So I did, amazed by how I could recount the events without batting an eye, like I’d witnessed them from afar. Ashley weeping in the atrium, Ezra marching me into the study to scold me, before dodging a very much needed, much overdue conversation about whatwewere. Finding Malcolm Waters, the surprisingly cute writer who’d holed himself up in my bedroom, and discovering that apparently, we’d been chatting for the last six years on my platform. How easily Mal had managed to help me forget my angst until the source of said angst showed up and burst our bubble. I’d been so in my feelings afterward that I’d stormed away after dropping Mal off with a particularly elusive Renata and probably looked like an enormous ass to whom he would never want to speak again.She’s kind of a bitch in real life, I imagined him telling his friends.
“Why would you think that he thinks that?” Dahlia said when I was done. Predictably, she’d started with the juiciest tidbit, which was that I, Josephine “he’s all right, I guess” Boateng, might be interested in someone other than Ezra.
“Because I was,” I said plainly. I remembered how he’d looked at me when I’d left him with Renata: knowingly, like he’d expected me to disappoint him.
Dahlia shrugged.
“Maybe he likes that,” she said. She blew over her tea. “Look,I know Ezra is your friend and all that, but what would you even do if he’d told you he was secretly into you too? Do youwantto be girlfriend number five hundred and fifty-two? Especially right after this Ashley chick?”
“Number nine,” I corrected quickly, slurping my too-hot coffee through pursed lips. As predicted, Dahlia had cut right to the meat of the matter. “And no. No, I don’t think so. I think I need to figure myself out first.”
Romantic love, or at least what I’d seen of it, was flighty. You could love someone desperately for five years and never speak to them again for the rest of your life. It made you do stupid things, like choose your best friend’s childhood bully over her in a roomful of people, or let yourself get to twenty-nine with less sexual experience than the average sixteen-year-old because you were waiting on a guy who made it clear that you were just his friend to change his mind.
Actually respecting and regarding another person for who they were, without the cascade of hormones and impingement of lust, was more long-standing. And what I wanted from the Adelmans was preservation. When, the morning after the party, Renata sent me a text reminding me thatwhatever issues Ezra and I were having had nothing to do with herand assuring me that she would even seat us at different tables at her upcoming Knydus Nest health benefit if I wanted, I’d felt overwhelming relief, like I’d been released from an obligation. It was okay that I’d responded to Ezra’s litany of pleading texts (Where did you go? Did you leave? I don’t want to fight. Can you talk to me, please?) with a true, simpleI need space. It was okay that I’d unfollowed him on social media and put his calls on “straight to voicemail.”We were friends. When I was ready, maybe we could come back to that again. If we’d crossed any more lines, maybe recovery would have been impossible.
Dahlia had a similar revelation before, two years ago, after finalizing her divorce from her high school sweetheart, Jonathan. Jonathan had been a dreamboat of a boyfriend for a teenager: sweet, prone to grand romantic gestures, the kind of good Catholic boy that her friends in her junior praise group prayed for. But he hadn’t transitioned well into adulthood. His college major in psychology was meant to become a PhD, lead to an academic career, but he’d dropped out three years in with a masters he never intended to use. While Dahlia worked her way through nursing school, he was intermittently employed, grumbling about how the world had wronged him, directing his frustration toward his wife. Eventually, he’d had an affair with a nineteen-year-old coworker at Best Buy, and Dahlia, who had spent the latter part of their marriage suppressing and remolding herself to bring back the great love of her youth, let go.
Away from her childhood home and childhood love, Dahlia had rediscovered herself. She learned that the obsessive admiration she’d occasionally had for other women was actually attraction, that the nursing job that she’d spent years pretending to feel fulfilled in was in fact destroying her spirit (and her back). So she quit her job, started taking travel nursing contracts that sent her to intensive care units around the country on her own time, started dating (seesobbing over) girls, and embraced her new identity as a “baby goth disaster bisexual.”
“You won’t die without romantic love. In fact, it’s statistically more likely to kill you,” she’d said after I first confided in herabout my lack of experience. “But I also wish you’d put yourself out there. Your world won’t stop turning without Ezra Adelman in it. Maybe it’s time to move on.”
And now she was sitting across from me, grinning like the Cheshire cat.
“You just had an epiphany,” Dahlia observed. “And I hope it’s that you should hook up with the writer.”
I sputtered around my coffee.
“How did you come to that conclusion?” I said, exasperated. “Shouldn’t you be telling me I need tohealor something?”
“Is this what you call healing?” Dahlia said, gesturing to my admittedly pitiable state. “Sitting in your apartment, half-jobless, weeping about the same guy who’s been stringing you along for ten years while your coochie continues to grow cobwebs?” I winced, stung that she’d given a voice to my most critical thoughts. She tapped a nail next to my phone. “No, girl, it’s time to try something different. Hit up the writer. I can tell you want to. If he doesn’t respond, no harm done. It’s time to get you laid.”
Getting me laidwas a ridiculous place to start, I thought. The first place should probably have been a shower. The second, a check-in with my therapist.
And yet.And yet.I thought of Mal sitting next to me on the bed, how I’d known implicitly that I could have fallen asleep at his side and he’d take off my heels and tuck me under the covers. How his top lip was ever so slightly darker than the bottom; how, for a brief second when he’d smiled, I’d wondered how he’d react if I’d caught it between my teeth. I’d liked how pliant he’d been, how easily he’d taken my hand when I offered it. I’d liked the firmness of his chest under my hand even better.Would I?I’d considered, already knowing that my answer wasI would.
“No,” I said, wagging the thought from my head. “No, I can’t do that to Mal. He’s sweet, and I’m not sure I should be trying to jump into a relationship right now. I don’t want to hurt him.”
“A relationship?” Dahlia said with a snort. “Be for real, woman. You said he feels safe, you find him attractive, and you’re ready to jump-start your journey to find your inner goddess, or whatever. Just say, ‘Hey, I would like to have sex with you, no strings attached,’ and see if he’s down.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. “He won’t feel objectified?”
“He’s a guy, Jo,” Dahlia said, rolling her eyes. “He’ll probably think he won the lottery.”
I laughed to myself. It was funny how, despite running a sex-positive platform, I hadn’t considered that I could justaskMal if he wanted to sleep with me. I had always been practical about sex, which was why I hadn’t yet had it. Pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases—all of those had seemed risks too great to take on a random person who would most likely prove less effective at getting me off than a good vibrator. And critically, sex required trust, and I didn’t trust many people.
But I could see myself trusting Mal. Eventually. Enough to proposition him.
Five years ago, when I was but a wee innocent medical student who blushed whenever I asked my patients about their sexual histories, this suggestion would’ve been nuts. But I was grown now, and hungry. Picky too. It would be good to strike now, while Mal was still exciting, before he had a chance to say something stupid that would dry me out like a sponge in the Sahara.
“Okay, okay. I’ll message him. But not because you bullied me into it,” I added, when Dahlia’s smirk turned too smug. “But because Iwantto.”
My heart hammered in my chest, and I willed it to slow, reminding myself that Malcolm Waters was just a person, and unlike him, I was very good with people. I typed a message, showed it to Dahlia. “How’s this?”
Dahlia took one look at the screen and cackled. “Woo boy, you’re good at this,” she said, fanning herself. “Send it.”
So I did.
Chapter Six
