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Malakai cracks, laughter breaking free and setting me alight, and it’s been a long day so I don’t have the energy to fight it. The sound washes over me, and hibernating flavours of joy take flight.

‘Wouldn’t you have to know Trevor Noah for that to work?’ he asks.

‘Well, I do. We became mates after he invited me onTheDaily Showin 2015 to talk about my new invention, TikTok. Which I created in 2014.’

Malakai nods in solemn understanding, light hop-scotching in the dark of his eyes. My body responds. Tiny, pretty-winged creatures from parts of my soul flap unsheathed in dusty, abandoned crevices. ‘OK, so were you on there as, like, a child prodigy or did you maintain your current age while you were travelling dimensions?’

My fingers thrum with a familiar buzz I’ve missed the feel of. ‘Current age. I did visit myself, though. Told her it was all gonna be OK and my boobs were gonna come in great, eventually.’

Malakai’s smile is tiny, so polite it’s dirty, eyes glinting with trapped play, but saying nothing, respecting the foundational tenets of our working contract. We fade into a silence that for the first time since we reunited feels comfortable. I bite my bottom lip to tuck away the persistent curve and look outside the tinted window to the dark street yellowed by streetlamps. It’s started raining and the light patter massages my bones. That’s it– I feelrelaxedfor the first time in so long that I can’t remember when the last time was. We’ve been waiting in the car for eighteen minutes despite Taré saying that ‘she’d be right out’. Thirteen minutes ago, I was itching to be on the move. Now, for whatever reason, I don’t feel in a rush to go, like moving might disturb the delicate peace I’m feeling.

‘Would you ever do a do-over?’ Malakai’s voice rolls into the quiet static of the car. I turn from the blurry window and scan his face, the warmth still there, but with a trepidatious curiosity edging it.

‘What do you mean?’

He hitches his shoulder. ‘Like, if you could go back in time for real. Do things differently. Would you?’ The air crackles with more than just the sound of the radio, the energy spitting and fizzing and making my palms prick. His question is swollen, and I’m scared of what will happen if it splits open.

I think about it for a second and answer cautiously. ‘I don’t think so. Everything led me here. I’m not too mad at where I’m at now.’

Malakai turns and looks straight ahead, at nothing, eyes narrowed in thought for a few moments before he nods. ‘Yeah. Me neither.’ In a beat, the rain outside pummels a little heavier, and he adds, ‘But I still think I would do some things differently. Better.’

Something twists violently, painfully inside me, making it harder to breathe suddenly, and a sharp sensation appears within my left temple.Why would he say that? Why did he say that? Why did he have to go and say that? What does he mean by that?

And I know it’s my ego, because Malakai’s life is expansive, and in the grand scheme of things I’m a blip, a glitch in the trajectory of his life, and it stings, but it’s true, and, still, I can’t help it, arrogantly, selfishly, I want to know where I fit into that thought. Does he mean not kissing me at that uni party eight years ago? Does he mean not walking out of a hotel room three years ago? Does he mean not having sex with me three months ago? Does he mean none of that, because, remember, I’m a blip, a glitch in the trajectory of his life and it doesn’t matter either way?

A thawing has happened between us, I feel that, and I’m allowing myself to let it feel good– it’s easier than wrestling it– but the Unsaid still makes it hard for me to breathe easy. It gets stuck in my throat every single time I try. I ask the question that’s been clinging to the roof of my mouth.

‘That guy Taré was talking about. The non-muse muse for “Lost Boys”. In the. . . in the hotel room. That was you, wasn’t it?’

Malakai turns his head to look at me. There’s a middle seat between us that I didn’t realise had disappeared until now, when it appears again to remind me that there’s still a gap here, one that was once a chasm and that perhaps, with some grace, is now a crevice, but, still, it’s here. The shadow has fallen over Malakai’s eyes again and now I know why it feels so familiar, why I recognise its contours. I’ve seen it in my reflection before, and maybe that’s why I didn’t want to see it at first. It’s hard to look your own pain in the eye. It’s heartbreak. My lips part, but I can’t speak because the Unsaid is still turgid. I really want to cry and I don’t know why. Malakai opens his mouth, but it seems like the same thing is happening to him. My phone buzzes– a voice note from Taré.

‘HI, MY BABESSS, OK, LISTEN. I’M SORRY. I AM A MESS. I WAS CHANGING AND I JUST GOT THIS IDEA FOR A SONG AND I STARTED DITHERING AND PLAYING AROUND WITH THE GUITAR AND I THINK I GOT SOMETHING– LOOK, LISTEN TO THIS. . . HANG ON. . . IT’S GOOD, RIGHT? DON’T WORRY. TELL MALAKAI I GOT MY HAND-HELD– I’M FILMING IT ALL. HE CAN WORK HIS MAGIC WITH IT. HE’S SUCH A DIVA. OK, SO YOU GUYS GO AHEAD AND HAVE FUN. JUST SAY THE PASSWORD AT THE DOOR. I’LL MEET YOU THERE IN AN HOUR OR SO. OK, LOVE YA. BYEEEEE. DON’T DO ANYTHING I WOULD HAVE DONE THREE YEARS AGO!. . . OH, SHIT, SORRY. THE PASSWORD IS “DESERT RAIN”.’

I play the voice note out loud and the shadow in his eyes is swallowed by a light that reappears as he laughs and runs a hand across his face. ‘Wow. We’ve really been out here for nothing.’

Like a coward, I greedily take the out offered instead of dwelling on what just happened. ‘The song does sound sick, though.’

‘It does.’ He clears his throat. ‘So should we still go to this ting? That cool with you?’

I shrug. ‘We’re here and we’re here. Let’s go.’

Malakai smiles. ‘I like that. We’re here and we’re here. Let’s go.’

Chapter 11

Desert Rain, in the Here andHere

Malakai lowers the car window and says the password into the crackle of an intercom. Ornate black gates swing open to reveal a behemoth of glass and brick. Honeyed light flows through its panes as amapiano drums thump so loudly the sound permeates the thick tinted glass of the sedan. Through six-metre glass panes, I see high ceilings and geometrically irregular glass shapes hanging from them, creating a glowing halo around the house. Those chandeliers definitely cost the same as the GDP of a small island. I make a note to snap them and send to Chioma, tap into her interior-design intel to see if I can get details of just exactly how unethical this place is that we’re about to enter, just for bants.

The tyres smooth over the sprawling driveway, lined by inground spotlights, creating a path of moonlight for us. The plaque on the pillar at the gate named the mansion ‘House of Alkebulan’, which I find an intriguing name for a home in Hampstead Heath that looks like it’s owned by a tech billionaire in a murder-mystery caper.

‘Mango.’ Malakai’s voice dips into the silence, warming me. We had fallen into a conversation so easy in the twenty-minute car ride that I had begun to feel uneasy. My bones were starting to slip into the satin of our words, smoothing around each other even when they were jabbing. I tell myself that this was a good thing, not a reopening of what we were, but the maintenance of a new healthy working environment. We’re congenial colleagues, that’s all, professionals who are bonded by a zany boss. We can be out together, alone, without it getting weird, because we’re grown-ups. Except, I guess, when Malakai starts saying random words as if the potential awkwardness of the situation is making him malfunction.

‘What? You hungry?’

We’re pulling up to what looks like a line of mostly G-Wagons forming a V, at the apex of which sits the house. Preternaturally sexy people step out of every other vehicle, dripped out in selectively styled designer, and I already know when I get out the car the air’s gonna smell like Francis Kurkdjian’s burp. ‘Well, yeah, I’m hungry, but, nah, mango’s our code. If either of us want to cut, we say the word.’ Malakai turns to me as the car slows to a stop, his eyes nebulas, and I can feel them birthing stars in my eyes; he’s calling me in to conspiracy. His gaze is dark and bright and carrying every colour, limitless possibilities, and I can see it, he’s in this, he’s sold, we’re here and we’rehere,and all of a sudden I know that this night is going to be a unit unto itself. Whatever is born here dies here. You only live once–that’s the motto, baby, mango.

I smile. ‘OK.’