“I know. Saw it on your ProntoPic page. And yeah, Meji makes yaji from scratch. Don’t let him hear you questioning that.”
I tilted my head. “So you cyberstalked me.”
“You didn’t cyberstalk me?”
My smile tickled the inside of my mouth as his eyes attempted to tease it out. Denial didn’t seem worth it. After a silent tug of war, I cleared my throat and squinted down at the menu to disguise my defeat.
“Your niece is adorable.”
“Thanks, she is.” I heard the grin in his voice. “My cousin’s little girl . . . I liked that picture of you at the beach.”
I stared harder at the menu. I knew the photo. Barcelona. Aminah’s and my first trip together. I was in an audacious blood-orange bikini that rounded and pushed my cleavage, bought with Aminah’s encouragement. My arms were outstretched and I was looking up and smiling wide. I squinted at the dessert options and released a more-prim-than-I-intended “Thank you.”
“And I’m glad you like the menu.”
I looked up from it, to meet the arched slant of his lips. Despite it, the bright in his eyes was earnest. “I do. How did you find this spot?”
Malakai rubbed the back of his neck and leaned back in his seat. He hesitated for a moment before replying, the default lightness on his face dimming in the shadows. He cleared his throat and leaned forward again, as if gathering what he needed to tell me.
“Uh, so I’d just transferred and was wandering through this part of town looking for something that would remind me of home. It was late, around this time. Anyway, I stopped near here, taking pictures in the middle of the road. . . . The chicken and doner shops look so bright in the night, like beacons. An oasis. Lighthouses. I wanted to capture that. Anyway, maybe I’m an idiot for taking pictures at night in the most policed area in Whitewell.”
Instinctual dread of what was to come cooled me as he continued, voice flat, matter-of-fact. “They pulled up, asked me what I was doing. I said I was just taking pictures, said I went to Whitewell, said I was a film student, all of that. ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘No, sir.’ Didn’t make a difference. I wanted to spit in their faces. I kept it polite. It’s funny”—the wry line his mouth pulled into compounded the fact that it was the opposite—“it was like, the more polite I was the angrier they got. And every instinct in me wanted to fight, you know? But what good would that have done? And it’s not that it hasn’t happened before. Of course, it has. I’m from South. But I really thought I could have a break from that here. Anyway, they wanted to stop and search. I asked them what for and they said I was being aggressive.”
Malakai released a dark chuckle and rubbed his jaw. “This was the first week of term and I didn’t know anyone. Kofi had to go back to London for a family thing that weekend. I was alone. Like for real, alone. I don’t even know how it happened, don’t know if it was five seconds or five minutes, but something must have happened, I must have said something—or maybe nothing was enough—but they had me pushed up against a car, hands behind my back while they searched me. Three of them. My camera drops. The camera I saved for a summer to get. Lens cracks. I feel it. Can’t get to my phone to film what’s going on.
“Anyway, Meji must have heard and he comes out. Meji’s kind of a big deal around here. A big brother, uncle to everyone, all the shop owners know him. Even the police know not to fuck with him. Meji went to law school in Nigeria and he’s the smartest guy I know. So, Meji comes out and asks them what they’re doing. They stutter. He asks them again, ‘What’s the reasonable grounds?’ And I’m shaking, man.
“I try to tell him what’s going on but I can’t talk. He says, ‘A young man taking pictures?’ They stutter. He gets his phone out, starts talking about rights, how what they’re doing is illegal. They let me go. The police say some shit. It’s all bluster. They’re scrambling. Meji ignores them, brings me back here, and gives me food. He calms me down and tells me to breathe. And that’s how he became my big bro. That’s how I found this place.”
I sat back in my seat, the full force of what he said pushing me. My stomach was a swirl of sickness and sadness and indignation, a cocktail that caused my hand to fly over to his and squeeze. “Malakai . . . I’m sorry. So sorry that happened to you.” But it felt useless, trite, and I felt embarrassed at how pathetic, how useless my words sounded.