Page 2 of Rivals to Lovers
Mo bit her lip. “Praise first.” She took a few steps farther down the street and leaned against a building for support.
“It’s genius. Honestly, one of the best things I’ve read in years. Eliza’s character is so fresh, so funny, so real. I bought every second of the dialogue, and the reinvention of the Westerly estate as an early-aughts McMansion? The ending? My God, the ending, Maureen. It’s a beautiful adaptation of Morgan. Wharton meets Fitzgerald swirled around with Occupy Wall Street. I’m making that little pinched gesture right now with my finger and thumb. Can you picture me making that gesture? I’m doing a chef’s kiss right now, so picture that.”
Mo did. “But.”
“But—and honestly this is a big but—the copyright hasn’t expired yet onThe Proud and the Lost. You know that, don’t you?”
Mo stared at her shoes, the ghosts of a dozen passersby’s shoes crossing in and out of her peripheral. “I saw that some other books from around that era had splashy contemporary adaptations recently. I assumed it would be okay.”
“E. J. Morgan’s estate has kept up the copyright past its usual expiration. The original novel was written in 1929, which typically would have put us in a safe position, but the estate has been maintained by Morgan’s daughter, Estelle. She hasn’t allowed for any derivative works. None. Not even a new film adaptation, and you know people have been angling for that since the eighties.”
Mo, like every other high schooler in America, had been treated to the 1950s movie version ofThe Proud and the Lostafter completing the book. It was grainy and overacted, and several students slept through it.
Mo had a movie poster of it on her wall. “So it’s a no?”
“It’s tricky.”
“Tricky impossible or tricky possible?” Yuri could work miracles—not miracles that had involved Mo’s first book selling, however. Mo didn’t want to press her. She was lucky to have an agent at all, let alone one who had sold several critical darlings and even more best-selling novels. Yuri was in her late fifties—middle aged, middle height, and with the most intense eye contact of anyone Mo had ever met. She had been the daughter of two lawyers and originally had gone into contract law before swerving to start a boutique literary agency with her first husband at age twenty-six. She’d dumped the husband but had kept, and grown, the career.
“I’ll tell you what,” Yuri said after a short pause. “I know the agent who represents Morgan’s estate. We can get in contact with him, but he might not be inclined to do favors.”
Mo wished she had time for industry gossip. Once a year Yuri took her out for drinks, and she luxuriated in it. Feeling like an insider when Mo had started as a nothing—still was a nothing—made her feel powerful. What else was writingexcept imagining other people’s secrets? And the writing world often held some good ones of its own.
Mo knew she should have emailed Yuri the idea while drafting it. She’d contemplated it, but there was something so big and all-consuming about reimagining a book that had meant so much to you. The process was like theLord of the Ringsfanfic Mo had written in high school. She’d put those stories up on the internet, enjoying the simple act of sharing her work with the world. Could she publish herProud and the Lostmanuscript on some site anonymously as Morgan fanfic and avoid getting sued? Probably, but that wasn’t how she pictured this book existing in the world. The fact that its original source was a novel published more than ninety years ago made Mo want to scream. She could do this project justice, and if she had a chance to talk to someone at the Morgan estate about it, she was positive she could prove that. “Could you make that connection? I don’t want to give up without having tried.”
An incoming text dinged, interrupting her thoughts. Keyed so deeply into the conversation, she had almost wandered all the way back to her apartment without realizing, weaving through the evening commuters. Her favorite flower stand on the corner had closed for the day. She paused near it as she listened to Yuri’s closing words. “Long shot” was the most frequent phrase, but all of publishing was that. Mo had to at least try. Yuri said she’d contact the estate’s agent and let Mo know the next steps.
After hanging up, Mo checked her missed text. It was from her boss, Amy, checking in for an event they were doing tomorrow. Complete clichéthat she was, Mo had moved to New York from Iowa to pursue her writing career. Working in catering allowed her to live with two roommates in a place withno bedbugs. Good enough. She had a place to live, her health, a job, and a foot in the door—it was just that that door wasn’t likely to ever open for her, at least not for this book.
She wished the flower stand were still open. She’d buy herself a bouquet of cheer-up daisies, something her dad used to do for her when she was a grumpy teenager. There was something, though, on the sidewalk.
A single-stemmed red rose. It peeked out between a trash can and an old box holding leaflets. She hadn’t gotten roses since she’d broken up with Aaron a year ago. The sight made her mouth quirk at the edges. The city was giving her a gift at the end of a long day. As she leaned over to pick up the rose from the sidewalk, she noticed something else between the trash can and the newspaper box.
A rat held the long green stem, chewing tentatively on the end of it.
All her life she’d trained herself to be one thing, and that was unflappable. Don’t let them see you’re shaken and you win, even if you look like you lost. Don’t scream. Don’t freak out.
She lifted herself back to standing, stepped back, and ran directly into an elderly man carrying an armful of groceries.
An hour later, after buying a fresh dozen eggs for Barry Studebaker, who happened to live two floors below her, she finally made it back to her apartment. Mackenzie and Sloan were thrilled to hear Mo’s ratport.
They didn’t ask about the phone call, as if they sensed she couldn’t handle rehashing it yet.
She didn’t expect a big break. She didn’t expect to become a literary darling, but she had needed to write this book. And now, book written, was it too much to hope that it would get read?
CHAPTER TWO
Wes
Wesley Spencer considered lighting his entire laptop on fire. While that wouldn’t solve the problem of his inbox in a concrete sense, it would feelsogood. He loved making decisions that felt good in the moment. Unfortunately, there were moments after those moments. Moments in which he’d have to explain the fire alarm blaring to the neighbors and the destruction of company property to his bosses. Worst of all, the thousands of unread emails would not somehow disappear in this process. The number, four digits, stared at Wes from the anchored bar on the bottom of his screen. The eyes of that number bore through him while he was trying to work on Things.Thingssounded abstract and amorphous, and sometimes it was. Client feedback, contract drafts, invitations to editor lunches and drinks sessions that he couldn’t turn down for fear of offense that would compromise some later deal. Wes loved his job, he really did, but if he could havedone that job in the middle of a forest with no Wi-Fi, he probably would have been a kinder and better person.
As it was, he was not kinder or better.
There were few great writers. There were even fewer great agents, at least those known outside the highly specialized literary circles Wes trod. He didn’t know why he needed to be great, but whatwereyou if you weren’t great?Fucking email,though. He’d spent two hours sorting and prioritizing tiny icons this morning: red stars and blue stars and exclamation points and why didn’t Outlook offer a tiny little bomb icon? Even after those two hours of sorting and snoozing, he felt overwhelmed.
Wes’s phone rang. It rang a lot—a necessary part of the job. He was almost grateful for a different piece of technology to feel overwhelmed with.
“Hello, Novel Literary. This is Wes Spencer.” This dialogue was one he’d learned from his internship, substituting another agent’s name.
