Sweet Heat

by Bolu Babalola

‘we just need to doula our best friends down the aisle and help throw them a Big Fat West African Wedding. That’s our only job.

‘You know, Malakai, I have a lot of strength because I’ve done one and a half reformer Pilates classes –’ and almost died – ‘but even I can’t push out somebody who don’t already wanna leave—’

I’m sure you’ll be awarded a Noble Peace Prize, Dumb-Dumb Tutu. It wasn’t by force to come talk to me so why are you here? I don’t control you.’

‘Nah, Malakai, you thought we could pretend, because that’s what you do so well. Funny that you’re a director, because I reckon you would body it as an actor.’

‘I don’t need you to be sorry, Malakai. I need you to grow up. Look, tonight is about our best friends. And, if we do this correctly, the only time we’ll be around each other will be because of them. So let’s just never speak about us again, focus on what we need to focus on and stay in our respective lanes.’

‘Chioma says she wants to perform a spoken word poem for us and I am not letting you escape this. You must suffer with me! No bitch left behind!

Past completely scrubbed. What does that even mean when your concept of love was shaped by how someone looked at you, saw you, knew you, touched you, like you were the essence of life itself?

‘I booked a room at this hotel for a couple of nights. More convenient. My short-term rental’s ready in two days.’ ‘So why are you . . .’ I pause as clarity clicks. ‘Malakai, you don’t have to wait with me. I’m cool by myself. I’ll just wait in the hotel foyer—’

‘Kiki, please don’t tell me what I don’t have to do. I’m gonna give a shit about whether you’re safe or not. Don’t make it weirder than it needs to be. Besides, this is for me. I won’t feel good leaving you here by yourself.’

I can’t imagine a world where I would ever feel unsafe with Malakai.

I’m unsafe around the version of me that appears in his proximity, but he can’t know that. He doesn’t get to have that power. And maybe the only way to rid myself of the risk is to confront it.

I’m one of those arseholes who finds it performative, who thinks if love is celebrated all year round it doesn’t need to be proven on a capitalistic day with heart-shaped chocolates and overbooked restaurants and pressure, so much pressure, to prove affection.

And every thirteenth of February, Malakai, with his tongue in his cheek got me a bouquet of carnations with ‘Happy Unvalentines Day, Scotch’ as the note, and a slice of Tottenham cake, my favourite.

So much so that my heart twisted up with it, every year on our Unvalentine’s Day, which defeated the purpose, but really proved ours, because it was just for us.

Last year, Bakari had got me a shiny designer bracelet popular among the luxury influencer set; it was objectively beautiful, and I, uncharacteristically, posted it, satisfied with concrete proof that I was capable of a love that wasn’t with Malakai Korede. Now, Malakai stands some paces away from me, like he can barely stand to be around me.

His new social-media presence is all urbane austere aesthete: beautiful photographs of scenes of Black Life and gleaming side profiles and abstract photos of, like, a gold chain on a white shirt, but barely anything of himself.

The question draws my attention from the lights in the dark outside and back to the lights in the dark of his eyes to see the curiosity in them searing. ‘That I was over you.’ My gaze meanders to his mouth, because I can’t help it. It’s dusky and velvet and full; if I bite it, want will drip all over me like juice from a ripe mango. ‘Which I am.’ Truth licks at my lips the same time his tongue darts out to wet his. ‘Emotionally.’

Man, he’s so beautiful to me still. I can’t deny that. I also can’t allow my heart to follow where my body clearly wants to go.

Malakai made it clear; he doesn’t want long-term. I was a trial. I was an error.

It’s also the face that broke my heart. It’s also the face that walked out on me. A world I knew crumbled around that face.

Was he loved on there? Did he have somewhere he could feel safe there? Why does that matter so much to me? Is he happy?

I read somewhere (well, a TikTok therapist said) that closure is a lie we tell ourselves to hold on to something. I don’t know why I remember this at this particular moment.

Why is he folding his clothes away when he’s leaving this hotel in two days? What a freak.

Technically, I don’t owe him an explanation, and technically this has nothing to do with him. Still, I feel uncomfortable, icky and, bizarrely, a feeling of betrayal.

‘You should have trusted me.’ My nose stings. ‘Yeah, and you should have given me something to trust.’

It never occurred to me to put a heart emoji next to Kai’s name. We were the heart emoji.

The mention of Bakari sits uneasy on me. I do love him. I’m sure I do. Although now, when I think this, there seems to be nothing real for the idea to grip on to, this idea of me loving Bakari. Before, I was able to reach for tangible proof for it to sit on, but now it slips, falls. I find nothing.

It was fun, Kiki.’ And I don’t know why it’s this statement that haunts me on the ride home. It sits on my spirit obtrusively, making my heart itch. I don’t know why it’s this that makes my eyes sting, and the tears fall and for me to sob so hard that my driver, a concerned uncle, hands me a pocket tissue and says, ‘It will be all right, sister. It will pass.’ I hope it does. I don’t know why it hurts. It’s not supposed to hurt any more.

When they’re not bickering, it’s a joy being an honorary member of the elite Bakare sorority, folded into the way they play, love, tease.

‘Well, my dear, if you like it, it’s fine.’ Oh, shit. ‘Oh, shit,’ Laide whispers under her breath. Damola begins to rub her temple. Several expressions ring across my best friend’s face, but hurt chimes the loudest. Her eyes glimmer. ‘So you hate it?’ My heart tugs. Her voice is softer, younger.

A little more emotion please!

‘Oreoluwa, you’re always so dramatic.’ She’s using Aminah’s middle name?

‘Where did “hate” come from now? I said if you like it, it’s fine.’

‘Wòó, Oreoluwa, ma stress me. Fï mí sí ‘lẹ. I’ve said all I’ve wanted to say. You look nice, ah!’

‘I mean the HBO drama! And God knows the last things I need right now are more liabilities and contingencies, and I don’t know what my maid of honour and best man getting into a situation would be if not a liability and contingency. I just need good, peaceful vibes.

Girl just wait.

Taré Souza, an R&B and soul artist, came onto the scene when I was in my second year of uni, and I immediately found kin in her music. She had a six-track soul R&B EP called Sun in Me released through Soundcloud. It seared through my skin and wrapped itself around a heart that was learning love. It was Lauryn Hill nodding at Sade and hugging Lala Hathaway and spudding Jazmine Sullivan with something new and crisp on the way, a softness that was razor-edged, love expressed like it was a knife that could cut through pain or simply cut you. It was a melancholia that was whimsical, joy that was visceral.

She was on the cover of Rolling Stone that year, her most recent album, Glow in the Dark, was rumoured to have been a shoo-in for Best Pop Album at the Grammys, when abruptly, just when she seemed to be on the precipice of superstardom, Taré Souza disappeared.

My mum is a serene queen, but, as I attempt to channel her, the righteous temper I’ve inherited from my father roars.

If a local fried-chicken chain is surviving, so can I. I need to cling on to this belief.

I could go back to publishing again, but it would mean almost starting again from the beginning, and now that I’ve had a taste of doing work that isn’t hampered by outside voices, it would be even harder to tuck myself in, make space for playing the game.

With my refusal to accept wages from my parents and my sinking savings, there’s a lot riding on tonight aside from watching an artist I admire and potentially pulling a grime legend.

suffused with incense. It looks like the powder room of a goddess. The atmosphere is so intoxicating that it dissipates my immediate anxiety surrounding fire hazards. Jewel-toned rugs and handmade artisanal leather poufs that seem to be from northern Nigeria dot around a room that glows amber, with walls

She looks ethereal. A halo comprising a deep wine Afro-puff frames a seraphic face with umber skin that glows in the dim light and a button nose glinting with a ring. She’s in a cream silk bralet, a matching kimono, expertly ripped jeans and a pair of dainty heels. It’s an outfit that says she floats from building into car and back again with her feet barely touching pavement, a graceful R&B fairy.

It’s magical, and it would make me feel like I was the only person in attendance here, even if I wasn’t literally the only person in the audience. I look around to see if there could be more people hiding somewhere in the open space.

In front of the stage holding Taré is an empty embroidered pink armchair. I blink at it as my heart drops. The gig is over.

In the flesh, she’s smaller, slighter, like all that’s tethering her to this earth is the heft of her voice; it’s husky, multi-tonal, an instrument in and of itself.

Her voice has soundtracked so many moments of my life that this soothes like a hug from an old friend.

There’s something about how a good love song can swing low into your gut and hit at a spot between pleasure and pain and yearning and bliss, this feeling that this, this is what music was created for – this transcendence that somehow makes you leave your body and become more aware of it at the same time.

Good songs like this melt over your skin and make your heart beat faster and you come into the understanding that feelings can be real despite being intangible.

Sometimes insecurities dictate our feelings – we project thoughts onto other people and let them trap us – but a good song stirs emotion with knowledge. What you feel is heightened, affirmed by melody, by lyrics that paint you true.

And sitting here, in this basement, I’m clear on one thing: Bakari has never made me feel like this song. Fact. The sultry blues of these songs make me think of hot kisses that make your bones crumble to brown sugar that melts in a mouth that makes you moan, makes me think of believing in a love that could weather whatever, because it is the weather, it is everything.