CARPE NOCTEM

            I spent the rest of the day trying to force myself to cry: stare at a lamp and fan my eyes, stop myself from blinking with my fingers, but even basic biological functions betray me. Thus, the moment I trusted Iya and Baba to be asleep, I snuck out: if I cry anywhere, it'll be Summer.

It's a clear night and the lake reflects moonlight. With my legs in the water, I sit at the edge of the deck and watch the silver puddles shiver in the breeze. All their dance draws out of me are the same berating and insulting railways I'm more than familiar with at this point in the night: I'm selfish, I'm cruel, I shouldn't exist...

Something rustles. I snap my head around, fully prepared to come face to face with some wild animal ready to maul me, only to see... Miles. The tightness in my chest eases but the sweet flutters are worse. I've passed the point of no return, haven't I? There's no potential future where I don't break my own heart.

His gaze flings around as if he expected to enter the tiny space without being seen and needs an answer for what to do now. 'I saw you leave...'

Are you stalkin me? I don't ask him out loud. I couldn't bear him saying no. I don't ask the rest aloud either. What do you want? Why don't you hate me yet? I've done everything I can, I'm out of tools. If you come closer, I won't resist, I don't have the strength and I'm too selfish. How don't you hate me yet?

Planting my palms at my sides, I go to stand up.

He leaps out of the shrubbery. 'Please don't.' Unlike mine, the beds of his eyes are swollen. His voice is feeble and cracked in a way I've never heard before. 'Please don't.'

My guilt strangles me and I can't speak so I shake my head. I don't know what it's supposed to mean. I can't do this? I can't take it? Don't look at me?

Miles doesn't listen regardless. 'I came out my mum.'

Speaking it aloud cements it into reality and he wobbles with nausea. His fingers root into his hair, just long enough now to grip. The heels of his hands jam his temples with enough force for his biceps to tense. He's going to crush his own skull. Forgetting me in the scenery, he stares out onto the lake as if a spectre has materialised out of the moonlit surface and is now hovering only ten metres away.

'I didn't mean to. It were an accident. It just... slipped out. I didn't mean to do it today as if today's not the worst possible option, as if the day's not bad enough. Like she weren't sad enough. And now I've just made it bout me. And I'm s'posed to be on her side. And I can't stop thinking about my dad and how he wouldn't be okay with it and how I'm disrespecting his memory cause now he can't have his say or owt. He can't... defend himself.

'And I shouldn't've told her cause that's what people've been warning her bout since he died, that we need a man in the house or we'll turn out rotten and now she's just gonna think it's her fault for not finding a new husband and she's gonna hate me for proving em right. I'm s'posed to be on her side. And now, whenever she talks to family or her friends, she's gonna have to lie. I've made her a liar.

'"Why are you telling me this?" That's what she said: "why are you telling me this?".' He shakes his head. 'I dunno.'

To watch Miles, who always pauses thrice in every sentence to choose each phoneme deliberately, flood with overlapping words and no rehearsal is so foreign it debilitates me from everything but staring. All my bones ache with the need to soothe his.

Mouth contorted and jaw quivering, he looks at me and it couldn't be clearer that I've had it all wrong. He handed me his spinal disks one at a time before I even had the thought. They're piled in my lap like monochrome building blocks along with his ribcage.

'I need you to make me feel like I'm normal.'

He sways.

I knock my ankle into the edge of the platform as I bolt forward. I'm late and catch him once his foundations have already eroded; we sink together into an awkward tangle. He's crouched and I'm on my knees as he buries his face into my shoulder.

My knees sink into the wet ground and water seeps through my pyjama trousers. I can't come up with anything to say. But I don't think he wants me to. His irregular breaths fog against my neck. One hand fists into my t-shirt and the other roots into my upper spine, clutching me so tight it hurts.

His voice scrapes from his throat. 'I'm so sorry. Please don't...' He doesn't finish the sentence. Or maybe it is complete.

The pit in my stomach is an endless pool of sulphur. 'How are you apologising after what I said earlier? I'm sorry.'

'I know you didn't mean it.'

Why do you have so much faith in me? I don't deserve it. I don't deserve any of it yet he keeps willingly pouring it out.

Though I continue to caress his back, I shake my head. 'Everythin you kinda liked about me in June... It's not what... I'm not...' The rest jams in my vocal cords.

He pulls back and despite his sore eyes and reddened nose, his stare is defiant. 'I don't care. I want you however I can–'

'I can't do that to you, not after your dad. I'm trying to be selfless here–'

'Fuck that.' Miles flips to an entirely different side of himself, so firm now that it's difficult to accept he's the same person who melted in my arms two seconds ago. 'I know when it's wrong. I know that much better than you do, don't I? And this isn't — you're not.'

I screw my eyes shut to substitute a groan and open them to glare at him. 'You think that now, but trust me, you're infinitely better off in the long-term forgettin I exist.'

'Fuck's sake, I'll regret you in ten years then.'

My breath halts. Then I exhale slowly. I'll regret you in ten years... What a thing to say! How am I supposed to respond? 'You don't understand.' That's the best I come up with.

But Miles only nods. 'Aye, I don't. I don't understand what's going on with you and all.' He moves his hands from my shoulders to my neck to caress my jaw with his thumbs. 'But I sure as fuck understand that everything's less scary when I get to see you.'

I shake my head, albeit half-heartedly. Otherwise, I'll shake his hands off and even if I know I should, I can't. I'm not trying hard enough. Even now, even when I keep professing that I'll cut him loose, I keep one hook in.

One self-serving hook that's still enough to drown him.

But even if I did have a debate statement prepared, I doubt he would hear it: the focus of his eyes has softened. His gaze caresses me — from my cheekbones to my eyelids, the flat bridge of my nose, my chin and lips — and his body slackens as if whatever he sees is so overwhelming to his senses that he couldn't possibly stay upright, much less listen, at the same time.

'It's your birthday...' The realisation leaves me as slowly as it registers in Miles. His brain is even dimmer now than usual and I repeat. 'It's past midnight, it's your birthday.'

'I guess...'

'Happy birthday.'

A fog I can't quite name raises to the surface of his eyes, like he can't quite understand what I'm saying, like he has to dig through his memories of learning English to remember what happy birthday means. Eventually, he does. A smile tugs at the hyperpigmentation at the corners of his mouth. 'Ta, love.'

Then he's staring at me again.

My cheeks burn under his palms. 'What?'

His eyes light up, a bliss that conflicts with the puffy lids and red waterlines. 'You reflect the moonlight.'

I open my mouth, complete one sharp phoneme, and shut it again.

Silence settles around us.

Miles tilts his head and his smile only grows before he slides one hand along my jaw to trace the arch of my chapped lips. It's not demanding, he doesn't stare at me in the salacious way city people sometimes do, nor is he frustrated with time and compelled to imprint every detail to memory before it's too late. Unlike me, Miles doesn't live in the future, constantly worried about how the current moment is already over and can never be re-lived, nor overwhelmed with nostalgia for the present. It's a gentle stare simply grateful for the moment. Maybe as a Buddhist, he's able to do that in a way I never will.

The flutters in my chest won't ease regardless of how loud I command. I'm being selfish. I need to cut him free. He's going to drown because of me. Tell him. Tell him.

I don't.

Then, as if charged by the moonlight, Miles sits upright. 'Fine. You can keep ignoring me if you want. But I won't make it easier for you by pretending I don't know you or that I don't want this.'

When his hands slip from my face, a whine of protest flees me before I catch it. He lets me save face, pretending not to hear it as he brushes down his clothes.

'I'll see you tomorrow.'

It's almost a threat — I'll see you tomorrow. Yet I already look forward to it.

             I stare at Jonah, convinced for a second that it's a joke, but the pronounced creases around his raised eyebrows throw the hope away with one sweep. 'Two hundred?' I repeat. 'That's barely a quid each.'

Johan picks up one of the books I've heaved onto the counter in front of him, From a Land Where Other People Live, and fans through it. 'These have all been written in.' He drops it back onto the heap. 'And even if they weren't, nobody here is going to buy these kinds of books.'

These kinds of books...

I ignore the add on and latch to the first. 'If anythin, that should increase the price cause now you get my thoughts too and I'm bare a comedian.'

He's unamused. Maybe he still holds a grudge from the time I worked here, though it'd make more sense the opposite way considering he's the one who sacked me.

'Nobody pays for the thoughts of some kid scribbled in the margins. Two hundred, take it or leave it.'

So I step out of Kingston Book Nook with empty Ikea bags rustling in my backpack and two hundred notes folded in my pocket. At least I managed to talk Ronny up from 170 to 173 and twenty pence for my bike. Meaning I still need a clean two thousand until I can pay Iya and Baba. The only issue is I have no way of making that money unless I sell my organs.

And I think I've already gone too far.

Only a few metres home-bound, I spin around and rush to Dal's instead. An apology is ready on my tongue as I race up the stairs, but I suffocate it as soon as I'm on the landing. Dal leans on his doorframe, holding a flip phone to his ear, and presses a finger to his lips.

I wouldn't be able to make a sound either way, the sight of him so feeble terrifies me mute.

Like a young oak that once grew so bulbous only to be whisked into a stick figure by wintry tempests, he withers in plain sight at whatever the person on the other end says. 'I ain't gon do that. No.'

Grabbing my shoulder, he ushers me inside, then eases the door shut so gently it doesn't click. The flat is cast greyscale in the diffuse light radiating behind the blinds. No lamps are on and his face is shrouded by darkness as it is by panic.

'Don't bring Libaan into this.' For the first time in my presence, his voice gets away from him, brandishing his anger and fear without consent. Dal screws his eyes shut. 'No. I'll figure it out, innit. I'll meet the index. But I ain't doin that.'

After another tense moment, he snaps the cell shut and shoves it into his back pocket. It's not the phone he uses to contact me.

'What was that about?' I ask.

'They need me to sell more.' Dal doesn't let me think about it too long, capturing my gaze with his which simultaneously threatens me to not ask questions as it asks me what I want.

'I sold your books. I'm so sorry.' The words choke from my compressed chest and I sway, ready to drop to my knees and plead for forgiveness. 'I need the money, but I shouldn't've... I wasn't thinkin. I'm so sorry.'

His brow furrows, for a moment uncertain whether this is a joke. 'You expect me to be cross with you for that? They're books.'

'Yeah, but you gave them to me.'

'So you'd read em, not so you'd buried with em. Wallahi.' With a sigh, not of exasperation with me but with himself for forgetting my sentimentality, he squeezes my arm. He steps past me to get out of the narrow entrance and into the flat. 'Blud, it's calm.'

I stare at the peephole on the door for a moment, then wedge off my shoes to follow him. Dal thrusts a glass of pineapple juice into my hand as I step over a pair of dumbbells to sink onto his sofa.

Dal works out when he's distressed. I think Miles does too, that's why he wears gym clothes: he can take off for a run at any point in the day. I think he runs a lot to get away from his mum. I think I'm a solipsist — I act like people vanish from existence the moment I'm not looking.

I thumb the perspiration on the glass. Any trace I leave mists over in seconds.

'Am I a bad person?'

Dal freezes in the middle of clearing the floor, then slowly returns the dumbbells to the carpet. 'If you're a bad person, the rest of us are doomed.'

My hands shake so violently that my juice threatens to spill. I embed the glass onto the side table. 'But my parents do so much for me and I still... And I rejected Oxford for no proper reason, which I still haven't told them about. I didn't go to Sonia's violin thing after I promised I would. And I kissed Miles and then I disappeared...' I pause to give Dal the chance to mock me but he doesn't. 'And the worst part is I really fancy him.'

Dal shuffles forward with uneven drags of his feet to sit beside me. Refusing to look at him, I wind into myself.

I want Miles to show me how to use MP3 converters to illegally download music en masse to fuck capitalism and the elitism of art, though mostly because I want Miles to show me. I want to join him for his runs, to bike beside him as he jogs. I want to lean my head on his shoulder and listen to music together. I want to peel oranges for him, to slice apricots and dates into a handcrafted bowl and bring it to him when he's so sunk into a task he's forgotten what time it is, keep the pits for myself, care for them until I have an orchard of my own. I want him to teach me how to use chopsticks. I want to hold his hand and massage each knuckle until I can sense their crevices in my sleep.

I look down at his grey sleeveless tee I've worn all night. I've slept in it enough times for it to need washing but Miles's cologne of pomelo and agarwood still clings to it and I couldn't bear for it to be replaced by Baba's laundry detergent. The cotton blend on my skin is the best substitute for his touch available to me. How I envy the sheets that get to wrap around you every night.

Unlike Arabic, Darija is not a language created for romance. It's created for haggling in the depths of a dusty maze-like market that somehow has a mosque crammed in the middle of sandstone walls, where you curse out the merchant's entire family for his prices only to share a glass of mint tea after the sale is done. But whoever first said the phrase sknti klbi bla matshawrni was a lover — you settled into my heart without permission.

Before I know it, tears spot my skirt. 'I think I'm spoilin everythin with everyone.'

Dal pulls my quivering frame to him, tucks me under his chin, and holds me tight. It's exactly the kind of hug I need, one that doesn't make false promises or give any pleasantries, one that says I can't speak for other people but you've not spoiled anything with me. He's my brother in everything but blood.

I speak before he can. 'Does your mum know the money you send her's from drugs?'

'You reckon she'd take it if she did?' He sucks his teeth but no sooner has it landed when he revokes the statement. 'Maybe she does. But she can't raise two teenagers on disability benefits so she ain't ask no questions.'

'Don't you miss her? I know you're an adult and everythin, but I dunno if I could ever go a week without seein my mum.'

'I do.'

As Dal tightens his hold again, his hug answers my implied question about why he doesn't visit her more often: I doubt I'm what she wanted. So that when I turn the words back on him as a reason for why I can't be with Miles, his dilemma is obvious: he either has to take back his previous honesty or become a hypocrite.

He picks the latter. 'I think you should give him the chance to decide for himself.'

Why don't you ring your mum then? The words are already on the tip of my tongue when I swallow them back down.

I bury myself in his chest so that my speech muffles into his t-shirt, half-minded to make it entirely incomprehensible so I don't speak my fear into existence. 'What if he thinks I'm a freak?'

For a long moment, Dal doesn't answer. Then he sighs, knowing he has no better wisdom to bestow and hoping he would; the misery of real life is that sometimes bland clichés are all that's at our disposal. 'That's the risk you take, innit.'