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‘Hey, so this is random–’ Taré’s voice yanks me out of my questions, breathy with what I now recognise as delight at her own – ‘but do you guys want to go out tonight? I just discovered this party is in a location that has a garden where IthinkI want to shoot part of a video– it’s on the list, Malakai– and this is a great opportunity to check it out. Team social?’

Mine and Malakai’s gazes snap to each other’s immediately, and his hand flies to the back of his head as my excuse trips off my tongue with ease. ‘Um, I would love to, but I have to wake up early because my best friend– Aminah– wants me to check out this wedding venue with her and her fiancé tomorrow morning– her mum’s insisted on tagging along and I need to be there as a mum-whisperer. And to stop Aminah saying anything she’ll regret since her parents are paying for the venue.’

Taré frowns lightly in confusion. ‘But aren’t you also covering the restaurant tomorrow night? Isn’t that kind of a lot? To mama-sit all morning? I mean I know how hard I’m working you. When are you gonna chill?’

My skin pricks uncomfortably at the articulation of a latent question that’s been burgeoning. I’ve been trying to starve it– it feels illicit, wrong– but the truth is Aminah’s been more stressed lately, which has led to an increase of late-night phone calls, which poses a problem when it’s before a morning where Taré has decided that she wants to start recording at 6 a.m. to ‘capture the essence before it’s diffused’. I’m also trying to cover for my mum and dad when I can; they’re almost sixty, and there’s no reason for them to be at the restaurant when it’s home for me and I can get some work done on my laptop whilst managing three employees and the six customers that come in every day.

I shrug, and push out a smile. ‘It’s fine. I’m fine.’

Malakai’s eyes are flickering with curiosity again, and it slips under my skin, presses on my pulse.

Taré’s brow quirks as she turns her to attention Malakai, tilting her head coquettishly. ‘And what’s your excuse? Hot date?’

There’s a beat of silence in which I feel a sudden burn in my chest, and Malakai’s eyes widen slightly before he releases a stilted chuckle, dipping his head and scratching his ear.

‘Not tonight. Uh, I just need to go through some rushes and I’m hanging with a friend tomorrow morning.’

Or maybe he does have a hot date tonight and the ‘hanging with a friend’ thing is a cover for morning sex and a lazy brunch with his lover– God, does he have a lover? Why am I sayinglover?– and isn’t in the mood to divulge it to two women he has had sex with. This thought does kick-ups with the prosciutto-and-rocket sandwich I had for lunch. I glance at the time on my phone– 9 p.m. A date at this time is likely a precursor to sex. It’s, of course, none of my business. This is just a casual observation by someone who takes note of the nuances of intimacy. This is all part of my job. Taré unfolds herself from the sofa, and stands in between Malakai and I, hands flying as she attempts to proselytise to a weary congregation.

‘Ugh! What the hell is this? Come on. I need my teammates energised and relaxed. I know I’ve thrown you both in the deep-end. It’s Friday night and you’re both like, what?Fiveyears younger than me? We’ve worked hard this week. Live a little. We’re not dead.’

I see Malakai stiffen a little at the last sentence, a shadow falling across his face and slipping into a line between his eyes. It’s the same as it was a few moments before, like he’s fighting a memory. A cold dampness scrabbles at me from the inside, and I wonder what he’s thinking about and then I recognise what he’s thinking about. The recognition weighs my veins down. I can see him receding into somewhere I’ve seen him go before, somewhere dark, and the last time it happened I couldn’t reach him. The last time he was there we broke up. A piercing protectiveness surges through me, and I’m ready tell Taré that we’ll be sure to go out next Friday, that Malakai’s right– we have a tight turnaround and a strict schedule– when Malakai shrugs. The shadow lifts in tandem with the corner of his mouth.

‘You know what? You’re right. We’re not dead. I’m down.’ The idiotic intense spike of protectiveness retreats. So he wants alone time with Taré. They seem to have maintained a professional distance this past fortnight, but maybe that’s what they want me to think? What if Taré extending the invite to me was a ruse because she knew I would say no? For all I know, they’re sexting outside of our text chain, hooking up whilst I’ve slipped out to the restaurant, staying behind to have some hot recording-studio sex—

Shit, what if they’ve had sex on this sofa? I shift on my seat slightly, untucking my feet from beneath me. Oh my God, I am sitting on a sofa that’s potentially carried the imprint of one– or both, depending on positions– of their bare asses whilst they orchestrate a prelude to adickappointment—

‘Kiki? What you sayin’?’ Malakai’s voice breaks into what was probably a rapid loosening of my hinges, and I jump a little to see him looking at me with surprisingly gentle enquiry. ‘We out tonight?’

I twitch my shoulder with a synthetic breeziness that I reckon I should probably win a Noble Peace Prize for constructing and say, ‘You know what? Why not,’ and it’s all going so well, except I overshoot the chillness in the breeziness recipe, knock the residual madness I had from my spiral a few seconds ago into it and overcompensate completely. The result of this is me uttering something that will definitely haunt me for the rest of my days. ‘YOLO!’

‘Kiki, can I say something?’ Malakai and I have been sitting in the back of the sleek private-car service for about five minutes, both of us scrolling on our phones, waiting for Taré to surface from the house. His voice is gravelly and serious enough to let me know that he’s about to be on some bullshit. I sigh, and stop scrolling social media looking for something, anything to distract me from the fact that I’m about to have a night out with my ex and his ex-fling. And from the fact that I was so rattled by the very idea of them having sex that I glitched and said something a middle-aged white male TV exec would say in an attempt to sound ‘urban’.

‘No.’

‘Well, I’m just gonna speak anyway. I don’t say this enough, but I just want to thank you. . .’

My jaw tightens, and I cross my legs, turning to see his eyes glittering with mirth. Unfortunately, the sight of it immediately sets off a tickle on the inside of my mouth, but I refuse to succumb to his bait. He blinks slow, in insincere sincerity.

‘. . . for, honestly, for making my evening. No, my day. No, my fucking life. Kiki Banjo, you have provided me the joy of my life by saying the word “YOLO” in the year of our Lord 2025.’

I roll my eyes. ‘Doesn’t say much about your life, then.’

‘Oh, my life is very blessed, but I just could not have foreseen a gift this big—’

‘Foreseen?OK.’

‘This is how I know God is real. Ey, boss.’ He raps the plastic safety screen between us and the driver with his knuckle. ‘Do you mind putting the gospel station on? I got worship on my heart.’

A tiny, disgusting little snort slips out of me. In all honesty, I’m impressed at Malakai’s restraint. It’s been an hour since that godforsaken moment and all he did at the time was blink at me in complete and utter shock and confusion before twisting his mouth in what I could recognise was a Herculean attempt to keep a smile in. I knew he would make me pay for it eventually. I’m just glad he had the decency to do it when we’re alone. He had to wait the entire time it took me to go home, get ready and come back to Taré’s to unleash my punishment, which means it’s had time to marinate. He’s ready to have fun with it and make my life a misery. Malakai has let his smile out now, and it is dazzling, wicked, having the time of its life at my slip into cringe. My stomach flips at the sight like some masochist, the kinky freak.

‘Nah, seriously, Keeks,’ he drawls, relaxing back into his seat, after assuring our driver that it’s fine to remain on CapitalFM because Michael Gray will help us get in the mood for the weekend to begin. ‘Are you like. . . OK? You coming down with something? Or was it that tiny,minusculebit of diluted THC you ingested weeks ago that altered your brain chemistry?’

‘All right.’ I slip my phone in my orange mini Telfar. ‘I’m in a generous mood. You get one more.’

‘Cool, because I have one more question. Did you get any travel sickness when coming to work today? Because you did trek a long way.’

I bite a lip that’s crying out to curve before nodding slowly, anticipating his thread, because I know his rhythm. ‘Oh, you mean my journey from 2011? It wasn’t too bad. I got to stop by Soho House in 2016 and tell Meghan Markle while her first date was in the bathroom that he’s cute, but it isn’t worth the stress. That she should go for someone like Trevor Noah. Smart. Funny. Hot. Not connected to an outdated form of rulership predicated on imperialism.’