“Ohgod,” I said, scrolling through our conversations. Most of them were likes and thumbs-ups, singular comments (“Have fun,” he’d said, to a video of my roommate Dahlia and me drunkenly belting “The Boy Is Mine” by Brandy and Monica on the Ferris wheel in Navy Pier), and the occasional brief exchange on the topic of my most recent posts. But sometimes the conversations were extensive. My most viral post to date, a video in which I responded to a follower’s question about how I communicated my boundaries with my sexual partners with an apparently shocking “Actually, I’ve never had sex,” had generated a surprisingly academic hour-long conversation about virginity as a social construct. In response to my post explaining why I hadn’t started a staff job after residency, he’d said, “I think it’s good that you’re taking some time—whether to rest or to evaluate what you want to do with your life next. We don’t romanticize just existing enough in this culture,” and I’d spent the rest of the afternoon lounging on the couch, encouraging him to massage away my guilt.
The mattress dipped next to me.
“Find anything good in there?” Mal said, a smile in his voice.
“I don’t know if I’ll call itgood,” I said, stunned, still scrolling. “Oh my god, I told you about mymother.”
Mal laughed. Even quietly, it sounded like thunder.
“I thought you were very appropriate,” he said. “And I was touched that you confided in me.”
I peered at Mal out of the corner of my eye. When I first started my social media platform, Dr.Jojobee, I’d answered almost all of my messages. But when my following exploded, the expectations of parasocial relationships had floored me. Four hundred thousand people who thought they knew me and therefore owned me, who greeted me with wide smiles and open arms like old friends when they saw me in real life, who dissected my every move and threw tantrums in my comments section when I made posts criticizing behavior that they felt echoed their own.
I didn’t know Mal. I hadn’t even known what he looked like. His page was sparse, with only one photo from eight years ago of a significantly lankier, significantly gawkier version of himself, with a face that hadn’t yet hollowed out. But he sort of knew me, and I found that immensely irritating.
“All right, Mal,” I said. “You know that I’m an unemployed doctor who’s never had sex and has serious mommy issues, which I think puts us onveryunequal footing. You owe me some secrets.”
“Secrets?” Mal said, considering. “I don’t really have many of those.”
Somehow, I believed him. There was an openness to his expression that suggested that, unlike half the attendees of this party, Mal wasn’t accustomed to artifice.
“Truths, then,” I offered. “No low-hanging fruit, though. The kind of truths that you wouldn’t normally tell someone you just met.”
“Truths,” Mal repeated. “Okay. Well. I’m a writer who used to be a photographer, and I have a pretty good relationship with my parents. And I have had sex, though I’ll admit it’s been a while.”
I nodded, trying to keep the surprise off my face. Mal had been blessed with good looks, not the kind that would inspire a double take, per se, but features that got more interesting the longer you looked at them. And there was a steadiness to his spirit that set me at ease, as if I were talking to an old friend rather than some guy who knew me from the internet and had been muttering to himself in my bedroom. In the few minutes since our interaction had begun, I’d almost forgotten about Ezra and Ashley, about Renata, about the loss I was soon to endure.
“A writer,” I said. “And I’m assuming a good one, since Renata invited you.”
“Ha,” Mal said. Suddenly he looked shy again, as if, despite having never read a word of his work, I’d just offered him the highest praise. “Um, who knows. I don’t check my ratings, and I’m only on social media to lurk, so I don’t even really know how my book’s being perceived.”
“What’s the name of your book?” I said, my finger hovering over the search bar to look it up.
Mal scratched the back of his neck nervously.
“She Blooms at Dusk,” he said. “Came out last winter.”
My jaw dropped.She Blooms at Duskhad topped theNew York Timesadult hardcover list for three weeks straight, and I’d seen it all over my feeds, and, more recently, on Renata’s bookshelf. “Have you read this one yet, Josephine?” Renata had asked me just the other day. “It’s divine. Very different. I think you’ll like it. And, I think, a great potential project for En Garde.”
“You’re Malcolm Waters,” I said.Inlandwaters.Of course. “Have you met Renata yet? She’s obsessed with your book.”
Mal ducked his head, embarrassed, and I studied his face, trying to piece him together. Most writer types were a bit self-absorbed, soaking up flattery like neglected houseplants even while they played at humility. But Mal seemed genuinely uncomfortable with my commentary, as if he’d rather I hadn’t offered it at all.
“She’s who I’m here to see. Just haven’t been able to track her down,” he confessed. He stared at the floor, a muscle in his cheek twitching. “But honestly, before you showed up, I was thinking about getting out of here. I got a bit, ah, overwhelmed.”
The man I’d seen when I first entered the room had seemed nervous, his legs jostling, his hands anchored on either side of the bed. I’d watched him inhale, count down on his fingers, exhale,breathing exercises that I, being chronically serotonin-deficient myself, recognized on sight.
“Anxious?” I said, nodding sagely.
Mal glanced up at me with saucer-wide eyes.
“A little,” he confessed. “I... don’t do well with people.”
“You’re doing well with me, though,” I said, and I watched him fight a smile, fascinated by the flash of his teeth, by the way it softened his entire face. It occurred to me, suddenly, that I thought Mal was cute. And not in the passive, fleeting way that I sometimes found men attractive, but in the way that made me want to see what other expressions he could make.
“That’s... I’m shocked by that,” he said. “I know this isn’t news to you, but you’restunning. I’m surprised I’ve managed to string a sentence together.”
And there it was: confirmation of mutual attraction. An idea formed in my head, rapidly taking shape as I assessed him. Smart—check. Respectful—check. Thoughtful—check. Hot—very. Experienced? Well, certainly more than I was, and probably willing to teach, if his insights on my posts were any indication.
