The alarm went off at five. Any other morning she would have ignored it, turned over and found another hour somewhere. Not today. Her man was in town.

She lay there a second with the word sitting on her the way it still did sometimes, faintly surreal, before it settled back into something ordinary. Jide had said it so plainly and so often, in so many small ways, that it had worn a groove into her until it stopped feeling like something she needed to double check. She had a man.

She washed her face, brushed her teeth, and came back to sit on the edge of the bed before starting anything else. She sang under her breath, low, half a hymn and half just humming, and then she prayed, properly, the way she did every morning, thanking God for Jide’s safe landing, for the trip ahead of him, for the two of them, and then she let the rest of it come out the way it always did when she had something sitting heavy in her.

You can trust me with big things, Lord. Trust me with a bigger life than this one. Trust me with whatever You intend for me, and I will not mess it up. I am ready to move into the next level of my life.

She had decided last night, lying awake long after the bike ride home, that she would tell him everything this morning. He needed to know that she had done the English exam. What she had been saving toward. That she wanted, eventually, to come back to England, not because Lagos wasn’t enough for her, she loved her shop and she loved being exactly what she’d built herself into here, but because wherever she ended up, she already knew it would be wherever he was. It was important to start moving in the right direction.

She had wanted to give him the news as a surprise, something whole and already in motion instead of a plan he would have to help carry from the beginning. She only hoped he wouldn’t be upset that she did the exam without telling him first. She had meant it as a gift, not a secret.

She got up and went to the kitchen.

Rice would have been the easy thing to cook, but it was also the thing every Nigerian abroad could easily get. So she decided on porridge instead, with Asun, and pulled the goat meat she had bought two days ago out of the small fridge, relieved to find it still smelling clean and fresh. 

She had bought her fridge the moment she got back from England. Something changed in her after that trip, she had spent the money gift she brought back on a fridge and a small generator, because she had gotten used to power being there when she reached for the switch. It had felt like a small betrayal of the person she used to be, like she was now spoiled. 

She set the pot on the stove and sent a message while it came up to heat.

I am sure you’re still sleeping. By the time you wake up, food will already be waiting for you.

His reply came so fast that she laughed out loud in the empty kitchen.

Jide: You think I could sleep, knowing you’re in the same city as me? I’m already dressed for the gym. Don’t take too long getting here. And you didn’t have to cook, you know. I could just order from the hotel. I just want to see you.

Yetunde: I want to feed my man. She typed, and then stood there a second looking at the word before she sent it.

Jide: I like the sound of that. My man. Say it again sometime.

Yetunde: You’re such a lover boy, Jide.

Jide: Take me as I am.

———————————————————————————————————————

The lobby was still quiet when Jide came down, most of the hotel not yet awake. He wandered a minute before he found the gym tucked off the ground floor, a proper public one, open to anyone on the street who wanted to pay for a day pass. He liked that about it. It made the room feel less like a hotel amenity and more like somewhere real people lived.

He started with the weights, then the treadmill, working the stiffness of the flight out of his shoulders and his back, then went back to the weights again. He had a bar loaded and was halfway through a set when her fragrance reached him. He knew it instantly, the way you know a smell you’ve spent four years underneath. He told himself he was imagining it.

He wasn’t.

“Elizabeth. What are you doing here?”

“That’s not a very warm welcome for someone who matters to you.”

He set the bar down carefully, more carefully than the moment needed, buying himself a second. “How did you even know I was here?”

“You told the driver last night when I called. And since I was on the mainland already,  I thought, why not? I will come and say hello. Maybe we will catch breakfast before we go.”

“We’re not catching breakfast. I already have plans. You need to leave, Elizabeth.”

“Why are you being so hard on me? I made one mistake, and now you—”

“Please don’t do this here. There are people around us.” He kept his voice low. “We’re seeing each other in a few hours. I already told you, transport is arranged. My girlfriend is bringing me breakfast, and she cannot meet you here.”

“You wasted my money. I booked a train ticket for both of us, Jide.”

“You need to leave.”

“Why? Because your little girlfriend is bringing you breakfast? Where did you even meet? How are you in a relationship with a girl who lives in Lagos.”

“You’re the one who cheated,” he said, quieter now, the anger going still instead of loud. “You don’t get to stand here asking me how I moved on.”

“How is it that we break up one minute and you already have a girlfriend the next? You were already cheating on me before I even—”

“I wasn’t cheating on you.” He picked his towel off the bench. “I don’t know why I’m explaining this to you again.”

“Then how do you move on that fast and call it love? You are throwing four years away because of a girl you met less than a year ago. That is the reason you won’t forgive me properly, isn’t it?  Because of this girl. You moved on like I meant nothing to you. Is she finer than me?”

“I can’t do this right now.” He started walking toward the reception, toward the stairs, toward anywhere that wasn’t this. She caught his arm before he had gone three steps.

“Don’t you find it sweet,” she said, “how well I can predict you. I didn’t even have to ask anybody where you’d be. I just said I was coming to the gym, and here you are.” Her hand stayed on his arm. “I know you, Jide. Does she know you like I do?”

“You need to let go of my arm.” Jide said, that was when he saw her.

Yetunde, standing near the reception desk, one hand still on the strap of the bag she’d carried the food in, her eyes moving from his face to Elizabeth’s hand and back again.

“Yetunde.” He said it too fast, pulling his arm free in the same motion, and crossed the floor to her. “Hi.”

“Hi,” she said. Just that. Her face gave nothing away, which somehow felt worse than if it had.

Elizabeth came up behind him, unhurried, and extended her hand toward Yetunde like a woman greeting a guest in her own house. “Hi. I don’t think we’ve met properly. My name is Elizabeth. Did he tell you about me?”

“Elizabeth, that’s enough. You should leave.” Jide scowled, took the bag from Yetunde, held her hand, and began to walk away with her.

“I was under the impression that I was the girlfriend.” Elizabeth said, smiling, “But apparently that’s you. Nice to meet you, girlfriend.”

“Elizabeth.” Jide’s voice had dropped into something Yetunde had never heard from him before, flat and final. “Leave. Now.”

“Fine, fine.” She lifted both hands, stepping back. “I’ll let you two have your breakfast. See you soon. Should I meet you here, or will you send the car?”

He didn’t answer her. She left anyway, unbothered, the way she always seemed to be, and he stood there a second before he turned fully to Yetunde.

“Babe. It’s not what it looked like.”

Yetunde said nothing yet. She was still holding his hand, but something in her face had gone very controlled, the way it did when she was deciding how much of what she felt she was going to let out in a public lobby.

“Come,” he said, softer. “Let’s go upstairs. I’ll explain everything.”

She looked at him a moment longer. Then she nodded, once, and followed him toward the lift, saying nothing at all the whole way up, while Jide explained what Elizabeth was doing in his hotel.

“Go and shower,” was all the response she gave his explanation.

——————————————————————————————————————

Yetunde watched him walk toward the bedroom, and even with everything sitting heavy in her chest, she couldn’t help the small, unwilling thing that happened in her when she looked at him. The singlet he’d worn to the gym. The shorts. The shoulders. The arms, the very ones Elizabeth’s hand had been curled around in that lobby.

She had encouraged him to go and support Elizabeth through this burial. That part was true, and she couldn’t now pretend otherwise to herself. If she had told him at the start she wasn’t comfortable, he would have stopped everything, all the kindness, all the back and forth, in a heartbeat. She had thought she was being the bigger person. Friendship mattered, she’d told herself. It was one of the things that made the world livable, two people who had loved each other once, being able to stand in a room together without it turning into a war.

But the woman who had sent that message last night was not a woman planning on being friends with anybody.

She believed Jide, mostly, that he hadn’t known Elizabeth would be at the gym. She had lived in Lagos long enough to know a certain kind of woman, though, the kind who didn’t need to be told anything to know exactly where to be. Yetunde was not that type of woman and it was intimidating. Elizabeth was beautiful in the pictures she had  looked up more than once, and somehow more beautiful in person, with an accent that wasn’t foreign so much as polished, the sound of a woman who had never once doubted her place.

Yetunde thought, not for the first time – how does a person compete with that? Then she thought, no. I’m not doing this.

She got up and set the table.

Two plates, two glasses. She poured the juice, brought out the yam porridge she’d carried across town that morning, and served it while it was still warm. She was already spooning her first mouthful when Jide came back out, hair still damp, and stopped in the doorway.

“You weren’t going to wait for me?”

“I’m hungry.”

He crossed the room, came around behind her chair, and pulled her up gently into his arms before she’d even set the spoon down.

“Yetunde.” He said her name properly this time, both syllables, nothing rushed about it. “I love you. You know that, right?”

“I love you too.” She let herself be held a moment before she said the rest of it. “But sometimes love isn’t enough, Jide. What if she’s actually who you’re supposed to be with? I can’t compete with a woman like that. I don’t even want to be in a competition with anybody.” She pulled back just enough to look at him properly. “Someone sent me a message last night telling me to back off. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want the drama. I am trying to sort my own life out, and now I’m standing here wondering if I even belong in yours.”

“Sort your life out how?”

She hesitated. “See how she was holding your arm this morning. So sure of herself. I don’t think I would even have the confidence to hold you like that in public, and I’m supposed to be “the” girlfriend.” She looked away from him, toward the window. “I wrote the IELTS exam, Jide. I didn’t tell you because I was scared, if I’m honest. That’s how much of a coward I am about my own life.”

He went still. “You did? Wow. Why didn’t you tell me? Did you fail? You know it doesn’t matter right? We will just do it again.”

“I passed.”

Jide carried her and twirled.

“Why didn’t you tell me? We could have prepared for it together, planned around it—”

“I wanted it to be a surprise for you. And I didn’t want you carrying the weight of what it means before I even had the money sorted.”

“I’m not worried about what it means.” Something had opened up in his face. “It means you’re coming to England. That’s all it means to me, and I’m happy.”

“I’m still trying to raise the fees. I don’t have it yet.”

“Then tell me that. You’re in my life, Yetunde. I’m not working for myself alone anymore. I’m working for both of us.”

“Why would you say it like that? 

“Do you not know what you are to me?” He tightened his arms around her. “You’re going to be my wife. Of course I’m planning for you. I’ve already started putting money aside for your school fees, months ago.”

She looked up at him, something in her face going unguarded. “Really?”

“Really.” He pulled her closer, his hand coming up to cradle the side of her face. “Listen to me. I’m crazy about you. I don’t want to wait for the right season or the right paperwork or anybody’s permission. Marry me before I leave. In fact, we can leave together to start our life.”

“Jide—”

“Is there anything actually standing in the way of it? I’m convinced you’re my wife. I’ve been convinced for a while now.” His forehead came to rest against hers. “Are you convinced?”

“I’m convinced.”

“Then let’s do it. Let’s go back to England together, properly, as husband and wife, and start our lives from there instead of this back and forth.”

She was smiling now despite everything, the porridge going cold behind them, his lips a breath from hers.

“And don’t sit here comparing yourself to Elizabeth,” he said, “She is constantly buying things to keep looking good, and while I have no problem with self care, none of that is what I see when I look at you. I see a woman who works with her hands all day and still has skin like this. I see somebody real. Don’t let her make you feel like she’s the standard.”

“It’s okay,” Yetunde said softly. “You don’t have to—”

“I mean it.”

“Is that why you are proposing to me like this,” she said, half laughing now, “in a hotel apartment, over cold porridge, with your ex still out there planning a trip? You are trying to assure me.”

He cradles her face.

“No Babe. I just don’t want to wait for a perfect moment that never comes.”

He leaned in. She closed her eyes.

His phone rang.

Elizabeth.

He turned it face down without responding to it, but the moment had already cracked. Yetunde slipped out of his arms and sat back down, picking her spoon back up, unhurried, though something careful had returned to her face.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t marry you just yet, Jide. Not before you’ve buried the things you actually came here to bury.”

She put the spoon in her mouth.

“First there’s the burial,” she said. “And maybe a few other things that still need burying too.”