“Rude,” he said, shaking his head in self-directed disbelief.
He’d taken down good notes during his brainstorming session with Kelechi, but he was still struggling to condense his thoughts into a coherent proposal. He’d spent too much time updating his Instagram (now boasting, to his astonishment, over five thousand followers) and decidedlynotwriting or even, at the very least, preparing for his event at Em-Dash Books.
Thirty minutes, Mal told himself.You have thirty minutes to fall in love with one of these beasts, and if it doesn’t happen, you are going to go home and stop procrastinating.To keep himself honest, he pulled out his phone to set a timer.
A notification for two missed calls thirty minutes apart and a text, all from the same unfamiliar number, flashed across his screen.
Hey,the text said.This is Jo. I changed my number. Update my contact.
Mal’s knees buckled. He should have been embarrassed by the extent of his relief, and probably more pissed that she’d left him on read for three days before reaching out. He called Jo back, biting down on his cheek when she picked up on the first ring.
“There you are,” Jo answered. “I was beginning to think you’d gotten tired of me.”
The nerve, Mal thought, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers.
“I had no way of knowing it was you. Tried to call a few days ago, and your phone was disconnected.” Having finished bathing herself, the Roux look-alike peered intently up at him, then bumped her head against his knuckles.
“Oh dear,” Jo said, “did you think I blocked you?”
She phrased it like a joke, but today, Mal didn’t feel like laughing.
“Yeah,” he said stiffly. “I did, actually.”
“Oh,” Jo said. She sounded muted, and Mal regretted his honesty instantly. How completely uncool.She’s not your girlfriend, he reminded himself.She doesn’t owe you a prompt response.
But then: “Sorry,” Jo said. “My mom calling put me in a weird place.” She laughed nervously. “I should’ve hit you up right afterI changed my number. I realize in retrospect how shitty that was, considering the topic of our conversation beforehand.”
“It was pretty shitty,” Mal allowed, but already he was thawing, placated by her apology. “But it’s okay. You got caught up. I get it.”
“Do you?” Jo said. “You don’t have to. You can be a little mad at me. I left you on read for forty-eight hours.”
“Seventy-two,” Mal corrected.
“Oh my goodness, seventy-two! Straight to jail!” she exclaimed. Then she laughed. “So, what have you been getting up to in these seventy-two hours?”
Mal opened his mouth to respond—Absolutely failing at writing my proposal, updating my socials, staring at the ceiling, trying to convince myself that you didn’t block me because you think I’m trash in bed—but Roux 2 beat him to it with an indignant meow. He’d stopped petting her, and she’d taken it personally. He snorted.
“Did that sound just come out of you?” Jo said, giggling.
“No, no. It’s a cat,” Mal said, laughing along with her. “I’m at a shelter. I finally lost my mind today and decided to get one.” Roux2 nudged him again. “Even though she’ll probably destroy all of my furniture.”
“She?” Jo said. “You picked one already?”
Roux 2 looked up at him as if to ask the same. Her haughtiness was made even more hilarious by the fact that she was slightly cross-eyed.
“To be fair, I have no idea if she’s a girl. Figure cats don’t really care much about gender,” Mal said. As if she agreed, Roux2 began to purr. “I think she’ll be pretty upset if I leave her here.”
“What are you going to name her?” Jo asked.
Mal thought about it. He’d been curating a list of potential pet names since college, and most of them related to his creative activities. When he was still a photographer, he’d thought of names like Flash and Bokeh, and now that he was writing full-time, the list had been dominated by literary devices and punctuation marks:Grawlix, Phrop, Hyphenator...
“Ampersand,” he said.
Jo didn’t say anything for a moment. When she spoke again, there was a smile in her voice.
“You are so very adorable, did you know that?” she said. “Which is interesting, because you’re also very sexy. How do you manage to strike that balance, Malcolm Waters?”
Mal scoffed. He was glad she couldn’t see him now, his chin tucked into his chest, his ears burning so fiercely that they felt like they were glowing.
