Insight of a Kenyan Girl

The bike hummed under us, steady and alive.
Wind tangled through my hair, the air smelled faintly of rain even though the sky stayed stubbornly clear.

Patty didn’t talk much as he drove — just pointed things out with small gestures. A mango vendor at the corner. Kids playing cricket in an empty lot. A rusted-out car swallowed by a jacaranda tree.

It wasn’t awkward silence.
It was the kind you could sit inside of, like an old sweater, warm and loose and worn-in.

After maybe twenty minutes, he turned down a side street I didn’t recognize — all sleepy lanes and flowering hedges. The motorbike slowed to a crawl in front of a tiny café tucked between a laundromat and a bookstore, so small I would have missed it if we weren’t right in front of it.

There was no fancy sign, just a hand-painted board that read:
“Maya’s: Good Coffee, Bad Jokes.”

Patty cut the engine and kicked the stand down.

“This okay?” he asked, glancing at me over his shoulder.

I pulled the helmet off and smiled, a real one.
“It’s perfect.”

Inside, Maya’s smelled like roasted coffee beans and vanilla. A tiny chime rang above the door when we entered, and an older woman behind the counter — presumably Maya — waved without looking up from her crossword.

Patty nodded toward a booth in the back, half hidden by a towering plant that was probably a little too big for the space.
We slid into the booth, facing each other.

For a moment, we just sat there, breathing in the quiet.
No hospital monitors. No antiseptic smell. No reminders of everything heavy and broken.

Just us.

“I figured,” he said finally, fiddling with the edge of a napkin, “you deserved a place where no one knew your name.”

I blinked at him.

No pressure. No explanations demanded.
Just a boy — or whatever he was to me now — offering a small corner of the world where I could just be.

I folded my hands around the chipped mug of tea the waitress brought over and felt the first real exhale leave my body in what felt like days.

Maybe even longer.

Outside, the afternoon sun dipped low, washing the world in gold.

Inside, across a battered wooden table, the beginning of something soft and dangerous and new waited for us — unnamed, unhurried, and undeniable.

We lingered at Maya’s until the sky shifted from gold to violet, until the tea cooled in our mugs and the low hum of evening wrapped itself around the little café.

When we finally stood to leave, Patty held the door for me, his hand brushing lightly against mine — accidental or maybe not.

Outside, the world felt a little quieter. A little kinder.

He walked me back to the bike but didn’t start it right away. Just stood there, the helmet dangling loosely from his fingers.

“You don’t have to figure it all out tonight,” he said, voice low enough that it felt like a secret.
“Some things… are better when you take the long way around.”

I looked up at him, the words settling somewhere deep inside me. Not heavy. Not hard. Just true.

The stars blinked to life overhead, shy and blinking.

And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like I was running from something.
I felt like maybe — just maybe — I was riding toward it.

Toward something real.

Something that didn’t need names yet.