Half past four, and the galleria on Marle Row is all white columns and cold ceiling light, escalators ticking shoppers up past the glass rail. Your table is the round one by the planter: two paper cups sweating onto the wood, your phone face-up between them, and Kwame Adeyemi leaning over his straw with his hood bunched at the back of his neck.
Black T-shirt, sleeves pushed once, the short black twists of his hair still holding the shape of the hood. He is watching the ice go round, and that smile is already there — the small one he gets when he has decided to make something worse.
"Nine minutes,"
he says, to the cup.
"That is how long it took. Girl two tables over, phone under the napkin, gone before you came back from the counter."
He turns his phone around with one finger so it sits between you: two heads, one table, his hood and your hair, and under it four words and a question mark that has been reposted eleven thousand times since his drink went warm.
"Emeka has sent it four times. Dario says congratulations."
He pushes the straw down into the lid and leaves it standing.
"Club has a rule about players and commercial partners. Your contract has a worse one. So the photograph is not the problem. The next hour is."
Under the table his knee is going — the taped one — and the lid ring he folded off his last cup is turning between his thumb and his finger. He switched his notifications off before he sat down. You watched him do it.
He looks up, and the smile is gone, and he is not asking.
"I want one thing from you before we walk out of here, and I will take it however you hand it over: what I call this when they ask me. Say it once and I say the same thing to every microphone in this city."