I was about seven years old when I found a porn magazine hidden under my father’s desk. I couldn’t pinpoint it back then, but something about the woman seemed comforting to me. This girl wasn’t some far off creature that didn’t like Naruto or Soccer, this was something tangible and present. Something I could touch. I didn’t know enough to grab my dick back then, and it would take several more years for me to even try. I would instead just stare at the woman, for so long and with so much intensity, until she stopped being a human being and became a shape, kind of like how if you say a word over and over again it loses its meaning and just becomes raw phonation, the woman became a silhouette, round in all the places that I wanted her to be. I wasn’t a big fan of reading back then, so I didn’t bother checking the her name, I instead called her ‘Lucy’. And every day after school I would run to my father’s desk and stare at Lucy, unblinking until she became blurry and I could not longer see her eyes. 7-year-old Tobe built a paper princess held together with spit and sweat, gyrating under the currents of his heavy breathing.

Eventually, my mother would find me gawking at Lucy, and then she would grab it from me. And then she would start crying. And then she would call my father into the study, yelling at him about how he promised he would stop, and then I would start crying. And then Dad would look at me, and then he would start crying, because I was supposed to break the cycle, because he looked into my eyes and saw his own. Because I was thinking with my balls even before they dropped.

Time would pass, and I would move on, but I would hardly be able to look at women in their eyes again. There were always shinier parts of them that drew me in more. I fought it at first, feeling disgusting, like my eyes themselves were dirty, but after a while I figured if they didn’t know it wouldn’t hurt them. As long as I was sly with it, I could look as much as I wanted, my eyes were my own to do with as I pleased, after all. And then, well, you know what happened next.

If there was a silver lining though, it would have been that I wouldn’t have access to naked women for many years to come.

Until of course, on my eleventh birthday, my father and I walked hand-in-hand into best buy, and I watched my old man purchase an Ipad.

#

I pulled into the middle of nowhere, very confused.

“You sure you got the address right?” Lucifer asked.

“Die, please.” I checked my phone to see if I was in the right place.

“Isn’t that her?” Lucifer pointed at something in front of us, and hiding under the shade of a tree literally just a few meters ahead of us was Belinda, leaning on her car with a grin.

I got out of my car.

“You’re such a dumbass.” She said, walking over to me.

“That’s not very nice.”

She cackled. “You really pulled up and was looking around like I wasn’t right in front of you!”

“Ha, ha,” I said, looking around again, “question: where the fuck are we?”

When I say “middle of nowhere”, I truly mean it. There was no pavement, just dust and a few scattered patches of grass with a handful of trees littered around us. To our left was a fairly thick woods.

Belinda’s grin widened into a smile. “You ever gone hiking?”

“Look at me. Do I look like I’ve ever gone hiking?”

She nodded. “Fair, your arms do be looking like jumper cables.”

“I was referring to my skin color.” I deadpanned.

“Did you just commit a racism to yourself?”

I sighed. “Are we hiking or not?”

The sun shone down on her face, I could see her eyes twinkling through her glasses.

“Follow me.” She said, heading for the woods.

“Yes ma’am.” I replied, following her.

She didn’t turn back to look at me. “Lock your car.”

I turned around and locked my car.

The hike itself isn’t really something that I remember too much off, just that it was really fucking awkward because she didn’t initiate any banter, and walking behind her on an upwards incline kind of made me one track minded.

“You struck me as the kind of guy who doesn’t stop talking.” She said, after about 20 minutes of silence accentuated by rustling leaves.

“Just trying to focus on not falling.” I lied.

Belinda said nothing for another 10 minutes, and I think I was moments from saying something, anything, to distract myself from my view when we reached a clearing. Sunlight hit me with an intensity I didn’t even know Minnesota had, and the grass was a shade of green I thought you could only find in a Zelda game. A few meters to our right, there stood a massive boulder, probably about ten feet tall or so, tall and jagged with a smooth top.

“Goddamn.” I said, turning and sweeping my gaze over my surroundings. The wind was strong, not enough to be scary, but enough to balance the zest of the sun. The sky was bluer and the clouds were racister. It was the kind of place to make you believe in God again, like he had put the whole clearing in Photoshop and just upped the saturation to eleven.

Belinda adjusted her sunglasses. “If you take a few more steps, I can say with absolute certainty that you will die.”

“Pardon?”

She made a ‘turn around’ motion with her index finger, and I obeyed, turning to see-

“HOLY SHIT!” I leaped backwards, because as it would appear, the clearing was on the edge of a fucking cliff.

“Holy fucking shit!” I echoed.

Belinda laughed. “Pretty dope, right?”

My tongue dried, and my lungs shrunk. “So, so this whole time we’ve been…”

“Yep.”

“That’s why I could only look at your ass, we were…”

“Yep- wait, what?”

“We were climbing a fucking mountain!”

“Hol’ up. Run that back-”

“You can almost see the whole city from here!”

“Tobe-”

“IS THAT MY HOUSE?!”

“You were looking at my-”

“Nevermind, I think it’s a petting zoo.”

“Are we not gonna talk about-”

“HOLY FUCK IT’S OUR SCHOOL!”

Belinda sighed, and tapped my shoulder.

“What’s up? Holy shit this so fucking cool, I-”

“Yeah, yeah.” She said, then she pointed at the rock. “The views better from up there.”

We walked up to the boulder and I waited for her to go first like the gentleman that I was, but she just glared at me before flicking her fingers and gesturing for me to go, so I obeyed like a good boy. I’m not particularly athletic, so it took me a while to get to the top of the rock, but God-fucking-damn, she was right, the view was better up there.

The flat top was big, probably as big as a truck in diameter. Near the middle, through a crack, a single leaf with a stem attached poked his head out. A gust came and the little guy waved at me.

Belinda came up behind me and saw what I was looking at.

“Oh, that’s Bulbasaur.” She said, “He’s cool, don’t worry. Now come sit, you weirdo.”

“It’s fantastic here.” I said, as we sat down.

“Yeah, I come here when I wanna be alone.”

“Well then isn’t bringing me here counterintuitive?”

“Shut-up, nigga.”

I don’t know what was so exiting about being so high up. I think maybe being able to see the world how I saw it in my head was electric. Maybe it checked out boxes I had left open in my mind for so long. Maybe I was sexually attracted to Wind-Waker grass, who knows? The point is, being there, sitting next to Belinda and Bulbasaur, I felt peace. All encompassing and all bright and still, more than I had in too long. I closed my eyes to thin the line where I stopped and where the breeze started, but Alex’s crying face slid behind my eyelids. My eyes jolted open and so I instead resigned to staring at the sky.

And that’s when Belinda Mensah burst into tears.

Instantly, I panicked. Not knowing how to fix things but reaching for a wrench regardless.

“A-are you okay?” I asked, my hand tentatively reaching for her shoulder.

“I’m bawling my eyes out in front of a motherfucking Nigerian, so clearly not, dipshit!”

I pulled my hand back.

Awkward as it was, I let her cry by herself for a few minutes. Eventually, she calmed down and wiped her eyes.

“I miss my fucking friends.” She whispered. “I miss my friends and I wish I didn’t get so goddamn heated all the time. Fuck!”

I immediately blamed myself. There I was, enabling her instead of encouraging her to go back and talk to them about it. If anything, I was more upset that I didn’t want her to go back to her friends, even when I knew she missed them, solely because I wanted company.

“I’m just always so angry all the time.” She said, “I… I always scare people and make them cry. I never think, it’s just a switch and when I come to, people are looking at me like I’m a fucking rabid dog or some shit. It’s fucking annoying, and I fucking hate it. Why can’t my brain just work?” She looked down at her palm. “Maybe I am a dog.”

“There are worse things to be.” I said, very stupidly. “You could be a cat.”

She sniffled. “In the fifth grade, I dated this guy, Jonah was his name. And I found out he liked boys too, and I’m not homophobic or anything, but I guess I was just worried since he had so many guy friends, and I just lost my shit. Yelled at him, threw things, think I called him the F-word, too. His sister bawled her eyes out, and then one of our friends, Momo Sayuri, I’ll never forget, she called me a bitch. We had been playing Mario-Kart just the day before and in what felt like a blink of an eye she was calling me a crazy bitch. To my face. And the worst part was that I couldn’t even fight back ‘cuz she was right. I knew then, instantly, that I was the bad guy. I was the villain in that story. And that’s a very weird feeling. You can’t protect yourself, you can’t do anything because you’re not the victim, even though you feel like one. Next thing I knew, he, his sister, his sister’s friend, all just ghosted me completely. I lost my entire friend group in a blink of an eye.”

“Were you okay?” I asked, also very stupidly.

“No. I felt… like, dirty. Unlovable. Don’t think that’s a word but fuck it. I felt like I was twisted out of shape. I couldn’t even be mad at them, not for long at least. I went to a different high school because of it. Ran away. I make ‘em cry then run away. Do dogs do that?”

“No.”

I wanted to tell her. I wanted to tell her how unlovable I was. I wanted to tell her I was the one who always made them cry. That I was the dog who couldn’t muster up the respect to look at her face instead of her lips. Who couldn’t admire the world breathing and living around me until an ass was removed from my line of sight. I wanted to tell her I was falling in love with her faster than I was getting to know her. I wanted to tell her she wasn’t the first, and she wouldn’t be the last.

But I didn’t. Partly because that would chase her away, but mostly because my fear of sounding stupid overpowered my desire to make her feel less alone. So instead I shut the fuck up and fingered Lucifer’s knife in my pocket.

Belinda sniffed and turned to me. “Sorry.”

“No it’s fine.”

And then it was awkward again.

Belinda turned away and wiped her tears, and I looked at everything but her.

“Happy birthday… again.”

I chuckled. “Dead-ass forgot about that.”

“Yeah. It’s crazy how we literally just met, isn’t it?”

“What’s your star sign?” I asked.

“Scorpio, why? What’s yours?”

“Don’t have the slightest idea, just wanted to talk about something not depressing.”

Belinda chuckled, before standing up and brushing off her pants.

“Alright,” she said, “let’s go, you this Naija Boy.”

“Wh-? I’m enjoying the view!”

“Don’t care, we’re off to the next destination!” She had already begun descending the rock. I sighed and followed suit.

We got down the rock and traversed the woods in relative silence, and when we got to our cars, she paused, then turned to me.

“Hey,” she said timidly, “thanks for not doing that guy-thing where you try and fix my shit back when I… um, when I cried.”

I scratched the back of my neck. “Uh…”

And then she gave me a hurried hug and power-walked to her car.

“I’ll text you the address!” She said. I waited for her to turn back to me, but she didn’t. Instead she hopped in her car and drove. Complete confidence that I would follow her.

Of course I would fucking follow her. It was the first time a girl ever initiated a hug. My dick was saluting harder than a veteran.

I trudged into my car and rested my head on the steering wheel, doing nothing but breathing for a few minutes. Beside me, Lucifer tried balancing leaves on each of his horns.

“Why aren’t you laughing at me?” I asked.

The leaves fell. Lucifer studied me for a moment, then he shrugged and turned to look out the window. That was when my phone dinged. I reached for it, unlocked it, and was about to read the text when he spoke.

“Don’t bother, Tobe.” He said, still looking out the window. “Go home.”

“Huh?”

“She’s taken, and ignoring the stubborn part of yourself you’re failing to bury, the foreskin of your cock-shrouded mind is thinking you can just be friends with Belinda.”

That was a sick metaphor, but I would die before admitting it. “Well, I c-”

“No you can’t. Not with Belinda, or Frankie, or Liz, or Alex. You’ve been here before. We’ve, been here before. No one has to cry or get hurt this time, Tobe. I don’t have to laugh, and you don’t have to do this again. You’re not ready yet. Just go home and sleep until you are.”

I turned away from him and started my car.

“Shut-up, Lucifer.” I said. Because of course I did.

#

Because of the normality of it, I was still surprised when I pulled up to the next location. It was a house. Not a dingy grocery store for homeless people, or the center of the earth, but a regular, two-storied townhouse.

“Huh,” Lucifer said, “I was expecting something with more syringes.”

I ignored him and stepped out of the car, before walking over to the patio and nervously pressing the doorbell.

It barely took a second before the door swung open, revealing Belinda and a radiant grin. She had changed into a pair of short shorts and a wife beater, and her eyes were redder than they were half an hour ago. Her smile just barely reached them though, it wasn’t enough to fool me, but enough to make me pretend it did.

“Come in, Naija Boy.” She said, turning around. I closed the door behind me as I entered and followed her deeper into the house. Her home was about what you’d expect. Hardwood floors, photo frames of her and her family (seemed to be an only child), and a good deal of what I can only assume to be Ghanian paintings (they are bad).

“You’re a little late, drive faster next time.” She said, as she led me down the stairs into a basement.

“My parents are away on a trip, but I still think it’d be better if we chilled in the basement, you know?”

I shook my legs to unstick my balls. “I’m a be honest, I still don’t know what we’re doing, and why you kidnapped me from my place of education.”

We got to the basement, and Belinda hand-gestured with jazz hands at two packs of “Nussa” standing next to what must have been the most expensive bottle of alcohol to grace the planet earth.

“We’re going to drink lots of alcohol and eat lots of discount Nutella until we’re too far gone to know or care about the line between getting a homemade tattoo and slitting our wrists!” She said, like it was the hardest bar to ever be uttered.

I picked up bottle like it was an ice sculpture. “This looks expensive as hell.”

“They’re my parents’. They have a whole bunch they keep for their anniversaries to remind them of their wedding or some shit. I snag a couple when I’m sad and want to raise hell.”

I suspect the way she said “I’m sad” indicated she wanted me to ask, but I didn’t.

Belinda sat criss-cross-applesauce in front of the Nussa and wine, before gesturing for me to do the same. I did, like a good boy.

She reached into her back pocket and pulled out two spoons, her eyes dancing.

“I spat heavily on one of these spoons.” She said, because in her cocooned mind that was supposed to scare me.

I grabbed both spoons.

#

“NIGGA!”

“What?”

“YOU KNOW, I HAD A DREAM LIKE THIS ONCE, WHERE INSTEAD OF YOU IT WAS BELLA THORNE AND SHE WAS EATING ME OUT!”

“I wish I had that dream. And a pussy that could be eaten out.”

“RIGHT? IT WAS- GASP!”

“Huh? Why did you just say ‘gasp’ instead of gasping?”

“I HAD A EPIPANY!”

“I think you mean ‘epiphany’.”

“SHUT-UP! WANNA HEAR?”

“Hic! Sure.”

“WE SHOULD COMMIT MASS GENOCIDE!”

“You’re asking a lot from me here.”

The two of us stared at each other for a few moments, before bursting right back into laughter. Everything is funny when there’s wine sloshing around in your gut. We had been drinking and eating spoonfuls of the fake Nutella for about 2 hours or so. I reckon slurping on a warthog’s anal cavity would have been far easier on the taste buds, but it wasn’t a deal breaker for either of us. We found it far easier to bond with one another when we drowned our, but admittedly, mainly my inhibitions.

“Naija boy,” Belinda slurred, “aren’t your parents gonna be worried? Isn’t it kinda late?”

I shrugged. “Nah, I’m sure they’ll be fine. They trust me.” I winced in bitter anticipation as I stuffed another spoonful of hazelnut in my white wine-coated mouth.

Belinda laughed as I gagged. “That’s how I know you’re a fake African. ‘Trust’ isn’t supposed to be in their vocabulary.”

I shrugged and took another swig of the wine, trying not to think about all of the indirect kisses we’ve shared.

“I guess my folks are woke like that.” I said, mid-gag. “What’re your parents like? They gonna care that you have a strange boy with superior blood drinking their needlessly expensive wedding wine?”

Belinda chuckled as she took the bottle from me. “Nigga, all they do is argue nowadays. Sometimes I almost wish they would get a damn divorce already.”

Then she took the biggest swig I’d ever seen in my life.

I nodded. “Sounds fun.”

Belinda belched but said nothing in response. Then the silence slid in like rain clouds, but I wasn’t about to let it get awkward again.

“So,” I said, “what’s Hunter like?”

Belinda smiled.

“Oh my God.” She slurred, “I love him so fucking much I wanna explode sometimes. Bro, literally my parents wish they could have what we have.”

“Oh yeah? Where did you guys meet?” I asked, ignoring the sound of my stomach chewing on itself.

Belinda’s smile went soft around the edges. “At a party, last year. Yeah, he was flirting with me, and with the exception of Jonah I usually turn down white boys, but I was a freshman, you know?” She hiccuped. “I was a freshman, and he was a Junior, so I was flattered, I guess. I don’t… I’ll be honest I don’t exactly remember how, but we ended up in a room and things got hotter and heavier, you know?”

I nodded. “Torrid start to a torrid romance, love to see it. Was the sex good?”

“Don’t ask a lady that, you perv!”

I swallowed a spoonful of chocolate. “Can I blame it on the wine?”

Something inside of her pushed her to answer me. “I… I don’t think I was feeling it that much, so I tried to postpone the sex, but I think I was too drunk so he must not have heard me, you know?” She giggled somewhat frantically and pushed her braids behind her ear. “Anyways, he has a big-ass dick and the sex was great and I ended up having a great time and he had a great time and I woke up with him next to me and it was low-key romantic as hell and, and then he called me beautiful and best believe my black-ass found a way to blush and then that was it and that was how we met, and we’ve been in love ever since, you know?”

She began picking at an imaginary scab.

And then silence. Because no, Belinda. I didn’t know.

The space that should have held the words leaving our mouths were filled up by the ones we didn’t say, as well as the soundtrack of human existence.

Smoke detector beeping.

Water running through pipes.

Our shuffling.

Our breathing.

“Belinda?” I said, looking at her hands.

“Yeah, yeah,” she whispered, so quietly I almost lost her voice in the sound of our breaths, “I fucking know, dipshit.”

And then she grabbed the bottle and downed the remains in one go. Mouth still full, she scooped a massive spoonful of Nussa and then stuffed it into her mouth. Bits of chocolate and white wine spilled forth, but that didn’t matter to her.

It was quiet for a while. Both of us daring the other to speak first, knowing whoever did so had the responsibility of fixing the mess that I had made. I stared at the empty bottle for a few moments, before sighing, because I knew fixing things was my responsibility. So in typical Tobe fashion, I made it about myself, proceeding to accomplish absolutely nothing. I could blame it on the alcohol, but it merely opened a door I had been scared of opening myself.

And so I took a breath.

And another.

And then one more.

I sighed.

“Sometime after my eight birthday,” I said, looking down at my fingers, “I realized I was the only one who could see the devil.”

I waited for a noise of disapproval or at least confusion, but I got none. So I continued.

“Sometime after my eight birthday, I realized I was the only one who could see the devil, or as he likes to be called “Lucifer Hart.” He often equates “Morningstar” to the N-word.” I scratched my nose, “I thought it was weird, but I was a kid, I just assumed everyone else could see him too. For the better part of a year he would just stand there watching me, not blinking or talking or moving. He was always standing there in my peripheral vision, eyes completely wide and mouth a thin line. I remember his pupils were so tiny if you weren’t looking closely you’d think he had none. Then one day, in the middle of recess, after this bitch Sarah Tomlinson had called me an ugly monkey when I gave her my valentine card, he started laughing.” My breath shook. “He started laughing and he didn’t stop, not after recess was complete, not after school was complete, not on the bus, or in my bedroom or in the shower or even when I was asleep the bastard just kept laughing and laughing and laughing and I would cover my ears and cover my ears and cover my ears and cover my ears and it wasn’t like he even had an expression his eyes were still blank and he still never moved or spoke a word the bitch just kept laughing over and over then one day I fell and hit my head on the kitchen counter and started crying and he shut up but only for a moment so I kept hitting my head over and over so I could cry more and so he was quiet for longer and that brought me so much relief that I didn’t stop even after I started bleeding because crying just felt right it really just felt like it was what I deserved and it was all Sarah’s fault.” I took a breath. “Anyway my mom walked in and then she screamed and then she slapped me and then she started crying and then I started crying more and then my dad drove us to the doctor and they said some bullshit I can’t remember and I tried explaining it was Lucifer but I was too fucking out of it but then when I woke up Lucifer wasn’t laughing anymore but he wasn’t expressionless either he could talk and move and smile and yell all that shit. “ Another breath. “And he told me his name and he’s been with me ever since and now he’sgivenmetheopportunitytogetridofhimif…” My voice splintered then.

“If I can… get a girl. To like me.” I whispered.

Belinda said nothing for a moment.

And another.

And another.

And then I knew she thought I was crazy. And then I was about to cry.

After about five minutes of relative silence, I mustered up every ounce of courage in my soul and looked up from my hands to meet her gaze.

Belinda Mensah’s eyes were impenetrable.

Then she swallowed her wine and Nussa concoction, before falling back into inactivity. We stared at each other for a while, under the knowledge that we had essentially now seen each other naked.

She leaned in.

I leaned in.

Her eyes fluttered close.

Mine didn’t.

I could feel her breath on the bridge between my nose and upper lip.

My heart was louder than Lucifer’s laughter had ever been.

My stomach back flipped into my intestines.

I was going to throw up.

I was going to throw up.

My heart got louder.

And louder.

I was going to throw up.

She was getting closer.

Why was I going to throw up? I was going to grow up!

This was it! All I ever wanted! I was going to throw up!

She was getting closer and I swear to God almighty I was going to throw up.

Our lips were at the point where an exhale could have connected them, but then something from deep in the back of my brain popped like a crack of thunder, and I jolted away.

Frantically I crawled backwards before turning and lying face flat on the floor, breathing harder than I ever had, and my heart beat louder than anything I thought possible. Surely she could hear it.

“You good?” She asked.

“I’m so… fucking… s-sorry.” I gasped, my face pressed against the wooden floor. Each breath was jagged and deeper than I thought possible.

“It’s fine.”

It was silent again for a moment, with the only sounds being my deep breathing and Belinda scrapping her jar of Nussa.

Then she spoke.

“I love him, you know?” Her voice splintered. “Hunter? I love him like fire.”

And then I began to cry. Sobbing loudly, embarrassed about it but too weak to stop it. Each sob undulated with the sporadic waves of my heavy breathing. My head hurt. My head fucking hurt. As for Belinda, she pulled out a spoonful of Nussa.

Belinda Mensah said the next words through a full mouth. “Also your star sign is Pisces, Naija Boy.”