Seun was breathing fast, his movements quick, wanting to please. He took off his singlet and lay on his back, pulling his legs up and locking his elbows behind his knees. He looked up at Ahmed silently and Ahmed almost smiled—he never liked hearing them talk, it was nice that Seun remembered. He didn’t bother taking off his clothes as they continued; he didn’t want his skin against Seun’s. When Seun tried to pull him in for a kiss, Ahmed slammed his head back into the sofa. All the rage he was feeling, at how Seun had dared to try him, interrupting his time with Souraya, all his frustration over the situation with Kalu and Okinosho, he channeled it into Seun’s body, lubricated by saliva, and to his surprise, Seun not only took it but enjoyed it. He came while stroking himself frantically, then smiled up at Ahmed as Ahmed kept going.
“Don’t think we don’t still have business to discuss,” he gasped, his body jerking under Ahmed’s thrusts.
Ahmed frowned and put a hand over Seun’s mouth. Who told him he could talk?
Seun kept smiling with his eyes as if he’d already won, as if none of this had anything to do with his inevitable victory.
“Shut up,” Ahmed said, quietly at first. He moved both hands to Seun’s throat and started choking him. “Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.”
His grip had doubled, tripled in force, driving the smile right out of Seun’s eyes, replacing it with alarm. Seun tried to talk but all that came out was a coughing grunt. He began to struggle, and Ahmed slipped out of him, pinning his lower body down with his legs, leaning heavier into his arms, putting his weight against Seun’s throat.
“Shut up,” he kept saying calmly, a chant, a mantra. Everyone talked too much, said too much, like Kalu, like Machi, saying things he wasn’t in the mood to hear, not caring, just talking, talking, all the time talking. They didn’t learn. They wouldn’t just shut the fuck up and give him some peace, some fucking quiet. Ahmed leaned forward some more and looked up in concentration, trying to find a silent place in his head. Everyone was trying to box him into a corner, put him somewhere impossible. His client trying to kill his best friend. This idiot here scratching his arms after threatening to release the video. It was too much of a headache—imagine if the video made it to those gossip sites, those clickbait Instagram accounts. It would go unbelievably viral. The amount of damage control he would have to do. He didn’t have time for that, not with this Okinosho shit happening, not with Souraya coming back into his life. There was so much going on.
He just needed some quiet so he could focus.
Saturday, 3:59 PM
The body had stopped moving.
Ahmed gradually loosened his hands from around its throat, sweat cooling on his forehead. A faint voice in his head noted how quickly you could go from being a person, a Seun, to a nothing, a body. He stood up from the sofa and tucked himself back into his trousers, zipping up. Seun—he had to force himself to return to that name; this was, had been, a person—was strewn over the sofa cushions, his eyes wide and glassed open, his mouth ajar. Ahmed looked down at his hands. The tremor had taken over completely; both hands were visibly trembling now. He tried to curl his fingers, control the shaking by forming fists, but it was useless; it did nothing. He glanced from his hands to Seun’s discolored neck. How was it possible that they had been strong enough to do that? They were just hands, just palms and fingers and skin and bone. It wasn’t possible.
Ahmed shuddered in disbelief and grabbed Seun’s shoulders. “Wake up!” he ordered. “It’s not funny.”
When had any of this been a joke?
He didn’t even remember deciding to do this. Seun’s eyes had just been so loud, he’d wanted the laughter in them to go away, but now…now they were even louder. He shook Seun again, slapping his cheek lightly. The split insanity had returned. On one track, Seun had just passed out and would wake up soon. On the other, no one wants a dead person staring at them. It’s unholy. His skin was still warm. Ahmed looked around, then ran to the kitchen and slammed open the refrigerator door, his shaking hands skimming the contents until he found a bottle of water. He ran back to the parlor, untwisting the cap as he stumbled against the sofa, dropping to his knees and pouring the water over Seun’s face. “Oya, wake up now! It’s enough.”
You’re going mad, a small voice in his head observed. You’ve known he was dead from since.
“Shut up!” Ahmed yelled into the lonesome air. How was he now the only person in the house? It didn’t make sense. “Come on,” he whispered. “Wake up; do it for me.”
He sat back on his heels and pressed Seun’s hand to his forehead. The skin was warm. It was warm. He had to be alive. Ahmed fumbled his fingers till they were pressing against the inside of Seun’s wrist, angry with himself for not doing that sooner, not doing that first—looking for a pulse. His searching fingertips found nothing, so he pressed them to Seun’s neck with an uncommon gentleness, and when that returned empty as well, Ahmed pressed his ear to Seun’s naked chest, willing the heart to kick back in like a recalcitrant generator. He felt slow, like his thinking and reactions were warped into a delay. CPR? Chest compressions? He’d never been trained for any of that, only seen it on TV.
He layered his hands on top of each other and started pressing down on Seun’s chest as hard as he could. “One, two, three,” he counted aloud, then paused before starting again. He had no idea if the count was correct. Was it ridiculous to look it up? Kneeling at an angle to keep his weight on one hand, he kept pressing on Seun’s chest with that arm while pulling his phone out and trying to type with the other hand.
Stop lying to yourself, the small voice said. You haven’t even tried to get help. All this is to make you feel like you tried to do something.
His hand was trembling too much to hold the phone steady, let alone type. Ahmed let it tumble out of his fingers, the leather phone case bouncing off the carpet. Why was he pretending? He wasn’t actually trying to bring Seun back. He already knew Seun was gone, had been gone in one of those terrible blurred moments he was deliberately not remembering, as if the act of pushing the memory away was going to overwrite it, perhaps with a grayness or a piercing white or just the nothingness of a blackout. He had kept strangling him after he was gone, why? To make sure? To be careful?
None of this was an accident. Blurring the moment of a decision didn’t change the fact that he’d made one and that the consequence of this was lying on his sofa with one leg dragging on the floor and limp genitals. Ahmed crossed his arms, tucking his hands into his armpits to try and stop them from shaking. He began to rock back and forth, staring at Seun’s face, at Seun’s dead face. What the fuck have I done? What am I going to do now?
He pushed himself back against the coffee table and drew his knees into his chest, and Ahmed began to cry.
eleven
Saturday, 1:16 PM
When Aima woke up, she was alone in Ijendu’s room, only rumpled sheets marking where her friend had been sleeping next to her. Her head hurt and her eyes ached in their sockets. She rubbed them and rolled over, patting the nightstand clumsily as she looked for her phone. The bedsheets were tangled in her bare legs, the cloth smothering her skin. Aima kicked free and stretched her legs over the bed, sighing as the room’s air-conditioning cooled her off. She tapped her phone’s screen to check the time, and there was a text from Ijendu.
Hey sleeping beauty. I went to have lunch with Daddy O. See you when I get back.
Aima’s immediate reaction was relief. She hadn’t been sure how she was going to look at Ijendu after what they had done last night. It had been so hard to slide back into that same bed with her after she’d been crying in the bathroom, to position herself in such a way that none of her was touching any of Ijendu. She’d prayed quietly and desperately, curled up at the edge of the bed, until she fell asleep.
Lying there now, Aima stared up at the ceiling and wondered what to do next. How to move on, how to redeem herself. She’d hoped that the guilt would’ve gone away by the time she woke up, that she would’ve felt lighter, like God had forgiven her while she slept, but it was still there, a brooding weight on her chest. Aima looked down and realized she was still wearing Dike’s T-shirt. Revulsion crawled over her skin as she remembered how he’d fed himself last night, spooning her into his eyes, breathing close to her. Aima sat up quickly and pulled the T-shirt off her body, balling it up in her hands and throwing it into a corner of the room. She pressed her hands to her eyes and took deep trembling breaths. She had invited it, how he looked at her, how he’d propositioned her so blatantly—she’d always thought he saw her as a sister; they’d grown up together after all. But when someone sees how you behave—and she had acted like a slut last night—who can blame them for treating you as such? Aima fought back tears and climbed off the bed, padding naked across the bedroom floor to take a bubu out of Ijendu’s closet, pulling it over her head, the cotton falling and draping over her body, covering her entirely.
She knelt at the side of the bed like she used to when she was a child doing her bedtime prayers, interlocking her fingers and propping her elbows on the mattress. She pressed her knuckles to her forehead and squeezed her eyes shut.
“Please, Father Lord,” she whispered. “Please forgive me for the wicked things I did last night. You know my heart, You know that’s not me, that’s not how I want to move in the world, against Your favor. I wasn’t in my right mind, I wasn’t sober, and I should have been. I should have kept my body pure, kept my mind clean, and I wouldn’t have fallen down that path. I’m so ashamed of myself, but please, please forgive me. I swear I won’t ever do it again. I will stay in Your Light; I will live a life worthy of being Your child, worthy of Your Love. I want to find my way back to You, please show me, please help me, please, Father Lord…”
Warm tears dripped off her hands onto the bedsheets. She kept praying and whispering, letting the words turn into a semiconscious stream pouring out of her mouth while her mind spun in multiple directions, looking for a sign, a clue that could lead her back to some form of righteousness. There had to be a point to what she had just gone through, what she had put herself through. This had to be rock bottom. It tasted like it, rich with despair and shame and hopelessness, like a cloak she was dragging over herself.
When she’d been doing all the things she did last night, it hadn’t felt wrong. It had felt wild and delicious and right, albeit with that small thread of Kalu-sadness running underneath. For a brief and blasphemous moment, Aima wondered why she was beating herself up so hard—like, what if it had been nothing more than what it was, a night of simple distracting pleasure? Did she actually feel guilty or was she performing it because that was the only world she knew, where these things weren’t allowed, where pleasure in those forms wasn’t allowed? She blinked with wet eyelashes and frowned, confused and suddenly reluctant to keep praying. She had a few lesbian friends, some of whom were Christian, and she’d reassured them several times that it was okay, that God still loved them, that God was, in fact, Love so their love couldn’t be wrong. So, what did she actually believe? Was it the words she said to them or the ones she was lashing herself with?
Aima sat back on her heels and chewed at the cuticle of her thumb. Was it that she’d slept with Ijendu or that she’d had casual sex at all in the first place? Or that she’d been drunk or high? Or that she’d done sexual things in front of other people? Where exactly was the guilt coming from; where exactly was the sin?
She was beginning to feel that a vague and generalized repentance wasn’t good enough, that there had to be specificity for any of this to count. Would sleeping with Ijendu have been different if she loved her? But it wasn’t as if she didn’t love Ijendu; of course she did. Everything felt muddled and mixed up, odd and guilty. Aima wanted to figure out how to leave it behind, how to just start over without having all these questions haunting her, wearing last night’s clothes and smelling like a hangover. She dropped her hands into her lap and stared at them. Her nails were shaped into peach ovals, decorated with small crystals. There used to be a time when she’d try different manicures, imagining each of them with the diamond ring she was sure—had been sure—Kalu would propose to her with. Aima had been following several engagement and wedding accounts on Instagram, trying to pick out which stone shapes she wanted, which style of ring. She’d send her favorites to Kalu, but his responses were always careful, approving but never enthusiastic.
At the side of Ijendu’s bed, Aima stretched out her left hand and imagined a ring on it one more time. Two rings. A platinum wedding band that nestled into the engagement ring. The image was clear, and with it, a sudden revelation swept across Aima’s mind. This thing, this hitting rock bottom, maybe it was meant to give her perspective, to show her that perhaps she was running away from the very thing she thought she was running to. Kalu loved her. He’d always loved her. They were always meant to get married; they’d both talked about it, agreed on it. The only reason he hadn’t proposed yet was because they’d gotten into those terrible fights, the ones where he’d shouted that they should get married when they both wanted to, not because everyone else was deciding for them.
He’d been so hurt that she didn’t trust him, that she’d started treating him like an enemy who only wanted to take advantage of her. That love—the one she shared with him—that was the true and clear thing. This confusion she was feeling, this other life she’d tried so hard to spiral into in just one night, it was all optional; it was all just a choice. There was a fork in the road, and she’d tried to leave the path that ended in Kalu. She’d tried to go down the other one, and this result, this harsh guilt, had sprung up to block, to show her the correct way to go, to save her. Kalu still loved her. All she had to do was find him, and she could return to the road she’d been on, one that ended clearly, with her and Kalu taking their vows in God’s presence. What better way to ensure that she stayed in God’s Light? Matrimony was holy; everyone knew that. Aima could see now that she’d been wrong to listen to other people—her relationship with Kalu should have been just between the two of them and God. That was it; she could tell Kalu that when she talked to him.
Aima exhaled with a small smile, but it faded at the thought of talking to Kalu. Would he even want to see her? Her relief at the decision she’d made was eaten up by anxiety moving in a greedy path through her, whispering that there was no way she could hope to just waltz back into Kalu’s life as if she hadn’t broken his heart and expect him to take her back. And if he didn’t take her back, then where would that leave her? She couldn’t stay with Ijendu forever, especially after last night. Aima stood up and dusted the front of her bubu, dragging resolve from deep inside her. She wasn’t going to continue in this direction, not when she knew that there was peace and love and clarity down the road with Kalu. She had to know whether he’d want her back, find out what he was thinking, if he’d be open to that or if he was angry and needed some time to cool off.
The bedroom door opened and Aima turned, startled. Ijendu entered the room, tossing her glasses and purse on the bed, a cloud of perfume wafting in with her.
“Bebi gehl!” she said. “You’re awake!” She talked as if nothing had happened, as if everything was exactly the same. Aima seized on it gratefully. She wanted nothing more than to start over, reset her life, and erase the last several hours.
“You woke up early,” Aima replied.
