21

You are ending the summer like you began the winter together, twisting through the backroads, from New Cross to Deptford. You run into one of her friends, and you watch their conversation dance around each other, such easy rhythm, such beauty in being. Walking on, comfortably drunk. Sobriety extends a hand in the late-summer evening, and you both bat it away. Not now, not yet.

When you’re a turn away from her flat, your fingers tangle. The seed you planted so long ago grown, the roots clutching in the darkness, pulling each other closer. Your lips meet under the canopy of a tree already showing autumnal symptoms.

You are ending summer, splitting a cigarette with her. She watches you fumble with the lighter. You’re not a smoker, and she knows it, but the alcohol makes it easier to succumb to the idea. Besides, there’s an intimacy to sharing this with her which you love. She takes the cigarette from you as she has done many times before, kindly, calmly, lighting up.

‘You know,’ she pauses to take a drag. ‘OK, we’re doing this now, I’m drunk, and we’re doing this now.’ Another drag. ‘I was talking to my friends about you, about us. And there’s parts of me you’re gonna have to learn and understand.’ She gazes at the ground for a moment. ‘I haven’t really done this before. I mean, I have, you know that. But this feels different.’

There are words and phrases rattling about your brain. You want to tell her, one day at a time, as you have been. You want to tell her you cannot wait to learn more about her, about all of her. But that you can and will wait, that time means nothing to you and her now, not really. You want to tell her how much you love her, but you’re met with an impossibility, so instead you chuck under her chin and pull her towards you for a kiss, hoping she understands.

You are ending summer, hands resting on each other’s thighs. Sitting across from each other on the train home, you were holding a gaze you could be forgiven for suggesting will never break. In moments such as these, time acts as it does in your relationship, falling away; past, present and future melding in the warmth of their touch. Neither of you wish to let this gaze go, but you know you must, if only briefly, knowing the return is an inevitability.

Later, lying in bed together, the feeling of timelessness heavier now you have come to a halt. This moment seems to be going on forever. What is it Kierkegaard says of the difference between a moment and an instant, of the fullness of time? Unimportant, as you fumble in the dark, knowing each other fully, in a way which will not be forgotten, in a way which feels right.

You are ending the summer, wondering how it is possible to miss someone before they have gone. There are lives moving around you but they are of little concern. Leaning against a noticeboard, your arms around her, running your chin over the softness of her shorn blonde head. You’re both watching nervously for her train platform to be announced, and right on ­time –

‘That’s you,’ you say.

‘That’s me,’ she says.

She’ll go from London to Holyhead and take the ferry to Dublin. On the platform, she kisses you, one foot on the train, one foot off. The whistle blows once. You need to step away from the train but you’re not ready. You have never loved from a distance, but then you have never known love like this. You want to tell yourself, and her, that it will be OK, that nothing will change, but you don’t know. All too quickly, the whistle is blowing again, and the train doors are sliding shut. You hold off the tears until the train has pulled away, until you are stumbling down the platform. It is like the summer has been one long night and you have just woken up. It is like you both dived into the open water, but you have resurfaced with her elsewhere. It is like you formed a joint only to fracture, only to break. It is an ache you have not known and do not know how to name. It is terrifying. And yet, you knew what you were getting into. You know that to love is both to swim and to drown. You know to love is to be a whole, partial, a joint, a fracture, a heart, a bone. It is to bleed and heal. It is to be in the world, honest. It is to place someone next to your beating heart, in the absolute darkness of your inner, and trust they will hold you close. To love is to trust, to trust is to have faith. How else are you meant to love? You knew what you were getting into, but taking the Underground, returning home with no certainty of when you will see her next, it is terrifying.

‘So now I have a ­place –­’

‘Yes?’

‘When can you come visit?’

‘How soon is too soon?’

The next week, you’re standing at her counter in Dublin cooking breakfast. The slithers of bacon sputter in the pan, while she taps on her laptop, planning things you can do together in the city.

‘We should definitely go to the Guinness Storehouse while you’re here,’ she says. ‘There’s something visually pleasing about watching it being made.’

‘Let’s do it. Guinness is Ghana’s second national drink.’

‘Really?’ she says, raising an eyebrow.

‘Yeah, it’s like you go to a bar and instead of a pint of lager, you ask for a Guinness.’

‘You’re not just saying that to please me?’

‘Promise.’

‘OK, perfect.’ She returns her gaze to her laptop. ‘I mean, it’s such a coupley thing to do, but whatever,’ she says, unable to hide the glee this idea gives her. ‘We’ll do that tomorrow. I got a bunch of work to do today. And then ­tonight – we’re going out.’

That first night: rum, cider, cider, interrupted by three stoners cleansing you both with sage, and a wonderful ensemble of improvised music. She asks you to describe her scent, and you are embarrassed, because you’ve thought about it before, and had an answer which slipped from your mouth: sweet, like flowers in fresh bloom. Not sickly but sweet enough to bring a smile to your face. That night you both get drunk and steal glasses from the bar. You tell her she deserves to be loved in the way you love her, and she starts to cry, quiet as rain.

The next morning, you gaze in the mirror with bloodshot eyes and ask if she has any paracetamol.

‘I thought you didn’t get hangovers,’ she says.

‘Oh, go away.’

You walk across Phoenix Park instead. The dredges of summer hang above you while she describes a summer before she knew you, spent working in Dublin. A time which imbued the city with a different feeling, one which allowed her to breathe here. It’s a strange turn of phrase, you think, being allowed to breathe, having to seek permission for something so natural, the basis of life; in turn, having to seek permission to live. You’re trying to remember the occasions when you couldn’t breathe, when each inhale took effort, trying to bypass the weight lodged on the left side of your chest, trying to bypass the weight of having to know how you can breathe ­here –

‘Where did you go?’ Her eyes twinkle as they meet yours. You shake your head as the threads of thought come loose and fall away.

Walking towards the cinema, you pass a police van. They aren’t questioning you or her but glance in your direction. With this act, they confirm what you already know: that your bodies are not your own. You’re scared they will take them back, so you pull down the hood which is shielding you from the cold. She doesn’t mention ­it – the unspoken exchange, the act of ­self-­preservation – until you are sat outside her apartment block, watching a dog dance across the lawn with the moon as his spotlight.

‘Are you all right?’ She pauses as she lights her cigarette, taking a long drag. ‘The police. Earlier. You good?’

‘Yeah. Yeah, I’m good. Thinking about the film.’

The film you saw together that evening, Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk, undid you. You didn’t cry, just a twinge as something snapped into place, recognizing yourself in the actions of others. You didn’t cry when Fonnie’s cheekbones had gained shape and a purpose he didn’t intend; when the tired man was on one side of the glass, and Tish on the other, equally wearied, cradling her unborn child, a protective forearm around her distended stomach. You didn’t cry when Fonnie, stretched too far, snapped, trying to explain the intricacies of his current condition without the language to do so; Tish, collateral damage, a story you know too well. You didn’t cry when she, unmoving, reached towards him to say, I understand what you goin’ through, I’m with you, baby. No, you didn’t cry, just a twinge as something snapped into place, recognizing yourself in the actions of others. The motivation of each character was the manifestation of ­love – she told you ­this – in their various actions. All actions are prayer, and these people have faith. Sometimes, this is all you can have. Sometimes, faith is enough.

That night, you dream the police wrote your death story and only included your name as a footnote. You jerk awake, squeezing her leg as you do; your limbs are wrapped together, and she lets out a small moan as you grapple for purchase. It’s not the first time these anxieties have visited you in the night and, like before, the images remain long into your waking moments. You often worry that this will be your destiny, and, though she’s always with you, she won’t be there ­then – and you won’t know who to call in that emergency. You wonder if the emergency has already begun. Evidence for this idea: the daily surprise of your enormous frame being walked into; being tailed by security guards in stores, both those who look like you and not; the scrubbing of identity with syllables that have never been your name. Further reading: jokes at your expense, implying a criminality or lack of intellect; others wanting to ­co-­opt a word they dare not say in your presence, like they have not plucked enough from you; the wearying practice of being looked at, not seen.

You leave her in bed, and go first to the kitchen, for a glass of water, then to the living room. When the anxieties visit in the night, you like to watch rappers freestyling, because there is something wonderful about watching a Black man asked to express himself on the spot, and flourishing. You load up a video you’ve seen before on your phone and nod along in the dark. The first time you heard Kendrick say, ­Ha-­ha, joke’s on you, ­high-­five, I’m bulletproof, your shots’ll never penetrate, those lyrics sailed over your head, obscured by that instrumental and the playful jest of your favourite rapper. Now, you want to repurpose them for a future you could live in the present. You would like to be bulletproof. You would like to believe the shots will never penetrate. You would like to feel safe.

Over the next couple of days, you can’t stop thinking about a scene in John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood, where Tre arrives at his girlfriend Brandi’s house, after being stopped while driving by the police. The stop is routine. The policemen, one Black, one white, tell Tre and his friend to get out of the car. They bend them over the hood, while Tre, the more vocal of the pair, insists that they have done nothing wrong. With this insistence, Tre is asking the Black police officer searching him, Why are you doing this? This question sparks a wick forever smouldering. The policeman cocks his gun and digs it into Tre’s neck. Tears stream down Tre’s cheeks, meeting at his chin. The policeman doesn’t answer directly, but with his actions he is saying, I am doing this because I can.

When Tre enters Brandi’s living room, she asks him what’s wrong. He replies, Nothing. He says this because to be him is to apologize and often that apology comes in the form of suppression, and that suppression is also indiscriminate. He explains that he is tired. He has had enough. That he wants ­to – There are not words for what he wants to do. He begins to swing at the air because he must get this out of him. He must explain. He must be heard. He swings at the air, large swipes, hoping to catch that which surrounds and often engulfs. He begins to moan, low and stifled. He wants to believe that Brandi’s comforting will alleviate the situation, if only a little, but still the tears come. The mourning continues.

But we cool, we real cool, playing it cool. Keeping it real, cool, until –

‘Are you OK?’ she asks. ‘Where did you go?’

‘I’m good,’ you say. And you are. Despite the fact the incident in Dublin a few days prior has stayed with you, despite the fact your concentration keeps drifting towards this memory and the paths it could have gone down, despite this, you’re good in her presence. Or at least, you believe yourself to be.

‘You don’t have to be,’ she says. She takes your hand in hers and rubs the thumb over the back of your palm. ‘But share with me. I just want you to be OK.’

‘Same. Same.’ This is a different room from the one you know together, but the routine is the same. The dimness of a sidelight flooding the room in a short glow. Your smiling figures cast shadows against her yellow walls.

Your few days together have been spent doing nothing really, which is something, is an intimacy in itself. Outside now, the ground is wet, but it has not rained. You both prefer the warmth but you like the rain and its quiet noise. You spend your last day together trying to remain present. Akin to pushing Sisyphus’ rock up one of the city’s bigger hills, only for it to roll back down with every shove.

‘You’re far away,’ she says, returning you to the present. ‘Don’t hide from me.’