On Rotation

by Shirlene Obuobi

No one before him had managed that, no matter how poorly they fit the script for what a fuckboy

was supposed to be. I’d made it to almost twenty-five before convincing a man to commit to me, and even he hadn’t made it a year before saying “never mind.”

And then one day, when we were out to eat, he’d told me that I was ungrateful. “I bet every woman in this room would love to get flowers from their man,” he’d insisted, and I realized that, all along, he hadn’t

been getting those flowers for me. He’d been getting them for himself: to prove that he was the kind of guy who got girls flowers. And deep down, I’d known that.

What was wrong with me? It was like Tabs had said. I didn’t love Frederick, and he hardly liked me. I was too brash for him, too unpolished. He wanted a poised,

political wife, and I had been willing, for a while, to flatten myself to fit that mold. And for what? Eight-year-old Angie had dreamed of white coats, not white weddings, and instead of focusing on studying for the last major hurdle in the way of that dream, I had let myself be distracted, anguishing over how to fix a relationship with a man I didn’t even want.

And an artsy boy, no less: the most likely subtype to ruin my life and destroy my credit.

Within its walls, I was no one’s eldest daughter and no one’s older sister and I didn’t have to prepare a tray. I could just be Angie Appiah, without edits.

Dick is abundant and low value, Tabatha used to say, shortly after discarding a potential suitor. And this particular dick was of the bargain-bin, dollar-store variety.

“Makes me wonder what else that mouth do.”

If Fate was what kept bringing us together, She and I needed to have some words. It seemed cruel for Her to force this man, who pressed every single one of my buttons and seemed determined to have me in his orbit, into my life.

“Look. I was drawn to you. I don’t know why.” “Because you were attracted to me,” I supplied. It wasn’t just my imagination. Admit it, Ricardo. Admit why we’re here even now. “You’re a pretty girl,” Ricky confessed. Then he turned to face me, his jaw set. “But I didn’t mean anything by it, honest.

“Okay, sweetie,” she said. “But just know . . . the relationship types don’t stay single for long. Get in there before someone else does.”

they did want the kind of woman that society told them they should—thinner than me, paler than me, less educated and more in awe of them than I ever could be—they left.

don’t think I’m not enough,” I said plainly. “I think I’m too much.”

Many men had called me beautiful; no one had yet to reach deeper and tell me what they liked about me beyond that. And here was Ricky, going into detail, identifying what I liked most about myself and telling me he liked it too.

“Hey,” he said, and I licked my lips, watching as he homed in on the motion. “I’m going to kiss you now. Is that okay?”

I’d imagined what kissing Ricky—actually kissing him—would be like. I’d imagined it would be electric, that it would feel the way touching him felt but times a thousand. But I hadn’t expected it to feel like home. The first touch of our lips together was brief, like

an experiment, or a question that we both answered with an emphatic yes. Warmth trailed down my body, like I’d taken a long draft of wine, and settled in my fingertips and the parts of my body where we touched. We kissed for a long time, my arms twining around his neck, his hands sliding down my sides to clasp me at the waist.

“And at first, I was pissed. She’d cheated on me, right? Met some other guy and was carrying on right under my nose . . . but then, I realized that I’d been doing the same thing. With you.”

Listen, gordito. The secret to long-lasting love is simple. You wake up. You roll over and look at your wife. And you say to yourself, today, I will choose you. I will love you. And you keep doing that every single day

until you die.’” He grinned. “It sounds better in Spanish.” I snickered.

“And I thought I could do that. It seemed straightforward enough. And then one day . . . this crying girl comes stumbling into my favorite garden and all of a sudden it’s a wrap.”

“Your eyes have set man’s heart ablaze,” he recited quietly. “And

you have had your will of him.”* He paused. “James Joyce.”

“I really like you,” Ricky said in response, and I warmed under those words, letting their

meaning permeate. Ricky had seen the full, unfiltered range of what I was, and he liked me. Just as I was. Angie Appiah, with no edits.

“I really like you too,” I said softly. We giggled together, giddy as teenagers. But unlike my teen years, there was zero chance of my momma busting down the door to interrupt.* Nothing stopping me from letting the mouth that was

hovering just above mine trail lower, of slipping my hands beneath his thin white tee to learn what he felt like underneath. No one standing in the way of me pulling Ricky’s body back over mine and seeing exactly where the night took us.

“Just that I’m . . . relieved. I wasn’t sure that you felt the same way.” Ricky hummed in affirmation, and then he kissed me again, so slow and deep that I almost felt at peace. When he pulled away, his eyes were bright. “Me too.”

mean, yeah you could, if you weren’t clearly in love with this dude,” Tabatha said, scoffing.

And Ricky wasn’t helping. In the forty-eight hours or so since we’d stepped boldly out of the friend zone, he’d been doing his best to plant seeds about the possibility of a long-term us into my head. He talked about attending music festivals that were a year away, posited taking a trip to Puerto Rico in February to escape the worst of winter. Yesterday, he’d even entertained the possibility of me

stopping by for an impromptu dinner with his grandparents, a proposition I dodged by insisting that I would be working late.

almost laughed. I was uncertain about a lot of things, but Ricky’s commitment to serial monogamy was not one of them. “Nah,” I said, “I don’t think that’ll be a problem.” “Sure,” Tabatha said. “Just don’t come crying to me when you get chlamydia.”

“Maybe, like, don’t sleep with him until you figure out if he’s in it for the long haul?”

Tabatha tutted me. “Yeah, well, some of us can handle it.” She pointed at my chest. “You? No way. Your heart is attached to your vagina.”

Because Tabatha was right. This . . . thing I felt for Ricky wasn’t just infatuation; it was something

deeper, more fundamental than that. It was love, or at least something like it, and I was tired of trying to fool myself into thinking it was anything less.

“I just want you to be careful,” Tabatha repeated. “I don’t like seeing my big sis get hurt.” “I won’t,” I promised, and left it at that.

It had been fifteen days since Nia and I had last spoken, a fact that was confirmed by the time mark of our last exchange before

I’d thought there would be an end to the depth of my feelings for Ricky, but somehow every time I saw him, I fell exponentially

harder. Tabatha had been wrong. I didn’t need to sleep with Ricky to get too far gone; I was already there.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe I can walk behind you and find out.” Giggling, I obliged, twirling my hand out of his and falling into my best strut. I could feel Ricky’s eyes course over my figure salaciously, and I pondered how a look like that from any other man in the world would have made me run away. From Ricky, though? He could spend the next hour undressing me with his eyes, and I would relish every second.

I was the Angela Appiah Experience, a nice ride, a fun time. The girl who taught you something about yourself, who you looked back on fondly while you cuddled up with the woman you decided to actually love in the end.

Operation Deep Clean went into effect immediately after forty-eight hours of Ricky-related radio silence. I wasn’t going to allow myself to sink into a funk of self-inflicted misery by scrolling through his Instagram or rereading our texts. No. I was going to be

proactive against Future Angie, who would doubtlessly want to do those things. I unfollowed him on social media, deleted his number, and set up a study and social schedule so airtight that there would be minimal room for my mind to wander. Because I was done. And I didn’t plan on turning back.

It was funny, how afraid I’d always been of being alone. I’d clearly been missing out; being alone was lit.

Until even these stopped, and I realized, too late, that I’d been abandoned.

And mine was remembering that I was deeply, desperately loved by many. I hardly had to cry out for my girls to come running to my aid, ready to lift me up when I was down. This was what love was supposed to feel like: uplifting, encouraging,

renewing. If I had to let go of a love that was not quite that, that was okay. Because I loved myself, and these women had taught me how.