“All right,” she said. “Divorce rates. Fifty percent of first marriages end in divorce—”
“Which means that fifty percent of couples stay together forever,” Mal continued, waving a hand dismissively.
“Not necessarily because of love,” Jo said. “People stay together who shouldn’t all the time. For the kids, or because they like thesocietal benefits that come with being married, or because of financial situations. You catch my drift.”
“So let’s be generous and say three-quarters of the people who stay married shouldn’t. That still leaves millions of happy couples, still together, still obsessed with each other.” Mal popped a grape into his mouth. “My parents, for example, are disgusting. You saw them. It’s like Gomez and Morticia in the Waters house.”
“Well, that just means you’re biased, because what I’ve got is my sperm donor ditching my mom the moment he found out she was pregnant, and Paul Adelman’s potato-looking ass getting caught on TMZ sleeping around on his literal supermodel wife,” Jo said, and Mal held back a grin, realizing that his ploy to use being open about his own history to get her to share her own was successful. “Okay, fine, I guess I’m biased too. But I guess what I don’t understand is... why we have to even declare things. I like you, I enjoy your company, and I’ve just discovered that I really, really like having sex with you. I’ve already told you I’m not planning on seeing someone else. So why even bring love into it?”
“Because I want to,” Mal said, bewildered by the question. “Because I think there’s freedom in being in love.”
“Freedom?” Jo repeated, skeptical.
“Yes,” Mal said. “In trusting someone with your whole heart. In not having to put on airs, or to pretend to be someone you aren’t, because they accept you as you are.”
Jo scowled, dunking a chunk of pancake into a pool of syrup. She wasn’t incapable of love; he knew that. If anything, he suspected it came easily to her. Renata had said it herself—that when Jo “decides to love you, she does it with her whole heart.” And he’d felt that from her, that day when she’d dragged him to thefront desk at a bookstore, her unabashed enjoyment of his company. The feeling that Jo genuinely, selflessly wanted him to be happy.
“That’s a very privileged take on the subject,” she said. She chewed, swallowed, pointed at him with her fork. “Because I think the opposite. I think, for women especially, that love is usually a prison.”
Mal recoiled. His mind flashed back to two years before, standing in an eerie, sanitized version of his living room: throw pillows gone, candles cleared off end tables, a bookshelf half-empty. Portia’s scribbled words on a Post-it note—I can’t do this anymore—as if loving him had become a burden too great to bear.
“Did you know that men are six times more likely to leave their female partners after they get a devastating diagnosis?” she continued. “Go to a hospital sometime. Take a look at the patients. The men? They either have no one or there’s a woman by their side, arthritic, with medical problems of her own, working hard to maintain an income for the house while cooking for the guy, cleaning him, giving him his meds. Being his night nurse and his momma all at once. The women? It’s their daughters. The men they made them with are nowhere in sight, and even when they’re around, half of what they do is try to tell you about their issues or complain about how she doesn’t put out anymore.” She looked at Mal, tired, her arms crossed tightly around her waist as if to protect herself from him. “You might think love is unconditional because you’ve been loved unconditionally. But from everything I’ve seen, for a woman to be loved, she has to serve a purpose. She has to look good on your arm, but not too good or she’s a slut. She has to be sensual but puritan, needs to work or she’s a gold digger,but not more than her man or she’s a harpy. She can’t gain weight, or she’ll have let herself go, and if she has your children, she has to prioritize them over herself at every turn or she’s a bad mother. She has to be strong, the backbone of the family, an extension of a man instead of his partner. If she defies any of these terms, most people won’t blame a man for telling the world that his love for her has dried up.”
Jo took a deep breath, her gaze focusing on him.
“Mal,” she said. “I’m the happiest I’ve been in a long time right now. I’m not going to lie and say that some of that hasn’t come from being with you.” Before he could delight in that information, she continued. “But I’m scared. Scared that once I let you in, I’ll no longer get to be the main character in my life. Scared that you’ll start expecting that of me once my novelty has run out. Is that a good enough answer?”
Mal took a deep breath, then chased it with a chug of coffee so big that it hurt his chest on the way down. He understood what she was describing because he had once done something close. He’d been too afraid to look inward and address his own fault lines, too content to hand over the reins of his life to a woman who loved him and then grew bitter when she turned them in a direction he didn’t want. But he wasn’t that person anymore. He was doing the work to never become him again.
“I get it, Jo, I really do,” he said. “What you’re describing is a pattern of behavior that you’ve observed and lived through. I’m not going to pretend that nothing you’ve said is valid, or that I haven’t been guilty of some of it. And I don’t deny that society enables us to behave in the ways you describe. But I’m one person, Jo. Give me a little agency. Judge me for me.” He reached for her, gently uncurling her arm from its hold around her waist. “Youdon’t have to trust me fully right now, but I hope you can eventually. And I want you to decide whether I’m worthy of your trust based onmyactions, not all the shit other people are doing and have done. Okay?”
For a slow, torturous second, Mal thought Jo was going to cry again. She swallowed, looked away, tucked her lips in the way people did when they were holding back tears.
But then she clasped his arm back tight, as if he were pulling her off the edge of a cliff and onto stable ground.
“You sound like my therapist, getting after me for my ‘defense mechanisms,’” Jo said. Then she laughed. “But damn. You’re right. I’ll try. But I’m a harsh judge, okay? And I will let you know when you start slipping up.”
“I’m good with feedback,” Mal said, grinning. Negotiating his own trustworthiness shouldn’t have made him this giddy. But the realization that hecouldhave hard conversations, and that they could feel productive, gave him hope. Jo smiled back, bashful, and he tugged her chair closer to him, catching one of her legs between his.
Across the room, a high-pitched tinkling punctuated the air.
“Hold on,” Jo said, whipping around to find it. She followed the sound to the couches, to their pile of carelessly discarded clothes, then, with a cheerful “A-ha!” found her phone inside the pocket of her bike shorts.
Mal cleared the table as she spoke, feeling rejuvenated. With Jo, things were going to be different. He wouldn’t make the same mistakes he’d made last time. This time, he’d check in, and Jo would be comfortable with those check-ins, and maybe someday she would look him in the eye and say those words (I love you too), and they would be all the sweeter because he would know he’dearned them. And after that, well, maybe days like this could become more regular. Maybe Jo would start moving her things over, her face masks and skin serums filling in the empty spaces in his bathroom cabinet, her clothes filling a drawer—
“Hey,” Jo said. She’d appeared behind him in the kitchen, her tote bag slung over her shoulder, shoes on, expression suddenly somber. “Um... sorry, but I’ve got to head out.”
The domestic picture he was painting in his head blotted out.
“So soon?” Mal said, then realizing that he’d sounded disappointed, tried again. “I mean, yeah. Of course. It’s almost ten. I’ve kept you long enough—”
Jo cocked her head to the side, pursing her lips to hold back a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. Then she stepped forward, bouncing to her tiptoes to kiss him gently on the cheek.
“It’s not you,” she assured him. “It’s just, ah, I spoke of the devil, and she emerged.” When Mal blinked at her in confusion, she clarified, “My mom just called, and I need to go be in my feelings about it.”
“Oh,” Mal said. He had so many questions, but all of them seemed inappropriate. “Oh shit. Are you okay? No, sorry, there’s no way that you are—”
“Relax, Mal, it’s not a big deal,” Jo said, already headed for the door. She turned back, gave him a small smile. “I had a great time. I’ll see you later.”
