Tricks for a Heart [mlm]

Chapter 20

At a glance, it seems like Luqman Tajuddin has really fallen in love with my hometown. This morning, I woke up alone, finding him in the backyard, where he helped my father tend to his little rabbit enclosure there. He kept on raving about my mother's coconut pancakes with palm sugar syrup that we had for breakfast and had already written the recipe down on his phone.

It's almost lunchtime, and I am behind the wheel in my father's car to take my lover out to town. It's nice to think of him as that-a lover, instead of anything else for now. A lover seems less official but not insignificant at the same time. I wonder how long we'll stay this way, even though moving forward in what we have depends on me.

"They'll love you in all the ways they've always loved you, Adam, and I'll love you for the rest." Every time I remember what he told me last night, a cold shiver runs down my spine.

Luqman is recording more Instagram stories of our drive along the village down to the small towns in Ipoh. Seeing all the clips of our trip in his social media, I wonder whether his rugby pals have already questioned his trip here with me.

The quiet with Luqman is always comforting, but it's nice to start conversations with him, too. "How early were you up today, pup?"

"Hmm ... at Subuh," he says. "I was woken up by the adhan from the nearby surau ... it was pretty loud."

"I'm sorry. Yeah, the surau is pretty close to our house."

"It's fine ... I like waking up on time for Subuh prayers, actually." He grabs one of my hands and interlaces our fingers together. I squeeze back. "Then I became imam again." He laughs.

"No way!" I say. "I'm going to kill Bapak."

"Hey ... relax," Luqman replies. "It's okay. I feel at ease with your dad. His character's familiar, too-like some of our wardens at school."

"Though a lot of the wardens are assholes, I know what you mean." Our hostel wardens were made to be these authoritative figures to keep us in check-they made sure we made our beds perfectly, had no phones, and kept the corridors clean. But in hindsight, some of them were just putting a front, because we were only thirteen to seventeen years of age.

"Yeah ... your dad's more like Cik Lan, if you remember."

"Cik Lan!" I yell. "I miss that motherfucker. He tended to all stray cats in the school compound, and always nagged! For the love of God, did he not know how to shut up." As I recount, I can see how Bapak reminds Luqman of him. "When we were in Form One, I was so scared to use the bathroom at night alone, and I almost shit myself. Thank God Cik Lan was the warden in charge for the week, and he basically kept me company while I took a dump."

Luqman cackles to that. "Hilarious. Because I remember a freshman simply took a dump right in front of our dorm room because he was so scared to go to the bathroom alone! We found a huge pile of shit right next to our shoe racks in the corridor and laughed our asses off!"

"Gross!" I say. "This is all the seniors' fault for scaring us with those stupid ghost stories."

"Can't lie, got me scared too. I was so scared that I made sure I finished all my business during the day."

We drone on about our Putra Wira nostalgia, exchanging stories and viewpoints since we lived separate lives when we were in school. Luqman admits to never knowing anything about rugby prior to entering Putra Wira. He only played because his father used to be an athlete at his own school, so it all started out as a scheme to please his parents. He fell in love with it quite fast, though, and having a sexual awakening worked in his favor being in the rugby team.

"So you were advantageously gawking?" I say.

"How could I not?" he expresses enthusiastically. "When I first joined in, we had all these handsome, big, burly Form Five seniors who made up the team. I was at the peak of puberty and having these crushes helped give me a reason to stay-hey, stop laughing, you're judging me!"