Chapter Fourteen
Jo
Posted: 1 month ago
[Image Description] Four images posted in a carousel. Image1: A woman in a pink taffeta dress poses in front of a carousel, tossing her hair
playfully. Image2: The same woman, laughing, bumps plastic cups filled with bubble tea with an unseen companion. Image3:
The woman, dressed in loose-fitting jeans and a tight-fitting shirt, poses in front of an arcade machine. She blows smoke
from a neon orange gun while the screen behind her reads Game Over in pixelated font. Image4: A selfie of two women—one a dark-skinned Black woman with rhinestones placed at the corners of
her eyes, the other a tan-skinned Asian woman with similar rhinestones placed above her eyebrows—under a black light. Their
arms are around each other, and they are laughing.
[Caption] During my three years of internal medicine residency, I often felt guilty for having fun. When I wasn’t in the hospital, I put myself under a lot of pressure to read, study, do research, prepare for boards. Rest felt wasteful, even if it was necessary. Nowadays, I am doing my best to live my life authentically, to reach for human connection as much as I do achievement. What are you doing to refill your tank?
Photo credit: @malcolmjwaters
@therealezraadelman and 62,392 people liked this.
Posted: 21days ago
[Video Description]: A woman holds up three different intrauterine devices. She describes reasons why patients may choose one over the other.
At the end, an image appears of a brand-name intrauterine device, which she presents as the most recent addition to the lineup.
[Caption]: #Contraception has many functions outside of preventing pregnancy. My IUD gives me freedom from monthly periods and their
side effects so that I can get shit done. Scroll through the slides to check out available options! #iud #ad
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Posted: 18days ago
[Image Description] A woman and a man sit next to each other at a table in front of a filled bookshelf. The man holds up a book. They are both
smiling.
[Caption] Thank you to everyone who tuned in to my Instagram Live for my chat with Malcolm Waters, New York Times bestselling author of my favorite read of 2023, She Blooms at Dusk! Missed the conversation or want to meet the author in person? Follow him @malcolmjwaters for updates on upcoming events and appearances!
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“So I’ve been replaced, huh,” Dahlia said, after she asked if I wanted to get dinner with her and I informed her that I already
had plans with Mal. “Would never have pegged you for the kind of girl who gets a man and ditches her friends.”
I stuck my tongue out at her, responding to Mal’s I’ll be there in ten minutes with an I’ll head downstairs . Both Mal and I worked from home with no set hours, and so it was easy to get together and getting harder to justify being
apart. The day he asked me to help him with his social media page, we’d stayed together until ten at night, wandering first
from the bookstore to his favorite farmers’ market to a surprise summer street festival a few blocks away, before eventually
settling in his apartment, where, to my chagrin, I passed out on his couch. He’d driven me home and asked, with uncharacteristic
boldness, if he could see me again the next day. I’d said yes, and since then we fell into a routine: days that started with
good morning texts, afternoons at coffee shops or bubble tea spots or park benches where Mal attempted to write his proposal for his second book
and I dug through offers to collaborate with brands and emails from recruiters asking if I was interested in working at hospitals
in “sunny West Virginia.” Evenings were spent checking out various Chicagoland events, typically initiated by Mal sending
me a link and a text with Interested? and me responding with a brief Let’s do it . He’d even joined me last week to go dress shopping for Renata’s upcoming health benefit, under the pretense that he needed to check out a nearby photography equipment outlet to buy a new lens.
“As if you don’t abandon me all the time,” I said to Dahlia, counting off the evidence on my fingers. “Let’s see. Two weeks
in Nebraska for locums. That weekend you left me to hang out with that dirty climber guy you’d just met off Hinge in the Indiana
Dunes. Then four days in New York hanging out with your nurse friends. And that’s just in the last two months—”
“Okay, fine, touché, bitch,” Dahlia said. “Have fun with your man, I guess. You’ll definitely have a better time with him
than getting arepas with me and discussing why Ezra Adelman is liking all of your posts.”
Ezra’s three-million-large following meant that he couldn’t interact with my posts without doing the social media equivalent
of blasting an air horn. Of course Dahlia had noticed. A lot of my followers had too, and the comments section was peppered
with the occasional Do you know that Ezra Adelman follows you, girl? To which a seasoned follower would respond, They’re friends irl, old news, and a snoopier one would stir the pot further with a Then why doesn’t she follow him back?
I was careful not to respond to any of the speculation, even when it happened in real life.
“That hardly requires a discussion,” I said. “Ezra just wants me to notice him.”
Dahlia grinned, a cat with a mouse under her paw. “Is it working?” she asked.
I shrugged. Mal had done an excellent job of forcing Ezra to the back of my mind, and I was sure Ez could sense it, that this was his way of clawing back into relevance without explicitly breaking any of my stated boundaries. And I would be lying if seeing his name didn’t give my heart a jolt. But then I could settle into the new memories I was making with Mal, kisses that always ended just a little too soon, intentions so pure and plain that I never wasted time questioning them. My therapist, Rochelle, thought all of this was a good thing. I’m proud of you for being open , she’d said during our last session. Even if this doesn’t work out, you’ve learned so much. You can live without Ezra. You can love someone who isn’t Ezra.
Progress. More than I’d managed in years, at least. All thanks to the sweet man whose genial smile I could already see stretching
across his face even from several paces away.
Mal rolled his window down, throwing his head and arm out. “I hope you don’t mind me saying, miss, but you’re looking thicker
than a bowl of grits,” he said, licking his lips in mockery of a guy who’d catcalled me outside a pharmacy we’d stopped by
last week.
I rolled my eyes, grinning in spite of myself, and watched his light up with delight.
“You were a little too good at that,” I said, walking around his car to the passenger side.
It was hard not to draw parallels between Mal and Ezra. With others they couldn’t be more different; Mal was reserved, preferring to stay cloistered within his small circle of friends, where Ezra made a point to be seen by as many people as possible. But with me? When we were alone? Ezra probably would reach for my hand across the console, like Mal was doing now. He probably would also roll down the window just an inch to let the air in, then lower the volume of his music to better hear me discuss the brand partnership I was considering. Like Mal, he would’ve probed me for details, asked how I intended to tie the project to a hot topic in health care, what I would be asking Denise to negotiate for in the contract. When Mal and I reached our destination, he stepped to the counter first, recounted my order, and slapped his credit card on the reader before I could even consider offering to pay, just as Ezra had done a thousand times before him.
But after dinner, Ezra had never taken my hand to walk down a hedge-lined street, had never kissed the laugh off my lips when
I poked fun at the tiny giraffes on his shirt. Had never pulled back to cradle my face in his hands and say, “Just because
you’re pretty doesn’t mean you get to be an asshole.”
“But being an asshole is so fun,” I said, leaning in closer in invitation. I dropped my gaze to his lips, a silent kiss me again that I hoped he might heed.
The corners of Mal’s eyes creased with affection, and then his hands dropped, once more, to his sides.
I tried to hide my disappointment. Mal’s chaste gestures were nice, sure, but what I wanted was to be handled the way he had
at the carousel, with recklessness and fiery abandon. That was why we were dating in the first place, right? So we could inject
a little emotion into the inevitable fucking? But Mal seemed insistent on treating me like a long-term girlfriend.
Except I wasn’t Mal’s long-term girlfriend. And unlike Ezra, whose habit of dating Russian models kept me from getting my hopes up, Mal’s earnestness was dangerous. Too good to be true. Too pure to be sustainable. Sure, right now, while I was a conquest, something to be earned, his interest was genuine. But what would happen when he caught me? When the chase was over and he had me in his grasp, when he’d lodged himself into my perfectly balanced life, would he steal away my hard-won independence? Would he do the same as the boyfriends and husbands of the countless women who cried to me in my DMs because of the STDs they gave them or the children they didn’t support or the emotional and physical abuse they forced them to endure?
Would letting myself fall for the first guy I properly dated be naive, a silly mistake made by a grown woman who would have known better, had she an iota of experience?
A hand brushed against the small of my back. “You still with me?” Mal asked.
I blinked, reorienting myself. “Yes, sorry,” I said. “You wanted to head to Millennium Park?”
“I know it wasn’t part of our plan, but there’s a free concert tonight for the summer music series...”
“Oh,” I said, processing his request in real time.
“If you have to head home soon, though, that’s also cool. I know I’ve been monopolizing you lately, but I don’t know.” He
shrugged, tucked his hands into his pockets. “I guess I’m not ready to say goodbye just yet.”
Nah. Men this sweet didn’t come with that face. Or that cuppable ass.
“I don’t have anything else to do,” I confessed, feeling the heat rise to my face in spite of myself.
We walked back to his car and piled in. Mal pulled out his phone to navigate, then winced. Five missed calls, all from his
“Momma.” He’d put a heart next to her name in his contacts. Cute.
“You can call her back,” I said, relieving him of his visible internal struggle.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’ll be quick. Just want to make sure it isn’t an emergency.”
It clearly was not an emergency, judging by the loud “Malcolm, I know I raised you better than to not pick up your mother’s calls” that I could hear through the receiver.
Mal wiped a hand down his face.
“Sorry, Momma,” he said. “I’m guessing by your tone that no one’s died.”
“Is that the only time I have permission to call?” Momma Waters said. “Your dad is here too. Say hi—”
“Hey, Dad, um, I promise I’ll call you later, but I’m a bit busy right now—”
“What could you possibly be busy with— oooooooh . Are you out with the girl you told us about? What was her name again, Russ?”
“Dr. Josephine Bo-ah-teng,” a sonorous voice responded. “Isn’t that right, son?”
Mal glanced at me with the helpless look of a man who has accepted his fate.
“Yeah, that’s right,” he said. “Look, I’ll be home later tonight, I’ll call you then—”
His phone buzzed in his hand. His parents were requesting a video call.
“Just let us see you,” Momma Waters said. “God knows how long it’s been since I’ve seen your face.”
“Momma...” Mal started in protest.
“It’s okay,” I said, bemused. “You can pick up.”
Mal swallowed an inaudible sigh, then held out his phone and hit “accept.”
A man and a woman filled the screen, staggered behind each other and grinning with mischief. Their faces were unreasonably
close to the camera. Mal’s parents.
“There you are!” Momma Waters said. She wore red lipstick and pearl earrings, presumably while lounging around the house. “Where’s Josephine? I want to say hi to her too!”
Defeated, Mal tilted the screen toward me.
Instantly, I could see the family resemblance—Mal’s features were a perfect intermediate of theirs, his skin a blend of his
father’s caramel and his mother’s deep umber, his nose and lips containing elements from both. Only his eyes were distinct,
snatched clean off his daddy’s face. Unbidden, I thought of my own mother. Her hand on my chin, examining my face for any
evidence of the father I never knew. Her smug satisfaction when she could find none. How, when I was young and starved for
her approval, I’d mistaken it for affection.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. and Mrs.Waters,” I said, feeling, to my surprise, a bit shy.
“Lena and Russell, please. And it’s lovely to meet you too, Josephine,” Momma Waters said. Then, with a wink: “Hopefully,
someday, in person.”
Mal snatched the phone back.
“That’s enough,” he said. “I’m hanging up.”
“She’s a beautiful young lady, son, good job—” Russell started, but Mal, true to his word, jabbed a finger on the screen to
end the call.
We sat in stunned silence for a long, protracted second. Then Mal dropped his forehead onto his steering wheel.
“I am so sorry about that,” he said, plugging in our destination on his phone and snapping it into the mount on his dashboard.
“Don’t be. That was sweet,” I said. “They love you.”
I’d hoped to sound unaffected, but Mal sensed my tension all the same. He snapped back to look at me, biting the hollow of
his cheek.
“I remember you saying that... you don’t really talk to your parents,” he said hesitantly. “Is that still... accurate?”
I nodded. “Got emancipated at sixteen,” I explained. “I’ve talked to my mother once since then. Which is fine. She never really
wanted a relationship.”
I waited for him to gasp, to say wow , or to call me strong or something equally asinine.
Instead, Mal fell back into his seat, released a slow breath. Then: “Did she... hurt you?”
I stared down at my lap, swallowing down my panic. The turn in conversation took me by surprise, so far from the safe shores
of our typical banter.
“Sorry,” Mal said. “I shouldn’t have asked that—”
“Not often,” I provided. “She beat me when I was younger, but at some point, she stopped, and somehow that was worse. Like
she no longer really cared. I mean, she kept the fridge stocked enough for two, covered the basic necessities, but it was
clear from early on that I was on my own. I learned how to take care of myself pretty quick. But I turned out okay, so—”
“You were a child,” Mal interrupted. Then he turned to me, sorrow and something like anger creasing a furrow in between his
brows. “Jesus, Jo. I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have had to go through that. You should have been cherished. You should have been
protected—”
I cut him off, wrapping my arms around myself to stop the tears that still, after all these years, threatened to sprout at
a mention of this topic.
“It’s okay, seriously.” I gave him a hopeful smile that did nothing to ease his expression. “I have Renata now. She’s a better mother than I could’ve ever asked for. And... I think it’s sweet that your parents love on you as much as they do. Even if they are a bit extra about it.”
At last, a snort.
“More than a bit,” Mal said, and I used that as an opportunity to change the subject.
“So you’ve been telling them about me, then?” I teased.
My feint worked masterfully. Mal gave me a queasy look, then started the car.
“We’re not talking about this,” he said.
“Oh, so we can discuss my childhood trauma, but asking why you’re out here giving your parents my whole government name is
off-limits—”
Mal turned up the radio to full blast, drowning out my cackles, and then we were on our way. We parked, and he procured a
pair of beach towels from his trunk—“I was hoping I hadn’t taken these out”—and we sprawled out on the lawn of Millennium
Park, listening to live jazz as the sky darkened. Dusk brought a chill with it, and when I shivered Mal pulled me backward
into his chest, draping himself around me for warmth. Our arms stacked against each other, and I looked down at the layers
we made, my skin reflecting streaks of violet light, his absorbing them. A girl sitting a few paces away stopped to tell us
we were “a cute couple,” then offered to take a picture, and when she handed Mal back his camera I felt a strange surge of
gratitude, glad that she had captured the moment, like it was a memory to which I might someday want to return.
“Thank you for confiding in me, earlier,” he said into my hair, during a sonorous saxophone solo. “I know it wasn’t easy for
you.”
“It was nothing,” I said, following the path of his veins down to the tendons in his hands.
“It wasn’t,” Mal said. “But I appreciated you letting me know you a little better, all the same.”
Shit shit shit . What happened to having fun ? What happened to no strings attached , like Dahlia had suggested? Instead I was walking right into Mal’s web.
When the concert ended, we walked back to the parking garage in silence that would’ve been comfortable if not for the thoughts
buzzing through my mind.
“I still don’t want to say goodbye,” Mal confessed when we reached his car. I knew that he meant it in the most innocent possible
way, and it irked me as much as it thrilled.
“Then don’t say goodbye,” I said, meeting his eyes in a challenge. “Then take me home with you instead.”
I half expected Mal to resist. Minus his singular lapse of control at the carousel weeks before, he’d done an excellent job
of exercising very unnecessary restraint. But then instead, his smile tightened, shadows deepening the hollows of his cheeks
and casting darkness under his brow, and I felt the air between us crackle.
“You sure that’s what you want?” he said, his voice lowering to a rasp. “I’m not sure if I can be held accountable for what
I might do to you if I do.”
“You mean in a sexy way, not in a murder way, right?” I joked, stepping closer to eradicate the space between us.
Mal sighed melodramatically, but he didn’t pull away. “Of course, though, you’ll have to just take my word for it.”
“Then I’ll forgive you,” I said, shoving my hand into his back pocket.
Turning Mal on was like flicking on a switch; one second he was gentle, his touch overly respectful, and in the next he pulsed with desire, his body flattening mine against the passenger door of the car as his hand looped around the back of my neck to direct my face to his. I closed my eyes expectantly, but instead of the clash of mouths, I felt the glide of his nose against my cheek, skimming, featherlight, past the angle of my jaw. The innocuous touch ran down my body like a lightning strike, and I gritted my teeth, frustrated.
“You’re not going to kiss me?” I whispered.
This close, Mal’s face was a study in cubism, his deep chestnut eyes overlapping, his chagrined smile repeating twice. Then,
finally, slowly, he pulled my bottom lip into his mouth.
I opened to him, winding my arms around his waist as he tilted my head to his. My body felt compressed, molding into the dips
and divots of his . The only thing better than the taste of victory—vanilla mint, like the lip balm he favored—was the head rush that came with
it. God, I wanted this man. I wanted his hand up my skirt and his mouth on my neck, wanted him to hike my legs around his
waist and take me right here in this garage. Wanted to hear our breaths echo against the concrete, the squeal of our hands
sliding against glass—
Mal wrenched himself away. I stared, breathless, as he guided my still-pliant body away from the passenger door, opened it,
and directed me inside. His drop into his own seat was graceless, his expression strangely stoic, a muscle in his cheek as
tight as a cord. We drove in clinical silence, tension thick as clouds in the small space, and I watched the flex of his hand
around the steering wheel, the skin pulling tight on his knuckles. When he slid into his parking spot in front of his condominium,
his movements were methodical, shifting the car into park, pulling his key from the ignition, stepping out, opening my door.
He walked ahead, leading me up the stairs to his apartment, then stepped aside to let me in.
I’d been in Mal’s apartment twice before, and both times I’d left decidedly not deflowered. But today felt different. The air felt charged as Mal stalked behind me, flicking on lights one by one, and I swallowed, suddenly feeling less like a sexy lioness and more like cornered prey. My heart racing, I sat down on his couch, listening to the sound of glass clinking in Mal’s cabinet, ice grinding in a fridge. There was a flyer on the table: Mal’s updated headshot on a brightly colored background, announcing his upcoming event at Em-Dash Books. I picked it up just as a pair of legs appeared in front of me.
“I wouldn’t have done something like this if it weren’t for you, you know,” Mal said. He turned to place two glasses of water
onto his coffee table coasters, then took the flyer out of my hands.
“A bookstore event?” I said. “Of course you would’ve.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” Mal said. “Before that day, when we went to Palmisano Park, I hadn’t been in a bookstore since Dusk ’s launch party. But I passed by Em-Dash Books and I remembered what you’d said. That if I wanted something, I had to reach
for it.” He swallowed jaggedly, then propped a knee onto the couch next to me, caging me between his arms. “And so I did.”
“That’s great,” I started. “I’m not surprised they wanted to do an event with you. They were probably so excited to—”
“Even now,” Mal said. “You’re doing it now.”
I bit my lips, confused. “Doing what?”
I watched Mal’s brow furrow: a writer, searching for words. When he chose them, he delivered them with care, like he wanted
them to be petal-thin, to land softly.
But then he spoke, and I felt them like a bludgeon.
“Seeing me,” he said. “You see me, Jo.”