“Get your shit together,” Mal said under his breath. He remembered advice his therapist had first given him, when he’drealized that maybe his aversion to public spaces was more than run-of-the-mill introversion.It’s okay to find a space if you need it, he’d said.As long as you don’t let yourself sink into it.
Space. Space was certainly not lacking in this place. He’d already traversed the crowded first floor, but there was a stairwell near the back that he’d seen only a few people ascend since his arrival. He propelled himself off the back wall, then power walked down the hall.
A couple of guests were milling about upstairs, peering down on the party from a mezzanine balcony, and the reduced density made it easier for him to breathe. The hallway just beyond was lined with dark wood doors, and he lingered, waiting to see if someone would appear before letting himself into the first room on his right.
It was a bedroom, but not one that was regularly used, judging by its lack of personal effects. Mal lingered by the door for a second, feeling (knowing) that he was trespassing, considering how he would explain himself if someone were to walk in after him. But just this short moment of solitude was already doing wonders for loosening the band around his chest. He snapped the door shut. Wiped his hands down his face. Sat on the edge of the perfectly made bed and inhaled, focusing on the top of his head, his shoulders, his palms. Calm spread down his body like cool water. The image of a person materialized behind his closed eyelids, hazy but tall, intimidatingly beautiful, and he practiced flashing them a smile.
“Hi. I’m Malcolm,” he said out loud, and, in his mind, the person responded. Despite appearances, they were warm, much more approachable than the guests beyond this room. They introducedthemselves, expressed how much they loved his novel, and asked,Has anyone talked to you about potentially bringing it to a screen?
“There’s some interest,” he responded. “But we’re still looking for the right team for it, someone who will understand the vision—”
The door opened and closed, so gently that, given a few more minutes, Mal might have dismissed the sound as a part of the scene he’d concocted in his mind. But then someone cleared their throat, and it became apparent that he’d been caught.
A woman stared at him from the closed door, her eyebrows raised high. She grasped the doorknob behind her, as if she were still deciding whether she intended to make a quick escape. But of course she was. She’d just happened upon a strange man muttering to himself in a room that was very likely off-limits. If only he could cease to exist. Better yet, if only he’d never been born.
Then, inexplicably, things got worse.
“What,” the woman said, her lips barely moving in shock, “are you doing in my room?”
Chapter Three
Jo
It had been some years since I’d last slept in my room in the Adelmans’ Gold Coast penthouse. During my second year of medical school, the radiator in my studio burst, plunging the temperature of my already shoddily heated apartment into the low forties and coating my windows in a gray layer of frost. I’d spent a week shivering under piles of blankets before Ezra dragged me out of “that fridge” into his house and declared a guest room mine. When two weeks passed and my landlord still hadn’t fixed the heat, I emptied my suitcases into the closet. Put up a whiteboard. Filled the empty bookcase with Osler and Sattar and Gray’s. Renata’s love for me had been fresh at the time, more a consequence of gratitude than true affection, and she showed it by leaving small trinkets by my door: boxes of chocolates, a diamond tennis bracelet, unhelpful study guides recommended to her by her out-of-touch, long-out-of-practice doctor friends.
But a man? Even for Renata, that would be a bit much.
“Um,” the intruder said, jumping jaggedly to his feet. “Sorry. I—I didn’t realize—”
I assessed him. Copper-brown skin gleaming under my bedroom lights, neat finger-thick locs that fell artfully over his forehead, stubble that probably reappeared within hours of a shave. Too broad to be one of Renata’s models, too easily flustered to be one of Ezra’s actor friends. His blue velvet smoking jacket was certainly a choice, but he filled it out nicely.
“I promise I’m not a pervert,” he said, and I raised my eyebrows, not sure if I’d anticipated those words in that sequence. He must have heard himself because he winced. “Oh god. That is definitely something a pervert would say. But I had to say it, you know, because there’s a very short list of reasons why I could be in your room, and I’m sure you were thinking it. So yes. Your panties are safe, or whatever.” I raised my eyebrows higher, and he cursed under his breath. “If it helps, I really want to disappear right now. So, um, let me get out of your space...”
My body moved automatically to block his path.
“Who were you talking to?” I asked. I watched his eyes flit pleadingly to the door. “Earlier, I mean.”
“No one,” he said quickly. Then he dragged a hand down his face. “But you knew that. There’s no one else here. I was talking to myself.”
“You could’ve been on the phone,” I offered, holding back a smirk when he scowled. To think I’d come into this room tosulk. This was so much more fun.
“Well, I wasn’t.” He sighed, shoving his hands deep into his pockets and rocking forward on the balls of his feet. “All right, I think I’ve been punished enough. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d really like to leave with at least a shred of my dignity intact—”
“Josephine,” I said suddenly. I thrust out my hand, holding his eyes in a challenge. “Most people call me Jo.”
He stilled. I watched, with fascination, as a full spectrum ofemotions crossed his face—bewilderment, embarrassment, curiosity, and then finally, relief.
“Malcolm,” he said, taking my hand in his. “Most people call me Mal.” This time, he held my gaze. From up close, I could see that his eyes were uniquely shaped: partially hooded, slightly downturned, soul-searching in a way that lent a quiet intimacy to his regard. They widened, almost imperceptibly, with recognition. “And... please don’t be weirded out, but I think I know who you are.”
I pursed my lips. I was nowhere near as famous as Ezra, who could barely get a coffee at the Intelligentsia’s on his block without ending up in a Bustle article critiquing his outfit, but I was niche famous, familiar to health care workers and the kind of vaguely man-hating doomscrollers who appreciated my frank approach to sex ed and my perspectives on being a woman in medicine. People like Mal—namely, presumably straight men—were definitely not my target demographic.
“Through social media?” I said.
“Yeah,” Mal said, suddenly shy. “You’re Dr.Jojobee on Instagram, right? We’ve... um... talked before, in the DMs.”
“Oh?” I said, stepping around him to sit on the edge of my bed. “What’s your handle?”
He told me: Inlandwaters (“Made the account in college,” he confessed, sheepish.); and I pulled out my phone, navigating to our conversation. The second I saw his profile picture, a stylized photograph of a hand crushing a juice box, heat rushed to my face.
