Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
“I know I’m late, I’m sorry.” I stuck my head in the office after I clocked in. “I took the wrong train, and then I got lost, and I still had to change.”
“It’s okay, Rosie, it’s only a few minutes.” My boss, Luke, didn’t even look up from his desk. He waved his hand dismissively and said, “Bar’s empty anyways. Just go start your shift now.”
I’d moved to New York City on a whim. My town in Tennessee, Rogersville, had fewer than five thousand people, so New York City was an entirely new world . This month marked my first full year in New York, and it was tougher than I’d ever expected. There was no Southern hospitality as my safety net, and I’d learned quickly I had to harden my doe-eyed view of life. I finally felt like I was adjusting and finding my place in the city, as hard it was.
“Running a little late, huh?” Alexa leaned over the other side of the bar. Her dark brown bob swayed around her face as she grinned at me.
“Aiden,” I explained as I tied the small white apron around my waist. “He distracted me as we were walking out of class, and I ended up at the L platform instead of the 6.”
“?C ó mo te distrajo?” Alexa wagged her eyebrows at me.
“Shut up, you know that’s not how it is.” I rolled my eyes, turning toward the wall of different bottles of liquor and glasses to make her a Shirley Temple like I did at the start of every shift. Alexa wasn’t a romantic. She believed in good sex the way I believed in true love. And she thought hate-sex was the best kind.
“If he’s as hot as you say he is—”
“I’ve never said he was hot,” I said indignantly, sliding the drink across the wooden bar.
She easily caught the glass in her hand, lifting it to her lips. “Yes, you have. You say it every time you blush when you talk about him and whenever you make a point to mention his green eyes.”
“They’re green like snot.”
Alexa tilted her head back and laughed, her dark eyes filled with delight. “One day you’ll see I’m right. Thin line between love and hate, Rosie. Thin line.”
“Not that thin,” I muttered.
The truth was, though, that I’d had a bit of a crush on Aiden Huntington last fall. Jess had dragged me to some student reading that Tyler was reading in, and Aiden stood up to read. It was the first time I saw him, and he was undeniably handsome with broad shoulders and dark hair. It was hard to see him in the dim lighting, but I could make out his square jaw and green eyes. The way his nose narrowed and turned up slightly when I caught a glimpse of his profile. I couldn’t stop myself from placing him as a romance hero in my head.
“Good evening. I’m Aiden, and I’m in one of the fiction sections. This is from a short story titled ‘Home.’ ”
Instantly, I was captivated by his words. The low hum of his voice filled the house and sent an electric shock down my spine. His story was about a young boy who’d never had a home, who’d searched for it in other people for so long, but eventually stopped.
Maybe it was because I was homesick, but tears sprung to my eyes and streamed down my face. I was leaning forward, hanging onto his every word. The five minutes he spoke felt like two seconds, and I craved more. I wanted to be envious of how naturally he strung words and sentences together, but I was in awe.
Then, on the first day of spring semester last year, he strolled in from the winter cold wearing a peacoat. Men nowadays didn’t wear peacoats. They wore North Face jackets with the logos facing out or hoodies with a ketchup stain on the front.
And it only got worse—he took off his coat to reveal a navy sweater that he subsequently rolled up to his elbows. It was almost appalling how attractive he was.
He sat directly across from me that day and returned my smile with a tentative one. I convinced myself that when class ended, I was going to ask him out for coffee. I envisioned it all in those few moments: We’d chat over coffee, I’d tell him that I’d thought he was cute at the reading, he’d confess his undying love for me, and I would get my Happily Ever After. The romance novel basically wrote itself.
My dad used to say I didn’t have a rose-tinted view, but a Rosie-tinted view. I saw what I wanted to see. I saw Aiden and fell head over heels. But you know what they say about la vie en rose—the red flags look just like all the other ones.
We all went around the table, introducing ourselves and what we liked to write, ranging from horror to comedy. But the minute “romance” left my mouth, Aiden’s demeanor shifted. Any warmth from him disappeared and was replaced with his signature scowl. His nose crinkled in distaste as if to say, “ Really?”
Sitting high and mighty on his horse, Aiden said he wrote “literary fiction.” He literally turned his nose up when he said it. And, hey, lit fic wasn’t my thing, but I wouldn’t ever shit on it the way Aiden shit on romance.
Things spiraled quickly from there. Aiden and I disagreed on nearly everything we could. He condemned romance every time I submitted a piece and would make snarky remarks like, “Oh, how coincidental there was only one bed,” or “No, it makes total sense for him to secretly be a prince. Sure .” I only wished I could hurl the same insults as he did and let it leave a mark. I tried, but I had to dig deep to find any critique for him, really.
I’d made the worst mistake of telling Alexa about the tiny crush I’d had on Aiden before I got to know him. Now she wasn’t convinced that I was over him, even though I was.
“How was class today?” Alexa pushed up on the wooden bar, trying to get a glimpse behind it. “Do you have any cherries?”
I pulled the small cup of them out from the fridge under the bar and plopped them into her drink.
My relationship with Alexa was trifold: friend, coworker, and roommate. The Peruvian network of worried moms encompassed the whole globe. When I decided to move to New York, my mom went into panic mode and called all my tías to see if they knew anyone I could live with. Turned out my tía’s friend who sent her aj í amarillo paste from Peru had a niece who was moving to the city around the same time as I was. Alexa had already secured an apartment in the East Village, and we quickly bonded over our lack of knowledge of city life. Our roommateship morphed into a strange, unlikely friendship. When the year ended, we hadn’t even thought twice about renewing our lease.
There was a learning curve in living together, though. Although we got along great, we were total opposites. She loved partying and night clubs and spontaneity whereas I preferred a weighted blanket on Friday nights and detailed to-do lists.
It had been hard to stay in touch with the Peruvian side of myself in Tennessee when the only store that sold Inca Kola was two hours outside of town. But Alexa kept a steady supply of Morochas in the apartment and taught me how to make a few traditional dishes, like lomo saltado or pollo a la brasa.
We rarely got to see each other outside of the apartment and the restaurant. She was studying fashion at The New School full time and was working here part time. Alexa had lucked out with financial aid from The New School, but NYU wasn’t as generous with me. I couldn’t even afford to consider being a full-time student. I spent my weekdays after class as a bartender here and spent the weekends writing and studying.
“Aiden was particularly vicious today. We got into it a little bit in class.”
Alexa took a seat as I rested my forearms on the dark bar. “How so?”
“He tore up my piece—and I was really proud of that one, too. I thought it could be a good start to my manuscript, but apparently not. We fought in front of everyone.”
“Ooh, foreplay.” She smiled, fishing a cherry out of her drink before popping it into her mouth. “Dime más.”
Heat crept up my neck. “I’m telling you, it’s not like that. He’s so horrible. And only to me, just because I like romance.” I sighed. “It’s Simon all over again.”
“Simon was a self-righteous prick.”
My neck prickled at the thought of my narcissist ex. I had spent the past year moving on. “I don’t see much of a difference between Simon and Aiden then.”
“Simon didn’t value you or your passions. Simon couldn’t have cared less if you spoke the same language.”
“I wish Aiden spoke a different language than me,” I muttered.
A couple walked in at the other side of the restaurant. Alexa patted the bar and said, “Duty calls. Don’t let him get to you.”
As she walked off, I started to organize the glasses and liquor bottles.
The Hideout was one of the best restaurants in Flatiron. It was a bit of a hike from our place, but the pay and tips were great. On weekdays there was usually a small crowd of regulars, but the weekends were wild. I refused to work them—even if they guaranteed a week’s worth of pay in one night—because the staff shuddered every time they talked about it.
Paying for school and rent was a struggle. I spent my nights eating free meals on a box of dried food in the storage room at the back of the restaurant. I hated that I would have to drag out my MFA for years longer than anyone else. But even though I wasn’t the New York socialite I’d dreamed I would be, I was here . And that was all I had ever wanted.
My ex-boyfriend Simon and I had met freshman year of high school. Almost immediately, I fell head over heels. Even now, I couldn’t really explain why. Maybe because he seemed put together and wasn’t a complete jerk like every other guy at fifteen. Maybe it was because he had swoopy hair that he combed every morning.
We didn’t end up dating until sophomore year. He was my best friend and one night after I confessed how I felt, everything changed so quickly. Suddenly it wasn’t Simon the Best Friend, but Simon the Boyfriend. I was so happy to finally be with him, to be SimonandRosie, that I let myself become blind to the red flags.
He encouraged me to go to our local college together and skip out on Barnard College, insisting that you didn’t find what we had twice, and we had to hold on it. He hated when I talked about New York or how I dreamed of being a novelist. He thought it was ridiculous and that I should either do something practical like teaching, or just stay home and raise our children. And even then, I still spun it in my mind as romantic that he wanted to have a family with me.
Once we graduated, he became even more controlling. It was frustrating, but I just assumed that every couple fought. Everyone had preferences and differences, and this was where ours lay. But as time went by, Simon still didn’t propose, citing he “wasn’t sure yet.”
Then I read Ida Abarough’s article “Why We All Should Read Romance,” and my long-lost confidence in writing romance was suddenly regained. She eloquently expressed why women read romance and how it showed women taking control in their lives while still being desired instead of wholly objectified. And how it had expanded to include different gender identities and become a safe space for people of color. No matter how bad life got in the romance novels, there would be a Happily Ever After that proved nothing was unfixable.
That night, I developed a two-step plan: get into NYU, then take as many of Ida’s classes as possible. I had been listless the few years after graduating, still working in my town’s diner. I knew this would get me on track and by a miracle, luck, or something in between, just after my twenty-fifth birthday, I was admitted into the MFA program.
When I told Simon I was admitted to NYU, he laughed. He thought it was some prank I was playing on him and when I told him it wasn’t, he said, “Rosie, you don’t have to go to school to sell those kind of books. Slap a hot guy on the cover and the work is done for you.” Everyone in my life, Simon included, deemed romance a “guilty pleasure.” You didn’t go to school to study it, and you certainly didn’t uproot your whole life to do it.
But I went anyway. The first class I registered for was a Fiction Craft lecture with Ida.
Simon and I tried long distance for a while. I’d always thought long distance was the true test of love. If you loved someone, you’d stay up late even if you were tired. You’d put in the hours and the work. But every time Simon and I spoke on the phone he said, “Rosie, when are you going to forget this pipe dream and come back?” Every time I texted him and he didn’t text back, I told myself he was just busy.
I’d never thought the long distance would break us, but ultimately I’m glad it did. Reality hit me hard my first fall in New York, and I sometimes I felt like I was still reckoning with the whiplash.
But Ida’s class had opened a new cavern in my heart, pouring out a new love for writing. At the end of lecture one day, she said, “If you have any questions, about this lecture or otherwise, come by my office hours and we can talk about it.”
Perhaps this had been an empty gesture. But it was my opening, and I came every week and stayed for hours, all but forcing a mentorship onto her.
I would pore through all my ideas, and at first, she’d shake her head, smile tightly, and say, “Rosie, maybe you should spend this time writing or go talk to your workshop professor.”
I had only smiled and said, “I’m only taking the craft class. I’ve got nowhere else to be.”
It took a while, but I slowly peeled back the layers of Ida. I knew she hated when we called her Professor Abarough because it made her feel old. She’d just gone through a nasty divorce but she won her dog, Buster, in the settlement. She always kept a Lisa Kleypas book in her desk ( Marrying Winterborne ) to flip through when she got overwhelmed. And I knew that she secretly loved having me as a mentee even if she acted like she didn’t.
Today, like I always did, I headed toward her office at the NYU English Department on Greene Street. But when I noticed a flyer on the bulletin board near her office, I gasped, snatching it off the board and reading it carefully.
It encouraged students to apply for the Sam Frost Fellowship that would pay half of next year’s tuition. The Frost was a prestigious national literary magazine on par with The Paris Review . If I got this, I’d not only be able pay my rent and become a full-time student, but I’d get my name out there. I stuffed the flyer in my bag before entering Ida’s office without knocking.
Her office space was tiny, her desk and chair facing a wall of books of different genres and colors. She generally tried to keep it clean, but clutter always took over her desk in the form of stacks of papers and coffee cups. As soon I stepped through the door, I fell into my usual chair.
Without looking up from her laptop, she said, “We need to talk about that chapter.” Her red hair was pulled back into a bun, her black glasses sitting at the tip of her nose as she typed away on her computer.
“I know. Not my best work.” I pulled out my workshop notes and first chapter, laying them across the edge of her desk.
“Can I ask what you were attempting to do here?”
“You know.” I waved my hand vaguely in the air. “Angst.”
She gave me a flat look. “Try again.”
“I’m waiting for something to stick.”
“Rosie,” she said gently. “There’s not much more time to wait. You need to decide on your storyline soon or you’ll be stuck with something you have no passion for. By the end of your time here, you will have to submit a thesis, and it’s better to start now than later. I can’t guarantee your thesis advisor will be as kind to romance as I am, so it needs to be as strong as possible.”
“You really don’t think there’s anything workable here?”
She hesitated. “Not necessarily. But it lacks your usual personality and voice and that’s what makes your writing so good. Everything you brought me from your other workshop last semester came alive off the page, and this feels … forced. Unlike you.” When I deflated the tiniest bit, she said, “Why don’t we both read through and see what we can keep and where to go from there?”
We sat in silence as she read through the copy I’d emailed her, and I sifted through my classmates’ comments, hoping something would spark inspiration. I narrowed my eyes at the impeccable handwriting, gripping the paper tightly in my hands.
Description isn’t working here.
Dialogue sounds unnatural.
Every statement ended with a period. What kind of psychopath took notes and included the periods? Anger simmered in me at the sight of his words.
“Oh my God. Look at this.” I handed her Aiden’s notes. “Have you reconsidered his expulsion from the class?”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re just as bad as he is.” She read through his comments, her lips quirking a bit before handing it back.
My mouth hung open in shock. “I am a goddamn delight . Aiden is a menace upon our class.”
“I do recall you threatening to toss his notebook off the Empire State Building last week.”
I waved her off. “Oh please, that was a joke.”
“Oh really? What about the time you told him his writing was nothing but bathroom graffiti?”
“Oh that?” I scoffed. “That was a compliment . Bathroom graffiti can be very poetic,” I said sagely.
She laughed and handed me back his paper. “I don’t know why you two act like this.”
“C’mon, indulge me. You know you want to gossip about Aiden. It’s our favorite pastime.”
“It’s your favorite pastime.” She gave me a pointed look. “I swear half the time you come in here, it’s just to talk about Aiden. Finish looking through your notes for this chapter.”
I huffed but did as she said. She wasn’t wrong about Aiden. It was hard not to be affected by his words when he was an annoyingly good writer.
And I was secretly hoping every day that he’d wear that peacoat to class, even though the fall weather hadn’t gotten cold enough to require it yet.
“Rosie,” Ida said softly. She said it in the way she always did when she told me something wasn’t working, and she didn’t want to hurt my feelings. (The first time she used this voice with me was when I burst into tears after Aiden called my chapter “One big, lousy clich é .”)
“I know.” I looked up from my notes. “But I don’t know where to go.”
“I still don’t understand why you can’t continue the last one. I thought it had a lot of promise.”
“But you didn’t think it was good,” I pointed out.
“I didn’t think it was there yet ,” she corrected. “But I feel like you quit writing it for more significant reasons than you’re letting on.”
My gaze flicked away from her intense one. She was right. I hadn’t been able to continue that project or start a new one because I felt like a fraud. I was writing about some epic, sweeping romance and all I had to show for that in real life was Simon ? I hadn’t even come close to my own Happily Ever After; how could I write one for my characters?
“I want to write something new,” I said, ignoring her unasked question. “I want to write something that’ll challenge me.”
“Okay.” Ida pulled out a notebook from her desk drawer and poised her pen above the paper. “Let’s brainstorm.”
That was by far my favorite thing about Ida. She never made my writerly goals feel ridiculous. We spent the next hour discussing different rom-com ideas and tropes to play around with and not once did I feel like the idiot Aiden made me out to be.
I left Ida’s with a newfound determination. I would write a romance that was funny and sexy and charming, and Aiden could choke on his own dick.
I didn’t come all this way to let some pretentious asshole in a peacoat (albeit a very nice peacoat) tell me I’m not good enough. If he could destroy me in just a few words, I was a writer. I could do the same.
“Don’t you two ever get tired of fighting with each other?”
Max and I shared a glance as if that was a ridiculous notion. “It’s my favorite pastime.”
— Excerpt from Untitled by Rosie Maxwell and Aiden Huntington