Page 15 of Rivals to Lovers
“What if beds were stuffed with marshmallows so if you got hungry, you could just eat them while you were dreaming?” she asked.
Wes moved Maureen so that he could tuck the sheets around her. “That might get messy.”
“That’s what she said.”
“Definitely bedtime,” Wes said.
Maureen closed her eyes and lay back on one of the uncomfortable-looking decorative pillows. He removed that one, then fluffed the softer pillow behind it before she settled back down on it. On his way out of the room, Wes turned off the light and said, “Good night, Maureen.”
No response came from the bed. She might have eaten a pillow, for all he knew, but he hoped not.
In bed, after he’d brushed and washed, he tried not to think about the length of her neck, her weight against his shoulder in the elevator, and the softness of her body in his arms. He wasn’t used to carrying the full weight of a person, and his muscles still resonated with some of that effort, the pressure of holding all of one person in his grip and thepleasure of it, too. It was the kind of muscle memory that boxing had always given him, the glowing feeling of use afterward. He hoped he’d be able to feel it tomorrow, ache from it a little to relive the moment. The proof that he could hold her, and that when he did, she would be close enough for him to see that gold in her eyes.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Mo
Ah fuck.
When you wake up in your clothes from the night before, you know things went wrong. Mo’s coat was carefully draped across the back of the chair, but she could hear the phone in its pocket vibrate all the way from the bed. Rolling sideways, she ran a hand across her brows and found mud. It was ironic for the outside of her to be as messy as the inside of her head felt. Was there actual gravel in her skull? Because—
Right, the phone. She scooted as far as she could to the edge of the bed and snagged it from her coat pocket. It was her sister.
Mo paused for a moment, considering whether to take Anna’s call or not, but if Anna was calling at almost six Central Time, then Mo should take it. “Hey, sis,” Mo said, falling back on the bed, phone cupped to her ear.
“Sorry it’s early—” Anna’s voice sounded like their mother’s but slightly higher and sweeter, like she was alwayssmiling. Maybe she always was these days, with her life so perfectly arranged.
“It’s even earlier there. What’s up?”
“Well, Midge went into labor last night, so I technically haven’t gone to sleep yet, and you know how hard it can be to lay down when you’re overtired. But anyway, Mom and I have been talking about timelines for June. Have you bought your ticket home for the wedding?”
“How’s Midge?” Mo asked, quick to change the subject. Midge was one of the Bernese mountain dogs that Anna bred for Bernedoodle puppies on her farm. Anna had gone through ethical breeder training to ensure that her puppies would not only be safely bred but also well trained and properly homed, and in her limited free time she volunteered at the local shelter, training the rescue dogs to assist in placing them with new families. She was, in short, an angel in human form. Mo had never had the kind of single-minded drive on anything except her writing. It was strange to look up to her little sister, but sometimes she felt jealous of her for having everything figured out—not only a five-year plan but a fifty-year one.
“Midge is understandably more tired than I am.” Anna laughed. She could even laugh at six in the morning. How were they genetically related? “All seven puppies are healthy, so that’s a mercy. But June? Have you bought your tickets?”
Mo closed her eyes, which probably had dirt like eyeshadow all over them, with her luck. How did she get dirt all over her face again? “I haven’t, but I promise I’ll be there. I’ve already requested the weekend off.” Her boss, Amy, had only been too happy to accept this proposal, since Mo had promised to work the whole week of the Fourth of July.
“And the shower is the second Saturday in May. And have you been thinking about the bachelorette party? Or—”
“You shouldn’t be worrying about any of this,” Mo interrupted. “You have enough to plan. Mom has the shower under control. I know you’re not privy to her Google Doc master plan, but it’s well organized, believe me.” Not as organized as it would have been under Wes’s mother’s control. Mo wondered if there was a section in Ulla’s very popular website that talked about edibles. Maybe a gallery of images of artistic fainting couches to pass out on after overdoing it.
“Listen, we’ll catch up more later, Anna-banana. It sounds like you need to go to sleep, and I need to get up for the day.”
“Big plans?” Anna asked, but her voice had a yawn in it. “You hanging out with Aaron this weekend?”
“No, but still gotta go.”
They exchangedI love yous and hung up. Mo hadn’t told anyone back home about the weekend, or about her new book at all. She also hadn’t told them that she’d broken up with Aaron nearly a year ago after he proposed and she said no. She couldn’t pretend that the book and her failed relationship weren’t mixed up, but it wasn’t a clear linear choosing of one or the other. Maybe she would inform her family when she RSVP’d for the wedding and wouldn’t be bringing a date. Slipping that detail in among three thousand others could let it slide by unnoticed, right?
It wasn’t that Maureen didn’t want to marry Aaron because she loved the novel so much. She didn’t have that kind of reductive view of marriage as an institution. Her parents, for instance, had been happily married for nearly forty years, or at least as happy as marriages seemed to be from the point of view of a child. Her grandparents on both sides hadremained married for life, as monogamous as swans. But in a few months, Anna was marrying a man Maureen didn’t really know. She was binding her life to some dude who looked good in a plaid shirt and liked the Iowa Hawkeyes. Mo couldn’t see what Anna saw in Kyle. Mo went home for some holidays, but he’d been there for such a limited time that Mo had barely met more of him than his smile and firm handshake. “Whoa,” he’d said the first time they shook hands. “Nice grip, cowgirl.”
Technically, Clive and Eliza’s marriage had remained in place until death did them part too, but that was a different situation. Mo didn’t fear that what stifled Eliza would stifle her, not really, but she didn’t like to be caged or held back. If being unflappable was one of her goals in life, then she needed to make sure to only be with people who couldn’t flap her. Letting someone close enough to really know her, enough for to promise her life to them? She didn’t know if she could do that.
Maureen wasn’t looking for love when she moved to the city. She wanted one thing: this book to be a book in the real world. Well, okay—that was the beginning of it. She wanted to be a writer, who could sustain her living that way. Everything else in her life had been put on hold to make space for that dream: any kind of other meaningful career, serious relationships, and even coming home as often as she might like. This book was her best shot, and in adaptingP&L, she truly believed that her ambition gave more shape to Eliza’s. In the original novel, it was unclear what Eliza needed. Mo’s adaptation reimagined Eliza, gave body to her wishes, in a new time period. Mo knew it could speak to people the wayP&Lin its original form had spoken to its original audience, expanding the conversation.
Did Mo turn every thought about Aaron away from their relationship and back into her work?
Maybe.
