Page 26 of The Death of Vivek Oji

My cousin laughed. “We haven’t been children in a longtime. I didn’t hear pim from you after the village. I thought you would reach out after that.”

The room was heavy and silent. He wasn’t making any accusations, not yet, but I could feel them anyway, like pinpricks against my skin. “I didn’t mean to just disappear,” I said, but then my voice trailed off.

“Well, it felt like you didn’t want to see me. I thought maybe you were disgusted.”

“Vivek...”

“You sounded disgusted by me.” A corner of his mouth twisted. “Trust me, I know what that sounds like coming from you. I’ve heard it before.” The way I’d looked at him after the incident with Elizabeth: he was right, I’d been disgusted then, but only because I had lost Elizabeth.

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “It wasn’t your fault, what happened at the boys’ quarters. You couldn’t control what was going on with you.”

“That sorry is late,” Vivek replied. “I don’t need it anymore. I know it wasn’t my fault.”

He sighed and looked at me. “Why did you come here? What do you want?”

Now I was ashamed. I hadn’t come to see if he was okay; I’d come because I needed him, and it was only now dawning on me how incredibly selfish that was. “I’m an idiot,” I said out loud. “You’re right, I shouldn’t have come here.” I began to turn away, but Vivek stood up.

“Wait, wait. I didn’t say that. Seriously, I want to know. Why did you come?”

I didn’t turn back to him. It was easier to tell the story if I wasn’t looking at him, if I was looking at the wall and the window, the trees outside it. “It’s stupid,” I said, and was horrified to feel tears sharp behind my eyes. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Osita.” Vivek’s voice was a ruler, flat and hard. “Tell me.”

So I told him, my voice unstable and small: About the small, dark club I’d been in the previous weekend, the young university student who leaned in to kiss me in a smoky corner, and the way I allowed it, allowed him even though anyone could look and see us; allowed his tongue to push into my mouth, even kissing him back before I came to my senses and pushed him away and left. About how he tried to talk to me about it the next day, bright-faced and eager, how panicked I felt because I didn’t know what he thought I could give him, what world he thought we lived in where it was safe to do something like that. About how I lied when he brought it up, claiming I couldn’t remember what happened, blaming it on whatever we’d been drinking. About the way his face collapsed in hurt and a fresh aloneness.

“You were the only person I could tell,” I said to Vivek, looking down at my hands. “So I came here.”

He was silent for a moment. “Why did you need to tell anyone?” he asked, finally. “Why didn’t you just keep it a secret? Isn’t that what everyone does?”

I opened my mouth to answer, then closed it again because I didn’t know how to explain it—the thing that the kiss had exhumed in me, the way it was loud, the way it wouldn’t be quiet. I had to do something, to give it room to unfurl, and Vivek was the only place I felt safe.

“So that’s why you came here?” he continued. “Are you ashamed? You don’t want to be like that?”

I scoffed, still not turning to look at him. “How am I supposed to answer that? You want me to stand here and tell you that I don’t want to be like you?”

Vivek’s voice turned cold. “If it’s true, why not say it? What’s your own? You didn’t have a problem saying it before.”

I kept quiet.

“Do you even know what I’m like?” His voice was shadowed with contempt now; he was disgusted by me. “In fact, forget that one. You came here so that—what?—I can make you feel better about yourself? Even after how you treated me, so I can tell you, Oh don’t worry, Osita, it’s okay to be like that?” His voice came closer but I kept my eyes on the wall. Vivek shoved me in the middle of my back. “Is that why you came? So I canfix it for you?”

He pushed me again and I stumbled forward, catching myself against the glass of the window. I couldn’t avoid him; there was nowhere to go, so I turned to face him. My cousin was furious. His eyes were hard and glittering, his mouth was tight. I could understand his anger—after the things I had said to him in the village, for me to come and admit that in the end I was exactly what I’d denied, it must have felt like a betrayal. I had kicked at him, only to come crawling back, asking him to see me. I thought about backpedaling, I could claim the boy at the club had been mistaken, but it was too late: both of us would know I was lying, and as much as Vivek would despise me for it, I would hate myself even more.

“You have no shame,” Vivek spat. “What do you want from me?”

I used to know the answer to that. I had just wanted to talk to someone who would understand, but now, faced with him and the fatigue bracketing his mouth, I shocked myself. I watched my hand wrap around his wrist, my fingerprints marking his skin as I surged forward and kissed him so hard that my teeth knocked against his, the way I’d wanted to ever since I’d seen him sitting on my bed at my parents’ house, since I’d woken up that night with his hair on my arm and his body so close to mine. Vivek’s pupils flared as my other hand knotted behind his head. He hit my chest with his free hand, trying to get away, but I couldn’t let him go. Our eyes were locked, two swirling panics, and he wrenched his face away. I was still holding the back of his head and his wrist.

“What are you doing? What are you doing?”

His voice was shaking. I should have let him go—I should have let him go, but I didn’t.

“I don’t know.” My breath was falling on his face, he was so close. I couldn’t look away. His eyes flickered, picking apart the fear in mine. “I don’t know,” I said again. I was starting to get very afraid of the line I’d just crossed. I slowly released his wrist and slid that hand past his ear, into his hair, cupping his head with both hands. It felt as if hot ants were skittering under my skin, all over my body. I tried not to think of how humiliated I was about to be, when he would step away, when he would look at me with a fresh disgust. I held his head so he couldn’t move, not yet—I was stronger than he was—and lowered my mouthto his again. I don’t know why; I hadn’t intended any of this, planned any of it.

I kissed him like I wanted to seduce uncertainty away, slow and gentle, filling my mouth with a plea and pouring it into his. He smelled like grass and wind and clothes that had been dried in the sun. Gradually, I felt him relax and relief overwhelmed me. His mouth softened under mine and then he was kissing me back, his hand like a dropped flower against my chest, petal-light and trembling as if there was a breeze. I stopped the kiss and released his head, dropping my hands to my sides. He could leave if he wanted, he could go.

Vivek stood with his hand still on my chest, his breathing uneven. His head was down, black curls falling onto the embroidered neckline of his caftan, against silver thread. He seemed to be thinking, so I stood still, looking down at him, waiting for him to decide. I deliberately kept my mind empty, except for him, because I knew as soon as I started to think again, I might go mad from what I had just done.

Moments passed. Vivek said nothing; his thoughts were slipping along some invisible course, too far away from me. I braced myself, then slid my right hand along the front of his trousers. My fingers grazed across taut fabric and he gasped, looking up at me in shock. I was relieved to find him so ready, to know that it wasn’t just me. He whispered my name and I stared at him without moving. I took my left hand and pulled his palm to me, pressing it against my jeans so he could feel how hard I was, how much it hurt. My cousin shuddered and leanedinto me, into my hand and against me, and my entire body became one loud thrill.