forward to clap his driver on the shoulder. “Can you just pull over here? This is me.”

The uber screeched to a sudden stop outside of Sephy’s Brownstone. The whole thing was so new that Jax and Sephy had never stepped into one another’s apartments, the man was half afraid he’d get lost on the way there. Jax looked down his phone, as though to make sure this was the right address. He had half a mind to step out onto the street, walk up those steps and call for her himself.

“Jax, man, is that your girl?”

Lifting his head, Jax was filled with a sudden quiet reassurance at the blonde head of hair ducking out from behind the door. A small, pleased smile crossed his features as his hand found the car door handle, spilling out onto the street to greet her.

“Yeah, that’s her.”