Page 72

Malakai gesticulated, his own annoyance simmering to the top, and I felt it, the ground beginning to quake beneath us. I began to smell the smoke in the air. ‘Scotch, I didn’t tell you because you already suspected the girl and preciselybecauseI’m moving to LA at the same time as her. I knew how you would react—’

I released a pastiche of a smile. ‘OK! And how am I reacting, Malakai? Please enlighten me.’

Malakai straightened, his words as deliberate as a bullet from a sniper. ‘Like someone who isn’t mature enough for a long-distance relationship.’

My heart and stomach dived to my bare feet, and my tears began to chase each other, joining each other for company. I nodded, turning my lips down as if impressed. In a way, I was. Finally, some feeling from him. I kept all emotion out of my voice. I kept calm despite the fact that I could feel the sky falling heavy on my skin, weighing me down. I could have fallen down.

Instead, I said, ‘Oh. There it is. Is that what you’ve been doing, then, Kai? A slow-fade break-up? What, are you too cowardly to actually do it? Do you want me to make it easier for you?’

Malakai held still, his eyes glinting. ‘You’re talking reckless and I don’t like it, Kiki. In what world are we going to break up—’

‘In a world where you rock up to dinner half an hour late smelling like another woman’s cheap perfume and callingmeimmature, guy.’ I could feel it, all the repressed hurt from the past few months reaching boiling point.

Regret flitted across Malakai’s face, but it mingled with anger, so it stayed stolid. ‘Kiki, I said I’m sorry.’

‘Yeah, but you’re not, though.’ I rose a finger and rocked back onto the ball of my foot as the tears streamed down my face. ‘And I don’t need you to lie to me again.’ I shook my head. ‘Because the truth is you have been running from me for the past few months and you’re talking about how I need to trust you.’

Malakai scratched his jaw, his eyes dark and weighty with a war of emotion. ‘Well, Scotch, this isn’t gonna work if you don’t. And maybe because we’re in different career stages that you don’t relate to—’

I choked out an empty husk of a laugh. ‘Fuck you, Malakai. How dare you? What, I don’t relate to drinking in bars with sleazebag directors?’

‘Is that what you think I do, yeah?’

‘How would I know? It’s not like you let me in any more. And, yeah, you’re working hard to please your dad, I know, but just be careful you’re not making the same mistakes as him on the way. Make sure you still have a home to come back to.’ I gasped as soon as the words were in the air between us, serrated blades that I could see cut through him immediately. My hand flew to my mouth as Malakai’s eyes became shiny, and all emotion drained from his face, hurt so acute that his body instantly packed it away.

‘Shit. Shit, I didn’t mean that, Kai.’ I rushed towards him, but he stood back, shook his head.

‘Nah, you’re right, Kiki.’ His voice sounded alien, like it was coming from a different body, a different person, ‘Maybe I’m just like him. Maybe I rushed into something too serious in life. Maybe it’s not that you’re immature, it’s that we both are.’

‘Malakai.’ I moved closer, held his face in my hands and the fragments of our world that were falling around us. ‘No. No. I was just pissed.’

He pulled away from me. Fuck, he was pulling away from me.

‘Kiki, look at what we’re doing to each other? I’m going to LA in a month and look at where weare?’ He bent at the knees, hands outstretched, eyes shiny. ‘We’rekillingeach other.’

It was then that the panic set in. Because now there was no question. We were teetering on the brink. It’s like I could see the bright, light pieces of what we were falling around us, scraping against the jagged edges of what we are now.

‘So what are you saying, Kai?’

The look that Malakai threw almost made my knees buckle. I’d never seen it in him before. Defeat. His own eyes were full and gleaming. ‘I’m tired, Kiki. I can’t do this and deal with everything else right now.’

‘Malakai,whatare you saying to me right now?’ My voice was ragged, frayed and barely coming out in a whisper, so scared of what was happening– this could not be happening. We were inevitable, a sure thing. We were the sun itself. We were us, forever us. What was happening?

Malakai crumpled and his hand came to his face, to hide within it, to run against it. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know, Scotch. It’s just. . . it’s too much.’

It wrapped around my heart, squeezed till I couldn’t breathe, and without realising what I was doing I went to him, and wrapped my arms round him, and he wound his right back, holding tight as if he was trying to anchor himself to me, tether himself to us. He pulled slightly away to look at me, and his eyes were so bright with our old love, and instead of giving me hope it killed it, because they were bright like a supernova, our love flaring like a star on its dying breath. And even then every part of my body was reaching towards him. My fractured heart pounded with all its diminishing might with need, desperation, the rhythm pulsing right through to the junction between my legs. Malakai, reading the look on my face like he’d written it, because he had, silently laid me down carefully on the bed, like I was built from gossamer and glass. We stripped each other of our clothes. We weren’t going to talk any more– we couldn’t, shouldn’t. What was there to say? Time was slipping, the sun was sinking, the ocean dying. When we kissed it was with ferocious sweetness, our bodies tangled, needing as much skin touching as possible, our tongues licking into each other’s mouths as if to capture all the words that refused to be released, that were too heavy, too light, too useless; hands roaming, squeezing, caressing, surrendering to the alchemy of us as I turned to river under his touch and he turned to rock under mine. He leant over me, a hand cradling my face as my hands pressed against his back. We paused, as if trying to suspend time, knowing this would be the last time. My eyes were already filling, but Malakai’s eyes were focused, leaden with intensity and concentration, like he was anchoring himself to this moment, as if we only existed inside it, as if we had to be, otherwise we would turn to dust. I followed his lead, not wanting to waste this time and this world where the only air I was inhaling was his breath made rapid by my touch, this space where the only thing I could see was him seeing me, our Pangea where my skin and his skin knew no borders. I spread my legs wider round him in welcome, and Malakai brought his face to my neck, his lips hot on my throat as he sank into me deep, so deliciously deep, boundless-ocean deep, that I cried out with both pleasure and pain as he filled me with all his pleasure and pain, slowly rocking me with it, his fingertips pressing hard into the flesh of my thigh, and I wanted him to press into me harder, like maybe if he did he would leave indents of his body, of his love, that I could trace when I missed him, which would be always.

My arm moved to slip down his back till it slid over a firm, smooth curve and pushed him closer, and he growled and somehow went deeper. This time he pushed tears down my face, bringing his face to mine, and he kissed me slow as we passed our hearts back and forth to each other. It felt like hours, saying goodbye over and over, till it was no longer just about feeling, but being, in the moment, staying suspended, not wanting to detangle, delaying reality. I didn’t know when we fell asleep, but we did, in each other’s arms, sweaty, all our energy given to each other as tribute. When I opened my eyes, it was around 5 a.m. and peachy-pink dawn was stretching through the windows, mocking us with its freshness, its hope. He was sat in the armchair in the corner of the bedroom, dressed. When he turned to me, his eyes were reddened, tired. I was tired too. Bone tired.

‘Scotch.’ I knew from the sound of his voice. It sounded exactly like the crack of a heart.

‘Don’t say it.’

‘If we stay together, if I go when we’re like this, we won’t make it. You don’t trust me. After everything we’ve been through, you don’t trust me, and that shit hurts, Scotch. And I need to focus on this job when I’m away.’

What was I supposed to do? Argue? Beg? I didn’t beg. Malakai had been silently screaming for his space and who was I to deny him that? We were supposed to be in this together, that was the agreement, that we got each other through whatever, and if he wanted out I wasn’t going to stop him. I could have said that I wanted him to stay, to fight for us, with me, but how worthy is the fight if you have to ask? So I swallowed it, alongside everything I’d been feeling for the past few months.

‘You’re right.’