Page 36 of Rivals to Lovers
Wes
Being a workaholic came in handy when Wes was trying to distract himself from having any feelings at all—good, bad, ambivalent, stressed—but it was less useful when dealing with constant sexual thoughts. Not that there weren’t other feelings, confusing ones, wrapped up in his thoughts about Mo, but he could pretend not to feel them while he proofread recipes for crepes and formatted the submission for one of his fantasy authors. His email, which he had ignored all weekend, created a ten-foot-tall digital barricade to hide behind by Monday morning. He had at least thirty emails that needed responses approximately yesterday, preferably last week, and a hundred he would cull through before EOD.
By noon, he’d dug through a third of the most urgent issues and drunk three cups of coffee. He took a thirty-minute lunch break to clear his head and walk around the park, hoping to also free himself from the constant urge to text Mo. He walked down the front steps, protein shake in hand, mentallybargaining with himself.Suppose you get all your work done by five. Maybe you could text her then.
The birds were flirting with each other on the sidewalk, which didn’t help things. Pigeons chased each other like horny assholes, and sparrows made aerial passes at one another. He thought about what Mo had said about pheromones. Maybe those were to blame. She’d left some kind of chemical marker on him, which despite a silent ride home and visiting the hospital yesterday had set him up last night for some of the hottest dreams he’d ever had.
Not that if he texted to say hi, she would come over. And definitely not that if she came over, they would have sex, preferably in his large-enough-for-two-people-shower, the one he’d never taken full advantage of since moving in.
He didn’t realize how hard he was squeezing the shake until it splashed all over his shirt. He detoured, taking a shortcut back to the door of his condo, and used the rest of the lunch break to wash up, change, and pretreat the laundry. Wes worked from his couch, in his brownstone, which wasn’t technicallyhisbrownstone but his parents’. It was a late-nineteenth-century, dun-colored three-bedroom in Fort Greene. His living room and upstairs office were lined with bookshelves, including books he had sold for his clients. He loved the brownstone: the wide windows facing the park; the open kitchen; the eclectic art on the walls.
He would love this brownstone even more if he could show it to Mo. He finished work by four thirty and held off texting until five so he didn’t seem desperate.
Hi, it’s your personal driver.
Kidding, hi. It’s me.
Hi, me. It’s me, too.
Good to hear from you, me.
Hi? Still there?
Sorry just trying to figure out if I should say
it’s good to hear from me, too or from you, too, me
This is getting kind of confusing.
And you say you’re a writer
About that, did you want to keep reading?
Our books, that is?
Yes
!
Sorry, meant to put those together. Yes!
Cool. Here’s my address. Free tonight?
Yes
No exclamation point this time?
I don’t want you getting the idea that I like
you that much.
!
Wes’s place was always clean, so he didn’t have to do much tidying before Maureen arrived at eight. When his phone rang at 7:50, he assumed she’d gotten there early and was waiting to be let up, but the caller ID said something different.
Wes cleared his throat before picking up. “Hi, Dad.”
“Ulla said she told you this weekend? About everything?” His dad always cut out the general niceties at the beginning of a conversation. Despite years of living in the States, he stillhad a slight Irish brogue and a definite Irish lack of appreciation for bullshit conversations. His dad knew that if he asked how Wes was, Wes would lie and always say fine. Wes knew if he asked his dad how he was, he would always tell the truth and include every sore joint he had, so they had come to this agreed spot in the middle.
