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he growled,
Joy shaved her head on a whim and tattooed a black dot on each lower eyelid. Feyi pierced her nipples and braided her bubblegum hair down to the small of her back. They turned off the news and ordered edibles instead, redecorated their apartment with plants instead, started making pizzas on Saturdays instead. There was nothing to stop them from being whatever they wanted.
“First of all, we’re a few years too old for that,” Feyi had replied. “Second, I think we’re just figuring out how to survive a world on fire… that it’s okay to be alive.”
It could become addictive; it felt so good to be on the receiving end of these men’s hungers. It felt like power.
Feyi liked the proofs of want, like Milan making reckless choices in that bathroom, like this man making a fool of himself right now.
All this was just desire, blind and stupid, and it had nothing to do with who she was, so it wasn’t even personal, no matter how deep he was trying to make it sound. They’d just met. He didn’t know her; he’d just seen someone pretty with turquoise cornrows and a plum mouth, a body leashed in black sequins, so of course he wanted to touch her and be touched. Of course he wanted to fuck her, no matter
I’m not him. I want the real thing. I don’t need it to be light and easy.”
and besides, you’re worth it, Feyi. You can be yourself, as messy and contradictory as you like. He’s lucky to be even near you.”
And that’s something I’ve learned in the years since, that there are so many different types of love, so many ways someone can stay committed to you, stay in your life even if y’all aren’t together, you know? And none of these ways are more important than the other.”
You always fall for the impossible, Jonah used to tell her. It hadn’t mattered then because he believed in her so fiercely, everything had turned out to be possible anyway.
Dimly, in the back of her head, alarm bells were clamoring, but she didn’t care. To hell with what trouble this would bring, she was alive. She was fucking alive,
Feyi brought her hands down to his shirt and pulled him closer so she could kiss him, slowly, deliberately, with a world of choosing in it.
“Everything I want seems impossible,” Feyi finally said, “and I don’t know what to do about it, so I told myself I couldn’t have it. I don’t know how to say what I want because it sounds mad. It sounds absolutely wild and like a thousand people are yelling at me in my head telling me how stupid and reckless and fucked-up it all is.”
You are so generous with your heart. You were like light. I couldn’t help but to turn my face to you if I wanted to keep living.”
I could think was that I’ve spent a significant amount of time trying to change what I feel into something else, and I can’t.
“We’re doing this?” “What, setting our lives on fire?” A corner of her mouth quirked up. “Sounds fantastic.” Alim wrapped his arms around her. “I’ll burn with you,” he murmured, and Feyi held him as tight as she could. The mountains laughed green beyond the glass, a new world intact and fragile, for now.
“He loved people being messy as fuck—he said it was one of the best things about being human, how we could make such disasters and recover from them enough to make them into stories later.”
I want us to take our time, to believe that we have time to take.”
“Sweetness, you have me for as long as you want, however much or little you want. I’m not going anywhere.”
“It’s more like that. Like when you look back over a whole life, you realize the things you panicked about before stop mattering in, like, thirty years. I think that’s why I’m nervous about this, but at the same time, I think it might all work out okay in the end. I didn’t think I would survive losing Jonah, not ever, but here we are, and yeah, I guess messy and alive is a good way to put it.” She shook her head and smiled, even though it didn’t feel funny. “None of this shit really matters, you know?” Joy sighed. “Damn, when you get all existential like that, it really doesn’t. You might as
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“I want you to stay.” His voice was close, soft and intimate. “I also want you to choose what’s best for you, but if you were wondering where I stood on it, or what I wanted, it’s you. Here, with me.”
His feelings are real, she’d tell Joy, you should have heard him. You could build a house on how sure his voice was; you could build a house that would never fall down. And Joy would laugh, but it would be true, Feyi knew it would be true.
“This is already almost impossible.” “Do you truly believe that?” he asked, frowning a little. “Not really,” she admitted. “But literally everyone else will.” Alim shrugged. He was even more relaxed naked than he was with clothes on. “I only care what you think.”
It hurt like it had just happened, like the years between then and now had collapsed into nothing and this was normal,
“Nothing too small. I like things to take up space.” She gave Feyi a dazzling smile, the somber look in her eyes dissolving into light. “I try my best to live by that, in fact.”
but there was a difference between being out of the way and hiding like this, which, she realized, was something she was choosing. Alim hadn’t asked her to go lock herself in her room and pretend like she wasn’t in the house, Feyi was the one pressing herself into this corner. “Stop acting like a small girl,” she said, forcing herself to her feet and out of the room.
“I can look away from the painting if you’d rather keep it unseen until it’s complete,” he offered, but Feyi waved him off. “You can see it in any stage it’s in,” she said. “I don’t care. I like showing myself to you.”
Alim lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it. “I’m in love with you,” he said again. “I love you, Feyi. I love how you skin fear and move through it. I love how you lean into grief and somehow use it to be even more alive. You’ve shifted my whole world, brought me light and company and a joy I forgot I could feel. I’m not letting a little distance get in the way of this.”
