Emeka Arrives
1088 Words
He came on a Wednesday afternoon without calling first.
Adunola was in the upstairs study working when she heard the gate. She did not think anything of it. Deliveries came. The gate guard managed them. She kept her eyes on her screen.
Then she heard Kola’s voice in the entrance hall below. And another voice. Lower. Unhurried. The kind of voice that belonged to a man who had learned to take up exactly the space he needed and no more.
She saved her document.
She went to the top of the stairs.
Kola was at the door. His hand on the frame. His body doing something she had not seen it do before. A specific stillness that was different from his usual composure. His usual composure was controlled. This was something that had stopped.
The man at the door was tall. Dark. He had the quality of someone who had been through things and come out the other side not bitter but permanently clear eyed about what mattered. He was looking at Kola the way people looked at things they had spent a long time not allowing themselves to look at directly.
She understood immediately who he was.
She came down the stairs.
Both men looked up.
“Adunola,” Kola said. His voice was even. She could hear what it was costing him to make it even. “This is Emeka Nwachukwu. An old friend.”
“From Nsukka,” Emeka said. He was looking at her with the direct eyes of a man who had already assessed the situation and was deciding how honest to be. “We were at university together.”
“I know who you are,” she said.
A beat.
Emeka looked at Kola. Then back at her.
“He told you,” Emeka said.
“Yes.”
Something moved across Emeka’s face. Not betrayal. Something closer to relief that had surprised itself.
“Come in,” she said. “I will make tea.”
She went to the kitchen. She heard them behind her. The sound of two people navigating the distance between them in a space that was not built for what they were to each other.
She made tea for three and carried it to the sitting room and sat in the chair that was not the sofa because the sofa belonged to the two of them to figure out.
Emeka sat at one end. Kola sat at the other. The distance between them was careful and deliberate and full of the specific ache of people who had been careful and deliberate for too long.
“How is the Abuja contract,” Kola said.
“Finishing in six weeks,” Emeka said. “Then I go back.”
“Back to Abuja.”
“Yes.”
The word yes carried something. A decision already made. A line already drawn. Adunola heard it. She suspected Kola heard it too and was not ready to respond to it so he lifted his tea instead.
“The work in Lagos,” Kola said. “You are satisfied with how it went.”
“The work was good,” Emeka said. “The work was always going to be good.”
The distinction landed quietly.
She sat with her tea and let them find their way through it. She was not uncomfortable. She was simply present. A witness to two people trying to speak around the edges of something too large for the centre of a conversation.
After a while Emeka looked at her directly.
“He is happy,” Emeka said. “I can see it. Whatever this is.” He gestured between her and the space around them with a movement that was more generous than it needed to be. “It suits him.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“I mean it,” he said. “I came here expecting to feel one way. I feel a different way. That is because of you.”
She looked at him.
“You love him,” she said simply.
“Yes,” he said.
“And you are going back to Abuja.”
“Yes.”
“Because.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Because some things do not have a shape that fits the life around them,” he said. “And you can spend your whole life trying to cut the life to fit the thing or you can decide to love it from the shape it actually has.”
The sitting room was quiet.
Kola was looking at his tea.
She watched him not look at Emeka and understood that this was not a conversation she should make easier by filling it.
She stood.
“I have work upstairs,” she said. “Stay as long as you need.”
She went upstairs.
She sat at her desk.
She did not open her laptop.
She could not hear what was being said below. The house was too well built for that. But she sat with the knowledge of what was happening in the sitting room and felt the weight of it move through the ceiling and into the room where she sat.
An hour passed.
She heard the front door.
She heard Kola’s footsteps on the stairs.
He stopped at the door of the study. She turned.
He looked like a man who had just set something down after carrying it for a very long time and was not yet sure whether the setting down was relief or loss or both simultaneously.
“He is gone,” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
“I did not ask him to stay.”
“I know.”
“I should have.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe you gave him what he actually came for.”
He looked at her. “What did he come for.”
“To see that you were alright,” she said. “He needed to see it for himself before he could go back.”
Kola stood in the doorway.
“Are you,” she said. “Alright.”
He thought about it honestly. She could see him thinking about it. Not reaching for the automatic yes. Actually considering.
“I will be,” he said.
“That is enough,” she said.
He nodded once.
He went to his room.
She turned back to her desk.
Outside the Wednesday evening arrived without ceremony and Lagos received it the way Lagos received everything.
Without slowing down.
- Writer
