But there was no apology at the end of the text. Why apologise if you felt like you’d done nothing wrong? Yaa swore under her breath. The swearing was impressive, her own a particular cocktail with particular stresses on certain words. Kofi always hated it when she swore, he said it was her market-woman blood coming out. Yaa was contemplating telling the Hitch driver to take her back home when, while stopped at a traffic light, he spoke.
‘Yaayaa.’
The low, familiar voice pierced into her, curled around her heart and squeezed so hard that Yaa gasped. Only one person called her ‘Yaayaa’。 It was her, doubled over. Her at her fullest. It was a nickname that tasted like a sugarcane-whisky-laced kiss, both indulgent and intoxicating.
Yaayaa. The name had been buried for so long – suffocated, really – that when it was freed, it took up all the air in the car, made it difficult for Yaa to breathe. The screen of her phone began to blur as she looked up to meet the eyes of the Hitch driver. She needn’t have looked to verify. She knew. The odds of this happening were far too unlikely for it not to be happening. It was a terrible joke, a torturous irony that would have made her laugh if she hadn’t been its victim. Maybe she’d laugh tomorrow. Maybe this could be a bachelorette anecdote. There was a version of her that wanted to slip out of the car at this stop light and run back to her apartment, but that part of her was becoming less realistic with every second that passed. That version of her was beginning to feel like an imposter. Every inch of her was in a state of remembrance, reshaping itself to a former form. Just at the sound of his voice.
She looked up. ‘Adric.’
There were two people in the world who knew her, the potent her, the essence of her and the honest her. One was Abina, her best friend and spirit-sister, and the other was the man whose eyes were currently sliding from soft, warm surprise to something colder, a forced distance.
He nodded. She could see the tension in his face, the tightening in the sharp jaw she used to enjoy sliding a finger across, raining kisses down the trail.
‘I saw the name on the app, but I didn’t figure it would actually be . . .’ He paused and looked at her in the rearview mirror. ‘I knew it was you when you got into the car, but I didn’t know if it was best to pretend I didn’t recognise you or to say something. Then you swore and, well, I always liked it when you swore. Really disgusting stuff. Extremely graphic. Poetic, really.’
Yaa laughed and felt the knots in her belly begin to loosen. She saw his shoulder hitch up in a shrug. ‘Yaayaa just came out. Sorry.’
She swallowed. ‘Don’t be. You’re the only one who ever called me that. You will always be the only one who will ever call me that.’
Yaa and Adric first met at a student rally in their first year of university. He didn’t know who she was; he knew her only as the girl at the front of the protest, creating pithy chants against elitist politicians who wanted to make the requirements for grants more stringent. The fewer people able to attend university, the more power remained in the same hands. He had no idea that she was protesting against the people who she was to be married into. He caught her eye, and she’d almost stumbled by the force of how he looked at her. It was more than preliminary attraction; it was a want to know. They went to the post-protest social at a student house and there Yaa found out that Adric was the son of a skilled carpenter and seamstress. Yaa told him her people worked in craft and trade too and quickly changed the subject. She knew she should have told him the truth straight away, but she was seduced by the bubble she was in and giddy with their flow of conversation. They had an immediate easy playfulness. She liked his mind, liked that he wanted to know hers. Love immediately pulled at her. It was a kind of love she’d never known; unburdened, pure and without expectation. Transparent love, unqualified love. They kissed for the first time that night at that student party, while dancing, in the corner in a room with dimmed lights and plastic cups full of warm liquor and flat mixer. The air was electric with R&B, possibility and promise. They were young people coming together to effect change, young people with their future in their hands, young people with their arms around each other, his wrapped around her waist, hers around his neck, drinking each other, rising up within each other.
They fell fast, heavily, startlingly into heady love, a love that thrummed through her veins and pulled her essence up to her skin till she was glowing with it, till her mother wondered why she looked different and her friends made fun of her. They discussed ideas, perspectives, learnt from each other, their minds calling and responding to each other, their bodies following suit. Yaa divorced her pre-written future from her world with Adric. When she was with him, she could pretend she was just Yaayaa, unencumbered. She knew it couldn’t last. They had been dating a year when Adric saw a text from Kofi flash on Yaa’s phone screen.