on’t look back, he thought.
He did anyway, on the way out to the tap. Wanted to see it, he reckoned; the kitchen was still wreathed in shadows, soft with the morning, but out in the yard Yaris was sharp as a knife’s edge. Wanted to see it catch on all Aremu’s features – met his eyes, which’d been dark as black inside, and now sparked with reflections and seemed to catch a color even darker and richer than that.
He felt a smile on his face still, mung as a boch’s and softened by that kiss. He could still feel it on his knuckles. The warm knot of fingers at his side came untangled; he felt the last scratchy brush of gauze, and then he was gone to the pump.
Water slopped warm. In the corner of his eye he could see Aremu leaned up against the old fence, chest still bare to the warm sun. Don’t look, he thought, and looked here too – looked at him even though his eyes was shut, even though there was a look on his face Tom felt like maybe he’d not earned the right to be privy to.
Like a dream of freedom, he thought, watching the muscles of his throat flicker in the sun. Watching his shoulders ease back, seemed like, just a pina, his chest rising and falling.
Ne here, Tom thought, shutting off the pump; ne freedom. He smiled down at the old eschana, running his hand over the bulb of it, feeling the sloshing weight.
There was a pattern of swirls across the side, bordered by thick bands with some kind of swirling script he reckoned might’ve been wika Mugrobi. Markings’d faded now, blended together.
Aremu smiled at him when he came close; he wasn’t sure why, but the imbala reached out and took his hand again and held it. He looked at him – really looked – met his eye, and his lips parted slightly.
That he’d asked a question, Tom knew; but the words had got tangled up in all the other words, and when he managed to pry them free all delicate-like with his clumsy fingers, they was still covered in their scents and the lingering colors. So he tried to take them apart, just these words, from each other, from the sounds, from Aremu’s voice. They fell apart like waterlogged roots; he couldn’t’ve told which belonged to which.
“Oes,” he said, smiling.
He felt the smile; he saw it on Aremu’s face, and he didn’t have to look back or not look back, ‘cause it seemed to him almost like the imbala was leading him inside. And there was nothing to look back at, except the yard and the pump and a fence where a man’d been, now all full of sunlight.
Nor did Aremu go and sit when they came inside. His headache thrummed, but he’d not realized how strong the smell of kofi was in the kitchen, and he found it easing in the rich dark.
He began to scoop the grounds in. He could feel Aremu’s eyes following him; his sun-warmed skin prickled. “Strange dreams. Better, ‘cause you was there,” he added, more a soft grunt than anything, and turned to put the eschana on. He turned to look at Aremu, still smiling soft, a pina sheepish.
“An’ you?” he said, easing himself back to lean against the counter too.
There was a tie coiled loose by the window-sill; he reached to take it, put it in his mouth, started working at raking his fingers through his hair. He put his hair up into a tangled bun; he felt the sun on the back of his neck, and the breeze too.