Rifqi was the first to stand.
He held out a cold bottle of beer to Tama, his eyes never stopping their glances toward Ayla as she pulled out a chair at the corner of the table. Everyone was still silent, still waiting. Everyone knew what was happening, and everyone was very happy not to be the one who had to ask first.
“So,” Rifqi finally said after Tama popped open the bottle. “What’s the story?”
Tama only shrugged. “Rain. She couldn’t get a ride.”
“Obviously. I’m asking why you were the one who took her. Why not someone else. Why not Gojek. Why not an angel descending from heaven. Why you.”
“Because I was there.”
“Ah.” Rifqi clicked his tongue. He sat back down with a broad, deeply malicious grin. “Okay. We’ll accept that answer for now.”
No one asked anything else.
They went back to talking as usual. About the thesis advisor’s insane final assignment, about the pretty new kids this year, about the meatball street stall that had just opened at the end of the road, where everything was two thousand cheaper. No one mentioned Raihan’s name. No one mentioned that Ayla had never once come to Sanubari in the past two and a half years. No one said anything.
But everyone saw.
They saw Tama always move Ayla’s coffee glass out of the way so it would not get splashed. They saw him reflexively wave his hand to shoo away a fly before Ayla even moved. They saw that every time Ayla laughed, Tama’s eyes turned toward her and stayed there one second too long before he quickly looked away and took a deeper drink of his beer.
Ayla saw it too.
She said nothing. She just sat there, holding a glass of plain tea, listening to them joke around and occasionally replying to incoming messages. There were no messages from Raihan. Not a single one.
The clock read 10:15 when the rain finally let up.
“I’m heading home,” Ayla said as she adjusted her pashmina scarf.
Everyone fell silent at once.
Tama set down his half-finished bottle of beer. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “I’ll take you.”
No one whistled this time. No one shouted. Everyone just stayed quiet. Rifqi only nodded slowly, looking at Tama with something that was no longer teasing. Something like pity.
There was no rain on the way home. The streets were empty. Only the sound of the motorcycle engine and the night wind. Ayla did not hold Tama around the waist this time. She only gripped the edge of the back seat, her fingers wrapped tightly around one another.
They arrived in front of Ayla’s boarding house at exactly eleven that night.
Tama turned off the motorcycle. He did not get off. He did not look back.
“Thank you,” Ayla said. She took off the helmet and handed it back.
Tama nodded.
“Ayla.”
She stopped mid-turn.
“Tomorrow,” Tama said. His voice was very soft, almost drowned out by the crickets. “Tomorrow, everyone will talk. The group chat will blow up. Raihan will get that photo.”
Ayla was silent.
“You can say I forced you. You can say you had no choice. You can say anything. Everyone will believe you. I won’t deny it.”
Ayla stood there for a few seconds. Then she took one step forward, close enough for Tama to smell her shampoo.
“And you?” Ayla asked. “What will you say?”
Tama stared at the asphalt beneath the motorcycle’s wheels. He did not answer.
“I won’t say that,” Ayla said at last. “I won’t say you forced me. I won’t say anything that isn’t true.”
She turned and walked toward the boarding house door. But before she opened it, she stopped once more.
“Tama.”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t have to forget.”
She went inside and closed the door.
Tama remained seated on his motorcycle for twenty minutes. The engine was off. The lights were off. He just sat there alone in the darkness outside Ayla’s boarding house.
He did not cry. He did not laugh. He just sat there, and for the first time in a year and a half, he stopped trying to forget.
And on the second floor, behind her boarding-house room door, Ayla leaned against it. She held her phone. There were twenty-one unread messages from Raihan. All of them had been sent ten minutes earlier.
She did not open them.
She only closed her eyes, and for the first time in four years of being with someone, she did not feel guilty at all.