Seven White Dresses,One broken heart
328 Words
Lydia Adeyemi’s hands shook as she adjusted the cheap lace on her wedding dress.
Outside, six limousines lined up in front of her father’s compound in Ibadan. Her six older sisters were marrying into oil money, tech money, political money. Lagos front-page weddings.
Lydia’s groom was arriving on a motorcycle.
"Are you sure about this, Lydia?" Mama hissed, fixing Lydia’s veil. Her eyes kept darting to the window, to the dusty road where Ade, the construction worker, would appear. "Sade married the Governor’s son. Funke married that billionaire from Banana Island. And you... you chose a man who carries cement for a living?"
Lydia looked at her sisters through the window. They wore diamonds. She wore her late grandmother’s old pearl necklace.
"Love is not money, Mama," Lydia whispered. But her voice cracked.
Because the truth was, she’d only known Ade for three months. He showed up at their compound to fix a cracked wall. He had kind eyes and calloused hands and he listened when she talked about her poetry.
He never told her his last name.
A motorcycle sputtered outside.
Her sisters gasped. The crowd murmured.
Ade stood at the gate in a clean but worn suit. No family. No friends. Just a small bouquet of wildflowers he probably picked himself.
Lydia’s chest tightened. What had she done?
The pastor cleared his throat. "We are gathered here today..."
As Lydia walked down the aisle, her sisters in their ₦2 million dresses avoided her eyes.
Only Ade smiled. And for a second, just a second, Lydia swore she saw something in his eyes. Not the shame of being poor.
But the calm of a man who owned the world and was choosing to hide it.
"Do you, Ade..." the pastor began.
Lydia didn’t know it yet, but the "broke construction worker" she was marrying had just signed a ₦5 billion contract yesterday.
And her six sisters would spend the next year begging for her forgiveness.
- Writer
