A SACRIFIES BEYOND LOVE

WHAT LOVE BOUGHT

Chapter Eleven: What Love Bought

Six months later, Bryan stood in a duplex in Banana Island and tried to understand what had happened to his life.

It was his. Or rather, Judy had bought it for him, had transferred money to his company account, had done these things without being asked, without announcing them, because she had gone to his office one afternoon and seen the wobbling desk and the single window and the look on his face of a man holding something together by force of will alone, and something in her had decided.

Johnson walked from room to room like a man cataloguing miracles. "Bros, you hear me? Duplex! Two months ago we were struggling for electricity bills in Cele, and now you're standing in your own sitting room in Banana Island."

"Na God do am, Johnson." Bryan was still taking it in, still not entirely sure this was real.

"God used Judy to do it. Don't be forming holy."

Bryan's phone rang. Ifeoma, from the office.

"Boss! I saw the alert!"

"Yeah. I sent it this morning."

"Six months' salary, Bryan!" Her voice was thick. "You didn't tell me anything. I thought you said business was slow."

"It was slow. But that's not an excuse to owe you. You've been with me since day one, Ifeoma. Even when I couldn't pay you, you never left."

"Nobody has ever done this for me before," she said, and her voice broke in the way voices break when gratitude is too large for the throat. "Thank you, boss."

Johnson was staring at him when he hung up. "You used the money Judy gave you to pay Ifeoma? Bryan, you mad o."

"Na my money now," Bryan said simply. "Once it enters my account, I decide what to do with it. Ifeoma has been suffering for me for six months. I can't sleep in a duplex knowing she owes her landlord."

Johnson shook his head slowly, and then he was smiling the way people smile when they see something that restores their faith. "That's why God will bless you more. Most guys in your position would buy a car. Buy designer. Form big boy. You paid your staff."

Bryan sat down on the single couch in the unfurnished living room. "I didn't collect this money to form big boy. I collected it so I can stand on my own feet. So I can stop being a liability to the woman I love."

Johnson looked around the empty rooms — walls that would need furniture, floors that would need life — and nodded.

"When's the housewarming?"

"When I can afford chairs for all the rooms."

They laughed, and the sound of it filled the empty duplex with something that felt, at least for that moment, like enough.

* * *