The first time
1539 Words
Saturday arrived soft and unhurried.
The rain had washed Lagos clean overnight — the streets were quieter, the air was lighter, the city wearing its after-rain face which was the most beautiful version of itself. Kamsi noticed this from her kitchen window at seven AM with her tea — one cup, deliberately one cup — and told herself today was a normal Saturday.
She had errands. She had a report to file for her pharmaceutical license renewal. She had a life that was organised and functional and did not revolve around a dangerous man in a black car.
She was going to have a completely normal Saturday.
Her phone buzzed at eight.
Zion: Good morning.
She looked at the message.
She looked at her tea.
Kamsi: Good morning.
She put her phone down.
She picked it back up.
Kamsi: You're awake early.
Zion: I don't sleep much.
Kamsi: Why?
A pause.
Zion: Habit. There's usually something that needs handling.
Kamsi: Even on Saturdays?
Zion: Especially on Saturdays. Okafor moves on weekends when he thinks attention is elsewhere.
She thought about a senator moving quietly on a Saturday morning while most of Lagos slept in.
Kamsi: Has he done anything?
Zion: Nothing I haven't already anticipated. Don't worry about it.
Kamsi: I'm not worried. I'm informed. There's a difference.
A pause. Then:
Zion: 😌
She stared at the screen.
Zion Adaora had just sent her a smug emoji.
She was unreasonably charmed by this.
Kamsi: Are you free today?
She stared at what she had just typed.
She had not planned to type that. It had come out before her sensible self could stop it and now it was sent and she could not unsend it and she was a pharmacist not a reckless person and yet.
The three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
Zion: Yes.
Just that. No question. No qualification.
She looked at the ceiling.
Kamsi: There's a market on the mainland I go to on Saturdays. Tejuosho. I need to pick up some things.
Zion: You're inviting me to a market.
Kamsi: I'm informing you of my Saturday plans. You can do what you want with that information.
A pause.
Zion: I'll pick you up at ten.
Kamsi: I have my own—
Zion: Kamsi.
Kamsi: Fine.
---
He arrived at exactly ten.
She was ready — she was always ready on time, it was a point of personal principle — and she came downstairs to find him leaning against the black car in the Saturday morning sunshine looking entirely too composed for someone who was about to go to Tejuosho market.
He looked at her.
She looked at him.
"You look different," he said.
She was wearing something simple — comfortable clothes for a market, nothing significant. "Different how?"
"Less like a pharmacist," he said. "More like yourself."
She didn't know what to do with that so she walked to the car.
---
Tejuosho on a Saturday was everything Lagos markets were — loud and colourful and slightly overwhelming and completely alive. The smell of fresh produce and pepper and the particular energy of hundreds of people moving through narrow lanes with absolute certainty about where they were going.
Zion had never been to Tejuosho.
She could tell by the way he moved — controlled as always but taking in more than usual, the assessing gaze working harder than normal. Lagos Island power and Lagos mainland market were different planets and he knew it and she watched him understand it in real time.
"Stay close," she said. Not because he needed protecting. Because she knew this market and he didn't.
He stayed close.
She moved through the lanes the way she always did — purposeful, knowing exactly what she needed and where to find it. Tomatoes from the woman in the third row whose produce was always fresh. Pepper from the man at the corner who didn't inflate his prices for people who looked like they could afford inflation. Herbs from the back section where the serious cooking ingredients lived.
Zion carried the bags without being asked.
She noticed that.
She noticed everything.
At the herb section the seller — an older woman with sharp eyes and decades of market authority — looked at Zion with open assessment and then at Kamsi with the knowing expression of a woman who had seen many things.
"Your man," she said to Kamsi, nodding at Zion. In Yoruba, which Kamsi understood and assumed Zion might not.
"Not my man," Kamsi said in Yoruba.
The woman looked at the way Zion was standing — close, attentive, the bags in his hands — and smiled with the certainty of someone who knew better.
"Not yet," she said.
Kamsi paid for her herbs.
She did not translate.
But she felt Zion looking at her with the particular attention of a man who had understood more than she intended.
---
They found a small spot outside the market — plastic chairs and a woman selling fresh pepper soup from a pot that had clearly been going since dawn.
They sat.
The soup arrived — hot and serious and exactly what a Saturday morning required.
Kamsi ate.
Zion looked at the bowl with the expression of a man who had been raised on different food and was deciding something.
He ate.
His expression changed.
"Good," he said, slightly surprised.
"Everything on the mainland is good," she said. "You just have to know where to look."
He looked at her.
"I'm learning that," he said quietly.
She kept her eyes on her soup.
They ate in comfortable silence — the market noise around them, the Saturday sun warming everything, the ordinary beautiful chaos of Lagos doing its weekend things.
"Tell me something else," he said. "Something that isn't birds."
She thought about it.
"I wanted to study medicine," she said. "I chose pharmacy because the scholarship covered it and medicine didn't. I don't regret it but sometimes I wonder."
"You would have been an exceptional doctor," he said. No hesitation.
"You don't know that."
"I know how you think. How you handle pressure. How you treat people." He looked at her steadily. "You would have been exceptional."
She looked at her bowl.
"Your turn," she said.
He was quiet for a moment.
"I wanted to leave Nigeria," he said. "After my mother died. I had an offer — London, good position, clean start." He turned his cup slowly. "I stayed because someone had to."
"Do you regret it?"
"No." Certain. Immediate. "But there are days when the weight of it—" he stopped. "There are days."
She looked at him.
At this man carrying something enormous and choosing every day to keep carrying it.
"You're not alone in it," she said quietly. "What you're trying to do. There are people in this city — ordinary people, people who go to markets on Saturday mornings — who need it to work. Who've been waiting for it to work."
He looked at her.
"I know," he said softly. "That's the only reason I haven't stopped."
She held his gaze.
The market moved around them.
Lagos did its Saturday things.
And something between them — that forbidden warm impossible thing — moved closer without either of them deciding to let it.
His hand was on the table.
Hers was close.
Not touching.
Just close.
Close enough that it was a choice.
She didn't move her hand.
Neither did he.
They stayed like that — not touching, choosing not to move — and it was more charged than touching would have been and they both knew it.
Then his phone rang.
He looked at the screen. Something tightened in his jaw.
"I have to take this," he said.
"Go," she said.
He stood. Moved a few steps away. His voice when he answered was the other version — controlled and cold and entirely professional. The version the world got.
She watched him.
She thought about the version she got. The laugh in the car. The market bags. The hand on the table.
He came back. Sat down.
"I have to go," he said. "Something with Okafor."
"Okay."
He looked at her. "I'll have Emmanuel take you home."
"I drove—"
"You came with me. Your car is at your building." A pause. "I'm sorry."
She looked at him.
"Don't be sorry," she said. "Go do what you need to do."
He stood. He looked at her for a moment — market noise and Saturday sunshine and something unfinished between them sitting in the air.
"Kamsi," he said.
"Yes."
"The thing the market woman said." He looked at her steadily. "In Yoruba."
She stilled.
"I grew up in Lagos," he said quietly. "I speak Yoruba."
She looked at him.
He looked back.
The market was very loud around them.
"Go handle Okafor," she said.
The almost-smile. Full and warm.
"We'll talk about it," he said.
He left.
She sat in her plastic chair outside Tejuosho market with her bags of pepper and herbs and tomatoes and her heart doing the completely unprofessional thing again.
Not yet, the market woman had said.
Not yet.
She picked up her pepper soup.
She finished it.
She was smiling the whole time.
- Writer
