Chapter Twenty-One
Mal
Mal found himself at the front desk of Paws and Peace, the two-story complex that showed up in Google Maps when he’d typed
“animal shelter near me” into the search bar. Impulsivity was not his style—he’d once visited an REI store four times before
deciding on a smartwatch—but technically, this wasn’t an impulse decision. He’d been considering adopting a pet since moving
into his own place. Mal simply hadn’t woken up this morning expecting to get one today .
He also hadn’t expected to be ghosted by a girl immediately after he’d slept with her, so in the grand scheme of things, this
was pretty mundane.
A gray-haired woman with giant paw-print earrings and a rainbow tie-dye apron over a red shirt greeted him at the front desk
and barraged him with questions to which he seemed to always have the right answer. He was looking for a cat, yes, a senior
cat would do just fine. Yes, he lived alone and would not be adopting with a roommate. Yes, he’d had a cat growing up.
“Would you be interested in fostering?” the woman asked brightly. Her name tag read Cindy in blocky, handwritten letters. “Or, if you’d like to adopt today, that would be great!”
The way Mal’s social anxiety was set up, there was no way he was leaving here empty-handed.
“Maybe let me meet them first before I decide?” Mal said quickly, then, because perhaps that had been too terse: “If that’s
okay with you.”
If Cindy was offended, she didn’t show it. Instead, she led him into the shelter, opening the door with a flourish. It being
a Wednesday afternoon, there were only a few people wandering inside, most of them wearing the shelter’s fire-engine-red shirts.
Mal pointedly avoided eye contact with the dogs, who, as if sensing that he could provide a potential escape, all began wagging
their tails vigorously as he and his guide walked past them to the “Kitty Korner.”
The Kitty Korner was expansive, its white walls outfitted with shelves and slings from which several cats lazed. Several others
padded across the floors, playing with toys, scratching at posts, kicking furiously in their litter boxes. A flat-faced orange
fellow rubbed against Mal’s legs, then skirted away when he bent down to pet him.
The sight was nostalgic. When he was five, he begged his parents for a puppy, only for them to compromise on a cat instead. He’d gone to the shelter and met Choux and Roux, two rambunctious paired siblings who tumbled all over the floor and eventually into his lap. His parents tried to steer him toward other options, but he’d been set on not splitting up the brothers, and so the puppy he’d initially requested became two kittens. Choux and Roux lived pampered lives in his parents’ house before passing a week apart while Mal was away at college. His parents had waited until he was done with finals to tell him, and when he’d found out, he’d spent an entire day sobbing in a blanket cocoon in his top bunk. Kieran, unsure of how else to show support, had showered his desk with his favorite snacks.
“Everything all right?” Cindy asked.
Mal shook himself back into the present. He’d gotten lost in thought, and he suspected his expression had looked inappropriately
morose for a guy in a room full of kittens.
“Yes, absolutely,” he said. He gestured at a fluffy bicolor tabby who was cleaning herself vigorously on top of a cat tower.
“I had a cat who looked just like that one, is all.”
Cindy nodded, understanding.
“They never really leave you, do they?” she said. “All right then, I’ll let you look around. All the cats here are available
for adoption.” She pointed to a scruffy tortoiseshell in the corner. “Except Lola over there. I wouldn’t try to pet her. She’s
still quite feral.”
Mal thanked Cindy, then began his rounds. Most of the cats paid him no mind, but the tabby approached him, sniffing his hand
when offered, darting around his legs when he dropped into a squat. She really did look a lot like Roux. He scratched her
head, and she arched into his touch before abruptly breaking away to clean herself.
“Rude,” he said, shaking his head in self-directed disbelief.
He’d taken down good notes during his brainstorming session with Kelechi, but he was still struggling to condense his thoughts
into a coherent proposal. He’d spent too much time updating his Instagram (now boasting, to his astonishment, over five thousand
followers) and decidedly not writing or even, at the very least, preparing for his event at Em-Dash Books.
Thirty minutes , Mal told himself. You have thirty minutes to fall in love with one of these beasts, and if it doesn’t happen, you are going to go home and stop
procrastinating. To keep himself honest, he pulled out his phone to set a timer.
A notification for two missed calls thirty minutes apart and a text, all from the same unfamiliar number, flashed across his
screen.
Hey, the text said. This is Jo. I changed my number. Update my contact.
Mal’s knees buckled. He should have been embarrassed by the extent of his relief, and probably more pissed that she’d left
him on read for three days before reaching out. He called Jo back, biting down on his cheek when she picked up on the first
ring.
“There you are,” Jo answered. “I was beginning to think you’d gotten tired of me.”
The nerve , Mal thought, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers.
“I had no way of knowing it was you. Tried to call a few days ago, and your phone was disconnected.” Having finished bathing
herself, the Roux look-alike peered intently up at him, then bumped her head against his knuckles.
“Oh dear,” Jo said, “did you think I blocked you?”
She phrased it like a joke, but today, Mal didn’t feel like laughing.
“Yeah,” he said stiffly. “I did, actually.”
“Oh,” Jo said. She sounded muted, and Mal regretted his honesty instantly. How completely uncool. She’s not your girlfriend , he reminded himself. She doesn’t owe you a prompt response.
But then: “Sorry,” Jo said. “My mom calling put me in a weird place.” She laughed nervously. “I should’ve hit you up right after I changed my number. I realize in retrospect how shitty that was, considering the topic of our conversation beforehand.”
“It was pretty shitty,” Mal allowed, but already he was thawing, placated by her apology. “But it’s okay. You got caught up.
I get it.”
“Do you?” Jo said. “You don’t have to. You can be a little mad at me. I left you on read for forty-eight hours.”
“Seventy-two,” Mal corrected.
“Oh my goodness, seventy-two! Straight to jail!” she exclaimed. Then she laughed. “So, what have you been getting up to in
these seventy-two hours?”
Mal opened his mouth to respond— Absolutely failing at writing my proposal, updating my socials, staring at the ceiling, trying to convince myself that you
didn’t block me because you think I’m trash in bed —but Roux 2 beat him to it with an indignant meow. He’d stopped petting her, and she’d taken it personally. He snorted.
“Did that sound just come out of you?” Jo said, giggling.
“No, no. It’s a cat,” Mal said, laughing along with her. “I’m at a shelter. I finally lost my mind today and decided to get
one.” Roux2 nudged him again. “Even though she’ll probably destroy all of my furniture.”
“She?” Jo said. “You picked one already?”
Roux 2 looked up at him as if to ask the same. Her haughtiness was made even more hilarious by the fact that she was slightly
cross-eyed.
“To be fair, I have no idea if she’s a girl. Figure cats don’t really care much about gender,” Mal said. As if she agreed,
Roux2 began to purr. “I think she’ll be pretty upset if I leave her here.”
“What are you going to name her?” Jo asked.
Mal thought about it. He’d been curating a list of potential pet names since college, and most of them related to his creative activities. When he was still a photographer, he’d thought of names like Flash and Bokeh, and now that he was writing full-time, the list had been dominated by literary devices and punctuation marks : Grawlix, Phrop, Hyphenator...
“Ampersand,” he said.
Jo didn’t say anything for a moment. When she spoke again, there was a smile in her voice.
“You are so very adorable, did you know that?” she said. “Which is interesting, because you’re also very sexy. How do you
manage to strike that balance, Malcolm Waters?”
Mal scoffed. He was glad she couldn’t see him now, his chin tucked into his chest, his ears burning so fiercely that they
felt like they were glowing.
“You think buttering me up is going to make up for how you did me these last couple days?” he teased.
“No, but I’ve got a few ideas on how to make it up to you next time I see you,” Jo said lasciviously. “Which is... when
again?”
As soon as possible , Mal wanted to say. Right now. Today. All the answers he could think of sounded overeager. Mal looked down at Ampersand, who chirped at him as if to say, Be brave.
“I’ll be home in a couple hours,” he said. “Want to come over? Meet my new cat?”
“Is that a euphemism?” Jo asked coyly. “The new ‘Netflix and chill’?”
“Only if you want it to be,” Mal said. “But really, I was thinking maybe we could go out. Walk to the lake. Go on a proper
date. I’m supposed to be courting you, remember?”
Jo laughed, and Mal warmed, feeling, finally, settled. The moment he hung up, he’d be texting the group chat to let Kelechi know that she’d won their bet.
“Of course,” Jo said. “Be there soon.”
“Oh wow,” Jo said as she padded through Mal’s living room a few hours later, observing the changes he had already made to
accommodate its newest occupant: toys, wands, a robot litter box tucked behind his monstera plant. She stopped at the half-assembled
cat tower that Mal had set up next to his desk and flicked the swinging mouse toy as Mal affixed the final platform at its
top. “This cat hasn’t even been here a full day and is already spoiled rotten.”
“Just giving her the life she deserves,” Mal huffed. Ampersand curled around his feet in appreciation, then froze, affronted,
when she spotted Jo. “She’ll warm up eventually, probably.”
Seeing Jo in his apartment again after spending the past three days certain that she wanted nothing to do with him was surreal.
He’d opened the door to Jo wearing an orange maxi dress that made her look like the tiger lilies growing in his neighbor’s
garden and a chagrined smile. Whatever anxieties he’d had that she was still in fact disinterested in him were eased when
Jo greeted him by winding her arms around his waist. “Hi,” she had said breathlessly, then stepped back and folded her hands
behind her back like a child waiting to be chastised, and after all of that he’d sighed mightily and thrown open the door
to let her in.
He should have been disgusted with himself, at how badly he still wanted her. The moment Mal shut the door behind her, he turned into a lecher, his eyes locking to the swish and sway of her round hips in the airy fabric of her sundress. He wondered how she’d react if he tucked his hand under the slit at its side. If he grasped a hold of the thigh that peeked through the fabric, raised that skirt higher and higher until her ass was spilling out into his palm. She’d play coy, probably, or maybe swat at him playfully, but she would want him too, drop her head back against his shoulder as he peeled away her underwear, plunged his fingers into the heat of her—
“Oh my god, she’s cross-eyed,” Jo exclaimed, knocking Mal out of his fantasy. She dropped into a squat—the reverberations
of the motion certainly not helping to sanctify his thoughts—and held out a hand to a very apprehensive Ampersand. Ampersand
curved away, then, having reconsidered her initial judgment, rubbed her haunches against Jo’s knee. “And very comfortable already. Congratulations, Daddy. What sparked this?”
If Jo knew what calling him daddy was doing to him right now, she might rethink it.
“Procrastination,” Mal admitted, wandering into the kitchen to finish packing for their date. “I have the event at Em-Dash
the day after tomorrow. Got a proposal due Friday. So, naturally, I felt like now was the time to make a big life change.”
Jo laughed. “Hold on, am I part of the procrastination plan?” she said, catching right on. “Did you just invite me out to
distract you from your work?”
“No regrets,” Mal said. Finished, he hoisted the insulated bag onto his back. “You ready to go?”
Jo and Ampersand cocked their heads at him simultaneously, and Mal wished he could whip out his phone to take a picture.
“What’s all that for?” she asked, rocking to her feet.
“You’ll see,” he said.
Mal’s apartment was a ten-minute walk from the lakefront. It was part of why he’d moved there after he and Portia split; he started most days with a run down the lakeshore path and ended several more clearing his mind looking over the expanse of crystalline waters. He’d gotten so used to walking this path to the pier alone that it felt strange to do so with someone by his side. Mal and Jo walked in comfortable silence on the trails along the lake. It being a gorgeous day, most of the city had spilled out onto the grassy hills, parents chasing after kids, kids chasing after dogs, college students lying on their stomachs and flipping through books, families grilling burgers over the firepits. A crew of shirtless men in cargo shorts blasted reggaeton from speakers mounted on their bicycles and cheered when an elderly man danced along from his hammock. Even the pier was occupied, mostly by teenagers daring each other to dive off the docks into the calm waters below. They reached the end, and Mal laid out a blanket.
“Romantic,” Jo observed.
“Kind of the point,” Mal said, unzipping his cooler and assembling its contents before them: a thin wooden cutting board,
jarred honey, small bricks of cheese, prosciutto, olives, a bowl of cherries. Then, finally, a pair of personal bottles of
rosé.
“This is quite a spread,” Jo said, in a way that could have been either appreciative or critical. She pulled out her phone
to take a photo, rolling her lips into her mouth, and Mal realized, suddenly, that what he’d often read as disapproval on
her face was actually astonishment.
“Not to be creepy or anything,” he explained, “but you had a video a while back, where someone asked you what your ideal date
was, and you said...”
“A picnic,” she finished for him.
“Yeah,” he said. Under her probing gaze, he felt shy, like he was admitting to something he shouldn’t. “What did you say? You didn’t want Doritos and Jimmy John’s. You wanted something that was just as pretty as it was good to eat, with items you wouldn’t normally get, you know, so it felt special, and so I tried to do that. The lady at the cheese counter said this cheddar paired well with this prosciutto, so—”
His words were cut off by Jo’s lips, her hands hooking under his jaw to open his mouth to hers. She tasted vaguely of spearmint,
and her kiss was declarative, as much a statement as it was a show of affection. Its force knocked him off-balance, and he
fell backward on the heels of his hands to support himself, knocking over the bowl of olives in the process.
“Sorry,” Jo said, pulling back abruptly. “I’m sorry, I just...”
“No,” Mal said, flustered. “Jesus. Don’t apologize. Please kiss me whenever you want.”
In response, Jo leaned forward again, angling her body carefully over his effortfully arranged spread. This time her lips
were soft, their press almost hesitant, and when he placed a hand under her chin to guide her closer, he realized her skin
was damp.
“You’re crying,” Mal observed. He filed this as another thing he knew about Josephine Boateng, that despite her stony exterior,
she was quick to tears.
“I know. I can’t help it,” Jo said, sniffling through a smile. She settled back onto her haunches, then popped a cherry into
her mouth. “I cry at everything. Movies, TV shows. I was a hot mess during residency. Couldn’t make it through a family meeting
without losing my cool. It’s annoying.”
Mal wiped a tear from the corner of her eye with his thumb, then draped an arm over her shoulders and gathered her into his side. She molded into him easily, and he marveled at how sweetly she nestled into him, her heat becoming his, their scents intermixing.
“I’m sure they appreciated that,” Mal said. “Seeing their doctor cry for them.”
“Sometimes,” Jo said with a laugh that was almost a whine. “Sometimes it pissed them off. Like I was making their loss about
me.”
Mal nodded, understanding. Then: “So why are you crying now?”
“Because you’re wonderful,” she said simply.
Mal chuckled nervously. “I’m not,” he began, but Jo shook her head.
“No, no, but you are ,” she insisted. “Like, look at you. You just set me up a picnic. You listen for what I want even when I don’t tell you directly.
You definitely should be working on your proposal right now, but you’re here with me instead.” She nestled farther into him,
turning until her voice was muffled into his arm. “I think I might adore you, Malcolm Waters.”
“But...” Mal provided, already knowing that it was too early to revel in her words.
“But I’m scared,” Jo finished.
Mal opened his mouth, then closed it, swiveling to face the water. It was nearing sunset, just as he’d planned, the clouds streaked with pink and purple, the sunlight spilling over the lake like a popped yolk. Frustration burned a hole in his chest. He knew that Jo’s trust wasn’t something he would magically get, that there was no fixed number of romantic gestures and sweet words that would eventually help her realize that he was safe. When they first met, he had seen Jo as a blazing star, someone who shone relentlessly regardless of circumstance or surroundings. Now he recognized that as fantasy. Jo was human, and a little broken, and the pessimistic worldview she’d built was informed by experiences that he would be remiss to diminish. There was no reason for her to believe that he had no ulterior motives, even if he knew that he’d put together this picnic just to make her smile. She would have to decide for herself.
“I can’t fix that for you, you know,” he said, after a moment. “I can’t chase away that fear. You just have to believe that
I’m not going anywhere.”
Jo nodded, dabbing her face with a napkin. Then she steeled herself and reached for his hand.
“I know,” she said. “But that isn’t what I mean. I’m not scared of you anymore, Mal. I’m scared for you.”
A breeze blew by, uncommonly brisk for the time of year. Across the water, Mal could hear children screaming.
“I need to tell you something,” she said.
“Yes,” Mal said. He could feel his pulse jumping in his neck, his body preparing itself for a blow.
And with a slow, shaking breath, Jo gave it.
“I saw Ezra the other day.”
Mal let his next breath round out his belly, then pushed it out in a slow, controlled exhale. Be cool , he thought, even as howling filled his ears.
“Oh,” he managed, not sounding cool at all.
“Yeah,” Jo said.
“So, uh...” he started, clearing his throat. “How did that meeting come about? Did you reach out?”
“No, actually,” Jo said. “Coincidence. His ex got trashed at a restaurant I was in.”
Jo told Mal, then, how just minutes before she found him in her bedroom at the Adelmans’ the day they first met, she’d learned that Ezra was unknowingly dating her childhood bully, Ashley, then knowingly took Ashley’s side when she made a scene at his party. How Jo had found that same bully making a mess of herself at a bar the morning after her and Mal’s night together, and how, in a show of apparent benevolence, Jo had called Ezra to pick Ashley up.
“It wasn’t because I wanted to see him again,” Jo insisted. “I just didn’t know what else to do.”
Serendipity was just fate for the unromantic, Mal thought. He imagined Ezra walking into the restaurant, a red string of fate
tightening and resonating between him and Jo.
“Okay,” he said steadily. “And what did you feel, when you saw him again?”
Jo extricated herself from under his arm slowly, and the loss of contact told him her answer before she could say it.
“I... don’t know,” she said. “Not what I used to feel. But not nothing either.”
Logically, Mal knew that Jo was just being honest, and that he appreciated honesty. Jo would never feed him just what he wanted
to hear, and her transparency was one of the things that drew him to her in the first place. But emotionally, hearing her
answer with anything other than apathy strummed a chord of misery in him.
Jo seemed to sense his despondence. “Not the way I feel about you,” she tried, putting a hand over his.
Her attempt at comfort came too late; he was already spiraling. If Jo had loved Ezra Adelman once, it would not be hard for her to find that feeling again. And Mal had met Ezra, had felt him size him up. That was a man who didn’t intend to lose the same woman twice.
“Is that why you didn’t reach out after you changed your number?” he asked, willing his voice to be steady. “Because you were
with him? Because you weren’t sure about us ?”
Jo’s smile fell to her feet. Mal heard it drop like a bell toll.
“It wasn’t just that,” she said softly.
“But it was , a little bit,” Mal said.
When Jo didn’t respond, Mal turned away. His body had kicked right into a fight-or-flight response, and he felt dizzy with
adrenaline, the muscles in his calves tensing and relaxing as they dangled over the edge of the pier. He picked up a cherry,
pitched it into the lake, and somehow the fact that it bobbed in the water instead of sinking underneath frustrated him more.
“I understand that things are complicated,” he said, “but I’m not going to wait forever. At some point, you’ll have to choose.”
He didn’t need to look at her to tell that she’d frozen in place.
“I know that,” she said eventually.
Mal smiled, more to himself than to anyone else. The old Mal, the one Portia had left behind, would have taken a year and
a half to recover. He would’ve holed himself up in his apartment, shut the blinds, and become one with his carpet.
This new one was capable of snapping back.
“Good,” Mal said.