The Arrangement

The Terms

The restaurant was in Lekki. Quiet. The kind of place with no name outside and a number you needed to know someone to get.

He was already there when she arrived.

She noted that. He had arrived early enough to be settled but not so early that it looked like effort. The table he had chosen was against the far wall. Both seats had equal sight lines to the entrance. Neither position was dominant.

She sat down.

He did not stand when she came in which she respected. Standing would have been performance. He simply looked up and nodded once and waited for her to settle before speaking.

“Thank you for coming,” he said.

“I am curious,” she said. “Not grateful. There is a difference.”

Something moved in his eyes. Not amusement exactly. Recognition.

He placed a folder on the table between them.

She looked at it. She looked at him.

“Before I open that,” she said. “Tell me what it is in one sentence.”

“It is a proposal,” he said. “That will benefit both of us more than whatever our mothers are currently arranging.”

She opened it.

The word CONTRACT sat at the top of the first page without apology.

She read. He waited. He did not check his phone. He did not fill the silence with explanation. He simply waited with the patience of a man who had prepared for this moment and trusted his preparation.

She read the terms.

Two years. A legal marriage registered in Lagos. Joint appearances at minimum twice a week. Shared residence for the duration. Separate rooms. Financial terms that were generous without being insulting. An exit clause operable by either party with ninety days notice.

She kept her face neutral.

She turned the pages.

On page six she stopped.

Clause Seven.

Neither party shall enter into or continue any romantic or intimate relationship outside this arrangement during its duration, for the protection of both parties reputations.

She read it once.

She read it again.

She placed the folder on the table. She picked up her water glass. She drank. She put it down.

“This clause,” she said.

“Yes.”

“It is a problem.”

“I know.”

“You included it anyway.”

“Yes.”

“Why.”

He leaned forward slightly. Just slightly. “Because I have the same problem,” he said. “And I needed to know if you were someone I could be honest with before I asked you to spend two years being dishonest with everyone else.”

The restaurant moved around them. Soft conversation at other tables. A waiter passing. The smell of food she had not ordered.

“You are assuming a great deal,” she said.

“I am calculating,” he said. “Not assuming. Your reaction to that clause told me what I needed to know. You did not ask me to explain it. You recognised it immediately. That means it applies to you the same way it applies to me.”

She was quiet.

She had built a company on reading situations faster than anyone else in the room. She had not expected to sit across from someone doing the same thing to her.

“Who is it,” she said.

“Not here,” he said. “Not yet. But I will tell you. When you decide to trust me with yours I will tell you mine.”

“That is a negotiation.”

“Everything is.”

She looked at him for a long moment. The kind of looking that was really measuring.

“If I sign this,” she said. “And the clause becomes a problem. What happens.”

“We protect each other,” he said simply. “That is what the clause is for. Not to restrict you. To give both of us a reason to protect each other.”

“And if one of us breaks it.”

“Then we were not the people we thought we were and the contract dissolves.”

She sat back.

“I need three days,” she said.

“You have two,” he said. “My uncle moves quickly and I would prefer to control this before he does.”

She stood. Picked up her bag. Pushed the folder toward him.

“I will take a photo of the relevant pages,” she said. “You keep the original.”

“Of course.”

She photographed each page. Precise. Quick. She paused on Clause Seven longest.

At the door she stopped.

“Adesanya.”

“Yes.”

“How did you know to come to me specifically.”

He looked at her steadily. “Because you have built everything you have without using anyone,” he said. “Which means you understand what it costs to need something. And you will not be careless with that knowledge when you see it in someone else.”

She left.

He sat with his water glass and the folder and the particular quiet of a man who had said the truest thing he knew how to say and could only wait now to see what it produced.

Outside the Lagos afternoon received her with its usual indifference.

She sat in the back of her car.

She opened her phone.

She had one unread message from Yetunde sent an hour ago.

thinking about you. how was ibadan.

She stared at it.

She thought about Clause Seven.

She thought about Yetunde’s face. Yetunde’s voice. The way Yetunde said her name in the dark like it was the only word she needed.

She thought about what it would cost if anyone with the wrong intentions ever photographed them together. What it would do to Yetunde’s career. What it would do to her company. What it would do to her mother.

She thought about a contract that would put a wall around all of it. Around Yetunde. Around the one real thing she had.

She typed back. ibadan was ibadan. can I call you tonight.

always, Yetunde replied.

She put the phone down.

She looked at the Lagos traffic ahead and made her decision before they reached the next junction.

Two years, she thought. People survive worse.

“Take me to the office,” she told her driver.

She had work to do before she signed anything.