Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
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, mentally bargaining 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 technically his brownstone 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 still had 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.
“How’s Tahoe?” Wes asked by way of an answer.
“Oh, fine, fine. I drove the ’vette out here. Long ride for the little bugger, but I think it enjoyed stretching its legs. Everything else is coming in a pod later. Have you seen those pods? They put them in the yard, and you pack everything in.”
“ You packed everything in?”
“Well, I had some people pack things in. Then the truck came, and it met me here. The person that invented that must be rich.”
“You’re rich,” Wes said. The clock on the microwave said 7:55. “Listen, Dad, I have a friend coming over soon. Did you need something?”
A smile came into his dad’s voice. “A friend? A boyfriend or a girlfriend?”
“A girl friend, with a space between girl and friend ,” Wes said. “Friend that is a girl.”
“Always so literal. I wanted to make sure you’re all right. I know that it’s a change, but we both love you very much. I’m still here for you. Just—”
“Just in Tahoe.”
“Right, just in Tahoe. But a phone call away.”
“Or I can pack you up in one of those pods and send you back here, huh?”
His dad laughed again, but then turned serious. “Listen, I remember when my parents divorced—”
Wes interrupted him. “Ulla said it was a separation?”
A pause. A throat clearing. “Well, she has her own ways of phrasing things. Marketing them, as she does.”
“Oh,” Wes said. His knees felt weak suddenly. “I didn’t know it was final.”
“I won’t interrupt your time with your friend.” Wes’s father put a slight emphasis on the word but softened it in the next sentence. “But we’re still a family, and I love you, son. I don’t get to tell you enough.”
Wes hung up, disconcerted. He wasn’t thrown by his dad’s affectionate tone—his father had always been a hugger, a feelings sharer, whereas his mother had the buttoned-up manner of someone too used to being burned by people’s uncareful words.
His dad was worried that Wes might be worried, which in turn made Wes feel even worse.
He leaned into Ulla’s worldview in most things, uncertain how to emote in the same open way his father did, but now Wes wanted to call him back and ask Whose idea was it?
The doorbell rang, shaking Wes out of his mental spiral. He threw a last look around the living room, lit a candle on the fireplace, and walked down the stairs to the entryway.
Mo had a bottle of wine in one hand and her manuscript in the other. Wes didn’t bother telling her he had both wine and her book here. He’d managed to hold off reading it so far, waiting for her. His own personal audiobook narrator.
Who Wes had kissed and done much more to. Whose taste he knew. Whose breasts looked really good under her yellow linen jumpsuit.
She handed Wes her pink coat, and he hung it on one of the hooks leading from the stairs up to the main floor.
Wes saw her glancing around and tried to take in the place from an outsider’s perspective.
Hardwood floors and high ceilings. Mismatched art on the wall he’d collected from flea markets and friends’ art shows.
In his main room, a mural of Winnie the Pooh smoking a hookah with Piglet dominated the wall.
She gestured at it. “And I’m the one who got in trouble for edibles last weekend? ”
“Hookah is only flavored tobacco,” Wes said, hands up in defense. “My friend Ajay made it. They have a show quarterly. This was one of the less risqu é pieces in their collection.”
“Oh no—hopefully not sexy?”
“No, no. But children’s book characters and drug use was the theme of the show, and some of them got dark. Something about the toll of criminalizing drug abuse? It got a write-up in the Times .”
She sat on the couch, nestling an orange throw pillow under her elbow to prop herself up. “I don’t have much reason to be in this area often.”
“Well, I don’t have much reason to invite people over, so thanks for coming.”
“Are you sure you’re not midwestern?” she laughed. “That definitely felt like a deferential neighbor about to bring out a casserole.”
“I have absolutely never made a casserole.”
“As a person of Iowan origin, I’m not sure this will work,” she said, then blushed. “Like, by this I mean being critique partners. My MFA cohort has mostly fallen out of touch, and most of my writing friends in the city are poets.”
“Well, I can’t promise to critique your book,” Wes said.
He didn’t want to critique her book. It was one of the things that had made him consider leaving Yuri’s agency before circumstances forced him to.
He found that he had been unable to find much to criticize in Maureen’s first novel.
Yuri told Wes then that he didn’t have the editorial eye needed to work in this business, and though he’d proved her wrong time and again, he couldn’t help wondering whether, if he had allowed himself more emotional distance from Mo’s first book, found some sort of flaw that no one else could see, she could have whipped it into the kind of shape to be sold.
Wes didn’t tell her this, though. He couldn’t tell her that this wasn’t his first time falling in love with one of her projects.
Revealing that detail would reveal too much about who he’d been while Yuri’s intern. And what he’d done.
Instead, he took a deep breath and said, “I think this is a mutual-admiration society. Or at least that’s how I see it. For books, that is. I really like hearing yours.”
“Like an old-school literary salon,” she said, standing again. The jumpsuit shifted, pressing against her hips. He watched her move as she walked into the kitchen. Observation was an important skill in a writer. “Wineglasses and corkscrew in here?”
“Yes,” Wes called. When she didn’t immediately return, he roused himself and followed. He found her standing in front of the open fridge.
She wheeled around, wine bottle in one hand and a block of cheese in the other. It was a three-year aged cheddar he’d bought a few days ago. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “If you didn’t have plans for this, it would pair really well.”
“I mean, I was going to shred it for a casserole,” he said, straight faced.
And then she threw the block of cheese at him.