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I’m a couple of minutes early when I get to the pub a few blocks from campus, so I grab us a table, praying that I don’t run into any students, and pull out the readers’ reports that the journal sent with my rejection letter. I’m having a furious internal dialogue with one of the idiot’s comments when a hand falls on my shoulder and I jerk around to grab it.
“Oh, hey,” I say to Rex. “Sorry.” He puts his other hand on my shoulder and gives them a squeeze.
“No problem. Hi.” He leans closer, but hesitates, and I can tell he’s not sure if he can kiss me in public. Ordinarily, I’m fairly disgusted by couples who are all touchy-feely in public, and I’ve certainly never been one of them, but some equally disgusting primal neurotransmitter is screaming at me to lay claim to him in front of Will, so I tip my head back, inviting his kiss. His mouth is warm and he smells like Rex, which makes the tightness in my stomach unclench a little.
“What are you doing?” Will asks as they sit down, gesturing to the readers’ reports, which, for some arcane reason, are printed on legal-size paper.
“An article I submitted for publication just got rejected and these are the notes from people telling me why,” I say, when what I meant to say was, “None of your business.” Oops.
“The strengths of this essay are that it is clearly written and that its author takes an imaginative approach to the—” Will reads from the top of the page before I notice what he’s saying.
“Hey, fuck off,” I say, pulling the paper away and stuffing it back in the envelope.
“Will,” Rex says, disapprovingly, and pulls me into his side.
“Hey,” Will says, hands up, “at least it’s clearly written and imaginative. That’s more than I can say for about 90 percent of the stuff I read.”
Rex glances down at the envelope curiously. “Do these people have the final say?”
“For journals, yeah. They send your piece out to three people in your field and those are the readers. It’s just so frustrating because I read the comments that they make and it’s obvious that they didn’t read the whole article, because they say that I didn’t do things that I totally did. Just, in the second half. Anyway, whatever. It was a long shot to begin with.”
“Let me get the first round,” Will says, “as someone technically in the publishing industry, to express my sympathies that basically everything involved in it is crap.”
I can’t tell if he’s fucking with me or not.
“Thanks, Will,” Rex says. Then, to me, “I’m sorry, baby.” He squeezes my hand and I shake my head. His clothes smell like pine and I take a deep breath of him.
“Were you in your workshop today?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“You smell so good,” I say, as Will comes back to the table with a beer, a whiskey, and a martini. He puts them down in the center of the table and gestures to me. Is this some kind of test? Like, I’m supposed to guess what drink Will thinks I’d want? What the hell? Rex rolls his eyes, grabs the beer, and slides the whiskey to me. Will sips his martini and looks at me across the table. I stare back at him and down my whiskey like a shot.
“So, what do you think of Holiday?” Will asks. “You’re from Philly, right?”
I nod. “It’s okay. I like how clean everything is here. It smells kind of green. And the woods by Rex’s are beautiful. There’s not much going on, but I can’t lie. It’s nice to be able to walk around here and not worry about if it’s safe or not. I feel like I could walk through the woods in the middle of the night and be fine.”
Unease flickers in Will’s expression, but he just nods.
“Yeah,” Rex says, “unless you meet any serial killers, right?” He bumps my shoulder with his.
“I only said that once,” I mutter. Out loud, anyway. “Did you grow up here?” I ask Will.
He nods.
“I left for college but came back for a few years after to stay with my sister. That’s when I met Rex.”
“Where did you go for college?” I ask. I mean where did he live, but it came out the way all academics say it: tell me your pedigree. Let’s see if my school was better than yours.
“NYU,” Will says.
“So, you like New York?”
“Yup.” Will drums his fingers on the edge of the table in a fidgety gesture of boredom and I’m reminded of why I don’t like small talk.
“Here, I’ll get the next round,” I say, though Rex still has half a beer left. “Gin?”
“Vodka,” Will says. “Dirty.” He waggles his perfect eyebrows.
Rex is looking back and forth between us like a betting man at a dog fight. I nudge his knee and he stands to let me out.
