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“Keep still.” I wound my arms around Malakai’s neck and hitched my legs tighter around his waist. His grunt reverberated through his chest to mine and his hands slipped under my legs for a firmer grip, but he continued hopping from one foot to the other. Our faces were inches apart, so close that our hot tequila-tainted breaths were mingling.
“The hell are you doing?”
“Warming up.” He decided to dip and stretch a leg with me still clamped on to his chest like a marmoset on a branch.
“It’s a race to the end of the room, where I have to direct a blindfolded you to a table that holds a shot of tequila that you have to pick up with your teeth and pour into my mouth without spilling it. You don’t need to warm up for that. Light work.”
Malakai smiled and even with the silk scarf I had used to tie around his eyes I could see the spark in them.
“I’m an athlete, Kiki. Let me do my ting.”
I rolled my eyes.
“You just rolled your eyes, innit.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t need to see you to see you.”
My belly twisted.Fucker. Bold of him to say those words while we were in a position where it would only take a slight consensual shifting for there to be a real risk of pregnancy.
While it was true that I had entertained tiny vignette fantasies of climbing on Malakai like I was a squirrel scurrying up an oak tree, this wasn’t quite how I envisioned doing it. Malakai was a finalist in the Lit-Lympics, a competitive event founded by Ty Baptiste in which participants had to partake in a series of athletic challenges that ended with one or more shots of alcohol. The prize was the master bedroom with the en suite hot tub with a consenting partner of one’s choosing. The notion of group games usually made my blood turn icy, but due to the high stakes of this particular one (the hot tub) and the fact that Malakai’s participation necessitated my involvement, here I was. As the second of Ty’s three dress codes had been beach chic (he had turned the heating up in the house to create a tropical Sussex microclimate), I was wearing a neon-yellow sleeveless crop top and stone-hued denim booty shorts, while Malakai had unbuttoned a red, blue, and yellow geometrically patterned shirt that was paired with board shorts. His bare skin bumped against my chest as he warmed up.
“You’re just flexing for your boyfriends.”
Ty was currently doing squats with Shanti fastened to him, keeping count. Kofi had made up with Aminah after she gave him a shoulder massage to prep him for the previous event. Right now he was doing some kind of intricate warm-up dance footwork while Aminah smoothed down her hair. Neither of them had their blindfolds on yet. I’d made Malakai put his on early as a safeguarding precaution for myself. Eye contact was still too dangerous.
Ty’s family’s conservatory was large, running almost the entire length of the house, and all pool tables and exercise bikes had been cleared for this last event. More people had since arrived for the party and so each side of the floor-to-ceiling glass room was lined with Blackwellians with red cups in hand, buzzed by the notion that Ty might actually be beaten by a newcomer.
Both Malakai and I had had more than a couple of drinks by now, muddling through interviews that got easier as the alcohol released dormant flirtatious energy that ran hot over the awkwardness. I knew I was supposed to be uncomfortable, knew that I was meant to be mad at him for playing with me like this, but I allowed myself the indulgence offeeling the sweetness of the lie before I repressed the instinctive quickening of my pulse. This was a performance and Malakai was nothing if not a showman—the playful hollers and whistles couched us so warmly it made me feel cold. All Malakai was doing right now was running drills to flex and train flirtatious muscles. He was trying to avoid Fuckboi atrophy. This was purely medical. I was a physiotherapist.
I grabbed his chin and a hold of myself. “Focus. I need you to get into beast mode. Our main competition is Ty. He has Shanti and he’s gonna wanna show out for her. He has something to prove. Kofi will be too flustered by Aminah’s proximity to focus.
“We have to win this. We’re gonna have them eating dirt. Well this house is super clean so, like, licking the marble.” I paused. “We’re gonna have them getting mild poisoning from the disinfectant, just a couple of trips to the bathroom, nothing major.”
There was a couple of silent beats until Malakai breathed out. “You’re kind of a competitive sociopath, aren’t you, Banjo?”
“Shut up.”
“I like it.”
“Anyway, I’m gonna hoist my butt slightly up to alleviate the pressure on your—”
“Kiki, chill. I got you.” He gripped tighter onto my thighs.
“You better have. I’m at a really juicy part in the latest Ifekonia book. Shangaya and Niyo are in a mountain cave. They just had a heated argument and they’re definitely about to have angry sex. The hot tub would be a perfect place to get into it.”
“I’mma get you that horny reading hot tub time, Scotch.”
It was the first time he called me Scotch since the other night. It sunk into me, sat warm under my skin, made my heart buoyant enough to jump to my mouth and push out a smile that I didn’t tuck in fast enough. I was grateful he was blindfolded. The potency of whatever permeated the air between us seared through my confusion over the other night.
“Alright sistren, brethren, them-thren.” Chi, our self-proclaimed games master, gathered our attention. She was perched on top of Ty’s dad’s home bar in the corner of the room, a bottle of tequila in one hand and a karaoke mic in the other.
“On your marks!”
I had a last-minute anxiety spike, imagining being dropped on my ass in front of the Blackwell elite and having it immortalized in GIF form on Simi’s blog.
“You better not let me go, Kai.”
