Page 46 of A Love Song for Ricki Wilde

“Sure, but then you will have a furious tiger.”

He blinked. “That… doesn’t mean anything.”

“Well, have you taken any of my advice regarding self-soothing? Have you tried the anxiety app? What have you been doing to de-stress? Have you heard any of my advice?”

“I heard you plenty,” he drawled, the picture of sullen sadboi energy. “I’ve been watching these YouTube videos of Muslim people putting their cats on these tiny prayer mats, to pray with them. That’s comforting.”

“I see. Well, whatever works, I suppose,” Dr. Arroyo-Abril said with a frown. “Talk to me about these encounters with Ricki. What happens when you run into her? How do you feel?”

“I’m just fucking… Pardon… I’m just drawn to her. No matter how hard I try to avoid places I think she’ll be, we always end up together.”

Every day, Ezra would leave his house to go to his part-time job, dog-sitting, and invariably, he’d collide with Ricki. Or sometimes she’d collide with him. He didn’t just feel pulled in her direction; he feltyanked. He’d be walking down 141st, then he’d blink, and he’d suddenly be headed up 127th. It was science-fiction bizarre.

And I knew it would be like this, he thought.I was warned this would happen. But it doesn’t make it easier.

“It’s terrible. But seeing her is also… It’s also…”

Dr. Arroyo-Abril made an encouraging gesture. “You have come so far with your communication skills! Keep going. It is alsowhat?”

“It’s also the reason I wake up in the morning,” he said, his voice solemn, tortured with longing. “Even if it’s just bumping into her outside Duane Reade. My life orbits around her. Around those moments.”

He pined for those encounters; he ached for them. His entire day was spent manifesting a sixty-second run-in with the most radiantly irresistible woman he’d ever met. He was drawn to her as helplessly as if he were pulled by a string.

Ricki’s face was like a goddamn beacon for the lost.

And what hurt, what trulykilled, was that Ezra had to convince her that he wasn’t ravenously desperate to learn everything about her: her diner order; every patch of her skin; which songs made her cry; what her voice sounded like at 3:00 a.m. when she was sleepy, unguarded, and breathing the same air as him. All he wanted in the world was to take her on a normal date: to sit across from her at dinner, listening to her talk about her favorite movie, her job, her dreams. To catch a matinee with her and share Junior Mints or Twizzlers, or maybe she was a Sour Patch Kids person—who knew? He wanted to find out.

Ezra longed to do regular stuff with Ricki. But he wasn’t a regular dude. And if he revealed the real reason why he wasn’t regular, she’d never believe him. Worse, she might call a psychiatric institute.

“Earth to Ezra!” Dr. Arroyo-Abril waved a hand in front of his face. “Where did you go?”

“Oh. Apologies, Doctor.” Shaking himself out of a daze, he sat up straighter and looked her in the eye. “The other day, I remembered this time I was in DC for a July 4 club date. That morning, I was hanging out with the bassist, this fella called Big Arkansas. Ever notice that only the hardest guys are named after states?”

“I have always found that to be true, yes.”

“Anyway, that afternoon we were eating at some spot on Georgia Avenue, smoking a joint… er, a doobie… no, a blunt…”

“It is okay, Ezra. Linguistic glitches are normal for people with our particular diagnosis.” She patted his knee. “The technical term is ‘linguitches.’”

He eyed her with skepticism. “You just made that up.”

“It is a fact. Clearly outlined in the Winter 1974Journal of Perennial Sciences. Page thirty-seven, paragraph four. Classic text,classic!”

She was so tricky, you could believe only eighty percent of what came out of her mouth.

“Anyway, the weed was laced with something. It was potent. I couldn’t move. For hours. I sat in a bar in the grips of wild paranoia, just waiting for it to pass. Finally, I got the nerve to leave, and the second I stepped outside, the actualsecond, the entire Howard University marching band charged down the sidewalk. Cymbalists, majorettes, drummers—it was a stampede.”

Dr. Arroyo-Abril threw her head back and cackled.

“I was terrified. But then I got out of the way, paused, and listened. I was like, this band istight. That’s how I feel every time I see her. Like I’m being trampled by an elite HBCU marching band.”

“Mmm,” she said, nodding supportively. “Ezra, I know you like to pretend you have no feelings. But what you have described? You have fallen for her.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Yes, you have. Receive it.”

“No, I haven’t.” He took a beat. It should’ve been impossible to feel what he felt for Ricki after knowing her for two seconds. Itshould’vebeen impossible. But denying the truth was futile. Especially in front of a licensed psychotherapist.

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