I inhaled a brisk gust of fortifying air and looked up at Malakai. “Okay, uh, I guess I should say I’m sorry for the whole drink thing. Actually, I am sorry. It was embarrassing. I moved mad. My bad.” I surprised myself by meaning it.
Malakai shrugged and shot me a small smile. “Thanks. I kind of deserved it, though. I was being a dick.”
I laughed, half-surprised “What? No.”
Malakai kicked at some leaves and rubbed the back of his neck in what was an obscenely sexy move. “I was being shitty. I knew it. I’m sorry.” His eyes searched mine, as if he needed me to know he meant it.
I glanced away from him because his eyes’ knowing focus made me uncomfortable, lasering through my skin. “It’s cool.”
Malakai cleared his throat. “Look, uh, full disclosure? Dr. Miller sent me some of your work. Your writing on pop culture and society and that essay on, like . . . what was it? The distillation of Missy Elliot’s contribution to Black feminism? Where you dissected her music videos? That was mad.” His face broke into a shadow of the playful smile I’d seen the other night. “Actually, I was kind of pissed at how good it was. Then I listened to more of Brown Sugar and that made me even more pissed.” He laughed. “You were right. About a lot of things. And, even if I didn’t agree . . . I just think you have a really interesting perspective. A cool voice.” He paused as if catching himself and cleared his throat. “I just thought I’d tell you that. She sent it to me. She’s been talking about you to me—without ever mentioning your name—since I transferred at the beginning of the year. I got kinda jealous.”
“Why, you got a crush on her?” The main function of the question was to distract myself from the fact that Malakai liking my work elicited a bloom of pleasure in me.
Malakai laughed and rubbed his chin. “Don’t you?”
“Obviously. She’s fine as hell.” I made eye contact with a terrier, waddling along with its owner. “Thank you, by the way. For saying all that. About my work, I mean.”
“Trust me, if I could have chosen to not like it, I would have.” His voice was bone dry. It struck against me, eliciting a spark.
I clamped on my grin and, glancing up at him, admitted, “I watched Cuts.”
Malakai’s gaze snapped to me. “Is this where you tell me all the ways you hated it as rightful punishment for my behavior?” He was joking but he wasn’t, his eyes softened with gentle wariness.
“Not gonna lie, I was kind of disappointed.” I paused long enough for the curve in Malakai’s lips to collapse infinitesimally. “Disappointed that I didn’t hate it. . . . It was good. Really good. Which sucked for me, obviously, because I fully planned on going back to Dr. Miller like, ‘I thought you said this guy was smart?’”
Malakai was staring at me, his smile sloping out wide now, rubbing the back of his neck again. He needed to stop it. Not only was it infuriatingly cute, it also drew attention to how thick, firm, and muscular his arms were. Seeing them reminded me of when they were wrapped with my palms, satiny and sturdy and warm beneath them. Was I ovulating? I needed to check my period app. I blinked at him. “What?”
“You fucking with me?”
I stared at him, trying to assess if Malakai really cared about what I, a virtual stranger who had shit-talked him on the radio, thought about him. Unless his game was so ultraevolved that it included insecurity as a disarmament tactic in its package, his need to know seemed real.
“Malakai, if I wanted to fuck with you, I would fuck with you.”
A lady pushing a designer stroller shot me a pointed look, like we weren’t in a public place. We were still in west Whitewell after all. I rolled my eyes.
“I think you know that much about me by now. Like, it’s almost causing me physical pain to say this to you.” I faked a dainty sneeze. “Oh man. See? I think I’m allergic to being nice to you, actually.”
Malakai laughed, a surprisingly delightful, loud bark of a laugh. The air around us was cool but the force of his bellow seemed to push it up a couple degrees. “Thank you. Seriously. Cuts got me into my course. I sent it with my personal statement.”
“What made you want to make it?”
“That barbershop is owned by a man I call Uncle K.”
“Ah. Super K’s Kutz,” I said, recalling the name I saw emblazoned on the storefront in bold white italics against black gloss.
“Right. I kind of half grew up there. Uncle K and my dad were old friends, from when they first arrived in England. My dad moved to Naija for work when I was seven, but before that he used to bring me along for his trims, then he took me for my first cut.” Malakai dropped a half-swaggering smile. “Couldn’t tell me shit on the playground on Monday.”