Chapter 21
Present Day
West is sitting on a makeshift stage under a big tent in dark jeans and a thin forest-green sweater.
I frown at him from behind my giant undercover sunglasses.
Why does he need so many sweaters? It’s not like he still lives in New York.
Between this and the photo on his book jacket, he’s practically drowning in wool.
When I knew him, he didn’t own anything but short-sleeve band T-shirts and skinny jeans.
I feel vaguely provoked by the sight of him up on a stage, in front of a crowd, looking exactly like the man I imagined he would become.
His hair is unruly, his jaw sharp, his shoulders squared.
My eyes sweep impatiently over his body, looking for evidence of nerves. But unfortunately for me, his feet are still, and his ink-stained fingers are clasped on the table in front of him. He is completely unruffled. I bet he got a great night of sleep.
Ugh.
My stomach dips when I realize how little my schemes have affected him. I wish he were sitting up there stewing in misery, thinking of me in my short dress, but instead he’s saying something under his breath to the author sitting next to him. She’s laughing, and he’s smiling.
I’ve been trying to ruin his weekend, but he is unmoved.
Well.
Good thing I’m here to make him move.
Almost every chair under the tent is filled. It’s perfect. One hundred people are about to watch West have the most frustrating hour of his professional career.
My stomach tightens with anticipation.
I take a seat in the last row of the audience as the moderator is introducing the two people onstage with West—Ayesha and Rowan, both literary writers who, I do admit, I feel a little sorry for.
Hopefully when they receive invitations to present at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in their inboxes next week, it’ll make up for today.
(I still have enough connections to make that happen, at least.)
“—and finally, we have West Emerson, whose debut novel, Oasis, was nominated for a Young Lions Fiction Award and whose highly anticipated novel Drought was released last month. Thanks for being here, West.”
“Thanks for having me, and for not telling the audience that I’m the one who slipped the words ‘highly anticipated’ into my bio.”
The moderator explains that this will mostly be a Q I should try harder with the sourdough. She’d appreciate it.
The microphone is passed to a young woman in the third row who introduces herself as a U of A student. West sits back in his chair, looking relieved to get a break from the onslaught.
“I recently started querying my novel and am wondering if you have any advice for dealing with rejection.”
“Alcohol,” Ayesha says immediately. The audience chuckles. “Wait, how old did you say you are?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Alcohol or antidepressants. Don’t mix the two. I can also recommend ice cream, crying, and venting to your friends in a private group chat,” Ayesha says.
West’s eyebrows skyrocket. “You mean my method of bottling up my feelings and refusing to talk about them isn’t a good idea?
” he asks. The audience laughs again, and an old wound reopens in my chest. I know he’s talking about career rejection—not us—but it hits a little too close to home.
“In all seriousness, being an author means dealing with a truckload of rejection. It sucks, especially in the beginning, and unfortunately nothing any of us can say will make it suck less.”
“So we’re not even going to try,” Rowan quips.
“I still remember my first brutal rejection,” Ayesha says. “I was sick over it.”
“I have parts of mine memorized,” West says.
“Do you really?” Rowan asks.
“It’s framed in my bathroom. Hanging next to my New York Times book review.” The audience loves this. “Have to keep myself humble somehow.” He winks, and I’m annoyed that even after that hellish Q&A, he’s still charming the crowd.
“I think it would make us all feel better to hear what it said,” Ayesha prompts, and it’s not that surprising that she’d ask. Writers like to swap rejection stories like badges of honor.
“Nice try.” He shakes his head, but the woman in the front row yells “C’mon!” and then someone else shouts “Please?”
West rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “Let’s see what I can remember.
” He runs a hand over his jaw, and my stomach tightens.
It feels unfathomable that he went through something so monumental and I don’t have any idea when it happened or what book it was in response to or how he reacted in the moment.
I don’t know anything about his journey other than what’s in his author bio. It’s just weird.
West’s eyes reach a spot in the back of the tent, and I slouch lower in my seat, grateful for the sunglasses.
“This agent isn’t working in publishing anymore, but at the time, he was extremely well-connected and respected.
He wrote ‘Dear Mr. Everson’—yes, he got my name wrong—‘You are not ready to be querying. You are nowhere close. Go back to high school and stop wasting my time with this insipid drivel. Ten years from now, you might think you’re ready to try again. If you are, don’t query me.’ ”
My chest caves at the thought of him opening that email with excitement and then reading…that.
I wish the circumstances had been different.
I wish I’d been there.
“What a bastard,” Ayesha says.
West runs a hand through his hair, a wry smile on his face.
He’s good at this. Confident, calm, funny.
Meanwhile, I’m out of practice, riddled with anxiety, and desperate to succeed.
Is there anything less likable in the eyes of the public than a woman who’s a try-hard?
At our panel tomorrow night, West will be charming, and I’ll be drowning in flop sweat.
I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours spinning my wheels to make him feel like he doesn’t belong in this world, but the joke of it all is that he’s more at home here than I am.
“That is uniquely brutal,” Rowan says.
“At twenty-two, I wasn’t mentally prepared for that level of rejection.”
I frown, positive I misheard him. West wasn’t trying to get published back then.
“You were a Wildcat then, weren’t you?” Ayesha asks.
“I’d dropped out by this point, but I read that letter on the day of my would-be college graduation.”
I shift uneasily. He never told me that.
“You think that’s bad?” West continues. “That email’s not even the worst thing that happened to me that day.” He laughs as if he didn’t just rearrange my entire past with one careless sentence.
I’m frozen in my seat.
Our eyes meet. It’s hard to breathe. Like there’s cement drying in my windpipe.
The missing piece of a decade-old story clicks into place.
I lean against a tent post as West slowly descends from the stage. He takes his time chatting with everyone who stops to introduce themselves. I watch, tapping my foot and listening to a rush of blood in my ears. Eventually he runs out of admirers, and he braces himself as he approaches me.
“I learn something new every time I come to one of these things,” I say with a bright, fake smile before stepping closer. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I demand under my breath.
“Not here,” he growls. West wraps his hand around my elbow and turns, running us straight into Dr. B.
“My star pupils!” the man booms. “Can’t say I’m surprised to see you two together again.” His eyes drop to West’s hand on my arm, and I wrench it out of his grasp.
“Thanks for coming, Dr. B,” West says.
“You should be extremely proud of yourself, Mr. Emerson.” He claps West on the shoulder. West nods his head in silent thanks. “Readers are going to really respond to this one.” His eyes twinkle with something I don’t understand as West stiffens slightly.
Dr. B turns his attention to me. “Don’t forget about your promise!” He winks at me again as he walks away, looking entirely too pleased with himself.
I frown at his retreating back when I feel the heat of West’s chest crowding me. “Ugh, stop looming.” I glare over my shoulder at him.
He barely manages to suppress an eye roll. “Don’t act like you don’t love it. You wanted to talk?”
“I do. Move.” I grab him by the biceps, sighing heavily when he flexes, and spin him. I shove him lightly between the shoulder blades.
“Where are we going?”
“Koffler.” I push him again, and we march to the front door of a large cinder block building that vaguely resembles a wildcat.
He opens the door and waves me through, his hand brushing over the small of my back.
I lurch away from him, pretending to hate that he’s touching me, and then immediately invalidate this by grabbing his hand and pulling him into a large lecture hall.
Inside, he leans against a desk at the front of the room and drums his fingers on the edge. It reminds me so much of last night that a welcome anger builds in my chest. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask again, bringing us back to the reason he refused to go to New York with me all those years ago.
“When would I have told you?” he sneers.
“Before you dumped me would have been ideal.”
His expression hardens. “Do you really want to do this now?”
“Should we wait another decade, you think?”
“I was trying not to make your day about me and my fucking insecurities.”
“And look how well that turned out.”
A storm burns in his eyes. “I tried, Mars. I screwed it up, clearly, but I was in love with you! I would have done anything.”
“Except tell me the truth!” It’s a physical pain to hear him say that word for the first time in ten years. I went to Rishi’s party that night thinking he didn’t.
“I wanted to. I realized almost immediately that I screwed up. Ten minutes after you kicked me out, I came back to wait for you. I slept in your bed while you were—” He grits his teeth, the absence of the words almost more painful than hearing him say it.
I tortured myself for years, wondering what would have happened if I’d stayed home. Had nothing to drink. Kidnapped West and made him come to New York with me anyway.
“You lied when we had drinks with Danielle in New York, didn’t you? About not looking for an agent yet?”
He tips his chin in silent acknowledgment.
“Why?”
He scrubs his hands over his face. “I needed to succeed on my own, and I knew you would try to help me—”
“Because I loved you!”
He lifts his hands, exasperated. “I know! I know I should have been honest. But I was twenty-two and a fucking idiot!”
“It would have changed everything, West.” My voice cracks. I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth and blink like my life depends on it. “Everything could be different between us right now.”
His face softens, his eyes lighting with something that looks deceptively like hope. “Do you want everything to be different between us?”
Sometimes I think I do. Hating West is exhausting.
Nothing about it comes naturally. Sometimes, when the fire burns away, it leaves a dull ache that I’ve never been able to fill.
Not with other men. Not with bestselling books.
Not by throwing darts at West’s picture or pretending that when I’m near him, I don’t feel a chain connecting us, handcuffing our fates until we’re both miserable.
For a minute last night, I wanted things to be different, and then I got slapped in the face with a harsh reminder of why they can’t be.
I close my eyes, fighting memories of months spent in bed, death threats in my inbox, a career on fire. It’s enough to make me nauseous with anxiety, even now. And none of it would have happened if it weren’t for him.
If I’m being honest, though, I could get over that. But my pride won’t ever let me be with someone who humiliated me the way he did.
I shake my head in answer to his question. “No. You’ll do your interview, I’ll leave, and with any luck, we’ll never have to speak to each other again.”