A moody, slow-burn romance set in 1977, "Time Waits for No One" follows Michael Jackson and Jacqueline, two lovers caught in a whirlwind of fame, ambition, and aching vulnerability. As Michael's star rises and Jacqueline navigates her own dreams and...
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Margaret didn't love everything about the apartment she shared with her fiancé at Lenox Terrace.
It was worth it — she knew that. Worth it for the address, worth it for what it meant to have landed here, in one of Harlem's most storied buildings, in a place that was genuinely theirs. She wasn't ungrateful... but the bathroom was small in a way that bothered her every single morning, and the bedroom looked out onto a wall, and if she let herself run the full list of renovations she would make given unlimited time and money and a contractor who actually showed up, she could keep going for a while.
But the kitchen.
Her kitchen was perfect.
It was galley-style — narrow, efficient, nothing remarkable on paper — but the stovetop was generous and the gas heated evenly, which was not something you could take for granted in New York City, and the light that came through the window above the sink in the afternoon hit the counter at an angle that made everything feel, reliably, like things were going to be just fine. The shelves had the particular personality of a young household still figuring itself out: her abuela's Dutch oven, heavy and dark and the most important thing she'd brought from home. The cast iron pan Jimmy had contributed with great ceremony and then never touched again, and in the corner, her small carefully arranged Bustelo bar — the moka pot, the sugar dish, two mismatched mugs from a stoop sale that she'd liked too much to care they didn't match.
Jimmy could cook. She wanted to be fair about that. He was the oldest of three, he knew his way around when he needed to — could scramble the hell out of an egg with real confidence, had opinions about seasoning that weren't entirely wrong. But he had also, upon moving in with a woman who could cook cook made the entirely reasonable decision to retire without being asked twice.
So the kitchen was hers.
On a Thursday afternoon in February, with three burners simmering and Earth, Wind & Fire playing quietly from her side of the record collection and Jacqueline due to come over in a few, that was exactly how it felt.
She was adjusting the flame when she heard the familiar sound of the record crate opening at the kitchen table.
"I swear, you keep shuffling those same records back and forth," she said, not turning around.
"I'm reorganizing."
"You organized them yesterday."
"Reorganizing is different from organizing."
She turned to look at him over her shoulder. He had his head down over the crate with the focused expression of a man engaged in important work, which she had come to understand meant his hands needed something to do while his mind was somewhere else.
She turned back to the stove, adjusting the light on her chicken. He had his handiwork, and she had hers.
A few minutes passed. The back burner did its quiet work. Philip Bailey was somewhere in the middle of something gorgeous. Then the crate closed, and footsteps, and before she could say anything Jimmy was behind her — arms around her waist, chin to her shoulder, the full comfortable weight of him settling against her back with the easy presumption of a man who had long ago decided that wherever she was standing was a place he wanted to be.
