Chapter Thirty-Five
Mal
“You said what?” Kieran said in disbelief, his voice as booming and bombastic as if he were sitting in Mal’s living room.
“If you loved her, you would figure it out,” Kelechi repeated, deepening her voice in mimicry of his. “Come on, Mal, you write
love stories. You should have known better than to give your rival that kind of encouragement. And now look what he’s done
with it.”
Mal covered his eyes with his arm, miserable. He’d known that there was a chance Jo wouldn’t take too kindly to the fact that
he’d been the impetus for Ezra’s public confession, but facing the reality had been harder than expected. Returning to his
quiet, empty apartment hadn’t helped. He’d spent yesterday pining and trying to distract himself with emails, work, and one
brutal two-a-day at the gym before giving up and calling his friends.
Who, unsurprisingly, were definitely making things worse.
“You think I pushed them together?” he said miserably.
“Of course you pushed them together,” Kieran said. After watching the Em-Dash book event, he’d switched to being staunchly
Team Jo. Like, damn , he’d said, covering Harvey’s ears. I get it now. “Like. What’d he say? ‘I was so lucky to stand in your light’? Bars. I teared up.”
“Thanks, man, I feel so much better,” Mal said sardonically.
“We’re just messing with you,” Kieran said, his tone mollified. “It’s just... this is crazy right now. First Lana, now
this. You’re like, famous famous. Do you know how many people from college have hit me up to ask about you?”
Mal shrugged. His phone hadn’t stopped ringing all day, calls from everyone from his agent to reporters to curious acquaintances
suddenly interested in “catching up,” and he’d already cleared his voicemail twice.
“It’ll die down soon enough,” Mal said. “I’m not all that interesting.”
“I would have said the same a few months back, but that was before you managed to steal Ezra Adelman’s girl,” Kieran said.
“If I haven’t already messed things up,” Mal said with a sigh.
“Um, Mal,” Kelechi said, her voice high the way it was when she had made a discovery. He could see her face in his mind’s
eye, the sideways tilt of her head, her eyes wide with thinly veiled delight. “I don’t think you messed things up.”
“And how would you know that?” Mal said, suspicious. “You hack into her phone somehow? Tap into her Alexa?”
“Nope,” she said brightly. “I just checked her page. You should do that. And then call us back. Or maybe don’t. You’ll probably
be busy.”
And then, abruptly, she hung up.
Mal looked down at his home screen, dumbfounded, and then opened up his Instagram. To Amelia’s naked delight, @malcolmjwaters now had a following forty thousand large, with Ampersand’s linked personal account sitting close by at twenty-eight. He blinked at the number, bewildered, then, biting down on his tongue, he navigated to Jo’s page.
There was a new post.
Mal sat up in bed, tapping it open with bated breath.
The photographs in the carousel Jo had posted were uncurated and unedited, a far cry from her typical well-manicured content.
If Mal hadn’t explicitly sought it out, he would have assumed he’d scrolled past a high school friend’s post, except none
of his high school friends ever got anything close to two hundred thousand likes. He recognized a few of the shots as his
own: Ampersand curling into a ball at the base of a rumpled white bedsheet, dark, pink-toed feet peeking out in the background
behind her, a portrait of Josephine in profile he’d taken during one of their many breakfasts together that focused on her
neck. But most of them were Jo’s: Mal typing at her dining table, his face tense with concentration, his and her shoes arranged
over her “As Featured on MTV Cribs” welcome mat. A silver serving tray with a glass of water, a plate of tortellini, a side
salad that probably came from a bag, taken from inside a dimly lit room.
And underneath that, the caption:
Hi. It’s been a while. If you’re new here, you know why I’ve been gone so long. If you’re not, well, thanks for sticking around.
For the last few weeks, I’ve let other people tell the world who I was. Scream as I might against the noise, I knew and felt
like I couldn’t be heard. I felt lost, misunderstood, hurt, discouraged.
But in that cacophony, I found something incredible. I found courage. I found clarity. I found love.
Malcolm Waters, my knight in shining armor. Thank you for weathering this storm with me. You saw me at my most broken and
decided to love me all the same. Thank you for reminding me that I deserve shelter too. That I deserve to be protected, and
cherished, and loved.
I don’t need time. I need you. Come outside.
Emergencies notwithstanding, Mal made it a rule to run every day. This was not out of concern for his physical health, though
the benefits were not lost on him. It wasn’t even for the aesthetics, though the combination of lifting, boxing, and running
had given him a physique worthy of an appreciative thread on r/onetruekiss. It was because his brain was hooked on the endorphins
that came with exercise, and without them, it tended to break.
Despite this, his lungs burned as he sprinted down his condominium’s stairs. Why hadn’t she called before turning up? Texted?
Something? From his bedroom window, he’d made out Jo leaning against the iron railings of his stairwell, her butterfly locs
up in two high ponytails, and he’d had to blink twice to make sure he hadn’t imagined her. When she didn’t disappear, he threw
on a clean T-shirt, tossed this morning’s cereal bowl into the sink, and ran out of his apartment like it was on fire.
When Mal threw open the door, Jo was right behind it, dressed in a white ribbed bodycon that hugged every curve. She gave
him a wry smile, then tucked her phone into her purse.
“There are easier ways to get my attention, you know,” he said, catching his breath. “You have my number. You could’ve called?
Texted?”
What Mal wanted to say: You look gorgeous, I know it hasn’t even been two days but I missed you, did you really just hard launch me on social media before telling me you still wanted me? But the adrenaline of realizing she was here had still not worn off.
“I could’ve. But this way was more dramatic, don’t you think?” Jo said. She pulled her arms over her head in a stretch, smiling
beatifically up at him.
“What if I hadn’t seen your post?” he said, irritated by her carefreeness. Like she’d spent the last day completely at ease,
while he’d worried and fretted that he’d overstepped, that maybe he’d lost the ground they’d gained. “What if I checked tomorrow,
or the next day? You know I’m not on social media like that.”
“I would’ve come back,” Jo said. “Or just hit you up directly, honestly. But today’s a beautiful day. I didn’t mind waiting.”
“I mind making you wait,” Mal said, and Jo laughed, winding arms around his waist. With her body pressed against him, her
face turned up to his with mischief, he felt his hackles lower.
“I wouldn’t have to wait if we lived together,” she said plainly.
Mal blinked down at her, then laughed out loud. This was the Josephine Boateng he knew, the one who could always leave him
speechless, whose audacity knew no bounds.
“So, what, you’re going to ditch Dahlia?” he asked, pulling back to look down at her face properly, the creases at the corners
of her eyes.
“Dahlia’s been thinking about leaving the city,” Jo said. “She’s been wanting to try homesteading. We spent an hour last night
looking up chicken coops.” She tilted her head. “I don’t take up that much space, my skills in the kitchen are improving.
I don’t clean much, but I can cover the maid service. I make a pretty decent cohabitant.”
As her hands folded at the small of his back, Mal studied her face, sensing that she was trying to tell him something else, something harder.
“You’re not angry,” he said.
Jo bit her lip. “No,” she confessed. “But I am sorry. I should have tried to talk things out with you. Communicated, like
you said before. I’m just so used to processing my feelings by myself, and so I did what I always do and ran away. But I promise
I’ll work on it, and you should absolutely call me out if you catch me doing it again—”
“You missed me,” he interrupted.
“Desperately,” she confirmed.
Her agreement and apology left him giddy, and he cupped her face in his hands, rubbing slow circles along her temples. She
closed her eyes, easing into his touch.
“I missed you too,” he said. “Which is ridiculous. It’s been one day.”
“Absolutely ridiculous,” Jo said, practically purring under his ministrations. “Clearly just a honeymoon phase on steroids.
Got me thinking the wildest thoughts.”
“Not as wild as mine,” Mal said, catching on to her game. “I’m thinking I want to spend every waking moment with you.”
“Ha!” Jo said, but her smile stretched wider, and when she opened her eyes to look at him, they were dewy with adoration.
The way he’d always wanted someone to look at him, like they couldn’t believe he was theirs. “I think I’ve got you beat. ’Cause
I want that, but, maybe, like, forever.”
Something inside his chest cracked, and Mal tugged her close, as if she alone could fill the gaps. He remembered, not for the first time, the errant, irrational thought he’d had when she took his hand in her bedroom at the Adelmans’: I’m talking to my soulmate.
“What if I don’t think that’s wild at all?” he said. “What if I want that too?”
Against his chest, he could feel Jo smiling, and there, under a beating late-afternoon sun, he felt like his life was beginning
anew.
“Great. We’re in agreement.” She lifted her arms. “Now, if you please, I would like to be carried upstairs to be ravished,
thank you.”
The laugh that bubbled in Mal’s chest was one part disbelief, the other part delight. He bent down and scooped her up, giggling,
into his arms.
“As you wish,” he said, and then he was fireman-carrying her over his threshold and into the permanent home he’d made for
her in his heart.