They sat on the rooftop of Kieran and Kelechi’s apartment, looking out over the Chicago skyline from under wide umbrellas. Harvey sat on the wood floor, wearing a bright orange sun hat that cast him in a puddle of shade and plastering himself with the reusable stickers that Mal had brought as a gift.
“I think,” Mal said. In truth, the experience hadn’t been traumatizing so much as it had been galvanizing, in that it had turned his crush on Josephine Boateng into something of an obsession. He could hardly go two hours without recounting the image of her on the carousel, her hazy, half-lidded eyes, the way she arched into him as they kissed, then leapt away to help the fallen man. Her skirts had floated behind her like a pink moth’s wings, and he recalled being both bewildered and captivated by her. One-sided trauma bonding?Or, Mal thought bitterly,me up to my usual bullshit?
“That explains her CPR video today,” Kelechi said, snapping him back into the present. She cocked her head toward him. “Mally-wag, I think your phone is ringing.”
It was. Mal reached into his pocket, stemming his disappointment when he realized that the caller was not Jo, Girl of His Dreams, but Amelia, Woman Who Made Them Come True.
“En Garde put in an offer,” Amelia said.
Mal sat bolt upright.
Intrigued, Kieran and Kelechi leaned forward, and Mal put his phone on speaker, holding a finger to his lips to keep his friends quiet. Harvey, who did not yet understand such cues, threw his hands down on the floor with a frustrated “BAH!”
“Hi, yes, good,” Mal said, biting back a laugh. “What is it?”
Amelia told him, and all three of their jaws dropped in unison.
“One hundred grand for an option?” Mal repeated, shocked.
“And amillionif it gets made. Which it will,” Amelia said smugly.
Mal slumped in his chair. His two-book deal with his publisher had been “major,” which had equated to three hundred thousand dollars suddenly appearing in his bank account one day. Between the foreign deals and this, his life was never going to be the same. Across from him, Kelechi was doing a silent, joyous dance.
Amelia wasted no time bringing him back to Earth.
“Which brings me to my next point. Malcolm, you need to get on social media.”
Mal groaned.
“This again,” he muttered, taking the turn in conversation as his sign to make their call private. Standing, he paced along the roof, squinting out into the bright midday sky. Amelia had badgered him about cultivating a presence on social media from the day that they’d signed together, and all this time, Mal had resisted. It was bad enough to be perceived by people who saw him in real life. But by complete strangers who’d read his work? No. He wanted to be like the authors he’d admired in his youth, unreachable except by fan mail, knowable only by the words they left on the page.
But the world was changing. The art and the artist were now inextricably intertwined into a brand that at times was more sensational than the work itself. Eventually, Mal knew, he would have to get with the times. Amelia seemed to think thateventuallywasnow.
“Yes, this again,” Amelia said. “We’re going to announce the deal soon. You’re already in the public eye. And, not to give you a big head, but you’recute. They pay more attention to you when you’re cute. When that headshot goes live on Deadline, I want people to be curious, and they need a way to channel that curiosity.”
The way she’d said it, so matter-of-factly, reminded him of Jo. When Jo told Mal he was handsome, she stated it as fact, in the same no-nonsense, nonnegotiable way in which she might have given a diagnosis. He’d started seeing himself in the mirror a little differently as a consequence, assessing his own interactions with others through the lens of a handsome man.Suddenly, the young man at Starbucks who snuck him a free cake pop wasn’tjust being friendly, and the girl at the farmers’ market with the sunflower dress who’d made conversation with him in the bread-guy line wasn’t just a chatty person. Mal had entered his most recent relationship at a time when his baby face still rendered him a bit awkward-looking, and the knowledge that he was now good-looking enough to garner the appreciation of one of the most beautiful women he’d ever met was disorienting.
Without warning, another memory of Jo sprang to mind, this time of them seated on the bench outside Il Latini. She’d cast aside the brash persona she had donned for much of the evening, and what was left was a woman he examined like a jewel, fascinated by her many facets. She was at turns vulnerable and guarded, easygoing and intense, and he wasn’t always sure whether his overwhelming attraction to her was just a consequence of an independent desire to be deemed worthy by her. But then she’d cocked her head to take him in, her eyes sweeping over his body like he was the third course to their meal, and he found himself entranced by the glistening pillow of her lower lip. He had guessed, correctly, that it would be as plush as the rest of her, that she’d taste a little sweet, like the cherry-colored gloss he’d watched her apply minutes earlier—
“It doesn’t have to be extensive,” Amelia was saying. “Just updates. News. Answer readers’ comments every now and then. Maybe even advertise events, when you get around to doing them.”
Mal shook himself.Chill.
“I’ll think about it,” he said. Kissing Jo had been a mistake precisely for this reason; not even the news that he’d just won the equivalent of a jackpot could distract him from the memory of it.
But then, Amelia asked him the one question that could slap him out of his stupor.
“Also. How’s the proposal for number two coming along?”
Mal flinched like she’d just upended a bucket of ice over his head.
The truth: number two was not coming along, a problem, considering he’d been paid for two books.She Blooms at Duskhad been the story of his heart for years, a book written in stops and starts and finished in a few fevered weeks after he was dumped. Mal had tried to tap into the same creative space that had given him the story of Iris, the young woman with albinism who ran an apothecary with only nighttime hours, and Louis, the foreign flower merchant who loved her, but nothing was sticking.
Maureen, his editor, had sent no less than five kindly worded emails with some variation ofWhenever you’re ready, I’d love to discuss your ideas for book two!To which he’d responded, vaguely,Soon!orI’d love to!orSure thing!
It was time to fess up.
“It isn’t coming along, unfortunately,” he said. “Honestly, Amelia, I’m stuck.”
