Sugar had learned, over four months of flat-sharing, that Zarina had exactly two modes when the pressure got high enough: relentless, productive motion, or — much more rarely, and only when she trusted the room enough to let it show — a kind of stillness that looked almost like grief, quiet and unhurried, homesickness with nowhere left to hide behind a spreadsheet.
Tonight was the second kind. Sugar had come home to find Zarina on the couch in the dark, laptop closed for once, an old, worn photograph propped against the base of a lamp — her mother's kitchen, Sugar had learned once, months ago, when Zarina had been drunk enough on one glass of wine to explain it. A cramped, bright room in Lagos, someone's hand blurred mid-motion stirring a pot, the specific chaos of a home that had clearly
