Page 63 of You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty
“I know. A bottle broke.” Feyi felt precarious, like she’d been stretched whisper-thin and even the smallest thing would snap her into a thousand sharp pieces.
She could feel Alim’s concern like tendrils of care around her, shielding and soothing, and it made her want to cry. His shirt was damp with sweat, and he smelled like grass and sun, but Nasir was standing right outside the doorway, his face thundering in silence. Alim needed to stop touching her. He was going to make Nasir even more angry. Feyi could see the way Nasir’s eyes were flickering, absorbing every moment his father’s hands brushed Feyi’s skin, the easy intimacy. She could see the way his mouth was beginning to curl, and Feyi wanted to pull away from Alim, but he was wiping the salt water off her face, his thumbs firm against her cheekbones.
“I’m so sorry for this, sweetness,” he said. “I really am. This”— he looked around the room and his face glitched in anger—“this should never have happened.”
Feyi shook her head, holding on to his wrists as she pulled his hands off her. “It’s not your fault,” she whispered. “But, Alim, you need to back up a bit. It’s going to make things worse. He’s watching. Please.”
His mouth twitched and he dropped his hands. “Give me a minute with him,” he said.
Feyi nodded, and Alim turned to the door, to his storm of a son standing outside.
“Downstairs,” he ordered.
Nasir looked at him, full of bitterness and betrayal. “Are you fucking serious?”
Alim took his elbow and steered him toward the staircase. “Downstairs. Now.”
Nasir shook him off angrily but obeyed, his back ramrod straight with fury. Alim followed behind, and Feyi came out of the room and sank to the floor in the corridor, her back against the wall, her suitcase scattered beside her. Her room was a ransacked disaster, and Nasir’s voice kept replaying in her head, telling her to get the fuck out, full of biting hate. A sharp pain wrenched at her heart, the fresh memory replaying over and over. Feyi put her face in her hands and sobbed quietly, her body shaking as she tried to muffle the sounds. Nasir’s and Alim’s voices drifted up the walls, faint but distinct.
“You can’t behave like this, Nasir. It’s not acceptable. Not now, not ever.”
“Dad …” For a second, Nasir sounded like a child again, unsure and unmoored. “Why? Why did you do it?”
Alim paused. “I hear you, and we’re going to talk about that, I swear. But first we need to address what just happened. You don’t ever, and I mean, ever, raise your voice like that or treat someone that way. Jesus, Nasir, I know I raised you better than that.”
Nasir gave a hollow laugh. “Are you really lecturing me about how I talk to the girl you basically just stole from me? Really, Dad?”
“Nasir. Her clothes are on the floor. I walk in and there’s broken glass everywhere, the girl is weeping, and you look like you’re this close to catching a domestic violence charge. It’s unacceptable. I don’t care what your provocation is, you don’t behave like that, and you know better. What would you have done if I hadn’t walked in? Dragged her out by her hair?”
“I don’t want her in this house, Dad. She can’t stay here. She can’t fucking stay here.”
“Language.”
“Fuck language! I brought her here! I invited her into my home, and the minute my back is turned, she fucks you?” Nasir’s voice rang against the glass of the house, warped and ugly. “Nah, fuck that shit, Dad, I’m kicking her out.”
Alim’s voice cooled to slick ice, like a stranger was speaking out of his mouth. “Boy, this is my house.”
There was a stunned silence from Nasir and the tension curled like a thick root through the air. When he spoke again, his voice was tight. “Gotcha. I’ll be going, then.”
“Nasir—” Alim’s voice cut off as the door slammed.
There was a pause before Feyi heard Alim walking back up the stairs. She frantically wiped the tears off her face and went on her hands and knees, picking up her stuff and shoving it into the suitcase. Alim turned the corner at the top of the stairs and clicked his tongue when he saw her.
“Feyi, leave it.” He crouched by her, pulling her up by her shoulders. “I’ll get it later, just leave it.”
Feyi twisted away from him. “No, it’s fine. It’s all my stuff. I can put it away.” Her hands trembled as she picked up a shirt and folded it clumsily. “It’s all my stuff; he threw out all my stuff.”
Her voice caught, then broke as she said it, and the pieces of herself she’d been trying so hard to hold together since Nasir walked into the house all fell apart. He’d treated her the way he now saw her, like trash, like someone who didn’t matter in all the worst ways. He used to be her friend. Feyi splintered into tears as the shirt fell out of her hands.
“He threw out all my stuff,” she sobbed, and Alim pulled her into his arms.
“I know,” he murmured into her hair, his voice thick. “I’m so sorry, sweetness. I’m so sorry I wasn’t here.”
Feyi clutched at his shirt, hoarse sobs ripping their way out of her throat, tears and snot puddling against his chest. Alim gathered her to him and rocked her, both of them on the polished floor, her fragments of life strewn around them.
Chapter Eighteen
Alim insisted that Feyi stay in his room while he cleaned up the mess Nasir had made. She tried to sleep, hoping that she could reset that way, slip out of the feelings she was in like they were clothes, wake up wearing something else. Alim’s sheets smelled like sweet orange, cool against her skin, his pillows like clouds seizing her head. She didn’t belong there. She was an interloper, and maybe Nasir was right, maybe Joy had been right, too, that she should just go home. It wasn’t supposed to go down like this. Feyi closed her eyes and pulled the sheets over her head, making a cocoon until the oxygen gave out and she had to come back up for air.