Page 9 of Rivals to Lovers
Wes didn’t seem to notice the pause in conversation. I-95 N was heavy with traffic, but at least it moved. The Civic hummed along and rain tinked lightly on the windshield, barely a drizzle. It couldn’t seem to decide whether it wanted to be there or not. While waiting for Sloan to text back, Mo clicked on and reviewed her sister’s wedding invites. They were perfect, much like her sister. She sent back a heart emoji. By the time she looked up again, they were in Connecticut.
Mo hadn’t had any reason to visit Connecticut before. She had friends in Baychester and Harlem and Roslyn Heights, but notGreenwich. Even its pronunciation seemed like it would cost you money to say it.
Wes went through a tollbooth, slow enough to ensure the E-ZPass scanned. She watched his hands on the steeringwheel, trying not to be obvious she was watching him. Observation was an important part of being a writer. He had nice arms under that shirt and shoulders that could support a wall. That wasn’t exactly the stuff of Alice Munro, but it was something.
Suddenly, Wes glanced out his side window, then back at the road. Calmly, he said, “The bridge collapsed.”
Mo’s stomach dropped and she grabbed for the oh-shit bar. She’d been an adult before she realized its actual purpose was for people (fancy people) to hang dry cleaning on. She held on tight, heart pounding, and looked out the window, prepared to see the gaping hole that was about to swallow the car.
Only to see a perfectly normal bridge.
Wes finally took off his sunglasses, lazily with one hand, leaving the other on the wheel. He caught her reaction, and the side of his mouth quirked up. It shouldn’t have made him more attractive, but it did. “Not now. In the eighties. It was a big deal; several trucks and cars went over the side. One of my authors’ books talked about it, used that incident to illustrate the failure of infrastructure on a national level.”
Her heart hadn’t caught up with her brain, which was still marching-banding in her chest. “Can you see why it might be, I don’t know, disconcerting to talk about while driving over the bridge?”
“Do you honestly think I would toss an offhand comment like that? And not slow down or try to stop?”
“I don’t know anything about you!”
“LinkedIn says otherwise, and LinkedIn doesn’t lie.”
“People on social media certainly lie.” Her phone announced a text from Sloan, and Maureen opened it, turning toward the window. If it had been embarrassing for him to notice herhedgehog on her screen, it would be a thousand times worse to have his own face there. She scrolled through the six screenshots Sloan had shared. The first, the bio page from his literary agency. Standard stuff, exactly what she’d seen from his profile. The second and third were other social media profiles, where his follower number dwarfed small midwestern city populations and his bio, like the bio of any person who didn’t need to be clever to get those followers, was simple. “Book person,” it read. The fourth through sixth shots, however, were more surprising. The fourth was an article from a tabloid, with Wes beside an older woman at a gala function. He wore a tuxedo, which, had she had more time, she might have lingered and zoomed in on. As it was, the person next to him piqued her interest. She’d seen that face before. The caption read “Ulla and her son, Wesley Spencer, both in Versace.”
Ulla. OfUlla. He had never talked about Ulla on LinkedIn. She was one of those one-name celebrities like Beyoncéor Bono, so how could Mo have known? It clicked, then, the whole thing. The media nepotism baby and his zillions of followers. She’d had enough friends try to break into the publishing world to know that the connections didn’t hurt, and neither did inherited wealth. She flipped through the last two images, one of an unflattering tabloid article about a breakup and one of him posing next to the woman they were about to see, Estelle Morgan-Perry. Maureen took a deep breath, refocusing. She wasn’t here to figure out the backstory of Estelle’s agent. She was here to share her vision of the novel with her.
She must have taken longer gazing at the tuxedo than she thought. When she glanced up, they had moved into Greenwich proper. Even the trees were different here. Mo wasn’t sure if it was the slightly less polluted air this far from the city,but she swore even the blossoms on the apple trees were whiter and the cherry blossoms pinker. She wondered if Wes noticed the difference or if he was so accustomed to having good things that they flew right past him without notice.
Her phone buzzed again, and she expected a follow-up from Sloan with even more bombshells. Maybe that Wesley ownedThe New Yorkeror something. Instead, it was a text from Yuri:Have a good weekend. Don’t stress.
Don’t stress? About the biggest opportunity of her life? Maybe someone like Wesley Spencer wouldn’t have to stress if he were in his shoes. Mo wished Yuri could be there with her. Yuri was a dynamo—110 pounds of concentrated authority in a pantsuit—but somehow she wore that confidence in a way that put Mo at ease. Yuri would not be present, she had confirmed, but she could get to Greenwich within two-ish hours if Mo absolutely needed her. An agent-client relationship was a strange thing, because her agent didn’t make any money unless Mo did—and Mo hadn’t made any money yet. It was like having an employee on spec, except an employee who technically had more power than you did. Someday, Yuri must imagine, Mo would be a lucrative enough client to justify a promise like this, but for now Mo had made her exactly zero dollars and zero cents, almost the same as what Mo made in writing for herself.
The gate for the Morgan estate opened before the Honda, splitting in half. She had never been in a place that had so much wrought iron before. It was called the Hill for a reason: Its elevated placement rose into view ahead of them. She had tried, when she moved to New York, to get a tour, only to be told it was open to high school tour groups and benefit events only. The first category disqualified her, and the second had athousand-per-person price tag on the only occasion she’d checked. She’d given up on ever seeing this estate, tried to comfort herself with the idea that walking around a person’s house wasn’t walking in their shoes. It wasn’t like holding a literary séance and being present with the genius. Now that she had the property a thousand yards away from her, her knees shook. She didn’t know what she could learn about her favorite author from walking around in her house, but she couldn’t wait to find out. “It’s massive.”
“It is. Not unlike my ego,” Wesley said.
She laughed at that. “At least you admit it.”
“I think a healthy ego is important.”
“A topic for another one of your famous posts,” she agreed.
As the car crept down the driveway, she steadied herself. The sun was setting behind the house, a convenient and luxurious backdrop that felt staged for Maureen’s benefit. She imagined E. J. Morgan’s father standing on this hilltop, finger-squaring the plot of land where their mansion would go. Mo wondered what kind of coating they had on the windows to reduce this kind of evening glare. If she had been building the house, she would have placed the dining room in the rear to stare out at the vast back lawn—at least she presumed it was vast. It was funny that so much about a stately house could be presumed. As a writer, she had spent a lot of time on Zillow looking at fancy homes to write her version ofP&L, and the houses blurred together after a while to become a monotonous blah of white walls, subway tiles, white-painted bricks, white columns, sweeping double staircases, and white people, generally. Not to stereotype. Okay, yes, to stereotype.
The mansion recalled British historical manor dramas, maids, and little white hats. Bells being rung for dinner andtea. If she were cast in a drama like that, she’d be entering through the service entrance, not the front door. She had always been solidly middle class growing up, and now that she was on her own, she was a few notches below that. Still, she knew how to be around the upper crust when she was working for them. That term: the upper crust. As if the rest of the world were the soggy-ass bottom of the pie mush that people usually shoved to the side of the plate. To not be shoved aside, she had to decide what parts of herself she wanted to pack for this trip, alongside her nonexistent tennis whites and Sloan’s weed gummies.
The long driveway ended in a roundabout with a fountain at its center. The fountain was granite, but at this point in the season it was only full of blown leaves. Standing in the driveway, she realized that the air felt cooler here, probably because of the sun setting. She shivered, arms goose-bumping under her nicest cardigan. First impressions were hard, but she’d settled on a green wrap dress that accentuated her hips, paired with a pale-yellow sweater. She looked like a just-opening daffodil if a daffodil taught preschool. Her braided blonde hair completed the perception. Her shoes had a little heel to them, enough that she was eye to eye with Wesley as he unloaded her bag from the back seat.
He handed her the suitcase, and she pulled the handle straight to roll it behind her into the house. He slid his own bag out next, a leather shoulder satchel that looked as soft as a kitten. She wondered if Ulla had picked it out for him. She had a sudden urge to press her hand to it. She had a thing about textures. Especially as a kid, she’d had to feel everything, run it between her fingers. Certain textures gave her intense pleasure, almost like what Sloan described as ASMR,but for feeling things. She’d tried to work in a clothing shop in college but was too easily distracted. Catering had fewer sensory distractions: the same reassuring hardness of a plastic tray, the cool firmness of an ice-cold glass—these things centered her. But no, she would not pet this man’s obviously expensive bag or his well-knit sweater, as much as she wanted to.
She followed him up the front ramp to the double wooden doors at the entrance. “I feel a little like I’m walking into the Clue mansion,” Mo said. “At least the rain stopped.”
He rang the doorbell and gave her a tentative grin. “I am your singing telegram,” he half sang.
“You might want to duck, if that’s the case,” Mo said. “Just in case Tim Curry is inside.”
“Oh God, I wish,” he said.
“Same.”Deep breaths, Mo,she told herself.You can do this. Pretend this isn’t the beginning of the biggest interview of your life.Her heart thumped as loud as any door knocker.
