Roosevelt and I never ended up together, no matter how much I wanted us to. In fact, the last time I saw him was two years after our break up. We were both at the airport – separately, of course. I was picking up my younger sister who had just come back from some leadership summit in South Africa. I was loading her luggage into the back of the car when, for the most inexplicable reason, I got the urge to look over my shoulder. And there he was, right at the door for international departures.

My first thought, after all these years, was whether he had nicotine gum in his pockets or had reverted back to his cigarettes. It’s funny that the time I hid his pack of cigarettes was the first time we ever fought. It was the only time something I had done had broken his composure.
“Where are my cigarettes babe, this isn’t funny.”
I had watched him tear his room apart. And at the moment, right before his anger reached its peak, I threw him a pack of nicotine gum.
“I got you those,” I said.
He mulled over it, turning the pack between his fingers. I could visibly see his anger dissipate and morph into something else. Embarrassment maybe? He looked up into my eyes. “Thank you.”
I had never heard his voice sound smaller.

Even though I only saw the back of his head, I knew he looked exactly the same. His dreadlocks were still thick, medium length and tied above his head. He still wore floral beach shorts paired with a monochromatic sweater and sandals with thick straps. He seemed relaxed and aloof as he always was.

He didn’t see me. I was too far and he was too preoccupied. I wonder if he would have recognised me if he had. He was with some tower of a girl – lean and tall enough to reach his own already domineering height. I knew he liked them tall with long legs, but she took the cake. She had such bone straight black hair that reached her waist. She was wearing a pink crop top and a long white translucent skirt that made me wonder if he had always liked skirts on girls. He was loading their bags on baggage inspection while she texted.

“After college, I’m going to travel with you,” he once told me.
“What if we’d have broken up by then?” I had teased.
“Then I will go with whoever is there at the time,” he had replied as he lit up his cigarette.
I hadn’t been very pleased by that answer but I guess I had provoked it. I still stormed out of his room though, exasperated. I hadn’t wanted him to chase after me but he didn’t, because God forbid Roosevelt go after something he thought he was above. I came back hours later, calm and very embarrassed. Roosevelt had worked through his pack by then and was lighting the last one from it.
“Cooled off now, babe?” he said, “You know not to ask me such questions. I will give you the truth, not answers that you’ll like.”
I had ignored him.
“Those are going to kill you,” I said instead, as I watched him take his first drag.
“I am not leaving this world due to a cancer stick.”

Until this day I wish he had told me something sweet. I wish he had sworn up and down and left and right that I was his forever. But Roosevelt was not like that. He said things the way he saw them – no artificial sweeteners.

When I looked at them again, as they passed through the doors, there was a sour taste in my mouth. Roosevelt always kept his word. He was travelling with his girlfriend after college. I silently willed for him to look back at me but they proceeded to the terminals without turning in my direction.
“You okay, sis? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” my sister snapped me out of the moment.
“Something of the sort,” I replied. “Come on, let’s go.”
That was the last time I saw him.

*

Three years from the airport incident, I get word. On some empty road, he had lost control of his car. It overturned three times, and he bashed his skull in and splattered his brains. That dimwit always loved speeding.

In all honesty, when I wasn’t terrified, I loved some of the drives he took me on. One time, he showed up at my door in the wee hours of a random Saturday in July. We had an argument a few hours back when I told him I was upset at something, and he said, “feelings come and go.” I had told him sometimes he wasn’t very sensitive. To which he told me, I purposely choose to misinterpret him. I stormed off, like I was known to do, and he didn’t follow as expected.

When he showed up at my dorm room hours later, he had his car keys in his hand.
“I want to take you somewhere,” he said.
No apologies. Not even a greeting.
“Where?” I asked. “It’s 2 am.”
“I’ll show you.”
“Let me go change,” I said, already half way back into my room.
He grabbed my wrist and stopped me. I was in pyjama shorts and an old t-shirt straight from his closet. He was in black sweatpants he rarely wore and a black fitted shirt.
“Don’t,” he said. “Let’s just go, please.”
It sounded like a plea and Roosevelt never begged.

He was wiry and only seemed to calm down when he was behind the wheel. We drove from Zomba to Blantyre in absolute slow silence, going at a decent eighty per hour. Everything was so quiet and surreal. I would have never imagined this city, that I thought never slept, could sometimes resemble a ghost town. When we reached the Independence Arch, Roosevelt stepped on the gas steadily but unexpectedly as well.
“You know, sometimes I just wanna go real fucking fast.” He pushed it to two hundred. “I just want to reach that edge of almost no control.”

On another day I would have told him to slow down, but there was something in the air that night. Maybe I sensed our impending breakup and just wanted to remember this moment when I absolutely knew – without a doubt – that I loved the thrill and the boy causing it. I rolled the window down, stuck my head out and hollered a long “Woah,” into the sky and street. I could barely hear myself and I thought if we kept going at that pace we would break the sound barrier.
“I love you,” Roosevelt said for the very first and very last time. “I hope you know that.”
I turned to face him and grinned like a mad man. The wind slapped my hair into my teeth. He gave me a side glance and gave me a smile of his own. I didn’t say it out loud, but I hope in the moment he knew I did too. I stuck my head out and hollered again.

Two days later, I got upset at something and he said, “feelings come and go.” I told him sometimes he wasn’t very sensitive. To which he told me, I purposely choose to misinterpret him. I stormed off, like I was known to do, and he didn’t follow as expected. He didn’t show up at my door at two in the morning. I didn’t call him. We didn’t speak again.

*

I don’t go to the funeral because I know I would have felt odd being there as his ex from five years ago. Instead, I cry for seven hours straight, until I have to put an ice press over my eyes. Even though I now have a steady boyfriend of three years who completely adores me, a part of me still loves Roosevelt. This is a reality that I feel guilty for because I always feel like I settled. Roosevelt on the other hand was my first love – an absolute whirlwind. For that one semester we were together, he managed to flip my entire life around, leaving a wreckage I will never fully clear up.

*

We met in my second week at Chancellor College. He was in his third year at the time. I had been walking along the great stretch from the flats to main campus when he sped past me. I thought nothing about it until I noticed the car recklessly reverse and skid to a halt right next to me, causing me to stop. I was taken by the beautiful boy who rolled down his window.
“Hey, I’m Roosevelt,” he said, running his hand through the thick dreads – an action that made me notice the cross tattoo on his arm.
I remained silent, slightly shell-shocked at how brown his eyes were. They were the colour of amber, a jarring contrast with his dark skin.
“I know I’m a virtual stranger but want a ride to campus?” he asked, drawing his bottom lip between his teeth – a gesture I would soon come to learn was a nervous habit.

At the time, I would have never guessed that he was an avid smoker because he had the pinkest full lips I had ever seen on a boy. I couldn’t stop myself from the brief thought of them on mine, his tongue slipping between them.
I lightly shook my head at the thought. And then more prominently at his invitation.
“No thanks,” I said. “I like the walk.”
“Fair.” He gave me a once over, his eyes stopping for a second on my bottom half.
The skirt I had worn was long and black, it would have been bland if not for the edgy side slits that went up to my mid-thigh. He lingered there a bit. He had always said I had the longest legs he had ever explored.
“Nice skirt,” he said. “I’ll see you around, Legs.”
I didn’t cringe at the obscene nickname, instead I smirked. Without warning, he sped off, the gust causing my skirt to whirl around my thighs.

That very next weekend, after he had offered me a ride, Roosevelt approached me at an open-air party – seeing me from a distance in a crowd full of people.
“Hello Legs,” he had said. “Nice skirt.”
I was in a short silver sequined skirt that barely covered my ass. He wiggled his eyebrows. I hadn’t remembered his name.
“It’s the chronic speeder,” I laughed.
“Guilty,” he laughed, biting his lip. I was lost in the thought of him pushing me up against a wall, when the second line entered my ears. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”
“I try to stay low,” I said, ignoring my whirring mind.
“Not with those legs you don’t.” His eyes travelled and lingered.

I felt as though the air around us was charged. I gulped down what was left of my drink to try and gain some confidence with the man before me.
“Come let’s dance.”
I was obviously tipsy because I put his hands on my hips and mine around his neck, before wiggling my body against his.
He smirked. “I think I’d like to get to know you, Legs.”
“You should, you might just end up liking me.”

*

Two weeks after the burial, his older sister shows up at my gate. She says she wished she had seen me at the funeral. I lie that I was out of town. She nods and passes me a CD. I immediately recognise it as my favourite from his collection. I always loved listening to it when we spent time alone beneath the sheets in his room.
“Leave it to Rosie to have written his will huh?” she tells me. “He wanted you to have this.” She gives it to me and soon after she leaves, I cry again.

Roosevelt always loved talking about his death. On our first date, when he took me to Zomba Botanic Gardens, he told me he wanted to be cremated and his ashes scattered over the lake in Nkhata Bay, because it remained the most beautiful place he had ever seen. He said he wanted Mary Elizabeth Frye’s “Do not stand at my grave and weep” poem recited at the ash scattering ceremony. He even burnt a CD with all the songs he wanted played at his funeral.
“Maybe I should have a Shiva too,” he had mentioned.
“I don’t think that’s appropriate since you’re not Jewish,” I told him, and he shrugged.
“I’ll put you on my will. It will be something you like.”
“Bit morbid to talk about death on the first date, don’t you think?”
“I don’t have rules,” he said.

I wonder if his family did any of these for him or if they went the traditional route and buried him in a grave I would never visit.

When my boyfriend comes later that evening he finds me in bed and I tell him I am not feeling well. He kisses my cheek and tells me he will make dinner. He probably finds the CD from where I dropped it on the floor because soon, I hear the familiar music playing from the player in the living room. That bastard is taunting me from beyond his grave. It’s just like him. I can imagine him staring down from the great beyond – smirking that, even now, he can still get under my skin.

He always told me that he was probably the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. The first time he kissed me right below my belly button, the same night I wore that ridiculous silver sequined skirt, he had said I would never ever be able to unfeel him. We had stumbled into his room and I was already trying to get his solid monochrome pink sweater off. My tongue was making its way down his throat. That blasted CD was playing in the background, smooth and sensual. He had laid me down on his bed, crunched my shirt up and kissed between the valley of my breasts all the way down to my navel.
“I’ll make sure you won’t forget me,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Cocky much.” I had tried to sound nonchalant but his touch was already making me delirious.
“Deny it all you want but I know.” He breathed on my belly button. “I know.”
And then he had kissed me even lower.

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by nacer eddine on Unsplash