Page 54 of You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty
A veil of emotion she couldn’t read cloaked his face, but Feyi could feel the effect almost instantly in the air. Something cool and distant drifted in between them.
Alim got out of the bed and pulled on a linen robe, belting it closed. “I thought we talked about this yesterday,” he said. His voice was low and level, but he wouldn’t quite look at her. “I thought you were in.”
“Me?” Feyi stared at him in disbelief. “Don’t worry about me, you’re the one whose family is going to implode over this! It’s not —I’m not worth it. They’re all you have left.”
Alim sat down in a leather armchair and crossed his legs at the knee. His toenails were painted red as oxygenated blood. “You’re not worth it?” he echoed, finally meeting her eyes. “Do you mean that?”
Feyi paused, confused. “What?”
He drifted a hand through the air, looking tired. “Do you mean that? If you’re telling me you’re not worth it, I’ll listen to you, Feyi. I have no interest in replacing who you know yourself to be with my imagination of you. It’s not sustainable in the long term, so if you’re telling me who you are now, telling me not to bother, then be clear.”
Stung, she stared at him for a few seconds, wondering if she should feel insulted or if she had just insulted herself. Alim sighed at her expression and uncrossed his legs, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.
“I don’t mean it badly,” he explained, his hands opening in front of him. “But I cannot coax you into this, Feyi. I won’t. It has to be your choice, entered willingly, you know?”
She shook her head at him. “Bruh, do you know what you’re entering?”
A muscle spasmed in Alim’s jaw. “What do you think, Feyi?” he bit out, his voice sharpening. She flinched, and he sat back in the chair, passing his hands over his face.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice muffled. “I just don’t understand what changed between yesterday and right now. I feel like I’m not talking to the same person.” Alim dropped his hands and looked at her, his face bruised with confused hurt. “Did you change your mind? You can just tell me. We can stop this if you want to. Just say the word.”
The offer sent cold water down Feyi’s back. He’d said it so casually, like they could take the last eighteen hours out back and slit its throat, watch it drain into the grass, clogging the soil with short memories. And then what, they’d go back to what they were before? Polite and distant and longing?
Feyi looked at Alim, and her heart wrenched. He had kissed her. He’d put his mouth to her neck and broken the distance between them, made a choice and now she was throwing it back in his face like he didn’t know what he’d done, or what it would cost him. He had touched her, and wanted her, and now he didn’t know if she wanted him after all, now he was swearing it would be fine if they stopped everything, rewound and erased everything, because it looked like that’s what she wanted, or wanted for him. You fucking idiot, she thought to herself. Put your big-girl panties on. She took hold of her fear and dragged it under control. Alim was looking at her, waiting for an answer, soft distress in the lines of his face. Feyi let out a deep breath and sank to the floor, sitting cross-legged and resting her hands on her ankles. She took a couple more breaths before she spoke.
“Aren’t you afraid?” she asked, looking up at Alim.
He stood up from the chair to sit on the floor across from her, mirroring her pose. “Feyi, I’m ashamed to admit this, but I’m fucking terrified.”
A knot in her chest eased up a little. “Of what?”
Alim gave a short laugh that sounded more sad than anything. “Breaking my son’s heart. You deciding this is too much to bother with, or that you got … carried away, perhaps. This turning out to not be real.”
He had no business being as fine as he was gentle. It made it hard for Feyi to think about a rest of the world outside this and him.
“How do we know if it’s real?” she said, her voice folding. “I’m scared that you’ll wake up from this and look at me like, What the fuck was I doing, you know? I’m scared you’ll wake up and I’ll still be in it.”
“Oh, Feyi.” Alim’s eyes had gone impossibly liquid. “Tell me when you’re afraid. Tell me whatever you’re feeling. I’ll take whatever it is over you pushing me away.”
“It just—it seems too much. Like, there’s messy, but this is some next-level shit.”
Alim laughed a little and looked out the window. A parrot wheeled past, red and blue feathers fanned out in the air. “You know, last night I thought about what Marisol would say.”
“Yikes. How would that go?”
“Oh, she’d be furious with me. Incandescently annoyed. Not for how I feel about you, but for how I went about it.” Alim looked back at Feyi, and the corner of his mouth tugged up. “I moved more recklessly than I should have. Marisol always called me impetuous; she was the careful one.”
“Wouldn’t she be on Nasir’s side?”
Alim wrinkled his nose. “Marisol wasn’t the type of person to take sides, not in that way. Not when it’s this complicated. She … she wanted people to be as kind as possible, even making difficult choices.” He sighed and shook his head. “The kindest way to go about this situation would probably have been to talk to you first, then talk things through with Nasir before moving forward.”
“I mean … that does sound extremely responsible.”
“What would Jonah have thought?”
The question shouldn’t have felt as unexpected as it did, with the strangeness of Jonah’s name coming from Alim’s mouth. Feyi could see Jonah’s face as easily as ever, his eyes tightening as he burst into laughter, his locs falling around his shoulders. Missing him felt like a fist swallowing her heart. She blinked back tears.
“He would’ve thought it was hilarious,” she said. “He loved people being messy as fuck—he said it was one of the best things about being human, how we could make such disasters and recover from them enough to make them into stories later.” Feyi bit her lip, feeling the odd mix of anger and love that sometimes came up when she thought of Jonah. “I was so mad after he died because I knew he would think it was just going to become part of my story, a disaster I’d recover from, and it made me so angry because I didn’t want to recover. I didn’t want to keep having a story. I wanted our stories to run together and stop at the same time, so neither of us would have to be alone. I got married thinking that’s what would happen, and then he literally fucking died before our first anniversary.” Feyi dashed tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. “So yeah, he would think this was funny, me having feelings for someone else, and now I’m actually mad about it.”