𝑵𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑮𝒐𝒍𝒅 𝑪𝒂𝒏 𝑺𝒕𝒂𝒚| 2

09: Evening Confessions 🌃

Asa

*
"You can ask me anything to make up for my stupidity." His thumbs stroked my tears away. His skin was soft, warm against my face. Nothing like I expected. And his eyes...

"Okay." I found myself whispering back.

He exhaled a breath and pulled me back to him, holding me like that until I calmed down. But one thing I noticed was his heartbeat, racing devastatingly out control, like he was running a race.

"We can play 'honest confessions', but I don't want to go through that formality. You trust me, yeah?" He asked when i calmed down. Eyes of stardusts and silver moons, beaming at me.

"Yeah."

His grin was a quick flash of teeth. "Okay."

He led us back to the ledge, the sun had already set, giving way to darkness.

"So, why do you live alone?" I asked him, trying to calm my raging heartbeat and control my erratic breathing.

He shrugged, taking a cookie and plopping it into his mouth as he chewed it all up at once. "It used to be my mum, my sister and I. Way back."

"You guys didn't stay in Sokoto with your dad?"

"For a while, yes. We did. But it got too much, you know. They, the other women, didn't like my mum. They treated her badly. They treated us badly."

"Because she wasn't Nigerian?" My body turned unconsciously towards him as I looked at him.

"Na. Dad had a lot of foreign concubines, but I think my mum was his favourite. I dunno. That was a stupid thought, considering how much he fucked us up in the end." He looked away again, his eyes closed as if in great pain and I almost stopped him from talking about this thing that hurt him so much.

But I didn't.... No, I couldn't.

Listening to him talk was like watching him sing. It was beautiful, raw, passionate. As if he was bearing part of his soul to me, unguarded, real. It was kind of hypnotic really. I just couldn't stop myself from watching him speak. I just couldn't look away.

"My mum had some money to her name, so she left the palace and came to Lagos. The city of opportunities. She built this entire apartment complex we're sitting on. And a few others in a bunch of other places. Bought some property in Festac and Ikeja and launched headfirst into Real Estate."

He leaned back, lying on the ground as he dangled his legs over the edge, his hands clasped behind his head as he looked up at the stars.

"She was going to be something. She was going to be everything... And then she died. Car crash. The news talked about it for days."

I found myself lying beside him, my back, hitting the hard concrete as he turned to look at me. We were staring at each other and the stars in his eyes shone brighter.

"I'm sorry, Amir."

He took in a ragged breath and offered a shaky smile. "It's not your fault, Asa." And then he gazed back into the evening sky. A velvety blanket with countless stars already dotting across the expanse.

"I guess, things would have been okay if my dad wasn't a complete dick about everything. He seized all her properties. Everything she had in her name, and made it look like she was unfaithful to him. He called her a harlot, totally ruined her image. He wanted me to come back to Sokoto. Back to all that negativity and hate. My older sister and I, we both refused. She sued and they had this tough legal battle and she was able to recover some of the property."