Page 58 of Rivals to Lovers
“Sacrilege,” she said. “I’m from the Midwest and firmly believe in the power of mayo, but it belongs inside a sandwich, not outside.”
“It’s not bad, but I think butter is better.”
“Always.” She finished slicing and created a sandwich to toss in the pan. As she nestled the first sandwich on the griddle, the doorbell rang.
“That’s probably Ilsa,” he said. He grabbed the huge soup pot with two potholders, snagging the other half of the loaf and placing it on the lid. Ilsa was still in her scrubs, fresh from her shift on the maternity floor. She thanked him and promised to return the pot in an hour.
“No rush,” he said. “I’m not planning on making more soup tonight or anything.”
“Well, if you did, you know we’d always accept it!” she tossed back, winking at him over her shoulder.
When Wes reentered the kitchen, toasted butter and melted cheese hit his nose, and he almost moaned from how good it smelled. Mo had found an apron to tie around her waist (it readDad Bodand was a joke gift from a cousin). He had always loved that apron completely unironically, but watching it wrapped around her hips was a revelation. She used a spatula to flip the first of the sandwiches onto a plate and held it out to him.
He moved to the knife block, pausing momentarily after selecting one. “Diagonal or horizontal?”
“Diagonal, then diagonal again. Triangles make sandwiches delicious.”
It was exactly how he ate his sandwiches too, but he didn’t comment. Smiling, he cut the sandwich they’d made together, the flow of effortless teamwork they executed. It was just a sandwich. He knew it was just a sandwich, but it felt so good to be with someone who intuited how dark you wanted your grilled cheese, how you wanted the cheese all the way to the edges so that it dripped down and hit the griddle, getting little cheese chips along its edges.
When both sandwiches were done, he snagged a bag of salt-and-vinegar kettle chips from the cabinet, and she grabbedthe ketchup from the fridge. She poured a huge dollop on her plate before offering the bottle to him.
“Absolutely not,” Wes said. He was relieved they were different at least in a few ways. It would make it easier if/when this thing between them fizzled. If/when life intervened to make things awkward. If/when a decision was finally made on the project and one of them would achieve their dreams and the other one would …
She shook the kettle chip bag, which was mostly crumbs. “You must have demolished these earlier.”
“I’ve got more in the cabinet. One minute.”
“Even when I was a kid, my dad used to buy salt-and-vinegar chips because he thought that would keep me and Anna away from them, but it taught me to crave them more.” She took the fresh bag from him and looked down at it. “I never meet people who love these as much as I do.”
“I love how they’re a little sour.”
“It’s a special kind of kick.”
He took a bite, definitely not thinking about cravings. Not thinking about how much he’d been thinking about Mo since seeing her at the gallery. With the selection of one of their books feeling more and more like a palpable event, it was pointless to want to make what they had more than it was, but he had never met anyone like her before. Not just someone he wanted to kiss but someone whose brain was full of things he wanted to see and learn about. Whose jokes made him laugh, even—especially—the dumb ones. Who was definitely, one hundred percent more talented than him, and who he wanted to get better at his craft alongside? Not to compete with her, but to be her peer. He could picture their friendship, not to mention anything else they had, like a physicalpresence in the room with them. Whatever weirdness they’d had from texts this week or stress from Estelle’s health issues, their connection was undeniable. He would catch her up on everything he’d been up to. He could do this, but for now, he wanted to enjoy the way they felt like any other couple making dinner together. He wanted that.
“You have ketchup on your cheek,” he said, reaching across the dining room table to swipe at it with a thumb.
She took his hand and brought that thumb to her lips, her tongue lightly licking the ketchup off, then releasing his hand just as fast.Stop it. Don’t think about that tongue. Don’t think about those lips. Finish your damn sandwich.
But a second later, she scooted her chair closer and put his plate aside. It held mostly crusts anyway. She sat on the dining room table, leaning down for a deep kiss. She broke away. “This week has been weird.”
“Yeah,” he said, slightly breathless. “It has.”
A few more minutes of pretending they were just two people, full of butter and cheese, who were really good at kissing one another.
He wanted more of the kissing. “Do you want to hang out in the living room?”
She nodded, sliding off the table. She collected her plate and his while he grabbed the condiments and water glasses. He watched her stack the dishwasher. Technically, it was the end of the workday in California, and he needed to check his email and Slack before he could focus on their conversation. “Do you mind if I do a little work?”
She shrugged agreeably and flicked on the television, pushing buttons on the remote until she found the closed-caption options and muted the TV. She was watching more ofthat astronaut dating show, and he appreciated not being forced to listen, even though he kept glancing up to catch snippets of the typed dialogue. “Out of this world,” one contestant declared.
Wes unplugged his laptop from his office desk and brought it down to settle next to her. He put a cushion as a buffer between the hot computer and his legs, remembering a long-repeated warning from his dad that “computers will shrink your balls” or something like that, in less crude words and with more of an Irish lilt. He scrolled through Slack, trying not to be distracted by watching Mo watch TV. He had some administrative work to catch up on. He refreshed his email once more for good measure, but then the doorbell rang.
He slid the laptop off his lap and set it on the couch next to Mo. “That’s probably Ilsa,” he said. “And I’m almost done. Thanks for your patience.”
She smiled and waved a hand. “Go rescue your pot.”
The whole apartment felt different with Mo in it, lighter somehow. Besides Ajay and Loris, most of his friends had never been to his place or him to theirs. Many of them were located around the country and around the world. It was harder for them to ask for favors that way, which made it easier to let them into his life from afar. In the city, he went to parties, but sometimes it felt like he was being sold something at them. He wondered why people had invited him: for the connections in publishing or for his mom or really, truly for his personality. And the people who understood that compulsion toward wariness were children of politicians or titans of industry, often not accomplishing anything related to their famous parent’s work. Often not accomplishing much that interested him at all, sinceit sometimes involved spending their famous parent’s money. But he’d had one of the best grilled cheese sandwiches with one of the people he wanted to hang out with the most.
