Page 81 of You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty

Despite Nasir’s flippant reassurance, Feyi decided not to worry if Alim felt the same way or not. It didn’t matter. Her therapist would say to only control what she could and Alim’s heart belonged loudly to him. Feyi had lost too much to feed herself daydreams, and she was tired of feeding herself fear. The only thing left was whatever was true, and in this case, it was two things.

She was in love with Alim Blake.

She was going home to Brooklyn.

That was the solid ground she could stand on, no matter what. Anything else was unpredictable, a current careening past, seizing and discarding whoever and whatever it wanted. Feyi sat up and braced herself to return to the house. It didn’t matter how this went —it couldn’t matter how this went. She had a life in New York. She had Joy, and her work, and it had been enough before this, so it would be enough afterward. Feyi shook out her braids and left the citrus grove, her heart pulsing in her mouth.

• • •

Buika was playing in the house when Feyi pushed open the door and stepped inside. This time the music loudly filled every room, pouring through a centralized sound system Feyi hadn’t even realized existed, piano chords striking against the walls and glass. Buika’s voice rasped against the paintings, against Feyi’s skin, climbing up to scratch against the ceilings of the rooms Feyi was walking through as she searched for Alim. The kitchen was empty, as were the living and dining rooms, the lower courtyard, the corridors. She finally found him in the library, wearing one of his usual outfits, a shirt open to the chest and rolled up at the sleeves, loose trousers. Feyi watched him silently, her heart alive in her chest. Alim was humming along to the music, intermittently singing a line or two in flawless Spanish. His voice sounded like smooth waves of deep amber honey pouring and folding over on itself. Feyi had never heard him sing before, and it pierced through her, lancet sweet. Leafy vines crept up around the window frame and Alim reached up to a shelf, running his fingers over the spines of the books before angling and lifting one out. He was flipping through its pages when Feyi took a step forward, her air cutting into his.

Alim lifted his head, and Feyi watched the small shifts that lit up his face, the stretching curve of his mouth, the wrinkling around his eyes, the gladness that filled his body as he turned to her, dropping the book on a table.

“How did it go with Nasir?” he asked, and Feyi had to catch herself—she’d already moved past that, it seemed so trivial now.

“It’s fine,” she said automatically. “We’re cool. He apologized.”

“Are you okay?” Alim caught shifts in her mood easily. Feyi smiled to reassure him, but even she could feel the sadness catching behind her teeth.

“I have to tell you something,” she said, twisting her fingers together.

Alim sat on the edge of the table, one leg dangling easily in the air.

“Well, two things, really.”

“I am listening for both of them,” Alim replied, looking amused at her formality.

Feyi glanced at his collarbone, jutting out from the open mouth of his shirt. The night before, they had gone for a swim, and Feyi had kissed his collarbone until Alim pressed her against the side of the pool and fucked her slowly, until she was coming apart around him, her cries falling on the water. She couldn’t imagine him outside this mountain, off this island. Maybe he didn’t exist anywhere else. Maybe he turned into someone else—the celebrity chef, the version of him the rest of the world saw. Joy was right— Feyi was never going to trust if this was real unless she left this bubble, took this into regular air to see if it’d asphyxiate then.

“I have to go home,” she said. “Back to Brooklyn.”

Alim just nodded. “When?” he asked.

“In the next couple of days? I just—I need to be back in my life, you know?”

“Of course.” He seemed unruffled, his hands resting gracefully as he listened to her. “You said there were two things?”

Feyi usually hated when his feelings were shuttered—he was impossible to read, infuriatingly neutral—but in this instance, neutral was helpful.

“I think—” she started, then broke off. It was harder forming it in voice, but there was also no need to inject uncertainty where there was none. Fuck fear. She loved him, and she was going home, come hell or high water. It didn’t matter if he loved her back, that wouldn’t change anything. She’d still love him anyway. The thought flooded her heart again, but Feyi leaned into it, into the ache and aliveness of it all.

She smiled at Alim, and this time there was no sadness there, just the bursting love and its thundering pulse and the way it expanded her, made her ring with life, heartbreaking cloth-rending life. Surrendering to it felt effortless, like floating on great salt, like calm and peace and everything was going to be all right in the end, even if he didn’t love her back, because her heart could do this. After everything it had been through, her heart could still do this.

“I love you,” Feyi said, and it felt easy in her mouth.

Alim straightened up, and Feyi held out a hand to stop him from talking.

“You don’t have to say it back. You don’t have to say anything. I just wanted to tell you because it was true and it felt right, that you should know.”

She walked up to him as Buika sang over a plucked bass, her voice stripped and cascading upward. Feyi slid her hands along Alim’s jaw, marveling as she always did that she could, that his eyes darkened at her touch, that he leaned into her palm as if they’d spent a lifetime touching each other already. The late-afternoon sun came through the library window and illuminated the muddy sclera of his eyes, the gray ringing his pupils. It broke against the steep slope of his nose and cast a shadow on his opposite cheek. Feyi traced his lips with her thumbs.

“You are so beautiful,” she told him, and Alim held her wrists, encircling the fine bones with his fingers.

“Feyi,” he said, cramming half a world into her name.

She leaned her forehead against his. “You don’t have to say it back.” It was enough to feel his skin, know that he was alive under her hands. If there was a miracle, it was complete like this. Feyi didn’t need anything more.

The song that was playing wound to an end and another began, rippling keys before Buika’s voice brushed through, snagging on breaths like she was standing there, the sounds of her throat and mouth close to them. Alim stood up when the languid horns started playing.