Seye’s shoulders dropped. He was quiet for a while before he nodded and rubbed at his chin. He stepped back, ‘You’re right. Tiara, I—’
Reaching forward, I tugged him towards me by his shirt. His gaze shifted along with the air between us, drawing us closer. I took his features in close-up, high definition, technicolour, for my viewing only; full, bossy mouth, the curve of his nose. I dragged my thumb across his lips.
‘How would you have said goodbye to me?’
He swallowed hard as his eyes took my face in, flaming. ‘I would have said that leaving you was the hardest thing I have ever had to do.’ His arms were curving around my waist, mine were winding around his neck. ‘。 . . and that I would miss you so much it would nearly drive me insane.’ He lifted me up and sat me on the counter. ‘But then I’d give up, because I’d realise that it ain’t possible for me to ever say goodbye to you, Tiara. That I won’t ever want to.’
Tiara’s Top Tips
When the man you are in love with pisses off his agent, publicist and producers to abscond from his first award ceremony and tell you that he has never stopped loving you, and he isn’t dating Riley （who is really quite a lovely girl）， tell him the audition process to be back in your life starts tomorrow. You tell him you think he has potential.
And you throw out all your granola.
Orin
I am on what is possibly the worst first date of my life. On paper, it should be ideal. I’m at an open mic/DJ night Upstairs At The Ritzy in Brixton on a Friday night, the lights are dim, the bar is cosy, I see some familiar faces in the crowd. He is a friend of a friend, works in finance and is good looking enough for me to allow my friends to set me up with him. However, the problem is, he works in finance and is good looking enough for me to allow my friends to set me up with him. His head is so far up his ass he should be submitted to scientists as an anatomical wonder. He’s talking about how brave I am to be in a field that is high input and low return, and while music photography is a novel profession – he’s dabbled in photography himself, had I seen the series of pictures he took while on a firm retreat in the Alps last winter? It’s such a shame for my law degree to go to waste. I smile and bite down the slight tingle of homicidal thoughts and tell him to pull out his phone and open his music app. After navigating my way out of a podcast called ‘Money Matters: It’s A Man’s World’ （I give myself props for not walking out right then）， I go to a Top Ten ‘Urban’ playlist and tell him that I have worked with six of the top artists. He chokes on his gin and tonic and tells me that he has never heard of them. He swiftly changes the subject and starts talking about how the gin he ordered – the most expensive on the menu – tastes like cat piss, and it’s nothing compared to the gin he tried while touring a distillery in the Cotswolds, where, by the way, he used to summer with his family. They had a country home there. I take a large gulp of rosé, hoping it might sweeten the acetic taste of him using ‘summer’ as a verb.
His name is Raphael Adeniyi Akinyemi.
‘It’s funny,’ he says, assuring me that the following sentence will be so aggressively bleak it may make part of my soul die, ‘that my name is Raphael, you know, like the angel, when I can be such a demon.’ He winks at me and my stomach turns.
‘And I know,’ he continues, ‘you’re thinking that Raphael may be a weird name for someone whose parents were born in Nigeria, but I think it’s, like, cool that I stand apart like that, you know? My parents call me Adeniyi at home, but I may drop it. Thinking of dropping Yemi from my surname too, though. Raphael Akin sounds so much more dynamic, you know?’
I lean back on my chair, resting my elbow against the back of it, having given up any attempt at feigning interest, as I understand now that I am a third wheel on Raphael Akin’s date with himself. Or, more accurately, I am an audience to Raphael Akin’s date with himself. I decide that looking at it from this angle is the best way to salvage the evening; this is immersive entertainment, The Modern Narcissus. An afrobeat song comes on while we wait for the acts and I start to shimmy, my waist immediately called by the beat, I find comfort in the song. Raphael chuckles and says, ‘Look at you go! Shout out to Burna Boy, innit!’ It is, in fact, Wizkid that is playing. My small moment of solace is unceremoniously shat on. I hear a sharp choke of what sounds like laughter and my eyes drift to the other side of Raphael, where a guy sits, trying and failing to cover up a smirk with a beer bottle that is lifted to his lips, eyes unashamedly glinting in my direction. I raise a brow as a question and he only smiles wider. A dick, clearly, who thinks the possession of a sexy smile is enough to distract from the rudeness of openly eavesdropping.