Do We Really Belong?

Chapter Two What Nia Does

Nia doesn't welcome you back. It just resumes.

By the time the bus pulled into the city at dusk, the sky had gone that particular shade of orange-grey that looked pretty in photographs and felt like exhaust fumes in your lungs. Zara stepped off onto Tabea Road and the noise hit her first — not loud, exactly, but dense. The coast had spoiled her for silence she hadn't even known she was enjoying.

Her phone buzzed the second it caught a signal. Six messages, two missed calls, a Slack notification, and a reminder that her rent had been processed.

Welcome home.

She scrolled without reading. One of the messages was from her colleague Tatu: girl, where ARE you? Cedric has been asking about the Gregor brief since Monday. Another from her mother: Did you land? Call me. Two from a number she'd saved as Do Not Answer and then, apparently, not answered.

She should have deleted that contact months ago.

Noted. File under: things you will not do.

She hailed a cab. The driver had the radio on — some evening talk show, two people arguing about something municipal. She stared out the window at the city rebuilding its grip on her and tried to hold onto something from the coast. The ginger in the tea. The way the ocean had no opinion about her.

It was already slipping.

Her apartment was exactly as she'd left it. Neat in the way that meant I live alone, and there is no one to make a mess with, which was either peaceful or sad depending on the day. She dropped her bag at the door, didn't unpack it — she'd do that tomorrow, or possibly never — and went straight to the kitchen.

She stood in front of the open fridge for a full minute.

There was yogurt. Some eggs. Half an onion living its best life in a ziplock bag.

"Right," she said to the fridge.

The fridge had nothing to add.

She closed it and ordered delivery. Pulled up the app, stared at the options, changed her mind three times. Settled on ugali and beef stew, which was either comfort food or defeat, depending.

While she waited, she sat on her couch and looked at her apartment. The pile of books on the coffee table she'd been meaning to read. The plant on the windowsill that was, improbably, still alive despite her general neglect. The framed print on the wall that she'd bought because she liked it in the shop and had felt neutral about ever since.

This is your life. It's fine. It's a fine life.

A perfectly adequate internal riot followed that statement, and she let it run itself out.

The call from Tatu came at 9 pm.

"You're alive."

"Debatable." Zara tucked her phone between her shoulder and ear, washing her fork. "I just got in."

"Cedric wants the Gregor brief by Thursday."

"Then Cedric should have said that before I went on leave."

"He did, actually."

"Then Cedric should say things louder." She dried the fork. Put it away. "I'll have it done."

Silence on the other end. The kind Tatu deployed when she was deciding whether to push.

"How was it?" Tatu asked instead. "The coast."

"Good."

"Just good?"

"Fine. Nice. The fish was excellent."

"Zara."

"What?"

"I can hear you being cagey from here, and I'm literally across town."

Zara leaned against the counter. Out her window, Nia was doing its nighttime glow — not beautiful, exactly, but alive. All those lit windows. All those other people in their fine, adequate lives.

"There was a man," she said finally.

"There we go."

"Two, actually."

"Zara wa Nia."

"It wasn't like that. Nothing happened."

"But?"

She looked at the wooden elephant on the coffee table. Small and ridiculous and slightly lopsided.

"But nothing," she said. "I'm home."

Tatu was quiet for a moment. "That's not an answer."

"I know."

She hung up before Tatu could say anything else useful.

Later, in bed, ceiling fan making its uneven circuit above her, she let herself think about it properly.

Not Abedi's flowers, not Ayub's swimming lessons. Not the ginger tea or the frangipani or the way the Indian Ocean looked at 7 am when the light hit it sideways, and the whole thing went gold.

The question.

Do we really belong?

She'd read somewhere once that belonging wasn't a place. That it was a feeling, and feelings were portable. She'd found that comforting at the time.

She found it significantly less comforting at eleven-thirty on a Tuesday with a Cedric brief due Thursday and a fridge that contained half an onion.

Portable. Right.

The fan turned.

Outside, Nia murmured to itself.

She didn't sleep for a long time.