Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Mo
Maureen had run into Ulla on the sidewalk outside and grabbed her arm like an old friend, or a lifesaver. “I guess we’re both looking for Wes,” Mo said.
“Oh, I am here for the scene. Keeps you younger than Botox to go to an art show and not understand a second of it,” Ulla responded.
They collected Wes outside and entered together.
The art gallery had lofted ceilings, white walls, and pine flooring.
The buzz of conversation wrapped them as they entered, but it was still quiet enough that Mo heard Yuri’s heels clicking against the wood as she approached.
“You came!” Mo said, leaning in for the hug her agent offered.
But suddenly Yuri went stiff in Mo’s arms, despite being the one to reach out for her.
Did Mo smell bad? She had sat next to someone eating a fish sandwich on the subway.
She felt Yuri’s breath near her ear. “We need to talk later. Find me. Alone,” and then she pushed gently away from Mo and excused herself.
Mo glanced around to see if the exchange seemed weird to anyone else, but Ulla’s attention was elsewhere, and Wes was making pointed eye contact with his shoes.
His gaze was so intent that Mo looked down at them—light-brown suede chukkas that she had to admit were nice but didn’t warrant that attention.
“Hey, Earth to Wes,” she said, waving a hand in front of his face.
He looked up, rubbing his scruff in a nervous way.
She wanted to touch that beard too, pet it to calm him down, but she didn’t think he’d appreciate being treated like a cat.
He shouldn’t be the nervous one here. She was with both his mom and his best friends, two major steps that if they hadn’t been just friends with extremely good benefits, she should be nervous about.
And she should be glad about that, of course.
After getting a text that Ulla was invited to the gallery opening too, Mo had felt the invitation shifting out of the possible date category into the “general hanging out” category.
If they were casually hanging out, then Mo decided to use his offer to invite someone too.
Having caught up with Yuri by email once or twice a month for the past year, she was overdue to see her in person and had invited her along on a whim.
Yuri, it turned out, represented a client who had tried to get Ajay to do cover art for a book, so she was familiar with their work and said yes.
There were millions of people in this city, but somehow you were supposed to be equally unsurprised if someone did or did not know someone else.
Which was exactly the kind of whiplash she suddenly had looking at Wes’s face. Suddenly her brain clicked. “Do you know Yuri?” Mo asked.
He cleared his throat, then touched her arm.
“Kind of.” He seemed ready to say something else when a tall person in a white blouse emerged from a crowd of people near the center of the gallery.
They had dark skin and loose, curly black hair resting above one of the most beautiful foreheads Mo had ever seen.
She hadn’t considered how nice a forehead could be before.
Wes looked relieved at the interruption, removing his hand from Mo to offer to his friend. “Ajay! You have gotten taller somehow.”
“Shoe lifts. Loris found them.”
“You are already over six feet. You don’t need them.”
“Maybe I’m modeling them for you,” Ajay said, then, smiling, turned to Ulla and Mo. “Ulla, doll, it’s amazing to see you as always. And you are …?”
Mo shook their hand. “Maureen Denton. So nice to meet you.”
Ajay smiled wider. “Are you and Wes something?”
Wes cleared his throat. “Friends.”
Mo laughed. “Also enemies.”
“I like that dynamic, and I insist on the full story later. For now, look around. Get some wine, if you drink alcohol, and some cheese if you aren’t lactose intolerant.”
“Cheese is my love language,” Mo said.
A man in a black shirt with short-cropped blond hair popped over Ajay’s shoulder and placed a kiss on the side of their neck.
“I’m also offering free insights on the state of modern journalism.
Hi,” he said, offering Mo his hand and removing Ajay’s delicately from her grip.
“I’m Ajay’s partner, Loris. I work at the Post . ”
“Though he did intern for me once,” Ulla cut in, tucking her long silver hair behind her ears, then accepting Loris’s cheek kiss. “Couldn’t keep him, though. He didn’t care much about the state of modern table settings.”
“Wasn’t my passion, Ulla. You know my heart isn’t in flatware.
Spoons don’t have enough secrets.” Loris’s smile was wide and infectious, too big for his face by half.
He wasn’t handsome, and his foxy features—big mouth, too-clever eyes—made him look like he’d been designed to be a gossip reporter.
Those ears that stuck out slightly on the side?
The better to hear you with, my dear. Mo made a mental note to be careful with what she said around this very charming stranger.
Everyone paused conversation to look around, as if they’d been cued to do so.
Even with her crack-of-dawn flight to Iowa tomorrow, Mo was glad for the distraction.
She’d never been to this gallery and certainly never seen anything like this show before.
Groups of people ambled up and down the ramped space.
Oversized paintings of Power Rangers interacting with celebrities hung on the walls.
In the closest painting, Tom Hanks stood at what seemed to be the helm of a giant robot, obviously painted as a good guy in this situation (every situation, though, right?).
Other celebrities got less-rosy treatment—they were the ones slamming down buildings while the Power Rangers took them on.
It was more fun for Mo to watch the people looking at the paintings. Eyebrows rose as people pointed out cultural Easter eggs. “Is that Four Seasons Landscaping in this one?” Mo asked, pointing to one of a former political lawyer.
Ulla clucked appreciatively, pressing her hands down over her long white dress to smooth it. “Oh my. Can’t wait to take in the whole collection. Lovely turnout as always, Ajay.”
“Wes, I’m stealing you to show you my favorite,” Ajay said. “You too, Ulla.”
Wes glanced at Mo. She could feel the sudden weirdness of this not-date. “Mo, coming?”
Mo remembered Yuri wanted to catch her alone, then shook her head. “You know if there’s cheese, then I am legally required to eat as much as I can handle.”
Wes grinned and headed up the ramp. Mo, too, turned to find the cheese table as she’d promised. No reason not to follow through on the dairy before tracking down her agent, but she was surprised to see Loris still standing next to her.
“Hi,” said Loris. “Thought I’d chat with you for a second.”
His tone was guardedly friendly, but something in Mo’s gut iced over in preparation for the worst. She steeled herself for a few conversations all at the same time.
Was this the feeling out if you’re good enough for my friend talk, or digging up who you are, as someone with the personal and professional interest to want to know , or the I’ve got something serious to tell you, like I got a genetic test done and you’re listed as my closest living relative kind of talk?
The last one was unlikely, but her writer brain did social anxiety well. “Sure. Hi.”
“I dated Wes,” Loris said simply, then rushed to say, “And we’ve been friends for, well, practically forever. But I wanted to tell you a little inside knowledge.”
Mo knew enough reporters to wonder what she had to give in exchange for this free info. “Sure, but why?”
Loris laughed. “This isn’t like me giving up his deepest secrets. You two seem like you have a nice repartee, and he’s never—literally never—brought someone to hang out with us. You are not just friends.” Loris said this with the simple certainty that came with lots of personal observation.
Mo didn’t confirm or deny this, but she did see Yuri standing near a huge painting of a former top network executive, who was depicted pinching a Power Ranger’s ass. “Fair assessment.”
“A hint about Wes. He acts very go-with-the-flow, adaptable, but he is terrified about not being in control of situations. He doesn’t know this about himself. He truly thinks he is easy, breezy.”
“Beautiful CoverGirl,” Mo finished automatically, then apologized.
“I set you up for it. Anyway, if you grew up with a mother whose entire life was magazine layouts and sprucing up a room and being the perfect host, you’d probably end up with some quirks too.
He’s a fabulous friend—will do anything for you, seriously—but he has trouble trusting people.
He will try to handle everything, emotionally and logistically, without bothering anyone.
He doesn’t get that it’s not bothering someone and that it’s communication. ”
You can’t handle the truth, echoed in Mo’s head, though she couldn’t even remember what movie it was from.
There had to be a German word for quotes like that which grew so far beyond their original cultural relevance.
And now she was distracting herself from an awkward conversation by trying to find specific vocabulary in a language she didn’t even speak.
She thought about Wes’s reluctance to have sex the first night she stayed over, his worry about things changing.
“I don’t know what you want me to do with this information,” Mo said honestly.
“I want you to be patient with him and tell him he’s an idiot when he needs it.
He’s not one, so you won’t have to tell him more than once.
Or a few times. I don’t think he lets himself make mistakes.
I have this theory that everyone has trust issues, they’re just different trust issues.
His trust issue is that he doesn’t trust someone to love him after he fucks up.
Usually he gives up on a relationship before he has a chance to be not perfect. ”
The breakfast Wes made her could have been a magazine layout, complete with a tiny vase of posies from the corner flower stand.
She remembered not just the food but the careful way he’d leaned across the table to brush a hair out of her eyes.
Other times, too, in the past two weeks of their time together.
His smile under his well-kept scruff. His warm and earnest eyes.
The uncareful curl of his hair, and his voice as he read some of the best damn sentences she’d ever heard in her life out loud to her.
He did seem perfect in some ways—most ways.
“Thank you for the insight. I don’t know what my friends would tell someone in some corner about me. ”
Loris pursed his lips. “Well, I’m not most friends. Figuring people out is kind of my job. Ajay and I adore Wes, but we are pushy in his life about two things: He needs a romantic partner to love, and he needs a dog. Then he’ll be fine.”
Loris excused himself after being called away by a short, bald person with a sleeve tattoo of Chappell Roan lyrics.
Mo took a breath. It felt like someone had handed her a key, a big important user manual to Wes, and she didn’t know what to do with that information.
She had known him just two weeks, thought it felt like much longer.
She thought about what Loris said: Everyone has trust issues, they’re just different ones.
Not me, she thought.
Except maybe she did. She hadn’t trusted Aaron to understand her and love all of her. She hadn’t even trusted her family with the information that she was writing something she was proud of, because she didn’t want to hear the follow-up questions.
This was too much self-analysis for a Friday night. She chose a few more cheese cubes and took in the crowd of people around her as she tried to track down Yuri again, but her phone chimed before she could find her. It was from Wes.
You throw any of that cheese at anyone?
Lol not yet
Need to show you something. You should have come with me.
Her impulse was to text back an eggplant. She hovered over the emoji, then decided to send it. He replied with the ha ha reaction. No, not that—yet , he texted back. He was the kind of guy to use an em dash in his texts. How was he so perfect?
The word popped into her subconscious before she could think of anything else, and she repressed it with another bite, this time into a Camembert.
Maureen felt a tap on her shoulder, which made her swallow her bite and wheel around. When she coughed slightly from choking down the dry mouthful, Yuri patted her back slightly. “You all right?”
Mo held up a finger. “Snack issue.”
Yuri pursed her lips, trying not to smile. At least she looked less concerned than she had at their first greeting. “We need to talk about Wes,” Yuri said. We Need to Talk About Wes seemed to be the actual theme of the evening, not Power Rangers.
“Sure, okay.” There was something in Yuri’s face that made Mo’s stomach clench.
Yuri paused, looking at the ceiling for a second. “Since I can’t break my NDA with Wes’s family, I’ll have to be circumspect.”
“Uh …” Maureen said.
“Let’s find a place to sit down.”