Page 46 of You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty

Nasir raised his eyebrows even as his eyes were drifting shut. “I’m not drunk,” he argued. “I’m just very … sleepy.”

“Well, you can crash here if you want. I’m not sure you could find your way to your room right now.”

“Mm … thanks. But hey, Feyi?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m fucking proud of you, yo. You did the damn thing.”

Feyi smiled and stroked his forehead. “Thanks for everything, Nasir. For real.”

He nodded and snuggled deeper into the pillow. “I’ma sleep now,” he announced.

“Aight. Get some rest.”

“Okay. Love you.”

Feyi froze in place, praying that she hadn’t heard what she just heard. When a few minutes passed and Nasir started snoring lightly, she cursed under her breath and hid her face in her hands, dread thickening around her heart.

Chapter Thirteen

“This is the worst fucking idea I’ve ever heard,” Joy said, her voice crackling over the phone connection, her frown pixelated. It was early the next morning and Feyi was still in bed, chatting to Joy through her earphones. Nasir had rolled out of bed an hour before, yawning as he padded out of the room, and Feyi had pretended to still be asleep then.

“It’s not my idea,” she replied. “Nasir’s the one traveling, and he has to because it’s for work. Besides, it’s only for a week.”

“So go with him! Definitely don’t stay in the same house alone with his sexy-ass father whose fingers you licked mango foam off of! I swear to God.” Joy pinched her nose and shook her head. “This is exactly how incest porn starts.”

“He didn’t invite me! He asked if I’d be okay hanging out at the house alone for a week, and I said sure. I can start thinking about that commission, maybe even get some work done.”

“Okay, boo, you’re killing me here. One”—Joy counted off on her clear sparkly nails—“you’re not alone in the house, Mr. Sexy Genius Daddy Chef is right fucking there, and two, you’re not gonna be catching up on ‘work,’ you’re going to be hooking up with his fa-ther!”

She punctuated the syllables of the last word with two claps, and waited for Feyi to argue back and claim innocence, but when Feyi just sighed and looked down, Joy’s voice turned worried.

“Babe,” she said, “talk to me.”

“Look, I’m going to leave for the Hilton as soon as I can, but real talk, I don’t wanna go with Nasir.” Feyi’s voice splintered by a fraction. She felt fragile and hungover. “What I really wanna do is stay here and make my work even though I know that means being around Alim, and I know this crush I have is stupid and wrong and five kinds of fucked-up, plus the man’s literally old enough to be my father, but I—I like what it feels like being around him, and we’re kind of friends, and yeah, I get that it can’t ever be anything more than that. I get that he and Rebecca are a better fit, I get that none of this is real, it doesn’t count as the real world, this is just some mountain paradise he’s built for himself, but it’s been nice to be in it, you know? Apart from all the crush bullshit, it feels better than I’ve felt in a while, now I have another friend I can talk to about Jonah—”

“Whoa, hold up. You talked to his dad about Jonah?”

Feyi shrugged. “He lost someone, too, he knows what it’s like.” She wiped her eyes roughly. “Look, I know you don’t approve, and maybe you don’t get what it’s like to be alone in a particular way, when the person you thought you’d spend the rest of your life with is gone, like gone forever. But I always feel alone, Joy, and I know Alim does, too, and when I’m here it’s like … it’s like I found someone to be alone next to, even just for a little bit. I’m not tryna do anything with him. I just wanna enjoy the last few days or however long before I leave and literally never see him again.” She pressed her hands against her face. “Okay, you can yell at me now, I know this is crazy.”

“First of all, bitch, that’s ableist, don’t say that.” Feyi laughed and dropped her hands to see Joy smiling at her. “Second of all, that makes complete sense, and I’m never here to judge you, babe. You made a new friend, and yeah, you have a pretty disastrous crush on him and it will probably tear apart his family if anything happens between y’all, so that’s some pretty tragic unrequited shit, but that’s still a friend who knows a little bit about what you’re going through. So, fuck it. Live your life, boo.” Joy shrugged and popped her gum. “No one’s gonna die, shit.”

“You bring up a fair point.”

Feyi didn’t tell her what Nasir had whispered before he fell asleep the night before, or even that he had stayed over in her room. There was no point. After he left, she’d decided that he meant it as a friend, that’s all. Joy would turn it into something it wasn’t.

“You’re lucky to have me,” she was saying. “Voice of reason and perspective. When’s Nasir heading out?”

Feyi pulled off her bonnet. “Late this evening, I think.”

“Damn, that’s quick! I guess you wouldn’t even have had time to tag along.”

“Yeah, it sounded like some last-minute emergency shit, but it’s a short flight to Antigua, so …”

“So you could technically still jump on that plane with him?”

Feyi cut her eyes at her best friend, and Joy raised her hands, backing off.