Frog and Quinn: Chapter Six (Patreon)

My parents instilled from a young age that family is the most important thing on earth. The world could be a dry, barren wasteland, but family would keep me alive.

I used to think they were just trying their best to bring Joana and me closer to our big brother, who felt eons away at times. Oscar is ten years older than me. He was out of the house before I hit puberty, before Jo was in kindergarten, and once he was gone for college, he rarely came back.

He was more like a storybook older brother told in tales and once upon a times. Rather than a real life one who was at our side as we boarded the school bus, who was there when we stepped off it.

But still Sônia and Rodrigo—Mom and Dad—made sure to remind Jo and me that if we were stuck alone in a desert, our older brother would be the one running back with buckets of water to save us from dehydration and heat stroke. He’d be the one person we could count on more than anyone else. And I believed them.

Up until a certain point. When the sentimentality of family faded. When Oscar didn’t come back during a year where I felt like I was choking on sand. When Yale and then the security team stole his time and his life. When that seemed to hold more importance to him than our family.

I used to be bitter about it, but I’m not trying to be weighed down by the past. Therapy, I guess, can be thanks for that one. So the Oliveira siblings are forging a new future together, one that would make Sônia and Rodrigo proud.

Oscar might not be a storybook big brother, but he’s something better to me now.

He’s real, and he’s here.

Oscar, Joana, and I occupy a scuffed wooden table in a dimly lit sports bar for the third outing of our weekly Monday night dinners.

Jo’s idea.

She basically ripped off the Cobalt Empire, citing that “the Cobalts don’t have a trademark on weekly family dinners.”

“They legitimately have a fan page called Wednesday Night Dinner,” Oscar said. “All capitalized. It’s a proper noun.”

She glared. “Come on.”

“It’s true. Look it up.”

“It is true,” I added. I’ve seen the forum. Fans mostly hypothesize what goes down on the weekly dinners, and they also try to investigate who attends each week (not all siblings do). But it’s a well-known fact that only Cobalts are invited.  

She cringed. “I’m not looking it up.” She thinks the Cobalts are overrated, and she’d be hard pressed to find others with the same exact feelings.  

I ended up agreeing to these Monday things, but I honestly didn’t think Oscar would show. He’s busy in the sense that he will bail in the middle of a conversation. Grab his radio, stick his earpiece in, and rush to Charlie’s side.

I could barely count on him to make it to my birthday dinners growing up, so the idea he’d get his ass to a weekly dinner—yeah fucking right.

Except, this is the third Monday night dinner, and he’s sitting across from me drinking a beer. I fist the neck of a Koning Lite and take a swig, trying not to smile like an eight-year-old who received a shiny red bike on Christmas morning.

Oliveiras together—it just feels right. I told that to Frog when we were stuck sorting through mail during Eliot’s birthday party. She ended up joining me. Even when I tried to let her off the hook. We both never made the party.

Frog replied, “I get it. I might not have before moving to Philly, but now…nothing has felt more right than being with my cousin. Except, maybe, being on SFO.”

We exchanged a softer smile, which seemed a little too intimate while we were alone. So I looked away and sliced open a cardboard box. My pulse was out of whack for several minutes after that.

 At the sports bar, I swallow a mouthful of beer and run my hand against the back of my skull, trying to let Frog out of my mind.

I’ve considered bringing her up.

Once.

Or twice. Mainly to tell Oscar what I told Donnelly about Frog’s quest to online date. I know he’ll have the opposite reaction and tell me to tread lightly. And maybe I need that reminder. Oscar will throw the caution tape at my face, not rip it off.

Still, I haven’t found a great time to sideswipe the conversation into…that.

I take another hearty swig.

Oscar wears a blue bandana like he just came from the gym. His hair has more curl to it than mine, and it’s long enough that pieces fall over the rolled fabric.

Joana has the same loose curls as him, but her glossy brown hair is in double French braids now. She’s not in gym clothes, though. Her short white sundress would’ve gotten her grounded in high school. Whatever pissed off our dad the most, she wore.

She absentmindedly touches a hand to her neckline, and my eyes direct to her necklace. A fine gold chain leads to a round shaped coin at the end with the imprint of Saint Christopher, patron saint of travelers. Mom bought it for her after her confirmation, which had been a hell of a family dispute since Jo refused to get confirmed at sixteen. Took Jo two years before her rebellion caved concerning Catholicism. And despite all of that, I’ve rarely seen her without that necklace.

Her hand drops into a basket of fried pickles. “These are crap,” she says, popping one in her mouth. “Too much breading.”

“Then why are you still eating them?” Oscar digs in the same basket.

“Because they’re addicting.” Jo stares at the seven TV screens above the bar. She’s fixated on the one playing soccer. “And I’m indulging. I don’t have any scheduled fights this summer, so I don’t need to cut weight.” She picks out a better-looking pickle, taking a long-ass time, then tosses it in her mouth.

I don’t miss those days.

Oscar and I both became professional boxers by eighteen, but he quit at nineteen. I quit at twenty. Jo is the only one currently fulfilling our dad’s hopes and dreams for one of us to live up to his boxing legacy.

Jo’s kind of like the Goldilocks of the Oliveiras.

Oscar was average at boxing and withstood it. I was great at it but hated it. And then there’s our little sister. She has the talent, the ambition, passion, and thank fucking God—she loves it.

Still, it never gets easier watching her in a ring. She competes mostly in the welterweight weight class, but sometimes she’ll work hard to shed pounds just to make it into the junior welterweight division, which is about seven pounds lighter.

“What are you doing this summer then?” I ask her. “Without a fight?”

“Dad’s got me on a two-month training regime,” she says casually. “Then there’s the sponsorship—”

Oscar chokes on his beer. “Sponsorship?” He coughs into a grin. Older brother pride is strong in his glimmering brown eyes. “Why am I just now hearing about this?” I’m honestly a little shocked she hasn’t told him, considering she lives in his studio apartment.

I even know about it.

“Let me list the reasons,” Jo says and lists on her fingers. “Prague, Paris, Istanbul.” All cities Oscar has popped in and out of recently. All thanks to his frequent flyer client, Charlie Cobalt.

Oscar holds up a hand. “Wait-wait. I’ve been traveling some, but a conversation can happen over the phone.” He mimes grabbing one and putting it to his ear. “Ei, irmão mais velho, sou eu, Joana Raquel Sousa Oliveira.” Hey, big brother, it’s me, Joana Raquel Sousa Oliveira.

She mimes picking up the phone and deepens her voice. “Obrigado por ligar. Tchau, vadia.” Thanks for calling. Bye, bitch.

I spit out some beer in a laugh. “Fuck, Jo.”

She leans back with folded arms. “That’s what Oscar gets for trying to have a fake phone call with me.”

Oscar is grinning while he motions his beer at her. “First, smarty pants, that sounds nothing like me. Second, I’d never hang up on you. So let’s try this again.” He puts his imaginary phone to his ear. “Oscar, I have some amazing, awesome, fantastic news to share with you. Like my sponsorship for…”

Joana leans forward and rotates a bottle of hot sauce. “Something that you might not think is amazing-awesome-fantastic, considering your allegiance to the Cobalt clan.”

I cough into another sip of beer and rub my mouth with my knuckles. Mid clearing my throat, I say, “No one calls them that.”

They are widely known as the Cobalt Empire.

A name fit for the beings you can’t quite reach. Out of all of us, Oscar is the closest to that family. He’s touched the gilded gates, and it’s about as far as a bodyguard goes. Because even as Charlie Cobalt’s bodyguard, Oscar isn’t exactly privy to all the secrets the Cobalts hold.

I love a good secret just as much as my older brother—but I am happy to be jetpacked away from Cobalt drama. It’s on a whole other nuclear level. Joana seems to be orbiting the chaos ever since she met Beckett Cobalt, which went about as well as sandpaper shaking hands with velvet.

“I’m not referring to them like they’re gods,” Jo says. “They bleed just like the rest of us.”

“But do they?” I tease. It is a little too easy to use the Cobalts as fodder to annoy her.

She tosses a fried pickle at me, and I let it bounce off my chin and onto the table. Oscar is in full contemplation mode. I wonder if he’s using his Yale deduction skills to figure out why the sponsorship would test his allegiances.

Jo waves a hand up at Oscar’s face, breaking his trance. “Don’t think too hard about it. It’s not a big, dark secret. Rebel Surge offered me a two-year sponsorship to wear their merch during any televised events and to post some pics on social media. I did consider the ramifications, but when I talked to Quinn, he told me to take the guaranteed money.”

Oscar’s head whips toward me. “That was your advice?”

“Yeah.” I frown at him. He’s the weird one for not being on board with this. “Rebel Surge is a big sponsorship.” Outside of Red Bull, Monster, and Fizzle’s Lightning Bolt!, it’s one of the more popular energy drinks on the market. “It’s not Jo’s fault that you and I are intertwined with the families that own Fizzle. She shouldn’t have to pass on the opportunity.”

Oscar frowns. “I didn’t say she should. I just thought she was friends with Luna Hale?” He says it like it would be a betrayal to her, but he’s not looking at Jo as he asks it. He’s eyeing me. Hard. Mostly because I know something Jo doesn’t. A big bodyguard NDA secret that I can’t exactly leak, not even to my own sister.

Luna Hale is the future CEO of Fizzle. It might be in a decade, but she’s next in line for the title. Even her classes at Manhattan Valley University are selected with the intent she’ll one-day be leading an entire multi-billion-dollar company. These details are under lock and key. Stocks would plummet if word got out that Fizzle already picked their successor.

Jo sips her strawberry mojito through a straw and makes a confused face at our brother. “Was that question for me or Quinn?”

Oscar rubs the side of his unshaven jaw before setting a gentle gaze on Jo. “You.”

“Luna and I are friendly,” Jo clarifies. “She’s gone through a lot, and I’m not sure she’s really looking for friends. I’m closer to her bodyguard.”

Me. “Because I’m your brother,” I mention.

“No, I meant Luna’s other bodyguard.” She swirls her straw around the mojito and raises her brows at me. “The one who isn’t you.”

Great.

I nod, thinking about how I’ve never shared a friend with my sister. I was a senior in high school when she was a freshman. Her friends were immature and annoying, and I can’t believe Frog is younger than her.

We’re all older now. In our twenties. That should make a difference, but it’s just in my face—Frog being nineteen.

“She has a name.” I pelt a pickle at Jo. “It’s Frog.”

Joana dodges the fried chunk, and it nearly hits an innocent girl sitting behind her. My face burns in guilt, and Jo cranes her head to see, then relaxes when she notices the pickle several inches away from a potential blonde target.

She rotates back to me. “I’m glad you know her name,” she says conversationally but in a way that makes me feel like she believes she’s better friends with Frog than I am. Uh, hello, I’m rooming with Frog. I think I know her much better than my little sister.

Oscar swings his eyes of big brother disapproval to me. “Did you at least ask Luna’s opinion on this before offering advice to our baby sis?”

“No,” I say, a little peeved. “I don’t have to ask because I know Luna, and I know she won’t care. She’d be happy Jo got offered a sponsorship. You don’t see Lightning Bolt! handing them out to anyone in the WBA.”

Joana chimes in, “And we all know the only family that would have an issue with it would be the Cobalts because they have tramp stamps that spell out loyalty in sans serif.”

“Now you know what font they’d choose,” I tease and glance at Oscar. “At what point does hatred become obsession?”

Oscar is less amused. “Stay away from Beckett Cobalt.”

“So you’ve said a thousand times,” Joana says, almost tiredly. “I don’t actively seek him out, you know.”

“Stay. Away.” He holds up a hand fast. “Last time I say it.”

“For today, he means,” I add.

Joana fights a smile, which causes us to share in it. Monday nights aren’t so bad.

Our meals arrive. Oscar with a smash burger and fries, Jo with ghost chili pepper wings, and me with an Impossible burger and steamed broccoli.

Jo takes one look at my pile of vegetables. “That looks sad and unappetizing.”

“Broccoli is underrated.” I stab it with a fork.

“Only time I’ve ever liked broccoli is when Katey Culpepper and I took shrooms in the Poconos, and I swore all the trees turned into broccoli. I vowed from that day on to never deforest the world by eating it. So in a way, I love broccoli more than you.” She dips a wing in ranch.

Oscar’s mouth is agape. “You took shrooms?”

I laugh. That’s what he got out of it? I kind of forget that Oscar has missed a lot of Jo’s life. Her exploits are not new to me. I’m the one she usually confesses to, and the shrooms thing—it was one-time when she wasn’t in fear of being drug tested. I don’t even think she’s friends with Katey Culpepper anymore.

“It was a one-time thing,” Jo confirms my assumption.

Oscar hasn’t touched his burger. He’s full-on processing.

“Don’t you love Mondays, bro?” I ask.

Jo adds, “Maybe you should give us a big brother secret. What’s something we don’t know about you, Oscar?”

He tightens his eyes at her. “Is that why you just dropped your drug story on me?”

She wears a sly smile. “Maybe.” She devours a chicken wing in one clean bite. It’s honestly skill, and I’m impressed by my little sis on that one.

Oscar looks to me. “You, first.”

I swallow the lump of broccoli. “I don’t have any secrets.” That’s a lie. I think about Frog and online dating and her quest to lose her virginity. Something that Donnelly now knows.

Donnelly, one of my brother’s best friends.

Donnelly, the guy living across the hall from me.

Would he spill the details to Oscar? I have no fucking clue, but I’m willing to roll those dice.

Jo narrows her eyes at me. “He’s…not lying. I don’t think?”

Oscar’s staring more skeptically. I want to shake off the big brother interrogation as best I can, and I almost deflect with a story about almost pissing my pants standing for hours in a concert pit at Summer Fest when Joana perks up and smiles, “She made it.”

Who made it?

She nudges my shoulder excitedly, and I reroute my gaze to follow hers. And that’s when my broccoli threatens to resurface.

Frog.

Kannika. A jean jacket hooked on her arm, she balances in heels and wears a very, very short floral mini dress. But it’s not her outfit that’s causing acid reflux.

It’s the guy pulling out her chair for her.

Like they’re dining at some five-star restaurant and not a sports pub. It’s his blonde swept-back hair, loose-fitted Tommy Bahama shirt, and cut off shorts. It’s the fact that I helped choose Fred the Freshman at MVU for Frog.

I knew she’d be on a date this week.

I just thought they’d be going out for pizza tomorrow. It’s why it hasn’t been on my mind. I haven’t been obsessing over it—and now I am.

Jo dunks another wing in ranch. “I suggested Frog come here tonight since we’d be good backup in case her date is a creep. Her track record hasn’t been great with Scooter. That guy was seriously a perv, and I don’t want her to get taken advantage of.”

Okay, so this was a Jo thing. Her heart was in the right place, but I’m not mentally prepared for this right now. I need…like a brain bleach bath.

But maybe I should be thanking my little sis? Frog’s ex was terrible, and if I could’ve been around to interrupt a bad date, I would’ve in microseconds.   

“I didn’t know Frog was dating,” Oscar says. He’s way more serious like he’s suddenly on-duty.

“Online dating,” Jo explains. “She’s trying to lose her virginity so that Epsilon can stop hounding her and treating her like a child.” She glares at us. “I can’t believe half of your co-workers are such douchebags that she’d even feel the need to do this.”

I rub at my eyes.

Jesus. Christ.

Oscar does a double-take from Jo, then to me. “Bro, did you know about this?” He’s jerking his head toward Frog. Off me slumping into my seat and groaning, he says, “You did. You knew.” He goes into full protective mode and points his fucking flimsy plastic knife at me. “Do not offer yourself to take her virginity. That is Messy with a capital M. You work with her—”

“I know.” I sit up straighter and lean over the table at him, feeling Frog looking at us with a little confusion because I am being Dramatic with a capital D. “Obviously,” I whisper-hiss, “I didn’t offer myself or I’d be sitting with her and not sitting with you.”

Jo wipes her fingers with a napkin, slowly registering this situation. “I think we found Quinn’s secret.”

Our brother ignores her. He’s totally focused on me and this complicated fucking situation. “She’s been through a lot of trauma recently, as have you—”

“Okay,” I cut in with heat. He said it like I don’t know. “I’m aware of our pasts. You don’t need to remind me.”

His gaze softens. “I just think if you’re trying to make her and your life easier, you both shouldn’t…it’s not going to look good with the bosses.”

“Again. Aware,” I say hotly. It’s what I expected from him. The stern, older brother routine. At least the guided path of virtue. Of how not to fuck it all up.

I must be out of my mind, or just really annoyed by my big brother, because I look to Jo and say, “That’s not even half of my secret.”

She’s baffled. “There’s more?”

“I’m helping pick out Frog’s dates. I’m vetting them so that they’re green flags.”

Jo’s mouth drops.

Oscar is stone-faced.

“We’re friends.” I outstretch my arms to him. “I’m just helping Frog in the same way that Jo is when she told her to come to this bar.” I jab a thumb toward the table where Frog and Fred are sitting, but when I look…Frog’s not there. It’s just Fred alone drinking a beer and staring up at the soccer game.

My phone buzzes, but so does Jo’s. It’s a group text from Kannika.

Frog: SOS

Thank you for reading another chapter of Frog & Quinn! It was so much fun getting to write more Oliveira family moments. These three have our hearts. And we know this one ends on a little bit of a cliffy, but the next chapter will drop in March -- which is right around the corner.

The next written content for the month will be the Fight Night - Part 2 bonus scene, so you can expect that by the end of February!

All the love in every universe,

xoxo Krista & Becca

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