made and how she felt inside. He was standing by the window in a green T-shirt, leaning on the wall, eating chocolate Speedy biscuits from a purple packet he held tight in his hand.
“You didn’t use a condom?” he asked, making a face.
I shrugged. “Abeg, I wasn’t prepared. How I fit know today was the day the babe go gree?”
“That’s stupid,” he said, his voice flat.
“Small boy,” I sneered, a little stung by his comment. My cousin was a virgin and I knew it. He scuffed his foot and looked out of the window. There was a dark bruise around his right eye. I sighed and changed the subject, gesturing at his face. “Oya, who was it this time?”
“That Tobechukwu idiot from next door. Feels he can just open his mouth anyhow and talk rubbish.” He flexed his skinned knuckles and ate another tiny biscuit. It had been years since he’d chipped my tooth, but Vivek still fought a lot, just with other people now. He had a temper like gunpowder packed into a pipe, a coiled-up strength that had developed with time, and because he was thin and quiet, no one expected the violence to explode out of his frame the way it did. I had seen a couple of his fights, and they were worse than when he used to fight me. At first, I’d tried to break them up, but I stopped after I arrived late once and saw Vivek beat the living hell out of the other boy. He didn’t need my help.
“Where did the two of you fight?” I asked, surprised he hadn’t gotten into trouble.
“Down the road.”
“You’re lucky his mother didn’t see you. What did your mumsy say when she saw your face?” I knew Aunty Kavita would have been upset.
“She hasn’t seen anything,” he snapped. “Fashi that one. Gist me about Elizabeth. How many times?”
I grinned. “Back to back,” I boasted. I didn’t tell him how it had felt when she gasped my name into my ear, her fingers digging into my back—like in that moment I was a whole entire world.
Vivek rolled his eyes. “It’s here you’ve been bringing her?”
“Yes, but it’s just today we did that,” I said.
He glanced down at the speckled foam of the mattress. “Is she going to come here again?”
“Maybe. What’s your own?”
Vivek ran a hand over his shaved head, the skin like burnt gold. “I want to watch next time,” he said, lifting his chin at me.
I sat up on my elbows, my chest bare, still smelling of her and sex. “Wait, wait,” I laughed. “Repeat yourself.”
He raised an eyebrow and kept quiet. I flopped back down on the mattress.
“You dey craze,” I said, looking up at the popcorn ceiling. “Watch for where?” I sucked my teeth.
“I’m serious,” Vivek said. “Unless you want me to tell my father what you’ve started doing back here.” I sat up fully and stared at him, but he was holding back a smile and laughed when he saw the alarm on my face. “I’m not going to report you, abeg. I’m just saying you should include me small.”
“Why do you want to watch?” I asked. “Is it that you like her or what?”
He scoffed. “I just want to see what all the noise is about. You people that keep talking about this knacking, knacking, every time knacking.”
“Ehn? So you want to just collect a chair and sit in a corner folding your hands while you watch us?”
He gave me a sneering look. “Nna mehn, don’t be stupid. I can just see through the window.”
“And if someone catches you standing outside, nko?”
“Who’s going to see me with all those bushes outside the window? I can just stay behind them.”
Vivek ate another handful of biscuits casually, as if he was suggesting something normal. I lay back and stared at the discolored walls, trying to imagine Elizabeth being there again, her short hair rubbing against the mattress in rhythm with my thrusts, except this time with a pair of eyes pressed against the torn mosquito net of the window.
“It’s not as if you’ll see me,” Vivek said impatiently, as if he’d read my mind. “Just pretend I’m not there.”
I gave in. I actually knew some friends who did things like this. They’d rent a hotel room and some of them would sit and drink on the room’s balcony in the dark, watching as the girl got fucked inside, laughing quietly behind the glass of the sliding door, hidden by sheer curtains and the