There was silence on the other end, but Mal could practically hear Amelia thinking.
“All right. Homework: I need you to put something on paper by the end of the month. I don’t care if it’s rough. I’m going to call you, and we will smooth it out. Oh, and I’ll expect you to atleasthave an Instagram by then, or I’ll be very disappointed. Okay?”
“Wouldn’t want that,” Mal said dryly. They talked for a little while longer about some of the details of the offer from En Garde, and when they finally hung up, Mal released an existential sigh. What had Renata said, that he needed to be audacious? He’d found that audacity when he finishedShe Blooms at Duskand decided to submit it to agents. Had it when Amelia called himto offer representation and he’d told her that he wanted to make “real money off this thing.” Had it three days ago when he decided, against all reason, to kiss Josephine Boateng on a carousel.
Not that it hadn’t been a good kiss. If he were honest with himself, it had been exceptional, the kind he could get addicted to, if he allowed it. And if he were the sort of person who could separate the physical from the emotional, who could imagine himself fucking her without relishing holding her close afterward, then perhaps it would have been a fine choice.
But Mal wasn’t stupid. He’d read enough books to know who got the girl between the millionaire-playboy childhood friend and the down-to-earth, comparatively normal second lead. He knew what his ascribed role was in this narrative—to force millionaire playboy’s eyes open, so that he could see that the girl who’d never left his side was the one he should have loved all along. And yes, the female lead would be conflicted. She’d genuinely like the second lead. He would make her bolder, help her understand her worth, provide arms for her to cry in when said millionaire playboy hooked up with someone else or lashed out at her in his confusion. But in the end, he was not the one she chose.
The moment they broke apart at the carousel, Mal had remembered that. He’d recalled how Ezra’s voice had cracked just a little when he’d said her name, how he’d asked how she was in earnest rather than to showboat. How Mal knew next to nothing about Jo outside of what she shared on social media, how Ezra had years of history and baggage and memories to call upon. How, the second Jo realized that Ezra was in love with her too, she’d be gone, wisping through his fingers like mist.
Mal had spent the last two and a half years building himself back from nothing. He was tired of heartbreak. And yet here hewas, rushing headlong into another one, all while he ought to be directing his energy into doing hisjob.
“Why the long face?” Kieran said when Mal headed back to their table. “Didn’t you just make a bucket of money?”
If Kieran could follow the path of Mal’s thoughts, he would probably have slapped him upside the head. Before Mal could fess up, thankfully, Kelechi came to his rescue.
“Weren’t you listening? His agent wants him to become aninfluencer.” She scooped Harvey onto her lap, who promptly planted a sticker of a heart onto the tip of her nose.
“I just don’t know where to start,” Mal said, collapsing back onto the bench.
“What do you mean?” Kelechi said. Her eyes were fixed on her son, removing the stickers that papered his arms and cheeks like mosaic tiles, but her smile, he sensed, was for him. “Aren’t you dating an expert? Hit her up. She’ll probably be down to help out.”
So much for stepping on the brakes. At Kelechi’s suggestion, Mal felt a surge of excitement, then alarm.
“I don’t want her to feel like I’m just using her,” he started, and Kelechi snorted, waving him off.
“You’re thinking too hard,” she said. “She already set this as a precedent when she asked you to help with her photoshoot. It gives you a reason to see each other again that’s not a big production.” She tilted her head, eyes shining. “Besides, Mally-wag, I’m pretty sure she’ll be down. She obviously likes you.”
Mal resisted the urge to askDo you really think so?,sure that it would make him sound like more of a sop than he felt. Instead, he waited another thirty minutes before excusing himself from the hangout and then texted Jo the second he stepped into the elevator.
I figured out how you can pay me back for the Tantra shoot.
Jo responded immediately.Oh?she said.Do tell.And when he did, she responded,This will be fun. What are you up to right now?
Two hours later, Mal settled at a stone table in the public park where Jo had asked to meet. At her suggestion, he’d brought one of his cameras, an old point-and-shoot he hadn’t dusted off since shuttering the doors of his photography studio, and an extra shirt, a short-sleeved button-down he could easily layer over his T-shirt. It was a perfect Chicago summer day, one of the first that didn’t carry the chill of “sprinter” in its gusts, and children and dogs tumbled across the grass together, their overtired parents looking on from benches and blankets.
As a kid, Mal had a habit of constructing stories about people he’d never met, filling them in like color within lines based on the way they carried their bodies, their clothes, the wear in their hands. The man sitting at the street corner peddling essential oils didn’t talk to his ex-wife anymore and had been dodging child support for the last decade, but occasionally snuck cash to his kids in crumpled white envelopes. The teenage boys who sat in the grass a few yards away from him, passing a giant 7-Eleven cup between them and snickering, had broken into one of their parents’ liquor cabinets this afternoon and stolen half a handle of vodka, refilling the bottle with water in the hopes their subterfuge would go unnoticed—
“You’re early.”
Mal looked up and fought back the idiotic smile he knew was already unfurling on his face.
“So are you,” he said, standing to greet her. “Thanks for agreeing to help me out.”
Jo cocked her head, a silentyou’re welcome. She’d traded her braids out for flat twists into a low ponytail, and her natural hair shrouded her face like a cloud, rounding her cheeks and making her look much younger. Her dress, loose, off-shoulder, linen, and baby blue, helped bolster the illusion.
“These are for you,” she said, handing him a large white paper bag.
Raising an eyebrow, Mal looked inside to find a box of four cupcakes.
“They’re from Magnolia’s. I don’t know what flavors you like, so I just had them give me the four most popular.”
Mal looked up at her, moved. He couldn’t remember the last time someone brought him cupcakes for anything other than his birthday.
“Why?” he said, then, realizing that he sounded ungrateful, added, “Not that you need to have a reason, but...”
Jo cut him off. “Didn’t you get big news today?” When Mal blinked at her, she sighed. “An offer? From En Garde?”
