Page 10

Zach sits at the traffic light, watching the rain pelt against the windscreen. He told Mali it was going to rain today. He wonders if she thinks about him now that she must be hearing the rain against the office roof. He wonders if she replays their conversations in her head. He wonders if she would think he was a loser for googling things to say to people when you don’t know how to start a conversation. He wonders if she knows how churned up he is inside because she told him a pillow thought, which means she thought about him when she was in bed. Sort of.

He spent a large portion of today with her, and he managed to speak more than four words every time she asked him a question. She even laughed when he asked her if her favourite colour was purple. Zach didn’t need Google for that. Mali didn’t answer him, though—she just laughed and tucked her hair behind her ear. Then some of her hair fell back over her face, and he was tortured with the idea of moving it for her. There isn’t going to be a time where he gets to see her without her wig on, but he wonders what her hair is like. Perhaps she’s bald, like Frankie. She has the face shape for it. Whenever he thinks about her, she has cornrows. If he told his old therapist that, they’d say he wants something that connects them. Something that’s got nothing to do with how badly his life is going right now. Something that means she was in his life when he was happier. Weirdo.

The light turns green… or it turned green a few seconds ago, because someone beeps behind him, and he throws a hand up as he swings around the corner. He turns left when he should have turned right. His house (now full of boxes and a vague sense of doom) isn’t this way. So, apart from the extra time in traffic, he has no idea why he went left.

Then he sees the office. It’s shrouded in darkness despite it only being five pm, as it always is this time of year. The office light is the only thing illuminating the carpark. On game days or at practice, the floodlights are on, but there’s nothing of the sort this evening. There’s no need for him to be here, although he knows why he is. Zach sighs. He could pretend he was never here and go home. Mali won’t drown walking home in the rain. She might even have an umbrella. Someone might already be coming to pick her up. She makes friends with everyone that walks through the door; he wouldn’t be surprised to see the postman turn up to give her a lift home.

He could leave.

He groans as he unlocks his car and jogs to the office door. He looks through the window. There’s no one in there apart from Mali, who is taking photos of the flowers he gave her. It might be strange to buy flowers for a colleague that barely speaks to him, but could he be to blame when she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth every time she looked at them this afternoon? Zach’s chest feels weird again. He takes a deep breath and opens the door.

“Sorry,” she starts, spinning on the spot. “We’re closed. Oh, hey. You’re back.” She’s smiling at him, and it makes his stomach flip.

“I’m back,” he replies, shoving his hands into his pockets.

“I’m just locking up, but I can wait if you’re quick,” she says, perching her bum on the edge of her desk, making her boots squeak against the lino. She’s wearing a skirt today, and the almost see-through black tights make his throat constrict every time he sees them.

“I don’t need anything,” he says, walking closer.

She frowns. “Then why are you here?”

“It’s raining,” he replies, like that would make any sense to her.

“Yeah,” she groans. “Wait…” Here it is. “Did you come back here to gloat?”

She doesn’t seem mad at it if he was. She stands up straight, and her top gets caught in the scrunch of her arms. The sliver of skin that taunts him every day is showing, and his mouth goes dry. So, obviously, he doesn’t respond, and before he knows it, the toes of her boots tap against his trainers. She’s so close he has to look down at her, and she’s stupidly cute from this angle.

“Zachariah probably has a middle name Azan, did you come here to mock me?”

He smiles, not even attempting to tell her not to call him that. He doesn’t mind it so much when it comes from her mouth. It’s like that’s how it was always supposed to be said.

“I, Zachariah Asabi Azan, am innocent,” he replies, and she laughs. An actual laugh. A head titling back, he can see the long expense of her neck, laughing just for the two of them laugh. He smiles wider, and Mali gasps.

“You do smile!”

Zach turns around so she can’t see. “I smile all the time!”

“Fibber,” she replies. Her fingers rest against his back, and the urge to lean into her has forced its way to the front of his mind. Before he has the chance to tense, she spins around him, her fingers never leaving his body.

“Zach, turn around. I’m missing the one time in my life when you’re going to smile at me. I need to memorise your dimple!”

When she stops, she’s facing him again, placing herself between him and the low wall that separates the main office from the kitchen. He looks down at her again, and she’s looking at him with so much wonderment that he wonders if he’ll ever be able to stop smiling.

“You’re so cute, oh my God.”

Zach frowns. “Cute is not how I want to be described.”

“Why not? Cute is good.” He hums, but she speaks before he can say anything else. “What would you want to be called if you’re not cute?”

His mouth goes dry, and embarrassingly, he thinks about all the things she must have called him in her head. A rude loser, probably.

“Hot? Sexy? Grumpy as fuck but still annoyingly attractive?” she asks, and he wonders if she truly thinks that. But earlier she said he wasn’t grumpy, so maybe she thinks Ezra is cute. She could call him anything if she said it while looking at him like that.

“Pretty?” she continues. “Something with ‘bro’ tacked to the end?”

Zach rolls his eyes. “Did everyone leave at, like, three?” Zach knows she rambles when she hasn’t spoken to someone in twelve seconds.

Mali nods with a small pout. “How did you know?”

“Wild guess.” He smirks, and she frowns at him.

“Why are you here?”

“To take you home.”

Her arms drop to her sides. “What?”

“It’s raining.”

“So?”

“Is someone else coming to get you?”

“No, but I live just around the corner.”

“I know where you live.”

“Stalker.”

Zach laughs. “Can I take you home, please?”

Mali narrows her eyes, somehow getting closer when they’re already touching. She smells amazing, even this late in the afternoon. Every day she wafts through the office, and he tries not to follow her like a puppy dog, but now she’s so close, and it’s like she might smell this good just for him.

Stupid man.

“Are you going to run me over with your car?” she asks.

“If I’m trying to get you into my car, wouldn’t it be better to ask if I was planning on crashing it?”

Mali pulls her bottom lip between her teeth, but it’s no use—she laughs all the same.

“Please don’t. I have a big meeting next week.”

“What’s it about?”

“Can’t tell you,” she replies, walking away. He almost reaches out to keep her here, but his fingers rub uselessly against his trousers instead.

“Why not? I won’t tell anyone.”

Mali looks at him like he must understand why she can’t tell him. They’re not friends, and it’s his fault.

“How would you tell anyone when you never talk to anyone?”

“I talk to you.”

Mali snorts. “Sometimes.” Then she grabs her bag, looks over at him, and sighs. “Promise? Because I haven’t even told Frankie yet.”

Zach’s positively ecstatic at the fact she’s telling him anything. That she told him enough he had something to pull at. He draws a cross over his heart and says, “Hope to die.”

Mali looks at him with a serious face. “I can’t believe you do things like that, and you won’t let me call you cute.”

Zach laughs. “Get in the car, Okeye.”

The drive to Mali’s house takes six minutes, and she talks the entire time. He knows what she’s having for dinner, and that Buffy doesn’t usually like men, and that she bought a new wig but doesn’t have anywhere to wear it. He knows she laughs at her own jokes (though he knew that anyway because she giggles to herself when she’s at her computer alone). He knows she looks at him every time she’s finished a sentence and wants to see how he’s reacting.

He knows he’s going to carve out the time around five p.m. every single night and pray for rain so he can watch her fingers drum against her knees when she turns the music up, and he knows he’s going to smell her in his car from now until forever.