Insight of a Kenyan Girl

The door clicked shut behind Callum, but the silence he left behind didn’t feel like peace.
It felt like a test.

Patty leaned against the wall, watching me with that unreadable calm. Not smug. Not shaken. Just present, like the storm outside hadn’t brushed him at all.

“You should sleep,” he said finally.

I let out a sharp breath. “You make it sound so easy.”

He tilted his head, and for the first time tonight, a small smile curved at his mouth. Not mocking almost gentle. “I don’t make anything sound easy. I just say what is.”

I crossed my arms. “You didn’t have to handle him like that. You could’ve…”

“Could’ve what?” Patty interrupted softly. “Given him the false comfort that he still mattered here? That he could rattle the cage and you’d open the door?”

His words landed like stones, heavy but precise. He didn’t raise his voice, but somehow they echoed inside me.

I turned away, staring at the faint light slipping through the curtain. “You talk like you’ve seen this play out before.”

Patty didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice was quieter. “I’ve seen men destroy themselves thinking love is a weapon.”

I looked at him, really looked. For a moment, I forgot about Callum. Patty’s eyes weren’t cold they were carrying something. Something old.

“Is that what you think of me?” I asked.

His gaze held mine. “No. You’re not the one with the weapon. You’re the reason people pick them up.”

The silence stretched again, but this time it was different. Not sharp thick with unspoken things.

I should’ve asked more. Who had picked up weapons for him? What world did he belong to where guns, silence, and consequence were second nature?

But I didn’t.

Because instead of fear, I felt something else building in the room something heavier, more dangerous, but not aimed at me.

Trust.

Fragile, impossible, but there.

Patty pushed himself away from the wall and moved toward the table. He placed his gun down, slowly, like a man laying down truth without words.

“You don’t have to understand me yet,” he said. “Just don’t doubt that you’re safe.”

I nodded, but the air was still too tight, too full of everything unspoken.

“Tea?” I asked suddenly.

His eyebrow lifted, amused. “Tea?”

“Yes. Tea. Because apparently, sleep isn’t an option.”

For a heartbeat, I thought he’d refuse. But then he shrugged, almost indulgently. “Alright. Tea.”

I busied myself in the small kitchen, boiling water, pulling out mismatched mugs. My hands were steadier than I expected. Maybe because I wasn’t doing it for Callum. I was doing it for myself. For Patty. For this strange new quiet between us.

When I handed him his cup, he didn’t drink right away. He just wrapped his fingers around it, eyes flicking over me like he was reading something I didn’t know I’d written.

“You’re not afraid of me,” he said finally.

“Should I be?”

He gave a half-laugh, low and dry. “That depends who you ask.”

“Then I’m not asking anyone else,” I said.

His eyes softened not much, but enough. He leaned back in the chair, sipping the tea. “This is terrible.”

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

He smirked. “The tea. It’s awful.”

I laughed despite myself. The sound startled me too loud for the hour, too alive for the night we’d had.

Patty’s smirk faded into something gentler. “But I’ll drink it anyway.”

The clock ticked on. The tea cooled. And we stayed like that two people stitched together by the night, sitting in a fragile peace neither of us wanted to name.

I didn’t ask who he really was. He didn’t offer.

But I knew one thing: Callum belonged to the past.
Patty, dangerous as he was, belonged to the moment I was living in.

And for tonight, that was enough.