Chapter Eleven
Jo
[Image Description] A dark-skinned Black woman with long box braids stands in front of a French window, facing away from the camera. She is backlit.
The light catches the curves of her cheek, her shoulder, an uncreased forehead. You can’t see her face, but you can tell that
there is a solemnity to her expression.
[Caption] Being alone, to me, is different than being lonely. I’ve been alone for a long time, and there’s a lot of freedom in that.
Freedom to do what I want when I want, freedom to be selfish, freedom to always choose me. But if I’m honest with myself,
there’s also fear. Fear of change. Fear of letting someone close. And lately, I’ve been asking myself—am I choosing myself
out of fear? Because I’m afraid of choosing someone else? Afraid of giving them the power to hurt me?
[Comments]
beyoncesgivenchydress: Speak your truth, Dr. Jojo! I’m alone a lot myself, but I’m only lonely on occasion. Sometimes I really do wonder if fear is what’s keeping me from doing something about it. But then I meet men... and I get over it lol
iamnursemegofficial:
exquisitetaste: Honestly girl, I never felt more lonely than when I was with my ex husband. The grass isn’t greener.
h0tnb0thered69: hi I’m so horny right now visit my profile if you want to see more
palomaortizauthor: I had this epiphany two years ago, and a few months later I met the love of my life. I was really closed off before him.
enlightenedone1357: oh so you’re alone now? This is what’s wrong with you bitter ass bitches. U spend all that time talking smack about men and
then when you get old and your value declines you start crying about being alone. I hope your feminism keeps you warm at night
beyoncesgivenchydress: lol this comment has ‘no bitches’ written all over it
enlightenedone1357: jokes on you, i get my pick of women
beyoncesgivenchydress: your waifu pillows don’t count
Malcolm Waters: yo is your latest post about me?
I snickered, then sent Mal a YouTube link to “You’re So Vain” by Carly Simon. He responded with a laugh emoji, and a Fair, followed by Are you on your way? Parking’s pretty rough right now.
Already here, I replied. I’d arrived at Lincoln Park Zoo thirty minutes early, in part because I was nervous, but largely because I had
nowhere else to be. Once Mal got over his assumption that I was asking him to shoot soft-core porn (“What else was I supposed
to think?” he’d said later, when we met at a coffee shop to plan the shoot), we’d gotten deep into brainstorming ideas for
how to sell the world’s most conspicuous vibrator in a fun “safe for work” fashion. We ran through multiple motifs—Mal suggested
emulating vintage vibrator ads, which mostly featured women with sky-high beehives smiling vacantly as they pressed their
phallic “beauty aides” against their cheeks, an idea we quickly discarded once we discovered that the Tantra eclipsed half
my face—until, exasperated, I made a joke about how I could probably saddle the thing up and ride it into town. Mal’s face
had gone dead serious.
“That’s it,” he said. “That’s perfect.”
Which was how I ended up waiting at a bench outside the Lincoln Park Zoo Endangered Species Carousel in a voluminous pink
dress, marveling at how much the seal steed already resembled a gigantic dildo preproduction. Luckily, it being a Tuesday,
the zoo wasn’t very busy, and the red-bearded carousel attendant agreed to give us a little time on the carousel in exchange
for a sneaky forty-dollar tip.
I scrolled through my email. Denise had forwarded me a handful of campaign offers, most of them from hair gummy companies
hoping I’d be willing to sully my MD with their snake oil for a good price. And there was another, again, from Dr.Makinen.
Josephine,
I just met a young woman during training who also does the social media thing. I’ve been informed that maybe the ticky tocks
have more value than I initially assumed. So please take this as an apology for my dismissive tone in the last email.
On a more serious note, please let me know if you are still considering a fellowship in Pulmonary Critical Care. I really
think you’d be an excellent addition to our field, and I would be happy to aid your application in any way.
Sincerely,
Mikael Makinen, MD
I bit down on my cheek, warring between annoyance, because why wouldn’t he accept that I wanted to be left alone, and delight,
because Dr.Makinen still thought I was so good at my job that he wouldn’t allow me to escape it.
Not that he had a choice. Once upon a time, I’d been a machine of a resident, on the wards earlier than everyone else, gone
later, shrewd, on top of my patients. Good at procedures. Before graduation, I’d probably appeared hypercompetent to people
like Dr.Makinen.
But it had been an illusion. It hadn’t been strength or talent that fueled me, but constant, crippling fear that I would miss
something, do something wrong, hurt someone irreparably. The second they handed me my diploma, the anxiety that had held me
together like Elmer’s glue melted away.
Posting a video of myself riding a man-size dildo might scar a few soccer moms, but they would be much more likely to recover than a patient.
I got a text. Mal.
Just parked. Walking over. Which dress did you pick again? Mystical Woodland Fairy or Tavern Wench?
I smiled to myself, then typed back: Woodland Fairy. But make her a little edgy, you know? I’m wearing one of those leather harnesses over it. In pink, of course.
Mal: Oooooooo. Very chic. Very Gen Z. I approve
Jo: Well, just in case you don’t, I brought a backup. And obviously a dress change
Mal: Ah, of course. You must be prepared for everything.
Mal: I think I see you. Though to be fair, I think it would be hard not to.
I rocked to my feet, fluffing out the layers of tulle and waving Mal my way. From afar, I could tell he’d come prepared, with
a softbox in hand and an enormous backpack I assumed held all of his gear bouncing off his shoulders. He returned my wave,
hustling faster, and I held back a smile. There was something so pure about Mal, something precious that I wanted to preserve.
“Not going to lie, I think this dress is a bit conspicuous for a woodland fairy,” Mal said when he skidded to a stop in front
of me. He was dressed today in joggers and a very slutty black compression shirt that outlined the curves of forearms into
biceps into shoulders into a chest that looked like it would serve very nicely as a pillow. Feeling wicked, I tugged at his
hem.
“Rich coming from you,” I said. “You’ve got all your goods on display.”
“My goods?” Mal repeated, confused.
I smoothed a hand down the curve of his chest until it was cupped in my palm, then watched for a reaction. Mal had refused
to sleep with me, refused to touch me much at all, really, and his reservations were as annoying as they were thrilling. Because
I could always see in Mal’s eyes that he was holding back. That there was a beast lurking behind that adorable sweet-boy exterior,
and it was my job to coax it out. That eventually, his legendary control would snap.
Mal didn’t disappoint: his eyes darkened, nostrils flared. I squeezed, and he clasped my wrist.
“Jo,” he said in a low, warning growl.
“Mal,” I said gleefully.
He peeled my hand away, turning toward the carousel.
“Come on,” he said. “Your deadline is in three days, and we only have half an hour until closing. You’ll have time to tease
me later.” He bent forward, unzipping his backpack and producing a camera. “Go. Get on.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, and then, gathering my skirts about me, clambered onto my seal steed. Mal waved to the carousel attendant
to keep the carousel stationary, then took a few test shots.
“This is going to work. This is really going to work,” he said excitedly, adjusting his settings. “You’ve got a good eye for composition, don’t you? Like the photo
in your post this morning. You took that yourself, right?”
I shrugged. Early in my influencer career, I’d gotten handy with a tripod, a Canon point-and-shoot, and a self-timer. On a
social media feed full of filtered phone shots, strong photographs stood out.
“Might be the whole regularly-spending-time-with-an-international-supermodel thing,” I said. “Who, by the way, I heard you met up with not too long ago.”
Mal’s face instantly went blank. Renata had informed me that she’d met with Mal’s team to discuss Dusk , but he had neglected to mention it himself.
“Yeah, I did,” Mal said. He busied himself by repositioning his softbox, then unfolding a diffuser. “She’s... a force to
be reckoned with.”
“Renata’s wonderful,” I said, smiling. “And she didn’t tell me to tell you this, but I promise you, Mal, if you sell to her,
you’ll be in good hands.”
Even with his head ducked, I could see that Mal’s eyebrows were knitted together.
“You’re really close to them,” he said. “To both of them.”
My smile tightened. It was clear who the other counterpart of them was.
“Yes,” I said simply. “Very.”
Mal nodded, pensive. If I was honest with myself, I was surprised it had taken so long for Ezra to come up again. We’d skirted
around him like a sink of dirty dishes—difficult, considering how much Ezra hated being ignored. Mal was quick on the uptake:
I had a room in the Adelmans’ home, an obviously special relationship with Renata, a discernibly complicated one with her
son. I wondered what Mal assumed about us—that I was a scorned ex whom Ezra’s mother could never let go, or perhaps a dedicated
groupie who, after years of perseverance, was eventually accepted into the Adelman fold. If he’d looked us up, he might have
seen pictures of me and the Adelmans chumming it up going back a decade, and maybe that would confuse him more.
I doubted he would arrive at the truth, that once upon a time, I’d saved Ezra’s life, and that they had decided to love me ever since.
“I saw Ezra that day,” Mal said. “He asked about you. Wanted to know if you were okay.”
The corner of my mouth twitched. “And what did you tell him?”
“That you were.” He took another picture, still framing the shot. “Are you?”
I laughed, but it sounded bitter even to my own ears.
“For the most part,” I said. My heart was racing, my brain doing silly things, trying to picture exactly how Ezra had looked
when he asked, if his forehead had creased when he heard that I was out with Mal, texting with Renata, living a whole life
without him.
“He’s jealous, you know,” Mal said. He was giving me a strange look from the base of the carousel, one part amused, one part
suspicious. “Clearly wants to launch me into the sun.”
“He’s like that with everyone I get close to. Took him like six months to get used to my roommate,” I confessed. “It doesn’t
mean anything. Promise.”
Mal hummed, unconvinced, then scrolled through his photos.
“Okay, this looks good,” he said, changing the subject. Then, brightly: “You ready for the real thing?”
I tossed my braids over my shoulder, praying my body language conveyed more ease than I felt. It was just like Ezra to get
under my skin, even when he was nowhere in sight.
“Of course,” I said.
When we were nineteen, Ezra taught me how to swim.
We were fresh off the tragedy of his near demise, though the time we’d spent fused at the hip afterward had felt condensed, a lifetime squashed into one hundred and thirty-seven days. I rolled awake to Ezra’s texts telling me good morning, fell asleep to his scratchy voice proclaiming his hatred of Cheever or his father’s questionable politics over my speakerphone, and so when he invited me on his family’s annual trip to the Maldives, I wasn’t surprised. By that time I had already recognized that such gestures came not out of generosity but out of avarice, that Ezra wanted nothing more than to swallow me whole, absorb me into his side like an anglerfish. And I was fine with that, elated with it, really, prepped and marinated myself to make me more palatable for him. We had faced death together. Facing life seemed so easy in comparison.
But then he started talking about what we would be doing. Snorkeling. Deep-sea dives. The crevasse between us that I could
normally ignore widened to a canyon. Being able to swim was a given for students at Elion University, who’d had private tutors,
where I’d had an underfunded library, backyard pools with a deep end, where mine had been inflatable. It had seemed just another
way to demonstrate our incompatibility.
“I just want to stay on the beach,” I said. Then: “I don’t want to get my hair wet.” It had taken hours of needling for me
to admit the truth. “Ez, I can’t swim.”
Soon after that, we were at Elion’s Olympic-size pool, Ezra’s hands gripping my hips to hoist them higher in aqua blue water
eerily close to the color of his eyes. I savored our closeness then, the slickness of his bicep when I grabbed hold of it
for purchase, how easily the greed I sensed in his voice extended to his hands in this place.
But a few weeks into our lessons, someone posted a video of us to the Facebook group Overseen at Elion: Ezra Adelman Catches Jungle Fever . Hundreds of comments and reactions amassed, most of them detailing all the reasons why I wasn’t hot enough to breathe his
air.
I didn’t mind them. I was used to rhetoric on how worthless I was, and I knew how to deflect. Ezra did not. Anything short
of adulation terrified him. I wasn’t surprised when, a few days after the post went live, he hooked up with a stunning sophomore
named Amanda Alkins to ward off allegations.
I was surprised when he invited her to the Maldives. A few weeks later, all of us hopped on a plane—the Adelmans, Amanda, and me,
the family pet. Their room was next to mine, and even before my years reading up on sexual health, I’d known her squealing
was more porn star approximation than true pleasure. On the day of the snorkeling expedition, I feigned a stomach bug. Ezra
hadn’t come looking for me.
Years later, he apologized. I was such an ass back then , he said. It would be an honor to be thought of as yours. Which was why whenever we hit a red carpet together, he made sure to tell every interviewer who shoved a mic into his face
that we were “just friends.”
“You good?” Mal asked, his voice snapping me back to the present.
I shook my head, watching the image of Ezra’s wet, focused face fade from my mind’s eye. Mal looked up at me sheepishly from
the tiles at the base of the carousel, his expression one part amusement, one part concern, and zero parts irritation.
“I’m good,” I said. I scooted up higher in a saddle made for toddler-size butts and loosened my hold on the pole. “Sorry.
I promise I’m usually better at this.”
“Yes, yes, on account of regularly hanging out with an international supermodel, I know,” Mal said, offering me a sly smile. “But seriously, let me know if you want to take a break.”
“We don’t have time for a break,” I said. “They’re closing soon, and besides, if any kids show up, we’ll have to set up again.”
I waved to the carousel attendant, who gave us a thumbs-up. “Come on. Let’s try again.”
Mal circled me slowly for a few more minutes, and I forced myself to laugh, kicking my legs to send my sheer pink skirts into
the air. Then he straightened, lowering his camera.
“It’s bad,” I said.
“It’s not bad,” Mal said unconvincingly.
“No. I can tell from your face that it’s bad.” I rubbed my temples. “I’m sorry. I don’t normally get in my head like this.”
“I get it,” Mal said. “You don’t have to turn into Tyra Banks, you know. You just have to look happy. Well, not just happy.”
He waggled his brows. “ Orgasmic. ”
Laughter burst out of my chest.
“Orgasmic? You sure you want that?” I contorted my face into a grimace, rolling my eyes backward, and Mal laughed with me.
It wasn’t all that funny, but it gave me a good jumping-off point for the joy I was supposed to be portraying. I hooked into
the sound of his laughter and prolonged it, let my body loosen naturally and my head tilt back ever so slightly. Made myself
fluid.
“That’s more like it,” Mal said, triumphant.
“Great to hear that I’ve redeemed myself,” I said. I peered toward the carousel entrance; a beleaguered woman in a wide-brimmed
hat and a bald man had approached with their kids. “You got what you need? I think our time is up.”
Mal craned his neck. The red-bearded carousel attendant waved at him, slicing into the air in a universal you’re cut off symbol, and Mal responded with a good-natured wave back.
“Ah, well,” he said, capping his lens. “I’m not mad at it.”
“Yeah, should probably let an actual kid use this thing, huh,” I said, making to slide off the seal. Before I could dismount,
my sandal slid off with me, and I cursed; the laces, which had been wrapped around my leg to the knee, had loosened and now
flopped in a sad tangle around my left ankle. “Oh no. Did that mess up the shot?”
“Oooh, let me check,” Mal said. He took a moment to dial through his gallery, then gave me a thumbs-up. “Nope, we’re good.”
“Thank goodness.”
I eased myself to my feet, wobbling as my heel slid out of the shoe entirely. I’d chosen these particular gladiators for their
short, comfortable block heel, but today, they were failing me spectacularly. The little boy at the entrance was tugging his
mother’s hand as he picked out his steed, and I sighed, pulling aside layers of tulle to right myself before Red Beard could
set the carousel spinning.
A hand on my elbow stopped me in my tracks.
“Wait,” Mal said, and then, without a second’s hesitation, he dropped to his knees and hoisted my foot onto his thigh.
“Whoa,” I said, so shocked by his touch that I nearly snatched my leg away. “What are you—”
“Relax,” Mal said. “I don’t want you to fall.”
Blood rushed to my head. A hypocrite, I opened my mouth to complain, then clamped it shut again. If Mal noticed my mortification, he didn’t show it, busying himself by winding the laces up my calf with alarming efficiency, his fingers barely ghosting over my skin as he worked. From my vantage point, he was nothing but compacted curls, broad shoulders, careful veined hands. The carousel music sounded distant and distorted behind my ringing ears, like I’d dunked my head underwater, and a silly, girlish thought came to my head: This is what Cinderella must’ve felt like.
Good lord. Why should I give a shit about Ezra Adelman when I had fine-ass Malcolm Waters on his knees in front of me right
now?
“Where’d you learn this move?” I said, trying to keep my voice even as he skimmed past the sensitive skin at the back of my
knee.
Mal tilted his head up to look at me, a self-satisfied twinkle in his eye.
“Nowhere,” he said. “This is just good old-fashioned chivalry.” He pressed a knot into my shin with his thumb, pulled the
bow tight. When he was done, he cradled my calf in his palm, admiring his handiwork, and I felt a frisson of something , maybe pleasure, maybe anticipation, crawl up my skin.
“Good to hear it hasn’t died,” I managed. It came out husky, a strained whisper that would have embarrassed me if I weren’t
so distracted by his touch.
Mal unfurled himself, shoulders rising and rolling back to give way to chest and a face that landed closer than I had expected.
His eyes seemed unfocused, faraway, and it took me a split second to realize that it was because he was staring at my mouth.
All this time, a small part of me had wondered if I was deluding myself, that I was in fact alone in my lust. If Mal’s unshakable
discipline was actually a consequence of not really being attracted to me, that in the time he’d taken to get to know me he’d decided that my boorishness outweighed my beauty. But now he’d revealed himself, closed the space between us without realizing it. All I had to do was tilt my head and—
A hand smoothed up my neck, steadying me.
“I really want to kiss you,” Mal said, his breath wafting soft and warm over my lips. “Just wondering if it’s a bad idea.”
Kissing me sounded like a splendid idea. Possibly the best one Mal’d had since we met.
“Why would it be a bad idea?” I asked, shocked by the whine in my voice, its pleading edge.
Mal laughed, a huff of a sound that only made his hesitation that much more frustrating.
“Because...” he said slowly. “I don’t want you to be thinking about anyone else when I do it.”
I felt a pang of guilt, as acute as an arrow to my chest. Of course Mal was perceptive. Of course he’d seen the way I’d drifted
into my memories the second he brought up Ezra. Maybe that had been a test of my readiness, and I had failed.
But I didn’t want to dwell on that, not when it could cost me this moment.
I closed the space between us, pressing my lips to his unmoving ones. Mal exhaled, trembling, and, encouraged, I kissed him
again, and then suddenly his arms were tight around my waist, his body crushing me into him, his mouth opening to mine.
My mind went blissfully blank. I forgot that we were standing on a carousel, that there was a family staring at us in horror, that the zoo was closing in fifteen minutes, and that we might get stuck by the lion enclosure if we didn’t hustle. All I knew was fire and fingertips, Mal pressing hard into my ribs like he wanted to leave a mark, his mouth clashing against mine like we were trying to steal each other’s air. The hard meat of his thigh pressed between my legs, the exquisite friction we created together. Shit. The last time I’d been kissed, by Sean Peterson, a rising R&B crooner who’d asked me out after performing at one of Renata’s
galas, I’d concluded that kissing was sort of sloppy and maybe overrated. But when Mal’s tongue slid against mine, the feeling
that skittered down my body was the opposite of disgust. Suddenly I was frustrated by his hands, by the way they hadn’t wavered
from my waist, by the fact that Mal wasn’t touching me more, kissing me harder.
When Mal pulled away—maybe five seconds later, maybe five minutes—his eyes were wild. They darted across my face, dropping
from my half-lidded gaze to my swollen lips, dipping briefly to the swells of my breasts in my corseted top. I watched, in
real time, as he regained reason.
“Um,” he said. “Sorry, I—”
I opened my mouth, ready to tell him that there was no need to apologize, that actually, kissing him had been better than
I’d imagined, that I’d like to do it again, for longer, in a place with fewer prying eyes, but then a scream that wasn’t mine
rent the air.
“Oh my god! Help!”
My body stilled, then chilled. Reflexively, I pushed past Mal, my gaze zeroing in on the scene at the base of the carousel.
Two kids under ten. The woman in the wide-brimmed hat, wailing, holding up the bald man by his armpits.
His eyes had rolled to the back of his head.
I gathered the layers of my skirts into my fists and ran.