Page 19 of You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty

“Yeah, sure.” Nasir took one last look around the studio as they left. “Thanks for showing me this. I can feel how important your work is to you.”

Feyi hit the light switch, and the room fell into darkness. They walked a few blocks back to her building, and as they stepped through the first front door, Feyi felt her pulse quicken. There was something small but important happening in her chest, a tiny leaf of want that wasn’t detached, that wasn’t armored and dismissive. It felt terrifying, like it would bruise and break if she touched it the wrong way, but this was Nasir. He was slow and gentle, he was making her believe that everything would be okay. She paused in the foyer, her keys hanging from her hand. Nasir placed his palm on the small of her back, one of his thousand familiar touches.

“You okay?” he asked, concern lilting in his voice.

Stop thinking, Feyi told herself. Stop thinking and just move. Before the fear could stop her, she turned and slid a hand behind Nasir’s head, pulling his face down to hers and kissing him with a mouth full of trust. It felt different from Milan—she had been sure and reckless then, certain that nothing there could hurt her, that she was absent enough to be invincible. With Nasir, it felt like a risk, like something sweet and dangerous, like flames licking around them. He kissed her back, but gently, carefully, and Feyi pulled away.

“Don’t do that,” she said. “Don’t hold back.” If he treated her like she was fragile, that was the one thing that would make her break. Feyi didn’t think she could stand it, to be touched so tentatively. People had turned her into webbed glass after Jonah died; it made her feel like a relic, not a person.

Nasir held her face in his hands, his eyes searing into hers. “Are you sure?” he asked.

Feyi bit her lower lip and nodded.

Nasir raised an eyebrow. “It’s not because I seduced you with a show and a fancy vacation now, is it?”

“Oh my God.” Feyi started to laugh, then broke off because he was kissing her again, unrestrained this time, his tongue sliding into her mouth, his hands trapping her face, and Feyi found herself pressed against the mailboxes, old brass cutting into her back, soft sounds being pulled up from her throat. Nasir tasted like the peppermint gum he liked, sharp and clear, like the start of a second chance. Feyi’s heart was thundering, blood roaring in her ears, Nasir’s hands sinking into her braids, his lips moving to the side of her neck, her pulse jumping against his teeth. She clutched at the back of his neck and looked at the tin ceiling of the foyer, feeling the world around her melt into something unreal, blurred at the edges.

Nasir nipped at her earlobe. “I’ve been dying to kiss you since the first time I saw you at that bar,” he whispered, his warm breath swirling on her skin.

Feyi hid a smile. “I hoped you would,” she confessed. “Just for a moment, when we were fighting on the roof.”

Nasir pulled back, his eyes surprised. “Really? I thought you were going to tear out my throat back then.”

She lifted and dropped a shoulder. “I didn’t know you back then.”

Nasir’s eyes softened, and he ran his thumb across her lower lip, gloss smearing off its fullness. “But you know me now,” he said, and Feyi could feel the weight of the question behind it. Do you trust me now? Do you know I don’t intend to hurt you, that I mean everything I say? Do you know that I care?

He was so sweet, so terrifying in what he could represent, the possibility of someone actually seeing her. A world after Jonah.

Feyi forced her fear back and smiled at him. “I do,” she said, pulling him down so she could kiss him again, feel him press against her with all that want he’d been holding in his body. “I think I know you now.”

“Good,” he murmured, and the word trailed like smoke from his tongue, losing itself in her mouth.

Chapter Five

The next morning, Feyi and Joy went for a run, breaking open the weekend with sweat so they could feel like they’d done something useful before they partied it all away. The sun was coming in jagged through the trees, and someone was playing soca from an open window over a fire escape, the music wafting through the heat. Joy’s skin shone a clear amber, gleaming with sunscreen, and her hair was growing back slowly in tiny dark curls on her scalp. Feyi had knotted her gray braids into a bun on top of her head and was trying out a new running set in bright red, shorts and a strappy sports bra. She looked like a gorgeous alarm, a warning splashed over the sidewalk.

The butch lesbian who lived on the corner of their block whistled from her stoop when she saw the girls. “All right, dark chocolate in red!” she called out. “I see you, sexy caramel!”

Joy laughed and yelled back. “Q, you better stop before I tell your wife!”

“Go ’head witcha bad self!”

Feyi blew her a kiss as she and Joy went past the storefront church and down to the bodega on the corner that was being renovated, jogging along a shaded block.

“Nasir asked me to come home with him,” Feyi said, dropping the news casually as she waved to Baba Yusuf through the window of his botanica.

Joy whipped her head around. “I’m sorry, what? Like, to the islands?”

“Yeah. He goes every summer, for a couple of weeks.”

“Isn’t that kind of a big step? You meeting his family?”

“Technically I already met his sister.”

“Mm, that’s right, the little thick one.”

Feyi shook her head. “Stop drooling. Besides, he invited me as a friend. And also, for work reasons. Apparently his dad can get me into a group show—”