Chapter 159: Someone Needs Company

Xavier was at his desk at 7PM when his phone buzzed.

He glanced at the screen.

Amira.

Amira: Xavier baby are you home

He looked at the message for a moment.

Baby, he noted. Amira texting me at this time with this particular question. He set the phone down. Picked it back up. Either something’s wrong or something’s very right.

Xavier: yes Amira

Amira: I kinda feel lonely tonight 😔 my roommates went to lodge at their boyfriends place and I’m all alone and bored. Can I come over?

Xavier looked at that message.

Then he smiled.

I know this play, he thought. And it works for both of us. He leaned back in the chair. We both know what a girl means by this specific statement at this specific hour. The lonely. The alone. The can I come over with the sad emoji? He almost laughed. Textbook play. And I’m not complaining.

Xavier: Sure thing. Put on something sexy between, I’ll prep the place before you come

A brief moment.

Amira: yes baby 😊.

Baby again, Xavier thought. That’s rare from Amira. She doesn’t do terms of endearment casually. He looked at the message. Which means tonight she’s decided she does.

Xavier: see ya lata

He put the phone down and stood up.

8PM, he estimated. That gives him just under an hour.

He looked around the room.

Prep the place, he’d said. Meaning it.

He ordered pizza first.

Not campus delivery. An actual place — the kind that took forty minutes and was worth the forty minutes. Added a bottle of something from the app he used for that. Checked the estimated arrival time. 7:55PM. Close enough.

He cleaned the desk. Not the aggressive clean of someone hiding something. Just the natural order of someone who preferred the room to present a certain way. MacBook closed. Cables managed. The Hartley suits hung properly in the wardrobe with the door left slightly open because the midnight blue in the wardrobe light looked good and he knew it.

Changed the sheets to good new ones, the ones he’d bought when the balance first crossed a number that made cheap linen feel like a deliberate choice rather than a necessity.

Dimmed the lamp.

Checked the room.

Better, he thought. Significantly better.

The pizza arrived at 7:53PM.

He tipped the delivery person properly — the particular generosity of someone who had done delivery work and knew what the end of a shift felt like and set everything out on the desk. Pizza. The bottle. Two glasses he’d bought months ago and used exactly twice.

He changed. Dark trousers. Clean shirt, open at the collar. The version of himself that wasn’t the suit and wasn’t the campus clothes. Somewhere in between that he’d learned worked.

Checked himself in the mirror.

Good, he thought. Not trying too hard. Just present.

The payment for the pizza rebated..

[ REBATE SYSTEM ]

Transaction Detected: $85 spent on pizza and supplies

Base Multiplier (Tier 2): 2x

Total Return: $170

[ Net Balance: $47,455,383.00 → $47,540,383.00 ]

Even pizza, he thought. Every single time.

8PM arrived.

Then 8:03PM.

Then he heard a knock on his door.

Three clean knocks. Not urgent. Just present, the Amira version of announcing herself, which was the same whether she was arriving at a library table or a hostel door at 8PM on a Monday evening.

He opened the door.

Amira was standing in the corridor.

The glasses were off. Contacts tonight. Hair down in the way it only came down when she’d decided the evening was worth the decision. She was wearing a fitted dark dress — simple, deliberate, the kind that said she’d thought about what she was wearing without performing the fact that she’d thought about it. Small bag over one shoulder.

She looked at him.

He looked at her.

100% favorability, he thought. Maximum Bond. Six months of genuine consistent presence. He looked at her in the corridor light. And she still manages to show up and rearrange the room.

“You prepped,” she said, looking past him at the desk. The pizza. The bottle. The two glasses.

“You said you were coming,” he said.

“I said I was bored and lonely,” she said. The corner of her mouth moving.

“Same thing,” he said.

She looked at him with the expression that had no adequate name — something that was still becoming what it was going to be after six months of consistently becoming.

“Are you going to let me in,” she said.

He stepped aside.

She came in.

The door closed behind her.

She walked to the desk. Looked at the pizza. Looked at the bottle. Looked back at him standing by the door with his hands in his pockets.

“Xavier,” she said.

“Amira.”

“You bought the good pizza,” she said.

“You came over,” he said.

She set her bag down on the chair. Looked around the room — the dimmed lamp, the organised space, the wardrobe door left open showing the midnight blue suit in the low light.

She’s reading it, he thought. The way she reads everything. Taking inventory.

She turned back to him.

“Six months,” she said quietly. Not dramatically, just noting it. The way she noted things that deserved to be noted.

“Yes,” he said.

“We’ve come a long way from Mrs. Adeyemi’s class,” she said.

“You peeked at my phone,” he said.

“You had interesting notifications,” she said. The corner of her mouth fully committing to the smile this time. The real one.

He crossed the room toward her.

She looked up at him. She was shorter than him by an inch. Looking up was a genuine thing she had to do, with the particular expression of someone who had made a decision somewhere between the text message and the knock and was done second guessing it.

“I brought food,” she said. As if the dress and the contacts and the hair down and the 8PM arrival needed clarifying.

“I see the food,” he said.

“Good,” she said. “Because I’m actually hungry.”

He almost laughed.

Amira, he thought. Impossible woman.

He reached past her and opened the pizza box.

She sat on the edge of the desk and picked up a slice with the complete ease of someone who had decided the evening was going to go exactly the way she wanted it to go and was comfortable with that.

Xavier poured two glasses.

Handed her one.

She took it. Looked at him over the rim with the expression that had replaced mixed feelings entirely — warm, certain, the particular look of someone who had long since stopped trying to categorise what they were looking at.

“To six months,” she said.

“To six months,” he said.

They touched glasses.