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I snort as I perch on a concrete bench that I imagine has been designed by a highly acclaimed architect, but is highly uncomfortable. ‘Remember when my dad put extra-hot yaji on the suya the first time you came to the restaurant? Wanted to test how well you could handle the heat. He said any man who wants to “court” his daughter must be able to handle intense pressure without sweating. “If he can’t handle a little peppeh, what else can’t he handle?”’

‘Listen. I thought I was gonna die. He was asking me my intentions whilst my entire face was on fire’

‘There was a vein poppin’ on your temple.’

‘I just had to become one with the pain. You know how Simba saw Mufasa in the sky? Yeah, I saw my grandad.’

I howl, my eyes beginning to water, and Malakai nods with gravity, eyes twinkling, as he sits next to me.

‘The one who died before I was born. His spirit told me to carry on, in the midst of the pepper choking me. My grandad told me that this was all for my future wife and this was just a trial of manhood I had to get through. Man just had to firm it. I was there to impress my girl’s pops–nothing was gonna mess with that.’

My laughter quiets, but the awkwardness I expect to feel doesn’t come. It feels good to acknowledge that what we had wasgood.My phone vibrates and I see two things: a text from Taré informing us she can’t make it and a missed call from Aminah. She calls me again and I stare at her name flashing on my phone. I know enough by now to know it might be because she’s decided on different flowers or a different sort of fish for the entrée or she wants to switch up the style for her bridal hair, and I brace against it. I can’t be on call right now.

Malakai wraps the suya stick in a serviette and puts it to the side. ‘You need to get that?’

‘No. Taré isn’t coming any more by the way. So, um, we don’t have to stay if you don’t—’

‘Why would I want to go?’ his tongue nips out to lick some residual spice left on his thumb, ‘I like to finish what I started.’

I can see shimmering, feverish waves in the air between us.

‘The Quest To Find M, I mean,’ Malakai says, glancing away from me with a quick clearing of his throat. ‘If I can consume suya spice that would break the Scoville scale in front of your dad without dying, discovering the identity of a mysterious cultural benefactor is a piece of piss.’

I release a stilted laugh and try to will a grip to come into my possession and fast. ‘Well, you definitely earned his respect. And he thought you were hilarious. You know, afterwards, he laughed so much there were tears in his eyes? Thought it was the funniest thing in the world that you refused to drink any water as if you were legit trying to prove something.’

Malakai’s brow props up and his face sobers. ‘What do you mean? Iwas. I was trying to prove I was good enough for you. That was serious business for me,’ he rubs his chin with a brusque laugh, ‘Man, I wanted your dad to like me so bad you have no idea. It meant a lot that he did. Shout out to Grandad for carrying me through.’

I smile in bemusement. ‘I know you’re playing, but . . . just so you know, my dad didn’t like you because you managed to handle a lethal amount of spice, Malakai. It’s because he saw how you were with me.’

Malakai is quiet for a while. He stretches out a leg, then leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He turns to me, head bowed, releasing a rueful smile that immediately fails in its purpose of keeping things light. ‘Your pops must hate me now.’

‘My dad would only hate you if I hated you.’

I pause and look out, seeing an Oscar winner making out with a Tony nominee. It’s nice when people find each other. I turn back to him, and the only thing left is truth. ‘I’m angry at you. I’m confused by your actions, but I don’t hate you. I could never fucking hate you. Trust me–I tried.’

Malakai’s eyes glimmer and he swallows, turning away from me before nodding quickly, as if to shoo away any soft feeling. Eventually, he says, voice gravelly, with a light choke of a laugh, ‘I’m angry at you too. Confused by you too.’

‘I think I’m pretty straightforward—’

‘Nah, Kiki, you’re anything but.’

‘Really? Because I don’t think it’s complicated to want someone who tells you the truth.’

‘I think it’s complicated to say you love someone and not trust that they would never do anything to hurt you.’

‘And yet you did, so where does that leave us?’

Malakai’s eyes glint into mine, reassuming the stand-off into which we’re perpetually finding ourselves, melting into a rhythm and then tripping over our past.

I release a stilted gust of a laugh. ‘Why does it even make a difference to you? Whether I hated you or not?’

‘It kept me up at night.’

‘You don’t have to be a dick about it.’

‘I’m not, Kiki.’ Malakai swallows and looks ahead, as if trying to conceal emotion. He cracks his knuckles, and his breathing feels considered. ‘It was the weirdest fucking thing. The idea of you hating me. . .Man, it made me feel like shit, but, also, I couldn’t deal with younothating me. Like I needed to believe you hated me so I could, like, unstickmyself from us.’

There’s a somatic discordance within me, something in between the delicious relief of knowing that Malakai could have never hated me if he hadn’t wanted me to hate him, with the petty belief that he might as well have, since he walked out on me the way he did. The most damning thing of all is that I know exactly how he feels. I know what it feels like to desperately want to unstick yourself from a relationship that seems to be tacked on to you on a psychic level, so tight, so strongly, that the more you struggle the worse it gets. You beg for anything to help you rip it off, desperate enough to manufacture a belief that the other person hates you. I try to examine what it all means in my mind, but the material is so soft that it falls apart when I try to hold it, look at it closely, see what it is, what it means. Maybe it’s for the best.