Chapter 10
I Love You, But I'm Afraid
He did not answer for two hours.
She lay on her bed, then sat, then walked up and down the room. She made tea and forgot to drink it. At nine she took a bath in a basin and dressed in her ordinary clothes, a pair of jeans and a green T-shirt, and sat on the balcony watching the lane.
At eleven her phone buzzed.
Where are you?
Lucky Star. Balcony.
Don't move.
He came up the lane on foot, in a faded blue shirt and sandals, with a plastic bag hanging from one hand. He had not shaved. He looked as if he had slept in his clothes, which, she learned later, was exactly what had happened. He stopped under the balcony and looked up, and his face was so plain and relieved and cross all at once that she nearly laughed.
"You are very difficult," he said.
"I know."
"Come down."
"I can't, I'm in pyjamas."
"You're not in pyjamas. You're in jeans."
"Oh." She looked at herself. "Yes."
"Come down, then."
She went. She walked out of the gate, past the guard, who gave her a knowing look, and into the lane. Nathan stood in the middle of the road, blocking a boda that had to swerve around him. He did not seem to notice.
"I'm only going to say this once," he said. "I'm not angry. I was. For about a day. Then I wasn't. Then I was worried."
"You don't have to..."
"Let me finish. I'm not angry, but I'm confused. I thought I did something. I went through everything. I thought of every sentence. That thing I said at the library, about your face, I know that was stupid. I should have kept it in. But after that, nothing. You just stopped."
"It wasn't you."
"Then what was it?"
She opened her mouth. For a second, she thought it would all come out. The folder, the car, the thirteen million. There's a man, and I owe him, and I'm afraid. She felt the words rise.
"I was ashamed," she said instead.
"Of what?"
"Of the way I've been acting. At the party. I was..." She searched for something true that was not the truth. "I was trying to be someone I'm not. Because I thought that's what people wanted. And I was embarrassed that you saw."
He looked at her for a long time. A group of schoolgirls passed, giggling, and he waited until they had gone.
"Okay," he said.
"That's all?"
"It's enough for now." He held out the plastic bag. "I brought you something."
She took it. Inside was a rolex, wrapped in newspaper, still warm. Under it, a second one.
"I brought two," he said, "in case you were still angry. One for eating, one for throwing."
She laughed. It surprised her so much that she coughed. Nathan watched her with the corner of his mouth lifted, and the tension went out of his shoulders, and they were suddenly just two people standing in a road, holding food.
"You don't have to tell me everything," he said. "I want you to know that. I'm not going to make you. We all have things. I just don't want you to disappear. If you are going to leave, say so. If you need time, say so. But don't go quiet. It's the quiet I can't stand."
"I know."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
It was a lie, she thought, as she said it. Or not a lie, exactly, but a promise made by someone who was already breaking it. She was the quiet. She was made of it.
But she saw his face relax, and she let it be.
That was April.
She would remember it, afterward, as the month when the world was briefly kind. It rained often, in long warm sheets that came out of nowhere and left the roads bright. The jacaranda trees along Kampala Road burst into purple and dropped their flowers on the pavement. Exams were over for the semester. Peace had gone home to Fort Portal. Brenda was preparing for a church mission, and spent her evenings painting a banner.
Patrick's week came and went.
She waited for it in her room, with the lights off. Seven days. Eight. On the ninth, she turned off her phone and kept it off, and on the tenth she turned it on and found one message, from the day the deadline passed.
Time's up. 🙂
Nothing else. No threat. No file. No screenshots. She sat on her bed with the phone in her hand, and waited for the next one, and the next. None came.
She told herself it was over. He had bluffed. He had been angry, and he had shouted, and he had calmed down and found someone else to buy drinks for. Men did. Shanice had said he lost interest. It was the oldest rule in the book.
But the message stayed on her screen for days. A small yellow face, smiling at her. She did not delete it. She could not have said why. It was like a stone in the road. You did not step on it, but you saw where it was, and every time you passed you adjusted your stride.
She and Nathan began spending afternoons together that had nothing to do with the project.
It happened gradually, as most real things do. The app was finished in the second week of April, a simple one with a green screen and big pictures, and Mama Jalia from Owino, who had agreed to test it, pressed a tomato and spoke into the phone and watched the numbers appear, and shrieked. "Wonders!" she said. "I will tell everyone. Where can I buy it?"
"It's free, Mama," said Nathan.
"Free? Then I will tell everyone twice."
Mr. Ssekandi, the Prophet, gave them ninety-three percent, and wrote on the cover page, in his majestic hand, A genuine solution to a genuine problem. See me about incubation. Nathan photographed it. He printed it. He taped it to his wall, above a poster of a rocket, and stood in front of it for an hour.
"We did it," he said, to nobody. "We actually did it."
"You did it."
"We."
"You wrote the code."
"You wrote the three things." He turned. His face was bright, with dark circles under the eyes. "Amara. Seriously. I would not have finished. I would have built the wrong thing, a beautiful wrong thing, and gone to bed proud. You stopped me."
"I just asked questions."
"That's a skill."
"It's what everyone does."
"It's not," Nathan said. "It's really not."
They celebrated with chips and a bottle of Krest at a stall near the gate. They sat on upturned crates in the evening sun. He told her what the Prophet's incubation was, a small programme, a few months of mentoring and an office desk, and that he'd always wanted it, and never thought he'd get it. His voice cracked on the last word. He took a long gulp of soda.
"My father will not believe it," he said.
"He'll believe it."
"He thinks computers are a kind of television." He smiled, and then did not. "I would like him to see it. Just once. The app. A woman using it."
"Then bring him."
"To Kampala?"
"To the market. To meet Mama Jalia."
"That's a long bus ride."
"It's a long way to come for a good reason."
He looked at her. The light was behind him, gold and low, and she could not read his eyes.
"You always know what to say," he said.
"I don't."
"You do. You say the true thing, and it makes everything simple." He turned the bottle in his hands. "I'm not like that. I say the wrong thing, and then I say another to fix it. My sister says I talk like a man falling down stairs."
"I like how you talk."
"Do you?"
"I do."
There was a silence. Not an awkward one. A soft, thick, listening kind, as if the evening itself had leaned in.
"I should go," she said, though she did not move.
"Yes."
"Brenda will worry."
"Yes."
Neither of them stood up. A woman across the road was unloading baskets from a bicycle, and a child ran past with a stick, dragging it along the ground.
"Amara," Nathan said.
"Yes?"
"Would you come to Entebbe with me? Saturday?"
She turned. "Why Entebbe?"
"There is a beach. And the botanical gardens. I've never been. I have saved forty thousand shillings. It's not much, but it's enough for the taxi and some fish, if we're careful." He was talking very fast. "It's not a date. I mean, it could be. If you wanted. It's just a... a trip. To celebrate the app. Moses can't come, he has a thing. I thought you might like it. You can say no. Say no if you want. I will not be offended. I will go and look at a monkey on my own."
"There are monkeys?"
"There are many monkeys. It's very famous for them."
"Then I'll come."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"Oh." He let out a breath that seemed to come up from his shoes. "Good. That's good. I was afraid you'd say no."
"You said you wouldn't be offended."
"I lied." He grinned. "I would have been devastated."
They went on the third Saturday of April, on a bus that left Wandegeya at eight, and a taxi from the old park at nine, and a final boda that took them along a road lined with mango trees to the gates of the gardens. It was a clear, bright day. The air smelled of cut grass and lake water.
Amara wore her old yellow dress, the one she had worn in S6, a little faded, which fitted her better than any of the expensive ones. She had braided her own hair the night before, with Brenda's help, and tied it with a ribbon. She wore no lipstick. She wore her cracked school shoes, because they were comfortable. In her bag she carried a bottle of water, a packet of biscuits, and a blue scarf, in case it rained.
Nathan wore his white shirt. He had shaved and put on something that smelled of lemon. He kept looking at her sideways and then looking away.
"You look nice," he said at the gate.
"Thank you."
"I mean, you look like you."
"Is that a compliment?"
"It's the best one I have."
They paid at the booth, a few thousand each. Beyond the gate, the gardens opened out like a green sea. Huge trees stood in rows, with trunks as thick as houses, and long vines hung from their branches. Paths curved between beds of flowers. A group of schoolchildren in uniform ran by, shrieking, chased by a teacher. On a lawn, a family had spread out a picnic, and a baby crawled across the blanket after a rolling orange.
They walked for hours. They saw the monkeys, a troop of black-and-white colobus swinging through the high branches, and Nathan stood with his head tipped back and his mouth open, and she took a photograph of him doing it. He said, "Don't," and she said, "Too late." They saw a hornbill, and a giant bamboo that creaked in the wind, and a tree with a sign that said it had been planted by a colonial governor in 1909. Nathan read the sign out loud in a pompous voice and she hit him on the arm.
At noon they found a bench near the shore and ate the biscuits. The lake lay in front of them, wide and brown-blue, with a thin haze where the water met the sky. Small islands floated far out. A fisherman in a wooden boat was casting a net, and the net opened in the air like a hand.
"It's so big," Amara said. "I knew it was big. I didn't know it was this big."
"Have you never seen it?"
"Only from the taxi. Passing."
"I saw it once, with my class. A school trip. I was twelve." Nathan leaned back, with his arms spread along the bench. "I thought it was the sea. I asked the teacher, where is the other side? She said, Tanzania. Kenya. I didn't believe her."
"Why not?"
"Because it looked like it went on forever."
They said nothing for a while. A breeze lifted her hair. Somewhere behind them, in the trees, a bird made a long liquid call, three notes, again and again.
"My mother used to say," Nathan began, and then stopped.
"What?"
"No, it's silly."
"Tell me."
"She used to say that a lake is a place where the sky comes to rest." He laughed at himself. "I told you it was silly."
"It's not."
"It's a thing a tailor says. She spent her life looking at fabric." He glanced at Amara. "She would have liked you. I think. She liked people who said what they meant."
"What would she have said about me?"
"She'd have measured you. With her eyes. She did it to everyone." He smiled, soft and distant. "Then she'd have said, That one will do."
Something tightened in her chest. Not pain, exactly. A kind of unfolding. She stared at the water, and her eyes stung, and she thought, Don't.
"Are you alright?" he asked.
"Yes."
"You went..."
"It's the sun."
"It's cloudy."
"Then it's the lake." She wiped her face. "Sorry. I'm being stupid."
"You're not." He did not reach for her. He only sat there, close, and let the silence be, and she felt the warmth coming off his shoulder through the thin cotton. He smelled of lemon and sun and clean sweat. She could hear his breathing.
She wanted to put her head against it. She wanted it so badly that she gripped the edge of the bench with both hands.
The rain came at three.
It came from the lake, suddenly, a grey wall moving across the water, pushing a cold wind in front of it. The fisherman rowed for the shore. The picnic families scattered, grabbing blankets and children. By the time the first drops fell, the lawns were empty.
"Run!" said Nathan.
"Where?"
"There!"
He pointed. A small round building stood at the edge of the shore, a shelter with a thatched roof and open sides, where visitors could sit and watch the boats. They sprinted. Rain hit them like gravel, hard and loud. She lost a shoe halfway and went back for it, shrieking, and he went back too, and they both arrived soaked and breathless under the thatch, laughing, with water streaming down their faces.
The roof was loud. The rain on the dry thatch made a sound like frying. Beyond the open sides, the lake had vanished. There was only a pale grey curtain, and the shape of the trees, and now and then the flash of a bird.
"I think I broke my shoe," Amara said.
"Let me see."
She held it out. The sole had come away at the toe. Nathan turned it over, frowning, with the gravity of a surgeon.
"It's finished," he said. "I'm so sorry. It was a good shoe."
"It was my mother's. In a way. She bought it."
"Then we'll bury it with honours."
"Not yet." She took it back. "It has one more taxi in it."
They sat on the low bench under the thatch. She was shivering. Without a word, Nathan took off his shirt, the white one, now translucent and clinging, and held it out, and she laughed.
"You'll freeze."
"I'm from Masindi. We have real thunderstorms there."
"It's April."
"I'm very tough."
"You're wearing a vest."
"A strategic vest." He shook the shirt. "Take it. It's wet already. It's a symbolic gesture."
She took it. She put it around her shoulders. It was heavy and cold and smelled of him. She pulled the blue scarf from her bag, the twin of the one she had given her mother, and wrapped it around both their shoulders, awkwardly, so that they sat pressed together under it, her cheek almost against his collarbone.
"This is better," Nathan said.
"Much better."
"You can feel your toes?"
"No."
"I can't feel anything. I'm a statue." He was trembling slightly, and so was she, and she could not tell whether it was cold. "Amara."
"What?"
"Can I say something?"
"You can always say something."
"I'm not good at it. I've tried to say it for months. I wrote it down, in my room. I have eleven drafts. They're all terrible." He swallowed. "I like you. A lot. More than I should, probably. I don't know when it happened. I think it was the three things. Or maybe the umbrella. I just know that every day I look at my phone to see if you've written. And when you do, I'm happy. And when you don't, I think I did something."
She did not speak.
"I'm not asking you for anything," he said. "I don't want to put pressure on you. I just wanted to say it, once, out loud. So that if you ever wanted to know, you would know."
The rain drummed on. The scarf was warm, now, from both of them. She could feel his chest moving against her arm, quick and uneven.
Say it, she thought. Say it. Say something.
She turned her face up. He was very close. His eyes were dark, and a little frightened, and so honest that it hurt to look at them.
"I like you too," she said. "I like you more than... I like you so much."
"Oh," said Nathan.
"Is that all?"
"I think my brain has stopped."
She laughed, and then he laughed, and then neither of them was laughing. His hand came up, slowly, giving her all the time in the world to move away. It touched her cheek. His thumb brushed a drop of rain from under her eye. She did not move away.
He kissed her.
It was soft, and careful, and it tasted of rain. It lasted only a few seconds. When he drew back, his face was bewildered, as if he'd walked through a door he did not know was there.
"Okay," he whispered.
"Okay."
"That was..."
"Yes."
"I'm sorry. I should have asked."
"You did ask. With your hand." She was laughing and crying at the same time, a little, and wiping her eyes with the corner of the scarf. "It's all right. It's fine."
"It is?"
"It's wonderful."
He kissed her again. This time it was longer, and she put her hand on his chest, flat, over his heart. She could feel it beating. It did not feel like anything she had known. It was not a performance, or a transaction, or a way of getting to somewhere else. It was only a boy and a girl and the rain, on a shore at the edge of a very large lake.
For a minute, maybe two, she forgot everything.
Then she remembered.
It came back like cold water. She pulled away so suddenly that he blinked.
"What?" he said. "Did I..."
"No. No, it's not you."
"Then what?"
"I'm..." She pressed her hands against her mouth. The thatch dripped. A gust of wind blew rain in through the open side and spattered the floor. "I'm afraid."
"Of what?"
"Of this."
"Of me?"
"No." She shook her head, fiercely. "Of how much I want it."
He sat very still. The rain was easing, a little, but the sky was still dark.
"I don't understand," he said gently.
"I know."
"Will you tell me?"
She looked at him. At the earnest, dripping face, the open hands. At the boy who had brought her two rolex and a spreadsheet. The words were in her mouth. There was a man. There were two. I took money. I lied to you. I have been lying since the day I met you. She could feel the shape of them. They were so heavy. They were so true.
She imagined saying them. She imagined what would come after. The silence, the face changing, the slow, careful stepping away.
"Not today," she said.
"Okay."
"I'm sorry."
"It's okay."
"It's not that I don't trust you."
"I know." He took her hand, loosely. "Amara, listen. I don't know what it is. I'm not going to guess. But whatever you're afraid of, I'm not going anywhere. I'm not saying that to be dramatic. I'm just saying it, because it's true. Whatever it is, you can tell me. Not today. Not next week. Whenever. I will be here."
"You don't know what you're promising."
"I know what I feel."
"That's different."
"Maybe." He smiled, very slightly. "But it's a start."
She leaned her head against his shoulder. He put an arm around her, carefully. And they sat like that, under the thatch, in the wet gold light, watching the rain thin out over the lake until the far islands came back, one by one.
She had never felt so happy, and so lost. It seemed to her that the two things could not live in one body for long.
I love you, she thought. It was the first time she had let herself think it in words.
I love you, but I'm afraid.
She did not say either. She only closed her eyes.
They took the bus back in the evening, squeezed into the back seat of a taxi with a sleeping child and a basket of fish. Nathan held her hand the whole way, lightly, as if it might break. They spoke very little. At Wandegeya they got down and he walked her to the corner of her lane, and kissed her once more, quickly, under a streetlamp.
"Tomorrow?" he said.
"Tomorrow."
"I'll bring rolex."
"You always bring rolex."
"It's the only language I speak."
She laughed. She watched him go, a thin, light-footed figure in a damp white vest, walking away down the road. Halfway along, he turned and waved. Then he did a small, silly jump, a skip, with both heels in the air, and kept on walking.
She was still smiling when her phone buzzed.
She took it out of her bag. It was Moses, on the group chat, delighted. WHO TOOK THIS?? A photograph. It was a candid one, taken that afternoon by a passing stranger, of two people on a bench in front of a lake. A girl in a yellow dress. A boy with his head tipped back, laughing.
Under it, in the university's student page, someone had posted it with a caption. Love at the lake 😍 MHU couples are winning. It already had two hundred reactions.
She saw the heart icons climbing. She saw the comments. Cute! Who are they? Isn't that the Business girl?
And she saw, at the bottom, a new notification, from an account she knew.
pato_ssentongo reacted with 😊
She stopped walking.
The street was quiet. A light came on in a window. Down the road, a dog began to bark.
Her phone buzzed again. A message from a number she had not saved, and did not need to.
Enjoy Entebbe. 🙂