“Kiki.”
I stayed still, my frantic words sapping all my kinetic energy, falling out of my mouth. “I should have known better. I’m full of shit, Kai.”
“Kiki, I want to look at you when I say this. . . . Will you look at me?”
I sighed, then hoisted myself around so I faced him, legs folded over his thighs. I was expecting to see something like judgment trying hard not to be judgment, but he was looking at me with a nectar-gilded determination, soft focus. He swiped a thumb across my cheek, before running his knuckles down the side of my face, bending his head slightly, ensuring my gaze was locked into his.
“You’re not full of shit, Scotch. You were going through something and you’re human. It wasn’t a hookup. That prick knew you were vulnerable, and he took advantage of you.”
“I know, but I shouldn’t have—”
While Malakai’s eyes shone steel, it was mellowed by concern-creased brows. He reached to clasp my wrists, his grasp firm but tender.
“Don’t do that, Scotch. No buts. Would you say that if someone had written to your show? Would you have told them that they should have known better? No. You would call Nile a manipulative predator.” Malakai paused, and his eyes glinted with anger and sweetness, sugared quartz. “And you would be right. . . . I’m really sorry that happened to you. You didn’t deserve that. No one deserves that. You see that, right?”
I swallowed, his words helping to clear a mental fog that obscured the truth. “Yeah. Yeah, I do, thanks Kai, I just . . . it was confusing. That whole situation made me feel so out of control. And I spent that summer afterward trying to get it back. I’d actually got into an internship that summer. It was pretty prestigious and competitive and once you were in, you were in. You could go back there for grad opportunities. It started in July and the plan was to work at my dad’s restaurant up until then. He was still at the hospital with my mum a lot and he was stressed. My little sister was staying with my aunt and our cousins for the summer, so this was a way I could help. But when the time came, I just couldn’t go. After everything that happened and losing like . . . all my friends, I just wasn’t in the right head space. The internship felt foreign, I guess. Scary, suddenly. I felt safe working at the restaurant. I kind of just wanted to hide.”
I took a fortifying breath. Malakai’s thumb swirled on my wrist lightly in a tactile cypher that my pulse translated as “I’m here.”
“Anyway, while I was working shifts, these really cool Lagos babes would come in every Sunday. They were a group of friends spending summer in London. They used to talk loudly about their dating life. Give each other advice, that sort of thing. They tipped well. Once, they caught me listening. Or more like, once they saw me roll my eyes at something a Wasteman did to one of them. They asked me my opinion on the situation and I gave it.
“Apparently my advice worked and they liked it, because they started bringing me in every week on their dating lives. It was like having friends again. It inspired me to create Brown Sugar. I couldn’t make things right with Rianne, so the least I could do was stop guys doing what Nile did to the both of us—pulling friends apart. I wanted Brown Sugar to be a place where girls could feel powerful. And the music is the ultimate company. Songs about love and lust and loss. It speaks. It connects. I wanted to connect. Make people feel less alone.”
Malakai’s gaze was so full of warmth it made my skin prickle and I pushed out a coy “Corny, I know—”
He shook his head. “No, Scotch.” He looked like he wanted to say more but he left me space to speak. I held it close to me. It gave me courage to continue.
“Um, I still didn’t trust myself to be involved, to make friends. Aminah and I became friends by accident within the first week of uni and I’m so glad, otherwise I would have had no one. I was so scared I’d mess up . . . but I think I’ve overcorrected and numbed myself to the point where I’ve turned myself into some kind of heartless, weird, judgmental robotic freak.” I thought about what Shanti and Chioma had said, that they’d thought I was judging them, that I was better than them.
Malakai tugged at a twist that straggled from the high bun tangled on the top of my head. “Kiki, the first time I spoke to you, outside them lifts, I felt like I’d been electrocuted.”
“Hmm—”
“Not in a robotic freak way.” Malakai grinned. “Your energy grabbed me by the throat. You’re electric. Like lightning. Bright with it. Bold with it.”