Page 40 of Rivals to Lovers
He smiled at the phone.Yes. And they are complete shit. You?
Not sure if I should say they are worse shit or better. If we’re competing.
I doubt they could be worse.Regardless of quality, he was grateful for the practice of typing every day. He liked thinking of it as typing, not writing, because it freed his brain to be terrible. He was more than surprised at the direction this work had taken the past few days, though. After the conversation in the hospital, he couldn’t get the idea of selling trauma off his mind. He had never written something with a happy ending, not even in short story form, and was challenging himself to do just that. He was typing a romance novel that no one would ever see, and it was stretching every bit of his creative muscles.
He saw she had texted again.Still on to exchange chapters tonight?
Wes allowed a suitable number of breaths to pass before he typed back. He thought about her too much—the way her voice sounded when she read aloud, the thump of his heart when he saw her pink coat come into view.Yeah, absolutely, he texted.
My roommates are out at a show, if you want to come here, she offered.
Wes considered her noisy street, the compact apartment. The probably thin walls and nosy neighbors. He wasn’t imagining doing anything that might necessitate privacy—but they could. As in, if they wanted to read extra loudly, it would be good to have no shared walls. If they did other things, he didn’t want her to have to stifle herself like they had to at Estelle’s. “My place is still fine, if you don’t mind making the trip.”
She texted back a thumbs-up, and Wes didn’t imagine what her real thumb could do as it rubbed him, her hand enclosing … He couldn’t do that, because he had work to do.
He worked diligently all day so that he could unplug that night and truly be present with Mo. The only break he took was to answer a call from Ajay.
“I need you there,” Ajay said, their voice pleading. Their voice was always pleading this close to a gallery opening. It was less than two weeks away, prime worry time.
Wes pictured them on the other end of the phone, running their hands through curly black hair. Ajay had been so distraught before the opening of the Winnie the Pooh show that they made Wes come over for Jell-O shots beforehand, something they hadn’t done since their dorm days at Penn. Wes could still taste the astringent mix of vodka and lime in his mouth. Alcohol shouldn’t be chewy. “I will be there, Ajay. You know that.”
It had only been chance at the admissions office that matched them together freshman year, but love and true fondness had kept them that way. The only real challenge to the friendship came when Ajay started dating Loris, a onetime fling of Wes’s, during sophomore year, but that was ten years plus one wedding ring ago. Now Ajay, Loris, and their elderly puggle, Hubert, lived in a cute condo on the Upper West Side that was overstuffed with paintings and furniture with trendy stick legs and uncomfortable seats. They had framed pictures of theirUllawedding coverage in their front hallway.
“What’s the theme this time?”
“Theme?” Ajay puffed out a breath. “I prefer to call it the next extension of my oeuvre.”
Wes laughed. “All right, so what is the extension this time? Care Bears Doing Lines of Coke?”
“No, it’s called Power Rangers. I’m painting the richest people, the famous, the political underpinning of society, but with Power Rangers.”
“As inMighty Morphin?”
“It’s a play on nostalgia, obviously.”
“Obviously? I forgot Power Rangers were even a thing.”
“Your loss.”
Wes bit his cheek, afraid to ask. “You didn’t paint my mom, did you?”
“Oh, honey, I can’t tell you that. I’m not telling anyone ahead of time. I painted these in secret. Not even Hubie has peeked.”
Wes thought about the imperative to protect his mother from the paparazzi right now. But honestly, it was unlikely that a mostly obscure modern artist would make waves bigenough to drench them all. Even if it did, he had to support his friend. “Can’t wait to see you,” he said finally.
“Bringing anyone?” Their tone was as curious as it was needling. Loris and Ajay, like many long-settled couples, ruthlessly matched up single friends.
“Maybe.”
“Not your mother! Not that I don’t love her. Bring her, too, but bringsomeone, or I will be forced to Pygmalion you a partner one of these days.”
“My Fair Ladyversion or actual statuary?”
“Both. Either. I will musical theater your life if you don’t figure it out.”
Wes laughed. “All right, yes, put me down for some guests.”
He hung up without telling Ajay that the only person he wanted to see was on her way to his place and he’d been thinking about it all day.
