The rain again
1324 Words
Friday came with rain.
Not the polite Lagos drizzle that apologised for itself and left quickly. The serious kind — the kind that arrived with intention and settled in, drumming on rooftops and flooding gutters and turning the streets into rivers that Lagos drivers navigated with the particular resigned expertise of people who had done this many times before.
Kamsi closed the pharmacy at five instead of six.
There was no point staying open when the rain kept customers away and the street outside looked like a minor flood. She sent Tolu home at four-thirty and finished the end of day inventory alone and locked up at five and stood under the pharmacy awning looking at the rain with her bag in her hand and her car twenty metres away.
Twenty metres had never looked so far.
She was considering her options — none of them good — when a black car pulled up directly in front of the pharmacy.
The window lowered.
Zion looked at her from the driver's seat.
Just him. No Emmanuel. No tinted convoy. Just Zion Adaora in a black car in the rain looking at her with that steady assessing expression.
"Get in," he said.
"My car is right there," she said.
"Your car is twenty metres away in a flood."
"I've navigated worse."
"Kamsi." His voice was patient. "Get in the car."
She looked at the rain.
She looked at him.
She got in the car.
---
It smelled like him again — clean and expensive and something underneath that was just him, just the specific warmth of this specific person. She was aware of that. She was aware of the rain on the windows and the city muffled outside and the smallness of the space between them.
"Where's Emmanuel?" she said.
"I gave him the evening." He was already pulling into traffic — calm and certain, the way he did everything. "I was passing."
"You were passing my pharmacy."
"Yes."
"In the rain."
"It's on my route."
She looked at him. "Your route to where?"
A pause.
"Nowhere in particular," he said.
She looked at the rain on the windscreen.
"You were checking on me," she said.
"I was passing."
"Zion."
He glanced at her. The almost-smile. More visible now than it had been a week ago. She was starting to learn its variations — the barely-there one, the controlled one, this one which was almost real.
"I was checking on you," he said quietly.
She looked forward.
"You don't have to do that," she said.
"I know."
"I'm capable of—"
"I know you're capable." His voice was even. "That's not why I do it."
The car moved through the flooded Lagos streets — unhurried, the rain drumming on the roof, the wipers moving steadily. Outside the city was grey and wet and beautiful in the specific way that Lagos in the rain was beautiful — softer than usual, all the edges blurred.
"Why do you do it?" she said quietly.
He was quiet for a moment.
"Because I want to," he said simply. "And I've spent a long time not doing things I want to do." He glanced at her again. "I'm revising that policy."
She felt something shift in her chest. Warm and wide and slightly alarming.
She looked at the rain.
"Where are you taking me?" she said.
"Where do you want to go?"
"Home."
"Okay."
He drove.
She watched the city go past — the rain-washed streets and the blurred lights and the people running for cover under umbrellas and awnings. A city she had lived in her whole life looking different from a black car on a rainy Friday evening.
Or perhaps the city was the same and she was different.
She didn't examine that.
"Tell me something about yourself," she said. "That isn't about the senator or the evidence or any of it."
He thought about it.
"I can't cook," he said.
She looked at him. "At all?"
"Emmanuel has tried to teach me three times. We've agreed it's better for everyone if he stops."
She laughed. The surprised kind — out before she gave it permission.
He looked at her when she laughed. Brief. Like something he was storing.
"Your turn," he said.
"I'm afraid of birds," she said.
He stared at her. "Birds."
"All of them. Every kind."
"You walked into that corridor and faced down Emmanuel and you're afraid of birds."
"Emmanuel doesn't have wings and a beak."
He laughed. Actually laughed — warm and unguarded and real, filling the car, and she thought: there it is. That's the laugh underneath all of it. That's what he sounds like when nothing is managed.
She filed it away.
"Birds," he said again, still almost smiling.
"Don't," she said.
"I'm not saying anything."
"You're thinking something."
"I'm thinking," he said pleasantly, "that you are the most surprising person I've met in a very long time."
She looked at him.
He was looking at the road but she could see the side of his face and the almost-smile that was now more than almost.
"Good surprising or bad surprising?" she said.
He glanced at her.
"Kamsi," he said quietly. "Everything about you is good."
The rain drummed on the roof.
The city moved past the windows.
She looked forward.
She was smiling. She couldn't stop it. She pressed her lips together and looked at the rain and smiled anyway.
---
He pulled up outside her building at six-fifteen.
The rain had softened to something lighter — still falling but less committed. The evening was grey and cool and smelled of wet Lagos earth.
She picked up her bag.
She looked at him.
He was looking at her building — assessing, as always. Filing things away, as always. She recognised it now because she did the same thing.
"You can go now," she said.
"I know."
He didn't move.
She looked at him properly. At his hands on the steering wheel — still, controlled. At his profile in the grey evening light. At the weight he carried that showed itself sometimes in the set of his jaw and the particular kind of tired around his eyes.
"Zion," she said quietly.
He turned to look at her.
They were close — the car was not large and she had not moved and he had not moved and the rain was still falling softly and the city was very far away.
"Thank you," she said. "For the ride."
"You don't need to thank me," he said. His voice was lower than usual. Something careful in it.
"I told you," she said. "I'll stop when it stops being true."
He looked at her.
She looked at him.
The rain.
The grey evening.
The particular stillness of two people who were not moving and both knew why and neither of them was saying it.
She looked at his mouth. Once. Briefly.
She looked away.
She opened the car door.
"Goodnight Zion," she said.
"Goodnight Kamsi." Quiet. Careful.
She got out.
She walked to her building without running — she was not going to run — and she heard the car stay where it was until she was inside and the door was closed.
She leaned against the inside of her door.
She pressed her hand flat against her chest.
Her heart was doing something completely unprofessional.
She closed her eyes.
Outside she heard the car finally pull away.
She stood against her door for a long time.
The rain fell.
She thought about everything about you is good and a laugh that filled a car and the way he had looked at her in the grey evening before she looked away.
She thought about forbidden.
She thought about inevitable.
She pushed off the door.
She went to make tea.
She made two cups by accident.
She looked at the second cup for a long moment.
Then she poured it away.
But slowly.
Very slowly.
- Writer
- chap_listContents
- likeADD