Chapter Thirty-Four #2
Anika inhales slowly. ‘Remember that night, when I said my dad had left us? It wasn’t just him being absent …’ She pauses, giving a soft laugh. ‘I mean, he was that, too. But that night was only a month or so after we’d buried him.’
Cam regards her closely, then nods. ‘Wow,’ he says quietly. ‘Anika.’ He doesn’t say anything else, her name imbued with enough. She gives a half-hearted shrug, playing with the corner of the duvet as Cam leans over to kiss her temple, resting his head against hers for a moment.
‘To be honest, all of this stuff recently happening to me, being in hospital, being … close to death,’ she says. ‘It feels like the scales have fallen from my eyes. It’s been good in a lot of ways. So many ways, actually. I feel powerful.’
He doesn’t react for a moment, but eventually she senses him nodding. ‘I can tell.’
Shifting against his side, Anika continues.
‘I read a quote somewhere once that said that “time is what life is made up of.”’ She shakes her head a little.
‘I dunno about that, man. That sounds way too indulgent for what I know now.’ She turns, ready now to look into Cam’s face, and he sits up more.
He keeps his arm around Anika’s waist, his hand resting on her hip as she settles her knees on his thigh, their faces close.
‘It’s one thing to think in the abstract, like, fuck – we all die, someday.
’ Her fingers trace the hair on his chest absently, the sensation of touching him acting like an anchor.
‘But let me tell you, it’s another fucking thing entirely to know.
To know.’ She shakes her head, not sure quite how to explain it.
‘Hmm.’ Cam doesn’t say anything more and Anika can still sense the tension in his muscles. Her eyes drift to the elaborate ‘Z’ tattoo he has nestled in a heart on his chest and she knows his gaze has followed. He shivers a little as her fingers brush against it.
‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I know that must be a hard thing to hear, with your sister and everything—’
‘That shouldn’t have been her time. It was too soon.
’ His voice is low. ‘Too soon.’ As if to emphasise what he said, he reaches over and lightly touches the symbol on the T-shirt Anika’s wearing now, just above her breast. It’s a war horn, an Adinkra symbol.
Anika remembers having looked it up once; it means readiness for battle.
Zaya was a warrior, out loud, in a way Anika is only just beginning to understand.
Maybe death was tapping on his sister’s shoulder, too, even at that age.
Cam is right – it was far too soon. Thirty is too soon as well …
‘Zay was my best friend,’ Cam is saying.
‘Like, yeah, I knew she was volatile, but that was what made her go for what she wanted …’ He sighs.
‘My family wanted someone to blame and I’m glad they chose me.
I should have looked out for her more.’ He stops speaking, and his eyes are faraway and filled with tears.
‘The thing … the thing that fucking hurts are the times that in a minuscule part of my brain, I actually blamed her for what happened. For ending up gone.’ Tears spill and he swipes his cheeks quickly.
Anika takes his hand in hers. ‘Cam … like I said, it’s hard to explain. For me, confronting mortality has just made me realise how tired I was of doing what everyone expected me to do. It made my path clearer.’ She looks up at Cam, but his jaw is tight, his gaze turned away from her.
‘You’re right,’ he says. ‘I don’t know what that’s like.
’ He shakes his head and finally looks at Anika.
‘If you feel powerful facing death, then I’m glad.
But from where I’m sitting, all it means is loss.
Absence. I know it comes for us all, but if I had a choice I’d never experience anything like that again. ’
Anika grips his hand tighter. ‘I know you wish you could have done something, but you did. You were her brother, her friend. You loved her when she needed someone to.’ She can’t help thinking about her own brother.
Kwesi deserved her love, in the same way he tried to extend his love to her.
Anika reminds herself this isn’t about her right now.
‘You’re honouring her and that’s beautiful. ’
Cam exhales for a long time, nodding, and she reaches her arms around him, pulling him tight into her, kissing the warmth of his skin.
‘Well,’ he says, eventually moving back a little. ‘I’m very fucking glad you’re one hundred per cent better now, Ms Lapo.’ But he must sense the way her muscles tense at that, ever so slightly, because he adds, ‘Right?’
‘Of course. I’m absolutely fine now.’ I will write it into being. Now, tomorrow and every day to come.
Eventually Cam reaches over to switch off the bedside light, plunging the room into darkness.
They both settle down into the covers and Anika rests her head on his chest. The silence of the room feels full of their thoughts.
But just being with this man she’s dreamt of for so long, she can’t help but smile.
‘You know what else is mad?’
‘Hmm?’ Cam grunts in response, already on the cusp of sleep.
Anika gives a breathy laugh. ‘That we’re going to your bloody film premiere.
That you wrote a film and it’s going to be in the cinema, and that we’re going to the premiere, in, like, a matter of hours.
’ Cam’s sleepy laughter joins hers with each incredulously emphasised word.
‘And more to the point,’ she continues. ‘That I’ve got to find a dress and put together a DJ set, and it’s …
’ She lifts her head up for a moment to look at Cam’s digital bedside clock glowing green in the darkness. ‘Nearly two in the morning.’
‘I told you, I believe in you, Ms Lapo,’ Cam says sleepily. ‘Nothing ignites you like a challenge. I lie?’
She knows he’s right. It’s disconcerting how well he seems to know her.
The rumble of his drowsy chortle guides her towards a drifting slumber.
Just before she falls asleep, Anika realises something: it’s tomorrow.
Back at the restaurant, just before the clock ticked over past midnight, she added the note about the DJ set to the end of her diary entry.
But she never wrote a single word about everything that happened tonight with Cam.