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I’m cornered. Heat crawls up my body as it dawns on me that I wouldn’t know how to answer that question even if I wanted to. While I miss Bakari on some level, it’s been. . . tolerable to have a little space to figure my shit out. I meet Malakai’s gaze to let him know I am deliberately ignoring him, before cutting my eyes away to look at my phone, tapping it alive to see that–Shit, my Uber’s cancelled.

Malakai clears his throat, accepting the subject change. ‘How long till your Uber’s here?’

I look at my phone, on two per cent and trying to reconnect. ‘Uh. Like, six minutes.’ I’ll deal with the lie in six minutes. For some reason, the cancelled Uber feels like a little failure, and I need to show him that I have control over every aspect of my life, that I’m good, so good. ‘How long’s yours?’ His finger scrapes the back of his head – his awkward tell – and he looks at something beyond me. ‘I didn’t call one.’

‘What? Why not?’

‘I booked a room at this hotel for a couple of nights. More convenient. My short-term rental’s ready in two days.’

‘So why are you. . .’ I pause as clarity clicks. ‘Malakai, you don’t have to wait with me. I’m cool by myself. I’ll just wait in the hotel foyer—’

Malakai runs a hand across his face tiredly, apparently finding this whole conversation tedious. ‘Kiki, please don’t tell me what I don’t have to do. I’m gonna give a shit about whether you’re safe or not. Don’t make it weirder than it needs to be. Besides, this is for me. I won’t feel good leaving you here by yourself.’ His voice is unsentimental and he barely meets my eyes, his gaze darting to a poster for a Dua Lipa fragrance at a bus stop as if he’s extremely fascinated by the resurgence of the popstar-branded fragrance phenomenon. I feel a shift and softening that I immediately brace against. All right, he doesn’t want me dead. So? I don’t want him dead either. I know Malakai and he would do this for anyone. It means nothing. Nothing, like my phone battery right now. One per cent. I swear under my breath, but apparently not low enough because Malakai catches it, eyes alert. ‘You good?’

‘Um.’ The pride I’m forced to swallow lodges itself in my throat and my voice comes out quieter. ‘My phone is literally about to die. I gave my portable to Shanti and she’s taken it home. Do you mind calling me a car? I’ll obviously pay you back—’

The smug quip I half expect doesn’t appear, and Malakai cuts in. ‘Don’t do that. You know I got you, but I think it’s safer for you to be in a car with some charge.’

I sigh and nod. ‘Yeah, you’re right. I’ll just charge it at the hotel reception—’

Malakai looks exasperated as he moves closer to me. ‘Kiki, it’s, like, 1 a.m. Just charge it in my room.’ He pauses, discomfit shadowing his face. ‘Unless you don’t feel comfortable, which obviously is cool—’

I can’t imagine a world where I would ever feel unsafe with Malakai. At least not in that way. Romantically, though, he might be a death trap. The problem is how at ease my body feels around him. I’m unsafe around the version of me that appears in his proximity, but he can’t know that. He doesn’t get to have that power. And maybe the only way to rid myself of the risk is to confront it.

I shake my head quickly. ‘No, of course not. I mean of course I do. I mean yeah. Cool. I’ll, um, come up.’ I try my best to be casual, but apparently my voice wears the aural version of an evening gown.

Malakai frowns, bending slightly to make sure I’m looking at the sincerity in his eye. ‘You sure? I mean I could wait with you in the foyer if—’

‘No, you’re right. It’s not a big deal. I’ll be out of your way in fifteen minutes. Thanks.’

Malakai’s nod is clipped and he steps back for me to move forward. ‘After you.’

I walk ahead of him, and maybe,maybe, I add a little swing to my hips as I do, because, while I don’t want him dead, I can at least torture him.

‘Since when do you celebrate Valentine’s Day?’ Malakai calls from the kitchenette as he plugs my phone into the socket. Apparently, LA money is doing him nicely, because his ‘room’ is around the same square-metre area of my entire flat, a plush seventeenth-floor suite split into an open-plan living room and bedroom. The floor-to-ceiling windows face a stunning cityscape, the London lights forming their own constellation against the navy of the winter sky. I’ve stationed myself at the window, staring at the twinkling glass and steel vista so I don’t have to look at him. I’m trying to limit intakes of his fineness in my weakened state, but now I turn to him, curious.

‘Pardon?’ It was never my thing. I’m one of those arseholes who finds it performative, who thinks if love is celebrated all year round it doesn’t need to be proven on a capitalistic day with heart-shaped chocolates and overbooked restaurants and pressure, so much pressure, to prove affection. People who weren’t partnered being told that being in a relationship is the default. Situationships engaging in pretence for One Night Only, before reverting to the emotional hopscotch the next day. A single day shouldn’t call for romance, but romance, when real, calls on itself on all our days, in all the nooks of a relationship, sinking into the contours of your connection; Malakai taught me that. And every thirteenth of February, Malakai, with his tongue in his cheek got me a bouquet of carnations with ‘Happy Unvalentines Day, Scotch’ as the note, and a slice of Tottenham cake, my favourite. He chose carnations because of a line in my favourite poem, ‘The Way I Feel’ by Nikki Giovanni. Nikki meant like the evaporated-milk brand, but I don’t think Malakai knew that and it never mattered to me. He mattered to me. So much so that my heart twisted up with it, every year on our Unvalentine’s Day, which defeated the purpose, but really proved ours, because it was just for us. Unique to our world. But that was the Before times, pre-apocalypse, pre-calcified resentment and hurt that makes the space between us frigid.

Last year, Bakari had got me a shiny designer bracelet popular among the luxury influencer set; it was objectively beautiful, and I, uncharacteristically, posted it, satisfied with concrete proof that I was capable of a love that wasn’t with Malakai Korede. Now, Malakai stands some paces away from me, like he can barely stand to be around me.

‘Don’t ask how I know, but last year I saw a picture of you. Posted up, wrist glistenin’.’

‘You Insta-stalked me?’

‘Why are you smiling at that? Don’t smile at that. Someone badmind sent it to me.’

A thrill runs through me at the idea of Malakai perusing my photos. ‘Sure. Is “Badmind” what you named your subconscious?’ I tease. Did he do it topless? In bed at night? Did he accidentally double tap once, praying I didn’t see the notification? I’m not naïve enough to not know that the curiosity is normal, nothing necessarily to do with wanting, just. . . access to a memory. Still, I savour the thought.

Six months after our split, I went on a glo-up thirst trap spree, my twenty-something second puberty (and break-up) weight gain spreading my hips, filling my ass, and I felt good, sweet in my skin, replenished,new. Shanti was the creative director on a girls’ trip to Mykonos as she contorted me intoSports Illustratedposes that would have made Tyra inform me that I’m still in the running to becoming an easy, breezy cover girl. I like that Malakai saw that, that I didn’t wilt without him. What did Destiny’s Child say? You thought that I’d be weak without you, but I’m thicker, thought that I’d be stressed without you, but I’m penger. Something like that. Aside from that one moment of weakness on his stories, I didn’t get much from my Insta-stalking of him. His new social-media presence is all urbane austere aesthete: beautiful photographs ofscenesof Black Lifeand gleaming side profiles and abstract photos of, like, a gold chain on a white shirt, but barely anything of himself.

Before we broke up, it was very much that, but with pictures of him and his friends sandwiched between a grainy film, pictures of the Blackwell crew on a night out– laughing, chilling, dancing– he would find the light in any dingy bar we were in, brown skin glowing, falling over each other, obsessed with each other’s company. Scattered sporadically would be lowkey encapsulations of me– maybe one of me laid out on a couch on a Sunday, jersey shorts and crop top, face nestled in a book. Caption: ‘I hope everyone is thanking God for their blessings today. I am. To God be the glory, look at this glory.’

Now, Malakai looks unapologetic, eyes defiant. ‘Fine. I was checking to see if the quality of your photos had gone down without me taking them.’

I quirk a brow. ‘Right. And what was your professional conclusion?’

He pauses, and says, voice flat and matter-of-fact, like he’s teaching a class, ‘If the subject is good, there’s a limit to how bad a photo can be.’

I tilt my head to disrupt the sharp thrill that shoots through me. ‘Oh?’