Page 26 of Rivals to Lovers
“Very distinct. To be honest, I never much likedThe Proud and the Lost. Not really my kind of book. I like mysteries. Detectives in English countryside, bodies turning up at the county fair and the vicar is involved. That kind of thing.”
Wes was gobsmacked. “How in the world did you end up working for the Morgan estate?”
“Estelle gave a lecture at my college many, many years ago.”
“Oh, about books?”
“No, accountancy. She worked as an accountant for years. Anyway, we clicked. I was more interested in her than in her mother’s work, and that seemed like what she was looking for.I will say that her late husband was a big fan of her mother’s, and it made it boring overhearing them. Not that I was spying, but working for her for so long—I think even Estelle got bored of thinking about her mother’s legacy at times.”
Wes could understand the notion of being bored of hearing about a famous parent. He stood at the French doors into the drawing room while Gary plowed forward. The room hadn’t changed much in an hour, but the atmosphere sure had. Four figures were silhouetted by the large windows. One was Estelle, of course, and he knew two others. Estelle’s children were notorious via gossip and photographs. Neither the gossip nor the photographs had been especially flattering, but Wes was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. He knew how the tabloids could be.
Back when Wes was little, Ulla had begun her upward climb to celebrity and Wes became an infrequent feature of that attention. He sometimes disliked being sent to boarding school, but at least behind its walls, he had a foot of brick and ivy to cover him.
Rather than dodging the limelight, Estelle’s children had done their best to stay in it. Her older daughter, Flor (short, Wes assumed, for Florence or Flora?) was a celebrity Realtor around the Hamptons. She had an overworked nose that smelled of too much surgery. That nose appeared all over billboards that said things like “Trust Flor” and “Flor’s the Door to New Homeownership” (which Wes read in a kind of off-rhyme, like ‘FLOR is the DOOR to new HOMEownerSHIP’—probably giving her family’s history in literature too much credit).
The younger daughter, who was in her late forties, was Talia. Talia was a curvaceous brunette whose default expressionseemed to besomething smells bad. She had starred in a range of lifestyle reality TV shows calledRich Wives of Manhattan. She was most likely the reason the whole family had gotten dragged in and out of the tabloids in the first place. From what Wes had seen, Estelle had never participated in theRich Wivesfranchise. As the literary agent to the estate, Wes had enough contact with her lawyer to know that the wordgauchewas thrown around frequently in terms of how her younger daughter had made a name for herself. Talia’s husband, Gus, was an entrepreneur of some kind, which was never made explicit in the show and was even less explicit in the wording of the company. He “managed logistics” for a “transportation firm,” the kind of transportation never being exactly obvious. It all felt mafia-y to Wes, but he would never mention that to Gus, who was even taller in person than he had been on TV.
Seeing Flor and Talia in the flesh was jarring, but Wes took a deep breath and followed Gary inside. There were light-green cocktails in tall glasses sweating slightly on a silver platter on top of the coffee table in the middle of the room. Delicate butter cookies filled a second, smaller silver platter, with a stack of white napkins set next to it. He grabbed a drink but ignored the cookies. Suddenly his stomach wasn’t up to it. The glass cooled his too-warm hands, and he took a sip. Mint and lime mixed in Wes’s mouth, along with something slightly sparkly—distinct. Distinct in a terrible way. Wes made a noise that made Gus turn around. The noise might have sounded like trying to spit something out. He swallowed instead and studied Gus’s square face. “Surprising taste. What’s the mixer?”
“Mountain Dew. We call this the Mountain Mama. Feels appropriate for the Hill.”
It wasn’t. Wes would need to find a convenient window ledge to forget it on, but the only candidate for that had Talia leaning out of it.
“It’s a favorite of mine,” Gus said, “though Tally says it’s responsible for all my dental bills.” He offered a hand to shake, not smiling. “Gus. You must be Wes, the agent-turned- novelist.”
“Still an agent too,” Wes said. As he shook Gus’s hand. he thought about the email wasteland that waited in his inbox. He had purposefully left his laptop behind and unsynced the work email from his phone for the weekend. He had, however, answered two client texts about nerves and revision questions. It was hard to sayHi, give me a tiny break. I’m a writer and need my creative space and time to be nervous, too.
Flor turned from the sofa and gave a demure wave. “I don’t shake since the virus. I can’t believe we all shook hands for so long; my God, what barbarians we all were. Even my clients get used to the wave these days. When I close deals, I sometimes will shake, but you know how the pressure of that deal moment feels, don’t you?”
Wes nodded, trying to manage a response that didn’t bring COVID back up again, and settled on turning his attention to Talia. She, it turned out, stayed near the window as well, but only to allow her cigarette smoke to drift out of it. “Hi,” she said, voice deep and throaty and familiar. “I’d shake your hand—I’m not a kook—but Mom says smoke goes outside or I do, so …”
Wes waved, cut off at the knees here with only his little shell-less snail of a creative self to offer. They were about to hear the ending of his book, the little tender work of his heart, without hearing any of the preceding chapters. Suddenly hehad a better idea, one that came from his agent-mind, not his writer one. “I’ll make some copies of my full manuscript to leave with all of you in case my final chapter makes you curious about the rest.”
“Oh, Gary could do that, couldn’t you, Gary?” Flor asked lazily.
Wes saw Gary’s back straighten. “I could.”
“Make a copy of the one that Mom has. We’ll have a sister book club. Won’t that be fun?” Talia asked, blowing a final puff of smoke out the window.
“What about having full copies of both manuscripts?” Flor asked. He could tell from the change in the room that Mo was behind him. He wasn’t trying to sneak one past her or get a leg up by offering his full book, but he was embarrassed that it might look that way. He took a sip of the awful drink, resisting the urge to look over his shoulder at her.
When he did, he saw she was wearing the dress she’d gotten that afternoon. His heart beat faster at the sight of her pale arms crossed in front of her. She shouldn’t be allowed to drive him to distraction when he was the one that had driven them to the Hill.
Talia glanced at Maureen. “Yes, both books. Or, Mom, what about the one you told us about too? The horror movie one? Clive goes on a killing spree? You said it was veryThe Shining. We could see all three.”
Estelle’s expression clouded over. “No. We’re not considering that one.”
Flor turned to Gary with the air of someone in a drive-through. “We’ll each take a copy of these two, then, Gary.”
Gary put his plate down and rubbed his hands on his gray slacks. “I’ll go get those printed.”
Poor Gary. Were there print shops open in this town on a Saturday afternoon after five? Did people do business here? They must, sometime between golf rounds. A lot of business was done on the links, right? Not in Wes’s business, but in somebody’s. Maybe in transportation logistics.
When Wes rejoined the sisters, they were deep in discussion, both holding fresh drinks. Mo and Wes must be at least two drinks behind at this point, but how anyone could drink Mountain Dew in a room with West Elm wallpaper and original plaster sculptures, he could never figure. Now that the windowsill was abandoned, he left his sweating, neon drink there. The family seemed to have forgotten the authors in the room, except for Estelle. She smiled at him, and Wes swore he saw an eye roll in that smile before she turned back to her daughters. He should try to join their conversation, but there was something deliciously naughty about standing next to Mo in a room full of people who didn’t know they had been making out. Well, not making out, but kissing at least. A kiss. A kiss he wished he could repeat.
Wes edged closer to the wall, and Mo followed. He wondered if her brain had played out a million scenes that could have been. She smelled delicious, like apricots. “You showered,” he said.
“I did. No Pert though.”
