Abandon relationship

abandon relationship episode 2

Damien graduated a year later. Zara saw his i********: stories once or twice. He was working in Port Harcourt, dating someone new, or maybe not.

“You were right. I didn’t deserve you. But thank you for loving me when I couldn’t love myself.”

She smiled and didn’t reply.

Because by then, she no longer needed to.

Zara eventually let Tobi in. Slowly. Carefully.

Not because he filled a Damien-shaped hole.

But because he didn’t ask her to shrink.

He read her poems. Walked her to class. Cooked jollof rice and burnt it but made her laugh so hard she forgot her scars.

She didn’t believe in forever anymore.

But she believed in the now.

By the time Zara turned twenty, she had published two books, gotten an offer to study Creative Writing in the UK, and hosted a sold-out live podcast in Abuja.

At the end of her show, a girl asked her during the Q&A:

“How did you survive being abandoned?”

Zara took a deep breath and said:

“Because I learned that the person who must never abandon me… is me.”

The rain had a way of falling in Ibadan that made everything slow down. The students of Atlantic University had long learned to dash between hostel blocks with plastic folders over their heads, the unlucky ones drenched to the bone. For Zara, though, rain meant silence. A rare peace from the voices, the laughter, and the pressure of being seventeen in a world that expected her to act twenty-five.

Zara Efe was a first-year Mass Communication student, with chunky glasses always slipping down her nose and a battered pink journal she carried everywhere like it contained her soul. She preferred campus corners—the library's second floor, under the mango tree near the Faculty of Arts, or the rundown café by the gate where the generator hummed louder than conversations. That morning, she sat in that very café, stirring a lukewarm cup of tea while watching water cascade off the roof like tears the sky couldn't hold.

That’s when he walked in.

Damien.

He wasn’t particularly tall or the loudest guy on campus. But Damien had the kind of face that stayed with you: calm eyes that looked like they’d seen too much, lips always poised like he was about to say something smart, and that quiet kind of confidence people mistook for arrogance.

He ordered coffee—black, no sugar—and sat two tables away from her. Zara recognized him from her department. She’d seen him during orientation week, the only guy who didn’t raise his hand when asked who wanted to be class rep. But today, he looked different. He looked... alone.

And maybe that’s why she said something.

“Rain makes the tea taste like metal,” she muttered without looking up.

He chuckled, surprising her.

“I thought it was just me,” he said, sliding into the seat across from her.

From that moment, something shifted.

Campus life in Nigeria had its rhythm. Morning lectures, power outages, late-night suya runs, and the eternal hustle to secure Wi-Fi strong enough to stream YouTube. Zara and Damien fell into each other’s lives like pieces of a song that didn’t need a chorus. They talked about everything—music, politics, grief, books, trauma, Lagos, their families, and the future.

Damien had lost his elder brother two years ago to a robbery gone wrong. Since then, he didn’t talk much to anyone, except Zara. She, on the other hand, hid behind her journal, afraid of people, of heartbreak, of being seen.

But with Damien, she let the pages open.

They would meet every evening under the mango tree. He’d wait with his hands stuffed in his pockets, and she’d show up with her journal and a snack. Sometimes, they sat in silence. Sometimes, they laughed so hard the security men stared.

Zara’s hostel mates began to whisper.

“Have you guys done it?”

“Are you dating?”

“He’s cute. You better lock it down before someone else does.”

But it wasn’t like that. Not yet.

Or so Zara thought.

Part Three: Distance in the Details

Things changed by the middle of second semester.

Damien started replying to messages late. He’d cancel plans last minute. He missed their spot three times in one week. And the worst part? He didn’t explain.

Zara noticed everything. How he avoided eye contact during lectures. How his laughter grew shorter. How his shoulders seemed heavier.

Then came the whispers.

“He’s always with that Law girl now... Kechi.”

“Have you seen them at Alumni Hall?”

“Heard they’re always together in the study lounge.”

At first, Zara denied it. She told herself they were just friends. Damien wasn’t the type to leave without a word. He wasn’t... like the others.

Until the day she saw them—Kechi and Damien—sharing a bowl of ice cream, laughing like Zara never existed.

She didn’t confront him. She just walked away, heart in her throat, tears she refused to let fall. She’d been abandoned before. By her father. By her stepmother. By her own sense of self-worth.

But this?

This felt like betrayal wrapped in silence.

The campus lights flickered that night as she sat by herself, writing in her journal:

>I thought you were different. But maybe that’s the thing about hope. It blinds you before it burns you.

She didn’t cry. Not until two nights later, when her favourite lecturer, Miss Tomilola, handed back their essays and scribbled a note:

“Your voice is powerful. Don’t lose it for anyone who won’t listen.”

It shattered her.

Zara stopped going to the café. She stopped writing. She deleted every picture they took—except one. The one where Damien wasn’t looking at the camera but at her. That one stayed buried in her gallery like a wound that wouldn’t close.

She tried to forget. Focused on her grades. Spent time with Mimi, her roommate, who dragged her to a poetry slam in the city one Friday night.

It was there, in a dim-lit room in Bodija, surrounded by snapping fingers and smoky air, that she found herself again.

Months passed in Abuja, and Zara’s world kept unfolding. She no longer confined herself to poetry and podcasts. Now, she was traveling—sharing her story at schools and youth centers, helping teenage girls find their voices. Each event reminded her of the journey she had taken: from silence to strength.

Still, there was one person she had not spoken to. One chapter she hadn’t faced.

Her father.

Since he left when she was ten, his absence had shaped much of her silence. No calls. No letters. Just stories from her mother, half-finished and full of pain.

One humid evening in Lagos, after a community reading in Ikoyi, Zara passed a small, weathered bookstore tucked behind a yellow-painted suya spot. A strange pull led her in.

Behind the counter sat a man leafing through a copy of The Girl Who Stayed. His salt-and-pepper beard twitched when he saw her.

“Zara?” he asked, as if the name had been stuck in his throat for years.

She didn’t respond right away. The man had her eyes—so unmistakably hers that the recognition felt like a punch.

“I’m your father,” he said, standing up.

“I know,” she replied quietly.

They stood in stillness, years of unsaid words resting heavily between them. Finally, she broke it.

“You were gone when I needed you.”

“I was afraid,” he said. “I failed you, and I didn’t know how to fix it.”

“I grew up anyway,” she said. “But I carried your silence like a wound.”

They spoke for a long time. Not as a family reunited, but as strangers reaching toward understanding. It wasn’t forgiveness, not yet. But it was a beginning. And for Zara, beginnings mattered.

Part Twelve: The Real Goodbye

Returning to Benin for an alumni lecture, Zara walked the familiar paths of Atlantic University. The mango tree was still there, tall and rooted. It looked older. So did she.

She sat under it and opened her old journal. The same one she’d cried into years ago.

> Dear future Zara,

If you're reading this, it means you survived.

I hope you learned that love doesn’t always stay—but you can.

She added a new entry:

> Some people will leave. Some will stay. But the one person who must never abandon you—is you.

And that was enough.

Final Part: Her Own Ending

A year later, Zara’s third book launched in Accra, earning international praise. She had become a symbol for young African voices, blending vulnerability and purpose with every word she spoke.

She and Tobi remained close, their friendship evolving into something warm and constant. They didn’t label it. They didn’t have to.

At her final book tour event, a teenager asked, “How do you know when your story ends?”

Zara smiled.

“When you can look back without pain—and forward with peace.”

The applause rose. She didn’t cry this time.

Zara no longer needed to finish a chapter to feel complete. She had written through the ache, walked through the fire, and emerged not just whole—but luminous.