Malakai grinned something sweet before he rubbed the back of his neck. “I want to tell you. But it isn’t easy for me to talk about.”
“That’s okay.”
The quiet that fell between us was comfortable, a continuation of conversation. I let it lie for a few moments before I ventured into it.
“How about we sit here and watch the movie, and whenever, if ever, you feel like it, you can talk to me?”
The grateful look Malakai threw me made my chest ache. “That sounds good.”
I unpaused the TV, reduced the volume, and turned to look at Eddie Murphy’s charming, bright, wide smile, as he flirted with a flawlessly coiffed babe.
“My dad actually always reminded me of Eddie Murphy.”
I turned to look at Malakai, but his eyes were still on the screen so I followed suit. “Yeah?”
“I think that’s why I loved his movies so much. Charismatic, handsome—and I know he didn’t seem like it just now, but he can be really funny when he wants to be. When I was younger, I loved when people said we looked alike, loved when my mum said I reminded her of him. I liked having something of him. He dropped out of school to provide for his family, prided himself on being a ‘self-made businessman.’ An entrepreneur. Providing was his idea of affection.
“More than once I overheard my mum calling him in Lagos on my or my brother’s birthday to remind him to call us. Then he’d visit for a week and buy us a bike that he wouldn’t teach us to ride because he didn’t have the time, but everything was cool. He’d kiss my mum on the cheek and dance with her in the living room to Earth, Wind & Fire and say, ‘My dear, everything I do is for us, I’m building for our kingdom,’ like everything was fucking cool.” Malakai’s voice was brittle. I linked my arm through his, squeezed it against my body.
He cleared his throat. “I started dating Ama because he encouraged it. I chose to study economics because that’s what he wanted me to study. To learn business, so I could work with him one day. I just thought it was a case of doing things, you know? Like, I could earn him giving a shit.” Malakai’s voice was muted of emotion, calculatedly casual.
“I found out my dad cheated on my mum just as I started first year. It involved a woman messaging me on Facebook, of all fucking things. Almost the worst part of it—she sent pictures of herself in the house in Lagos. Pictures of her with my dad. I guess my dad got bored of her and she wanted revenge. It was kind of genius, actually. Because then I was in the really fun position of telling my dad that I had seen a woman draped all over him on the sofa my mum had picked out and if he didn’t tell her, I would.”
His eyes were assiduously trained down, jaw tight, tense with the memory of the emotional burden of carrying information that would rupture your family and also having your hero lose his status in a matter of seconds. My whole body felt for him. I wanted to hold him.
“Shit, man.” He pressed the balls of his palms to his eyes. “Sorry, I don’t know why . . .”
I clambered up so I was sat in front of him, nestled between his legs, back to his chest. He instantly relaxed against me as I took his hands in mine and brought them together around my waist.
“You’re good, Kai.”
Malakai leaned his forehead against the back of my head. “It’s mad how shocked you can be by something that you were always prepped to find out. Mad how much it can still really fucking hurt. How angry you can still be. And it wasn’t until then that I realized how much I was holding on to this idea of my dad. I could excuse shit because I genuinely thought he cared. I bought into the whole building a kingdom thing, like some cult follower. It was like I’d been brainwashed.”
“Kai, you can’t blame yourself for looking up to your dad—”
“It’s just, I wanted to be him so bad. Despite everything. Always cool, always collected, nothing could phase him. Life of any party. Capable. And he turned out to be a selfish mess. Cowardly. This giant became so . . . tiny. He always said he couldn’t come to England because of his schedule at work but he managed to get a flight to Heathrow two days after our call.”
“He told your mum?”
“He tried to send us out the house, but I dropped my brother at a mate’s and snuck back. I wanted to be there for my mum. Neither of them heard me come in. She was screaming at him. From her gut. This . . . mad sound. And I heard her say, ‘I could handle you doing it to me. I accepted it. I said, He does his job, he takes care of me. But our children? Malakai had to find out that you’re a whore from one of your toys? You can’t even be neat about it? My heart was not enough, you had to break our sons’ too?’ And it went real quiet because I guess that was when my dad realized that my mum had known the whole time.