Becky Shikunyi

Ngong Road shimmered with heat as July winds stirred the red dust across the tarmac. Nairobi was colder than Malik remembered—not in temperature, but in spirit. Malindi had burned him raw. The city, with its noise and unspoken ambition, felt like both punishment and possibility. But possibility was what he needed. The rooftop property near Adams Arcade was a skeleton of concrete and rusted beams when he first visited it again. The elevator groaned, the stairwell stank of mold and rat piss, but Malik looked at it with a builder’s gaze. Beneath the grime was grace. The skyline stretched wide from up there—Kilimani in the distance, the Ngong Hills whispering promises if one dared to listen. He unpacked his life slowly. A sketchpad. A kettle. His tools. Silence. --- Malik poured himself into the project. The restaurant would be modern but warm, open but personal. Bamboo trims, lots of stone, panoramic glass for sunrises and rainstorms. A place where people could fall in love or heal after ...

Some betrayals arrived with a thunderclap. Others slid in quietly, like saltwater into a wound—painful only after everything was already ruined. Malik had been building a future that didn’t exist. The guesthouse in Malindi had become more than a love nest. It was where he’d dared to imagine permanence again—something solid and beautiful and real. He’d sketched plans to turn it into a boutique hideaway: a bistro on the lower floor, rooms overlooking the sea, and a rooftop bar for sundowners. A place filled with music, rosemary, sea breeze, and the low laughter of lovers. But the foundation he was laying had termites in the wood. And her name was Aida. --- That Friday, Malik had risen early, energized by the new sketches he’d worked on all night. He bought fresh hibiscus flowers on the way, something he knew she loved. He imagined surprising her—maybe even whispering the beginnings of forever. He didn’t expect to find a stranger’s shoes at the door. Or to hear a man’s voice echoing in th...

Malik couldn’t remember when the seed of doubt first took root—perhaps it was the way Aida once flinched when a phone rang. Or how she never let him take her photo, never let him walk her to the edge of town. The town knew her, yes—but only in shadows. Still, his body betrayed his logic. Days were molten with want. She would show up at the beach house wrapped in nothing but an oversized linen shirt, the wind teasing its hem as she brought him mandazi and whispered Kiswahili lullabies into his neck. Nights were primal—raw silk sheets tangling around limbs, wine-stained lips, whispered vows that never made sense by daylight. “I want to live in this house with you,” she once murmured, tracing the outline of one of his restaurant sketches with a salt-wet finger. “I want us to build something beautiful together.” But even in that moment, Malik noticed the ring mark. A faint pale band on her finger, usually covered by coral bangles or varnished nails. She caught him staring and kissed him to...

In the days that followed, Malik found himself trapped — not by bars, but by satin sheets and whispered lies. Aida was a woman of silken danger. Every morning, she stirred beside him with bare thighs tangled in kanga cloth and a crooked smile on her lips that promised more chaos than comfort. He should have walked away. But every time he tried, she touched him — and his resolve melted like sugar over a flame. They made love often. Wildly. Softly. Sometimes with desperation, other times with reverence. In the hush of the humid afternoons, she’d press him to the bed, her palm to his chest, riding him with slow intent as if writing scripture with her hips. At night, when the ceiling fan clicked overhead and the crickets outside grew loud, she’d pull him into her like she needed to be filled just to feel alive. But it wasn’t just sex. It was something more consuming. He started skipping breakfast at the café just to hold her longer. He stopped sketching. His days blurred into her skin — he...