“Of course a writer would be perceptive,” she muttered, straightening in her chair.
“It’s complicated,” she started, then sighed and shook her head. “No, actually, it’s not. Classic case of unrequited love, honestly. I have feelings for him. He doesn’t have feelings for me. I’m cutting my losses and seeing what’s out there.”
Her honesty was bracing, and if his stomach hadn’t just dropped like an anchor, he might have found it admirable. He imagined most other people would hold such information close to their chest, wait until they’d extracted what they wanted from him before sharing their motives.
“So... this is your attempt at a rebound?” Mal asked. He could practically hear Kieran’s chiding voice in his head—I told you: toxic.How had he ended up in this situation, sitting across from a woman with whom he’d imagined a genuine connection, only to find out that she intended to use him as a stepping stone to recovery?
But Jo was shaking her head, no longer gleeful.
“It’s not that simple,” she said. “Mal. I’m twenty-nine. I’ve kissedone guyin my life, and I didn’t even enjoy it. Did it because I thought I should.” Mal blinked, shocked by that revelation. “But you... I like you. I like talking to you. I think you’reinteresting, and insightful, and I’m only, like, thirty pages into your book and I can already tell that you’re ridiculously talented. If I wanted to sleep with justanyone, I would’ve found one of Renata’s models back at the party. Or hooked up with one of Ezra’s costars. I want to sleep withyou. I just think it’s only fair that you understand where I’m at first.”
Suddenly, one of Jo’s older posts came to mind: a clip from an Instagram Live with HuffPost, the screen split horizontally between a severe-looking white woman and Jo.
“Honestly, I find the fascination with my virginity interesting,” Jo had said, somehow managing to sound both bored and biting. “I think when people see Black women, they try to categorize them as respectable or not respectable. I talk about sex, so I must be hypersexual, but I can’t be hypersexual because I haven’t had sex. I’m neither the Madonna nor the Whore, not the Mammy nor the Jezebel. It confuses people.”
“On your platform, you encourage pleasure,” the interviewer had said, after a pause to absorb Jo’s first response. “Do you also encourage abstinence? Do you intend to continue practicing it?”
“I encourage being discerning about all of the things we put into or around our bodies. Sex can greatly impact both physical and emotional health.” Jo paused, balancing her chin on her fist. “And I wouldn’t say I practice abstinence. I’m simply aware of the risks, and I haven’t met a man who is worth me taking them yet.”
It occurred to Mal, then, that Jo had decided that he was such a man.
Of course he was flattered. Who wouldn’t be? Jo met all manner of people, fraternized with the kind of guys that some women put on their mood boards, and the person she found most worthy of her washim. Still, even as he reeled, he knew that whatJo wanted would require a level of ambiguity that he couldn’t provide.
“I’m not interested in hookups,” he said. “Sorry.”
The stoicism that Mal had suspected was a facade cracked, and for half a second, Mal saw that he’d wounded her. But then, with a blink, it was back.
“Okay,” Jo said. She gave him a smile that was almost placating, as though she felt the need to soothe him for rejecting her. “Totally understandable. Sorry if I put you off—”
“You didn’t put me off,” Mal interrupted. “I just don’t do the casual thing. And...” He tested the words on the back of his tongue, then, feeling bold, said them aloud. “Specifically, I don’t really want to do the casual thing withyou. Because I like you too.”
Jo’s expression opened up, and he marveled at how much more she resembled the girl he’d met in the Adelmans’ bedroom, the one whose sincerity had turned a lion’s den into a safe space. The one he’d immediately felt comfortable spilling his heart out to, because she’d done it so easily first.
“We’ve talked about this before, you know. Online,” Mal continued. “Virginity is just a social construct, and sex is just a physical act. You can go out to Viagra Triangle right now and find some guy who’ll be willing to sleep with you, then roll over a few minutes later feeling completely unchanged and totally let down.” He leaned in closer, enthralled by her focus, by how her gaze hadn’t lifted from his mouth since he’d started speaking. “But...wantingsomeone for more than just their physicality? Wanting to hear from them, speak to them, see them, every second of the day? That feeling when their hand brushes against yours and you ask yourself if you want to hold it? That first kiss? It amplifieseverything. You feel like you’re onfire.It’s transformative, in the best ways. In theworstways too.That’s what I want for myself. It’s what I want for you too, especially since you’re new to this. And if we can find that together, great. But I’m not taking anything less.”
He’d tried to capture that feeling inShe Blooms at Dusk, the tension that went beyond a physical yearning, the other person etched so far into your skin that you couldn’t scratch them out. Lust that couldn’t be sated with one passionate romp but needed to be addressed over and over again, every time with increasing urgency. Once upon a time, Mal had tried to be pragmatic. Feelings like those were short-lived, after all, reserved for a finite honeymoon period. Only a few lucky people could put in the work to keep a fire like that alive. His parents had managed; Mal had spent his entire childhood grimacing at their public shows of affection. Now he knew that he would take the fairy tale or nothing at all.
Across from him, Jo had gone stock-still, holding in a breath that he didn’t remember watching her suck in. It should have scared him, speaking so candidly. He could never have imagined having a conversation like this, never thought he could form words like this in public, that he could look someone right in the eye as he said them. His teenage self was kicking him—A beautiful woman throws herself at you, and you turn her down?—but he felt comfortable in his resolution. Jo herself had requested his difficult truths. Here he was, delivering them. If she decided to walk away and find someone else, that would be fine. He had a second book to write, after all. He could go back to his monastic life, the one in which he spent his days staring at his computer screen, bothering his chosen family, and seeking out endorphins at the gym. It was a good life, a respectable one—
“Okay,” Jo said suddenly. She blinked, rolled her lips into her mouth. “Okay. Yes. Yes, I guess I want that too.”
Mal grinned, victorious.
“Great,” he said. “So you’ll let me date you?”
Jo laughed. It was a full-bodied sound, rich, reminiscent of poured honey and smooth jazz in the mornings.
“I’ll let you date me,” she agreed.
Chapter Nine
Jo
It was foolish of me to underestimate Mal. I’d identified him as complex, and yet I’d tried to proposition him with a simple arrangement, as if he were just some guy. No. This was not my run-of-the-mill, self-satisfied straight-male creative. I couldn’t manipulate him by appealing to his ego or set him off-kilter with disarming questions aimed at his intentions. When I’d said, “Well, I’m not planning on seeing anyone else. Are you?,” he’d answered unflinchingly, “Great. Me neither.” When I asked him why, he’d smirked, and informed me that he was “lazy” and “tended to fixate.” There were easier questions too, about where he was from (“Missouri City, just outside of Houston, but my family moved around a lot.”), when and why he’d moved to Chicago (“Three years ago, because my ex-girlfriend’s family is from here.”), how he felt having his work out on display for the world to see for the first time (“Terrified, most of the time. Like all the inner workings of my mind are just out there for people to dissect. Like they’ll assume the wrong things about who I am because of it.”).
People normally fit neatly into the boilerplates I developed for them in my mind. A man like Mal—handsome, well built,intelligent—was supposed to expect adulation. His humility was supposed to be a cellophane-thin facade meant to make him seem more noble, and his “honesty” was supposed to be a farce, his truths selected to depict himself alternately as a hero or a victim, depending on the circumstance. When I told him that I had feelings for Ezra, he was supposed to either be offended that I expected him to take up another man’s discarded goods, or delight in the prospect of screwing a girl who could have screwed America’s Boyfriend.
He was not supposed to turn me down because he wanted to get to know me better, then make good on that declaration by actually asking me questions about my life.
