Page 35 of Rivals to Lovers
“No, he didn’t.” Mackenzie chewed on her lip. “And the vibe was off, even without the praise band music. Which, again, not super romantic. I was happy to attend his service, but on our walk, I mention my interests—”
“Your favorite romantasy series,” Sloan interrupted.
“My favorite romantasy series,” Mackenzie agreed, gesturing to the book in her lap, “and he couldn’t comprehend the termfae daddy. I think he might be more interested in saving me than in wooing me.”
Mo laughed. “Yeah, when people talk about soulmates, it’s usually not because they’re only interested in saving your everlasting soul.”
“A special kind of catfishing? Maybe loaves and the fishing?” Sloan asked.
Mackenzie was blowing her fingernails dry, shaking them so that the bright-red nails made slashes in the air. “Enoughabout me. You were pretty radio silent this weekend. I’m sorry about what happened with Ms. Morgan-Perry, but you have to fill us in. How was Mr. Famous in person? Sloan told me about her research.”
Mr. Famous. If only her attraction were just that instead of this complicated mix of competition and horniness and the blooming sense that there was more to Wes than met the very public eye he was often in. How likely was it that you happened to meet your new favorite author at what was basically a job interview, and also find him magnetically attractive? His brown eyes, lightly curling hair, and broad chest—oof, she hadn’t known she wanted a thicker guy until she felt how good his arms felt around her in that hot tub, anchoring her to him. He wasn’t much taller than she was, but he was solid, and that solidity was just what she wanted now when she felt so adrift. When the ambulance had pulled away, they had gone back to their separate beds until morning—spell broken. She slept horribly, and she missed his body heat, the comforting cocoon of his arms.
She felt the threads of something bigger weaving inside of her, and it scared her. For now, this thing between Wes and her felt like early book projects always did—something she created, nurtured, could revel in inside her skull, but felt worried about sharing for fear of hearing feedback that she didn’t like. Still, if anything would help her process, it was her two best friends.
“Uh, Earth to Maureen.” Sloan waved a hand in front of Mo’s face. “I was asking how your weekend went?”
“You look like something happened and you’re waiting for a reason to tell us about it,” Mackenzie added.
Mo chewed her lip. “That obvious?”
Mackenzie laughed, that full bright bubble of a laugh that couldn’t help but relax Mo. “Look, if I had gotten some action this weekend, it would have also been obvious. Details, please.”
Sloan sat up and clapped twice. “You owe me for the gummies! Details!”
Mo spilled everything. There were times when being used to thinking up concrete and interesting descriptions came in handy.
A year ago, during a lunch catering shift, Aaron had barged into the kitchen and proposed to Maureen. It was a running joke now, every time Mo worked afternoon shifts with Amy, her boss, that some dude was on his way with a ring. With the distance of time, it’d become even funnier. As they stood in the kitchen, waiting to bus the dinner plates, Amy nudged Mo. “Is he coming before, during dessert service, or after?”
Mo folded a stack of napkins into bishop’s hats. “Listen, the wholerunning through the airporttrope from our childhood rom-com favorites had to go by the wayside because of security, so we’re workshopping replacements.Propose during an inopportune moment at workcould be acceptable. From the right person.”
“Which he was not,” Amy said.
“Absolutely correct. What about you, Amy? If Rebekka were to propose again, would you want it now, when you have downtime, or do you prefer the spectacle of interrupting the toasts?”
Rebekka was Amy’s partner in both business and life. The two had met at Howard, falling in love with each other andwith event planning at the same time. Amy pressed her lips together with serious consideration. “Oh, she would have never. She knows me too well. If we did this whole thing again, hot-air balloon proposal or I’d stay single.”
“I respect that,” Mo said. As emotionally exhausted as she was from the weekend, she was glad to have the Sunday shift to get her mind off things. If she had been stuck home all day, the temptation to Google news articles about Estelle’s health or text Wes would overwhelm her self-control. At work, she had timelines to balance, as well as glassware. It was a point of pride for her that she hadn’t broken any glasses here. Back at the barbecue restaurant she’d worked at in college, people used to shout “Opa” sarcastically when someone dropped a plate or dish. She had been that someone twice. Judging from the stodgy blue and black suits in the room, Maureen couldn’t imagine that the retirement dinner they were serving would have many of the type liable to yodel out a caustic remark at the staff, but you never knew.
The dinner was small enough that she and Amy were the only staff. Besides asking for a lot of decaf coffee, it wasn’t a challenging service. Mo was spared from further rumination when Amy brought out the layouts and prep sheets for the upcoming week. Mo took notes on the spreadsheet of the various contacts, allergies, and special situations they needed to follow up on. Amy ran a finger down her copy of the paper and pointed at the different arrangements of tables—six ten-spots, four eights—while Mo followed along, definitely not thinking about Wes’s artful tongue and the multiple places it had marked her body last night.
On the subway back to the apartment, she noticed that her hands had pruned from dishwashing. She rubbed herwrists and stretched her raisiny fingers, watching the dark walls of the tunnel pass her by. She liked riding on Sunday nights—it was quieter. A nurse dozed against the window in the seat next to Mo. Across the aisle, an elderly man in a sweatsuit thumbed through aTIME Magazine. She hadn’t even known they still printed paper editions ofTIME.
Maureen bet people felt that way about books too. Sloan and Mackenzie read, but so many people Mo knew didn’t. It was so strange to dedicate your life in pursuit of something that would not matter to 99.99 percent of the world, even if your book was a relative success. Anna read romance novels with Mo, which she appreciated, but her sister had refused on principle to readThe Proud and the Lost, even in high school when it was assigned. “When there is a CliffsNotes of something,” Anna had said, “that is a sign that God doesn’t want you to waste your time.”
Mo’s rejoinder was always that nowhere in the Bible did it say that God’s name was Cliff, but whatever.
Maybe it was talking about Aaron with Amy, or maybe it was being fresh from her first good orgasm with another person post-relationship, but she let herself think about Aaron’s proposal for the first time in a long time. He had burst into the kitchen during a dinner service, proposed while she was still in her apron. Could any action be romantic if someone was thinking about table settings during it?
So she’d said no. He’d asked, and she hadn’t been prepared. Of course he’d been hurt, but he slung words at her that dug so deep she wondered how long he’d been thinking them. “You work too much. You want too much. Like, when you’re not at your job, you’re writing. I thought I could show you how much I love you. How much I want to spend mylife with you. I thought I could shock you out of your routine.”
If she could’ve thought of anything to say, if she could rewind to that moment, she would tell him that her routinewasher life. She didn’t know what else to say beyond that. He had liked her in their quiet, domestic moments, and he had liked the moments he could show her around to his friends. He didn’t like the hours she needed to herself, space to think and write and exist without him being the center of her day. The warning signs were there, had she paid attention. Sure, he hadn’t overly celebrated the short stories she had published in the year they had been together. She thought it wouldn’t bother her to have a boyfriend who “didn’t read.” In the past, if a guy could understand the space she needed to make for her writing, then they could make it work, but something had changed inside her as she’d been working on the adaptation. Why was ambition a dirty word for women? Why was it so bad that she worked hard?
If the weekend with Wes had done nothing else, it had shown her that she wanted a partner who was as excited about her work as they were about her body. Her creative life was a part of her personality. It was such a big part of her, and she needed someone who could not only tolerate but embrace and support that.
If only they weren’t her direct competition.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
