Chapter Thirty-One
Mal
Jo got a little better, day by day. As promised, Mal brought Ampersand over to her apartment, and the two of them became thick
as thieves, Ampersand curling at Jo’s feet as they watched their respective favorite comfort films (Rodgers & Hammerstein’s
Cinderella for Jo, The Bodyguard for Mal) or beat Dahlia at her own overcomplicated board games. Jo was still too anxious to wander outside for fear of being
recognized, but she had started heading downstairs into her apartment’s gym again and occasionally down to the mail room.
She’d even ordered Ampersand a name tag with an & , under the auspices that a “chic little thing like her would prefer it.”
And while Jo healed, Mal kept an eye on the news cycles.
To his horror, they’d only gotten uglier. The Post article had uncovered several potential controversies, and every patchy-bearded man with a podcast mic and woman with a webcam had a hot take about the situation that required four minutes of ranting and two hundred comments worth of discourse. The Adelmans were racist because Paul had assaulted his Black assistant, or they weren’t racist because they’d donated to this or that Black people in tech organizations. Jo was a conniving, capitalistic opportunist because she allowed them to use her for PR, or an unsuspecting victim who had found herself immersed in an unscrupulous billionaire family’s business. There was talk about whether her medical admission had been bought, which then spurred an internet-wide debate about whether such nepotism was only being considered a problem because a poor Black woman was benefiting from it. And of course, the speculation on her love life, with Ezra worshippers flooding her inactive page with vitriol and original Dr. Jojobee fans defending her honor in the comments section.
It was simultaneously horrifying and fascinating to witness, like watching the aftershocks of a tsunami. Jo had been right
to turn off her phone.
“So...” she asked, leaning against her doorframe, fresh from a shower. She wore a fluffy lilac robe, her hair held out
of her face by a matching headband. “How bad is it?”
Reflexively, Mal grimaced, and Jo sighed.
“Yeah, I figured,” Jo said. She stretched, and he followed the rise of her chest through the fluffy opening of her robe. “Well.
On the plus side, Denise has informed me that my follower count is currently at seven hundred thousand. Granted, two hundred
of those are probably just waiting for me to post something so they can find something wrong with me, but, you know. All press
is good press, and all that.”
She’d said it with bite, and Mal sighed, placing his laptop on her desk before opening his arms for her. She hopped onto his
lap, and he dropped his head onto her shoulder, pulling her close.
“Denise isn’t giving up, is she?” he said. She smelled sweet, like the lavender body wash she favored and the ginger spice
underlay he had only recently realized was her natural scent.
“Nope,” Jo said, sagging into him. Mal nipped at her neck, and Jo sighed, angling her hips into his. Then she leaned away, smirked down at him. “Are you seriously hard right now? Reading all those terrible, awful things about me get you going?”
Mal laughed breathlessly, parting her open robe farther to weigh a breast in each palm.
“Oh yes,” he said. “You’re a very bad woman, according to all the reports. Downright villainous, actually.”
“And you like that?” Jo said, arching into his hold.
“Of course,” he said, leaning forward to kiss her. Jo’s sigh washed over his face, cool and minty, and then her hands were
scrambling for his drawstrings, loosening them, drawing him out. He groaned into her mouth as she encircled him, stroking
him firmly from base to tip, her grip sure like she’d been doing it forever.
“What do you want?” He breathed into the shell of her ear. “My fingers? My mouth? Want me to eat you?” He grazed his teeth
against her lobe. “Want me to fuck you?”
Jo shivered—she liked when he talked, he’d realized, the filthier the better—then, without preamble, lifted her hips up and
lowered herself onto him. Mal gasped against the sudden, unexpected heat, but she didn’t give him a moment to adjust, pushing
him back onto the bed with a gentle hand on his chest. The smile she gave him was beatific, made more so by the halo of light
formed behind her by the ceiling fan lights.
Goddamn. It was hard to believe that this was what he was coming home to these days—a gorgeous girl with a heart of gold and the libido of a teenage boy, who fucked him like she had something to prove. Jo dragged his T-shirt up to his clavicle, leaning forward on her knees to kiss her way up his neck, and he bit down hard on his lip as pleasure spiked through him. There was something about seeing her undulating above him that got him going a little too quick, the visual stimuli of heaving breasts and thighs and her gasping, euphoric expression too overwhelming when paired with the exquisite clench of her around him. He reached for her, hooking his thumb into her mouth, and she gave him a coy smile before sucking it deeper.
Fuck. At this rate, he wasn’t going to last another minute.
“Slow down,” he begged. He grasped at her hip, gripping it beseechingly, and she interlaced her fingers in his. “Jo, please,
I’m going to come.”
Jo grinned down at him with all of her teeth, but she didn’t let up. Instead, she leaned back on her haunches, plunging herself
onto him relentlessly, and he realized, too late, that he’d been ambushed.
“Then come,” she said sweetly.
She might as well have snapped her fingers. One second, he was gritting his teeth, rubbing circles around her clit to catch
her up, and the next he was lost to sensation, his vision blurring before turning white, his whole body tightening as he emptied
into her, over and over again until he had nothing left.
They lay there, panting, for several minutes, Jo’s shoulders sloped backward, her face tilted up toward the ceiling. Eventually,
she tucked her head down to give him a small, indulgent smile, as if she hadn’t just ravaged him.
“I’m not saying sleeping with you is fixing my depression,” she said, dismounting. “But I feel really good right now. It’s
the endorphins, I think.”
Mal tucked her under his arm, tugging his shirt back down and his pants up.
“Glad to be of service,” he said, pressing a kiss to her neck. She nestled into his side, leaning into his embrace.
“I had an epiphany,” she said suddenly.
“Sleeping with me give you that too?” Mal said. “Damn. I’m more powerful than I thought.”
Jo shoved his chest playfully.
“My mother’s boyfriend emailed me yesterday,” she explained. “He found my account. He and my mom have been watching my videos.
He said...” She bit her lip, suddenly shy. “That the ones on heart disease especially have been really helpful. And I guess,
I don’t know, it made me not want to give up.”
“Oh.” Mal held her closer, feeling a conflicting clash of emotions. On one hand, after all Jo had told him about her childhood,
it was hard for him to feel any sort of positive feelings toward her mother. On the other, he was relieved that she finally
seemed to sound optimistic about her future. “That’s good.”
“And...” Jo said. “Denise sent me an email. From Lana Porter.”
If Jo hadn’t been weighing down his arm, Mal would have sat up in surprise.
“Lana reached out to you?” he said apprehensively. “Why?”
Jo shrugged, then reached for her laptop on her nightstand. She opened her email, scrolled, and handed it to him.
The email was a forwarded thread, and he scrolled further to read the messages chronologically. The first message came from
Lana’s assistant, a simple request for a virtual meeting. Denise responded with a not-quite rejection, explaining that her
client was not taking meetings at the moment, but asking her to circle back in a few weeks. (“It must have killed her to say
that,” Jo said, snickering, at his side.)
Then came a message from what appeared to be Lana Porter herself. Please pass this on to Dr.Boateng, it started.
It isn’t often that I feel compelled to reach out to talent directly. But it is obvious that your client, Dr.Boateng, is
something special. People who desire the spotlight do all they can to remain in it. But no matter how she may want to avoid
it, the spotlight is trained on Josephine. She has a compelling image, a fascinating backstory, and what appears to be a healthy
dose of ambition. She is magnetic in a way that simply can’t be taught.
I make it a point to identify and uplift talented Black women and would very much like to discuss having her on my show as
a physician correspondent, with the hope that she could eventually remain on as a regular contributor. Please let my team
know if this is something she would be interested in.
Best,
Lana
Multiple things ran through Mal’s mind: First, that by mentioning her in his segment, he might have actually done something good. Second, that Lana had recognized Jo’s inherent magnetism on sight. And finally, that Jo seemed to be sharing this email with him because she was considering saying yes.
This should’ve been a good thing. It was a path forward, and he could understand how a place as a physician correspondent
on Lana’s show aligned with her mission. But he’d seen how badly being under severe public scrutiny had affected her. Had
watched her suffer. The idea of her being under a magnifying glass all the time, not just by virtue of her connection with
the Adelmans, but through reach that exceeded her own, terrified him.
“This is good, right?” Mal said hesitantly. “I mean. It’s an incredible opportunity. But it’s also a lot of exposure. Are
you sure it’s what you want?” He wondered if she could hear his silent, tense Will you be okay?
Jo kissed him, gently, on the cheek.
“It’ll be different. I’ll have you.” She shuddered, chuckling to herself. “Blegh. Gross. Can’t believe I said that out loud.
Your sappiness is rubbing off on me.”
Mal laughed, but her assurances eased his anxiety some.
“Should’ve warned you that it was contagious,” he admitted. Then, more seriously: “But how do you think it will be different?
Lana’s audience is massive.”
“Well, for one, I’ll be teaching,” Jo said. “You said it, remember, at Il Latini. It’s what I’m good at, and it’s what I like.
It’s what I’ve always liked about medicine. Talking to people, helping them navigate and take charge of their own health.
And it’s why I think I’m struggling to go back to clinical practice, because that isn’t always incentivized or encouraged
there.” She inhaled, but she sounded excited, the way she had when they’d sat across from each other at the coffee shop, planning
out her shoot for the Tantra. “But I couldn’t help it. So I tried hard to make that a big part of Dr.Jojo. But my engagement
was always higher when I made it less about facts and more about me. My opinions. My life. My vulnerabilities. I was selling
access to myself, not to my knowledge. Lana, on the other hand...”
“Doesn’t sell herself,” Mal finished, understanding. “She sells topics.”
Jo sat up fully, her grin vibrant.
“Yes,” she said. “Lana is funny. She’s beautiful. She’s magnetic. But what do we know about her? I mean, if we looked her
up, we’d probably find some personal details, but mostly we’ll learn about who and what she’s discussed. She’s a public figure
in the truest sense. If I could eventually do something like that, but with health care, where I talk to different specialists,
cover a disease process, or a patient’s story, it would be perfect. Call it something like Ambulatory...”
“You could start off as a correspondent, like she’s asking,” Mal continued, “and if all goes well...”
He almost laughed. It was a brilliant plan. Ambitious, sure, but this was Jo, and so it was possible. He told her as much.
Jo put her laptop aside, then draped herself over him, nuzzling her nose against his. He laughed, roping his arms around her,
relieved to find that, for once, her happiness didn’t seem filtered through a layer of melancholy. She kissed him, once, twice,
cradling his face between her hands.
“I couldn’t have gotten to this point without you, you wise old man,” she said.
“Yes, you would’ve,” Mal said. He believed it. “You were already extraordinary. I just provided a little support.”
Jo laughed, and then her gaze grew tender, her thumbs tracing a path around the angles of his jaw.
“I love you, Malcolm Waters,” she said, and Mal froze.
That Jo loved him wasn’t news, exactly. She’d skated past the words themselves, found ways to show him that fell just short
of a declaration. But now she was saying them out loud, and he understood just how much she meant them. They weren’t just
I love you , but also I trust you, I accept you, I understand you. Not just a feeling, but a choice, because nothing Josephine Boateng said or did was ever without intention.
And that intention surged something inside of him, crackling through him like a lightning bolt. Suddenly he felt powerful,
capable. He could do more than just sit and hope for the noise to settle. He could force the quiet to come.
“I love you too,” Mal said, and later, when Jo settled in to sleep at his side, he sent his own email, this time addressed
to Renata Kovalenko.