“Sounds like a deal,” Ricky said finally. And then we laughed, kissed again, and laughed some more.
Epilogue
I fidgeted in front of the mirror, pulling on the hem of my blue sheath dress. Match Day, the day I had been both dreading and anticipating from the second I submitted my rank list in February, started in one hour. The day when I would learn where I’d be spending the next three years of my life. Poor Ricky’d had to deal with me fretting around the apartment for weeks leading up to this day, including a particularly memorable dinner during which I’d nearly had a panic attack about whether I should have swapped the fifth and sixth institutions on my list.
In contrast, Ricky seemed all too calm about Match. My two favorite programs were outside of Chicago and when I considered moving them further down the list to prioritize local programs, he insisted that I move them back. I tried to explain the ramifications of the Match to him—“You might have to move away from your grandparents, and what if I end up in the middle of nowhere?”—but he insisted that we would “work it out.” I’d seen serious relationships break up two months into residency, even less when they were long distance. The nonmedical partners seemed to take residency the hardest, but no matter how often I reminded Ricky that I would soon be working sixty to eighty hours a week, he brushed me off.
Even now, watching me in the mirror from against the doorframe, he looked inordinately unbothered.
“Is this dress too short?” I asked. “I thought it looked good before, but it keeps riding up.”
Ricky smirked, scanning the length of my body with shameless admiration.
“I think you look great,” he said lasciviously.
I rolled my eyes at him but smiled all the same.
“You’re just saying that because it’s tight,” I said.
Ricky sidled up behind me, pressing a chaste kiss on my cheek while running his hands down the curve of my waist in a manner that was . . . much less so.
“My point still stands,” he said, pulling my ear gently between his teeth. I melted into him, letting him lather my neck with blistering-hot, feather-light kisses, and then, before he could break down my resolve, pushed him away.
“No,” I said sternly, pointing at him. “On task.”
He chuckled, pressing one last kiss onto my cheek, and then spun me to face him.
“We have an hour,” he said, drawing me slowly into him again. “I can be . . . efficient.”
Lord, could he be. I considered it. I always found Ricky delectable, but today in particular, dressed in his smart button-down, navy blazer, and a pair of chinos that held his ass up like two loving hands, he looked particularly irresistible. Even Momma, who was still a bit disappointed that neither of her daughters had shacked up with a Ghanaian, cooed, “Ooh, he is handsome,” when she first met him.
“It’ll take twenty minutes to walk there,” I reasoned. “We have to get there ten minutes before, or we won’t get good seats. So no.”
“Angela Appiah, worrying about being late!” he teased. He lunged for the nearby window, making a show of searching the skies for something. “Are pigs flying?”
I stuck my tongue out at him, and then stepped into the bathroom to do my makeup.
My entire life, I had been careful. I knew myself, knew that I would give all of myself away for nothing if I didn’t hold myself on a leash, and so I made sure I always followed some general rules. No sex before commitment. Always pay for my own first date. Don’t say I love you until the other person says it first.
But with Ricky, I could be reckless. There didn’t seem to be a need to be cautious, not with the man who painted my face into murals and squeezed my hand at his father’s funeral. When Ricky’s lease ran out, instead of renewing it, he suggested he take Nia’s old room, and I agreed without thinking. And when Momma called to ask whether I’d be sending in Ricky’s measurements, I did so without question. I spent my newly earned fourth-year free time* taking Spanish lessons and having stilted conversations with Abuela over cups of homemade horchata. I finally convinced Abuelo to go to the doctor’s, calling into his appointments after he was diagnosed with high blood pressure.
A part of me kept waiting for Ricky to prove that I was making a mistake. That our honeymoon period would pass, and we would go from being lovers to bitter roommates. But he didn’t. At Tabatha’s traditional, he had looked dapper in his custom-embroidered attire, and somehow won over my aunties so thoroughly that they made a competition out of asking him to dance. He’d eaten fufu properly, with his hands, and helped Momma and me with the cleanup afterward. “I’m a grandma’s boy,” he claimed when Momma tried to shoo him out of the kitchen. If the mural hadn’t won her over, that certainly did the trick.