He felt bad for hanging up and putting his phone on Do Not Disturb, but he would make good on his promise afterward. He’d call her, and maybe they would discuss expectations, define themselves a little more beyond the exclusivity they’d agreed on during their first date.
But for now, he had to give a performance.
The event itself went well. For the next hour, Mal put on his bravest face and answered the questions Hani and the Em-Dash staff had put together to the best of his ability. He fumbled a few sentences, talked too fast sometimes, caught himself going off on a tangent about how he’d fashioned the disorganized mess of Iris’s apothecary off the bedroom inHowl’s Moving Castle, and somehow the awkwardness that had left his first audience bored enraptured his current one. Kelechi tossed him a thumbs-up. Heremembered what Amelia had told him whenDuskfirst came out: “Don’t worry too much right now, Malcolm. You’ll find your readers eventually.”
When it came time for audience questions, ten people filed into an orderly queue in front of his table. Mal felt like a king of a court, taking time aside to listen to the concerns of his vassals, all starstruck, some of them carrying tote bags and handmade pins with references toDusk.He thanked each of them.
“This is a dream come true for me, really,” he said, overtaken by emotion. “If you told me last year that this would be my life now, I would have said you were joshing me. So thank you all.”
Amongst the ensuingawwwws, Mal didn’t hear the door to the bookstore swing open. A woman approached the mic, dressed in a shimmering violet dress not unlike the oneDusk’s main character, Iris, wore on the day her love interest, Louis, found her fishing in the stream by her house.
“Hi, I’m Juliet, and I’m going to ask the question that we’re all thinking,” she said, giving him a wicked smile that, in retrospect, should have served as a warning. “Are you single?”
Heat rose immediately to Mal’s face, and he felt the entire room focus in on him like sharks. Suddenly he noticed the number of phones in the audience, raised high to get the best angle, to capture his answer for posterity.
“I’m not... available,” he said hesitantly.
“But you aresingle,” the woman said, undeterred, and he was about to attempt to redirect the conversation when suddenly, a woman in white cut in front of him and snatched the microphone out of his hands.
“No, he most certainly is not,” Josephine Boateng said, her voice echoing mightily through the small bookstore. “He’s mine.”
Fuck.Mal should not have found Jo’s righteous indignation or the way she’d cut in the middle of the line and commandeered his microphone sexy. But there was something thrilling about the way Jo had just claimed him, so assuredly, with cameras rolling, that felt like exactly what he’d needed from her all along. And then there was how she looked, dressed in a white baby doll dress that skimmed around the flesh of her thighs, hair plaited into a long braid that swung like a whip down her back. She held a bouquet of flowers the color of sunset and, giving him a crooked smile, handed them to him.
Mal took them, shell-shocked. InShe Blooms at Dusk, Louis, the male lead, lamented that by nature of being both a florist and a man in their quaint, superstitious mountain town, he was fated to forever give flowers but never receive them. But on their first meeting, Iris had given him a cluster of blossoms as vibrant as the setting sun.
The audience burst into a roar of giggles, applause, and wolf whistles. Juliet lifted her hands, accepting defeat.
“Sorry, sis, just shooting my shot,” she said good-naturedly, then made her way back to her seat.
The event was somewhat in disarray after that. Not because of Jo, who, having said her piece, leaned against a bookshelf at the back of the room. Nor really because of the attendants, who turned the topic of conversation appropriately back to his novel. But because Mal was a mess. Blood had vacated his brain entirely. When a reader asked about why he’d decided to include real-world commentary about isolation and persecution in the narrative, he gave some half-baked response about how it had just felt right, while imagining propping Jo’s legs on his shoulders. And when someone asked whether the villagers were right aboutIris having intentionally poisoned the town magistrate who had been disturbing her business, he shrugged, too busy thinking of biting down on the lip Jo had just sucked into her mouth. Hani, realizing that she had lost her author for good, cut the Q&A short and started the line for the signing. In the front row, Kelechi was barely keeping the glee off her face.
“Okay, so that was true live entertainment,” Kelechi said, joining the signing line just to give him a hug. “You did so good. Proud of you, Mally-wag.”
“Thanks,” Mal said. He’d known his face would hurt from smiling politely all evening, but it was outright aching because he couldn’t keep his smile from stretching across his whole face.
“And you’re also down sooooo bad,” Kelechi said. She looked behind her conspiratorially. “No wonder. She’s that nineties it-girl Nia Long fine. And that flowers move...Sheesh.” She rubbed her belly. “Even baby Noelle is getting shivers. I should go meet her.”
Mal laughed, then sucked in his cheeks to give his aching face a break.
“You should,” he said. “She’s nicer than she looks.”
It took nearly two hours for Mal to finish signing books, during which he spent much too much time peeking out around the swell of the crowd to catch sight of Jo. As it thinned, he found her, her chair angled to face Kelechi’s, both of them snickering so hard that their heads nearly knocked together. A warm sense of pride bubbled in his chest. Kelechi and Portia had never really gotten along—Kelechi thought Portia too frigid, Portia thought Kelechi too flighty—but Jo slotted in next to his friend like she’d known her forever. When Mal reached the end of the line, they sidled up to him together.
“How dare you not let me know that you were dating my long-lost African sister,” Kelechi said, standing to give Mal a kiss on the cheek. Then, she leaned in close to Jo, whispering something in her ear that made her smile turn somber. Jo nodded, and Kelechi squeezed her shoulder, then turned back to Mal. “All right. I’m heading out. Your parents are blowing up my phone, by the way. I sent them pictures.”
Then she was gone, leaving Mal, Jo, and a beleaguered Hani carrying away chairs. Mal bent to help, and she waved him away.
“You’re our esteemed guest,” Hani said, balancing two chairs under each arm. She looked over to Jo, grinning knowingly. “Enjoy your night.”
Hani disappeared into the back room, leaving Mal and Jo alone in the dimly lit bookstore. The silence between them felt potent, full to the point of bursting.
Jo broke it first, rocking back on her platforms.
“Sorry I was late,” she said. “You were phenomenal. Didn’t feel like someone who isn’t ‘good with people’ at all.”
“Yeah?” Mal said, grinning.
Jo pursed her lips. “Yeah,” she said. “I think you made every person here feel special.”
