Chapter 26 #2
“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 physical presence 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 of that 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, since it 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.
He rarely had people in his life he cared enough about to be honest with.
He had to stop putting it off. He would tell her about everything when he got back to the couch—the agent, the editor, and most recently, Gary’s email about Talia’s and Flor’s responses to Maureen’s book.
He was ready. He could tell his face looked strange when Ilsa frowned as she handed back the pot. “Are you okay?”
He said he was fine, and she gushed that the soup was more than fine—delicious.
Her husband had washed the stainless steel pot before returning it.
Ilsa caught him for a few minutes to talk about happenings in the neighborhood.
Wes tried to track her conversation as he built a script in his head for the next few minutes.
Both the pot against his hip and the conversation waiting for him on the couch felt heavy by the time Ilsa said goodbye.
He put the pot on the front table, unwilling to take any more trips to the kitchen or distractions from Maureen, but when he reentered the living room, Wes saw her with his laptop perched on her lap.
He couldn’t believe her disregard of his private space.
He breathed deeply, willing his shoulders to relax before he said anything.
Computers were more private than underwear drawers. Annoyance clenched his stomach.
“Hey, need something?” he asked, hand out to receive the laptop.
“The truth would be nice,” she said, placing the computer on the coffee table and regarding him with a serious expression.
“About what?” Wes looked more carefully at her face and realized she was crying.
He sat next to her on the couch. She pulled her hands away, moving them to brush the tears from her cheeks, and scooted farther toward the arm.
Wes froze, not willing to move closer when it seemed like he’d done something horribly wrong.
“I saw the email,” she said. “I shouldn’t have looked. I know I wasn’t supposed to see it, but—”
Shit. Wes had known that Gary’s email was sitting right in his inbox, and of course she had clicked, because who wouldn’t?
She had probably also heard from him this week how Estelle’s health had declined, and of course she would want to know what Gary, or the rest of the family, thought.
“Look, Talia and Flor have no insight into this kind of thing. I bet neither of them reads more than a book a decade. It doesn’t matter that they say your book is unmarketable—”
“Flor and Talia said my book is unmarketable?” Her face, if it was possible to fall further, had done that.
It looked like a crumpled version of itself.
He looked away from the wreckage of her expression only to glance at his laptop screen, which had a different email pulled up, one that had just arrived.
He scanned the email from Elena, which was about his book, with her thoughts.
He wanted her praise to buoy his heart, to live in the current of her exclamation points and italicized flourishes, but he pulled back, focusing on Maureen.
He was aware she was getting up from the couch while he’d been skimming.
“Hold on,” he said, reaching toward her again.
He needed to stop this, to explain the full situation.
He had given an editor at Wildman his book, yes, but he had also given Elena her manuscript as well.
He wasn’t going to make the same mistake he had with Estelle early on.
At the beginning of all of this, he’d thought that by not introducing Maureen into Estelle’s life, he could save himself the trouble of ignoring her talent.
He couldn’t, professionally or personally, allow that to happen.
As much as he wanted his book to land in front of an editor, he wanted Mo’s to have the same chance.
How could he want anything else? Her book was incredible.
It had shifted tectonic plates inside him.
The manuscript had been the weather-worn copy Mo had left at his place, since he had revealed his personal copy when she came over that night.
And Elena had laughed at the state of it, emailed a picture of herself with an umbrella next to it and, in fact, read it first.