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“I have a boyfriend, Ma. You can reach out to your prophet. We could use some prayers and blessings. If he won't be too distracted trying to fuck me, that is.”

The quietness this time could alter eardrums.

“I have a boyfriend,” he repeated. He could say only those words for the rest of his life.

“And sometimes, I think I will die from how totally, irrevocably and deeply I am in love with him.

It's like…he just exists, and I can't breathe. So, I seek his mouth for my oxygen. Like eeevery time.” He shook his head.

“It's baffling, I know. Even I can't explain the science.

But guess I'm grateful for it. You see, he has the most beautiful mouth I've ever se en on any human. His face too. You should see his face. Fuck. What was God think—”

“Stop.” Ma looked like she'd burst an artery. Or arteries. She was probably bleeding to death as she stared at him. “I know you're lying. I've seen your women. It worked. Everything worked. You're free.”

Laughter tore out of him. “Yeah, I guess I am. Completely free. Of you, and to love whom my heart has chosen.”

Her face began to contort. “No. No. Eyi, please. Remember what the scriptures say.”

He remembered all right. The three weeks he stayed bedridden.

Dank walls caging him in, submerged in smells of mouldy clay, unwashed bed sheet, and essential balm.

Ma seated in her wing chair, scarf tightly wound around her head, her thick bible held out like a shield, chanting the same words repeatedly like they could invade his sick brain and organs, and repair them.

Her eyes held the same crazed look, the brimming tears making them crazier. “If a man lies with a male as one lies with a woman, they have committed an abomination. And the two of them shall be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them.”

Hearing those words, a heaviness began to build within him. The guilt, the uncertainty, the shame. If he stayed another minute here, he could really die. He got up. “Then, let me die, Ma,” he said. “If it is my fate, let me die.”

His sisters, who had sat frozen as he talked, got up with him.

“Ey—Timi…” Lara whispered.

Ma stretched out a frantic bony hand, reverting to Yoruba.

“Eyitomilayo, come. Come to your mother, ehn.

No one will love you more than me. Everything I did was for you.

Can't you see my heart?” Her words stumbled over each other; her voice urgent.

“I'm dying, my son. Ah, egbami. What will I tell God?

That my only son's soul is lost? Your father's lineage, gone. How will I—”

“How's your little tape recorder, Ma?” Timi asked, as he began advancing.

“Did you and your god have a good time listening to your son as he begged the women you engaged to rape him to stop?” He faced his sisters.

“Did you all enjoy listening? Happy that I'd been cured?” He stooped before his mother's face, who had begun whispering to herself.

“How about your beloved prophet, Ma?” he asked softly.

“Tell me again why you hate Agu despite all he's done for you? His threats offended you? Which one exactly? That he will beat you? Drown you? Lock you in a freezer? Cut you to tiny bits? Which one slighted you the most, so I can tell if you guessed the most painful. Should you fear to receive exactly what you inflicted on your son?”

A heavy sob broke out, and Timi raised his gaze towards his sisters. Tola was staring at him in shock. And Lara's fists were on her face as she cried into them. They'd known, hadn’t they? The bruises. They'd seen it and said nothing.

He straightened. “You ask what you should tell God when you see him? Ask him…”A vice clamped his chest, and he took a deep breath to keep his voice from breaking. “Ask him why he replicated my soul and placed it in a body I'm forbidden to love.”

He turned to leave, and that’s when he saw him. Standing at the now-open doors, staring at him with a distraught look.

Alex.

His lungs seized up. The tears he’d been keeping at bay stabbed through with vengeance. When he volunteered to accompany him, Timi had declined. He'd only wanted to pop in and out. Let them know he held no grudges. How had he known to follow him?

As they stared at each other, he realised then death had shifted from something fearful to a befitting reward of a life thoroughly lived.

At every notable point in his existence, three people had seen every part of his soul and loved him with a consuming and ardent devotion. Luck couldn’t get luckier than that. He’d lucked out on luck. Reality had eventually trumped possibility. If he died now, he died well.

His legs began moving, an almost incorporeal quality to their movements. They floated towards the man at the door, whose raging vital force called to everything unchartered within him.

His love, his home, his life.

The last of him .

"You came, again," he whispered as soon as he got close. Close enough to feel his heat, but still so far away, his bones ached.

Alex's gaze didn't leave his. "You're here. Where else could I be?" His eyes brimmed with heart-aching tenderness and an emotion Timi couldn't exactly place.

The nurse, who had come to investigate the noise, muttered a gruff “excuse me” as she brushed past him, and then, Ma's voice was ringing out. Breathy with incredulity.

“You…”

Timi turned around. Her face was a mask of shock, her bulging eyes focused on the man behind him. Confused, Timi returned his gaze to Alex, who stared back at Ma now, brows furrowed.

Then, Ma lost it. Yanking at the needles on her arm with a manic strength she shouldn’t possess, trying to get to Alex.

“You! You took my son away from me! Didn't I beg you to leave him alone?! For thirteen years, he was okay without you! Why did you have to show up?”

The nurse and his sisters held her down, but she kept on struggling. Pity welled as he took in the scene. Some things could never change. He would never have the love of the one person genetically programmed to love him. And he was finally okay with that.

Wearily, he turned to ask Alex to take him home, but Alex's gaze was on Ma, tears pooling in his eyes. No shock or surprise or even an affront at being mistaken for Timi’s first love.

And it was as though a blind spot in Timi's brain split open.

Traces of that face appeared within Alex's familiar one. Diamond-shaped. Slightly wobbly cheeks. Plump lips. The long eyelashes. Those eyes blazing with intensity.

Kainye.