“That hardly requires a discussion,” I said. “Ezra just wants me to notice him.”
Dahlia grinned, a cat with a mouse under her paw. “Is it working?” she asked.
I shrugged. Mal had done an excellent job of forcing Ezra to the back of my mind, and I was sure Ez could sense it, that this was his way of clawing back into relevance without explicitly breakingany of my stated boundaries. And I would be lying if seeing his name didn’t give my heart a jolt. But then I could settle into the new memories I was making with Mal, kisses that always ended just a little too soon, intentions so pure and plain that I never wasted time questioning them. My therapist, Rochelle, thought all of this was a good thing.I’m proud of you for being open, she’d said during our last session.Even if this doesn’t work out, you’ve learned so much. You can live without Ezra. You can love someone who isn’t Ezra.
Progress. More than I’d managed in years, at least. All thanks to the sweet man whose genial smile I could already see stretching across his face even from several paces away.
Mal rolled his window down, throwing his head and arm out. “I hope you don’t mind me saying, miss, but you’re looking thicker than a bowl of grits,” he said, licking his lips in mockery of a guy who’d catcalled me outside a pharmacy we’d stopped by last week.
I rolled my eyes, grinning in spite of myself, and watched his light up with delight.
“You were a little too good at that,” I said, walking around his car to the passenger side.
It was hard not to draw parallels between Mal and Ezra. With others they couldn’t be more different; Mal was reserved, preferring to stay cloistered within his small circle of friends, where Ezra made a point to be seen by as many people as possible. But with me? When we were alone? Ezra probably would reach for my hand across the console, like Mal was doing now. He probably would also roll down the window just an inch to let the air in, then lower the volume of his music to better hear me discuss the brand partnership I was considering. Like Mal, he would’ve probed me for details, asked how I intended to tie the project to ahot topic in health care, what I would be asking Denise to negotiate for in the contract. When Mal and I reached our destination, he stepped to the counter first, recounted my order, and slapped his credit card on the reader before I could even consider offering to pay, just as Ezra had done a thousand times before him.
But after dinner, Ezra had never taken my hand to walk down a hedge-lined street, had never kissed the laugh off my lips when I poked fun at the tiny giraffes on his shirt. Had never pulled back to cradle my face in his hands and say, “Just because you’re pretty doesn’t mean you get to be an asshole.”
“But being an asshole is so fun,” I said, leaning in closer in invitation. I dropped my gaze to his lips, a silentkiss me againthat I hoped he might heed.
The corners of Mal’s eyes creased with affection, and then his hands dropped, once more, to his sides.
I tried to hide my disappointment. Mal’s chaste gestures were nice, sure, but what I wanted was to be handled the way he had at the carousel, with recklessness and fiery abandon. That was why we were dating in the first place, right? So we could inject a little emotion into the inevitable fucking? But Mal seemed insistent on treating me like a long-term girlfriend.
Except I wasn’t Mal’s long-term girlfriend. And unlike Ezra, whose habit of dating Russian models kept me from getting my hopes up, Mal’s earnestness was dangerous. Too good to be true. Too pure to be sustainable. Sure, right now, while I was a conquest, something to be earned, his interest was genuine. But what would happen when he caught me? When the chase was over and he had me in his grasp, when he’d lodged himself into my perfectly balanced life, would he steal away my hard-won independence? Would he do the same as the boyfriends and husbands ofthe countless women who cried to me in my DMs because of the STDs they gave them or the children they didn’t support or the emotional and physical abuse they forced them to endure?
Would letting myself fall for the first guy I properly dated be naive, a silly mistake made by a grown woman whowouldhave known better, had she an iota of experience?
A hand brushed against the small of my back. “You still with me?” Mal asked.
I blinked, reorienting myself. “Yes, sorry,” I said. “You wanted to head to Millennium Park?”
“I know it wasn’t part of our plan, but there’s a free concert tonight for the summer music series...”
“Oh,” I said, processing his request in real time.
“If you have to head home soon, though, that’s also cool. I know I’ve been monopolizing you lately, but I don’t know.” He shrugged, tucked his hands into his pockets. “I guess I’m not ready to say goodbye just yet.”
Nah. Men this sweet didn’t come with that face.Orthat cuppable ass.
“I don’t have anything else to do,” I confessed, feeling the heat rise to my face in spite of myself.
We walked back to his car and piled in. Mal pulled out his phone to navigate, then winced. Five missed calls, all from his “Momma.” He’d put a heart next to her name in his contacts. Cute.
“You can call her back,” I said, relieving him of his visible internal struggle.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’ll be quick. Just want to make sure it isn’t an emergency.”
It clearly was not an emergency, judging by the loud “Malcolm,I know I raised you better than to not pick up your mother’s calls” that I could hear through the receiver.
Mal wiped a hand down his face.
“Sorry, Momma,” he said. “I’m guessing by your tone that no one’s died.”
“Is that the only time I have permission to call?” Momma Waters said. “Your dad is here too. Say hi—”
“Hey, Dad, um, I promise I’ll call you later, but I’m a bit busy right now—”
“What could you possibly be busy with—oooooooh. Are you out with the girl you told us about? What was her name again, Russ?”
