My First Time

Something Important

I got to the wall twenty minutes early.

The sky was still soft with morning light, the air cool enough that my uniform didn’t stick to my back yet. I sat in our usual spot and wiped my palms on my trousers for the third time. Yoma’s message kept replaying in my head.

Can you meet me at the wall before school? I need to talk to you about something important.

Important could mean anything. Important could be the thing Chioma had already told me. Important could be something else entirely. My mind refused to settle on one possibility. It kept jumping between hope and dread until both felt the same.

I saw her before she saw me. She was walking quickly, bag hanging off one shoulder, expression serious in a way that made my stomach tighten. When she finally noticed me she gave a small smile, but it didn’t fully reach her eyes.

“You’re early,” she said as she sat down beside me.

“So are you.”

She nodded and looked at the road for a moment. A single motorcycle passed. Somewhere a generator started up. The silence between us felt heavier than usual.

“I need to tell you something,” she began. Her voice was steady, but quieter than normal. “I’ve been trying to find the right time, and I keep putting it off because I don’t want to ruin what’s happening between us.”

I waited. My heart was beating so hard I was sure she could hear it.

Yoma took a slow breath. “My dad might be getting transferred. There’s a high chance we’re moving to another state before the end of the session.”

Even though I already knew, hearing it from her mouth made it real in a different way. The words settled in my chest like something cold and solid.

“Oh,” I said. It was all I could manage at first.

She glanced at me, searching my face. “I didn’t want to say anything until it was more certain. But things are moving faster now. They’ve started talking about packing. My mum asked me yesterday to start sorting my clothes.”

I stared at my hands. The same hands that had held hers yesterday. The same hands that had started memorising the feeling of her without permission.

“When will you know for sure?” I asked.

“Soon. Maybe in the next few weeks. Nothing is final yet, but… it’s looking likely.”

The quiet that followed was thick. I could feel her watching me, waiting for a reaction. I didn’t know what expression I was wearing. I only knew that the carefully controlled calm I had been holding onto for days was starting to c***k.

“Say something,” she said softly.

I let out a breath. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Are you angry I didn’t tell you earlier?”

“No.” I shook my head. “I’m not angry. I just…” I stopped, searching for words that wouldn’t sound as desperate as I felt. “I got used to this. To you. To walking here. To the messages. I didn’t think that far ahead.”

Yoma’s shoulder brushed against mine. “I know. Neither did I. That’s why it’s hard.”

We sat in silence for a while. Students had started arriving in the distance. The school day was getting closer, but neither of us moved.

“I don’t want this to end,” she said eventually.

“Neither do I.”

“We can still try. If I leave. People do long distance.”

I nodded, even though the idea already felt like trying to hold water in my hands. “Yeah. We can try.”

She reached for my hand. I let her take it. Her fingers were warm. I held on tighter than I meant to.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“For what?”

“For not being able to promise I’ll stay.”

The honesty in her voice hurt more than a lie would have. I swallowed and stared at the trees on the other side of the road.

“I’m glad you told me,” I said finally.

She leaned her head against my shoulder the way she had started doing, and for a few minutes we just stayed like that. The morning continued around us — more students, more noise, the day beginning whether we were ready or not.

When we finally stood up to walk to school, she kept hold of my hand until we got close to the gate. Before we separated she looked at me properly.

“Are we okay?” she asked.

“We’re okay,” I said.

It wasn’t a complete lie. It just wasn’t the full truth either.

The rest of the school day felt unreal. I went through the motions — classes, break, more classes — but everything sat behind a thin layer of fog. Tunde asked me twice if something had happened. I told him I would explain later. Chioma caught my eye once across the field and gave a small, almost apologetic nod. I looked away.

After school Yoma and I didn’t go to the wall. She had a meeting with a teacher, and I needed time to breathe. We texted instead. The conversation was careful, softer than usual. Neither of us mentioned the move again. It sat between every message anyway.

That night I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, replaying the conversation at the wall. The way her voice had sounded when she said packing. The way she had apologised for not being able to promise she would stay. The way my chest had felt like it was already practising the absence.

My phone buzzed.

Yoma: “Are you still awake?”

Me: “Yeah.”

Yoma: “I keep thinking about this morning.”

Me: “Me too.”

Yoma: “I hate that I made you look like that.”

Me: “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

There was a longer pause. Then she typed:

“Can I call you?”

I sat up immediately.

“Yes.”

The phone rang a few seconds later. When I answered, her voice was quieter than it had been all day.

“I just wanted to hear you,” she said.

Something in my throat tightened. “I’m here.”

We didn’t talk about the move on the call. We talked about nothing important — a teacher, a song, the fact that her brother had broken yet another plate. The ordinary sound of her voice settled some of the noise in my head, but not all of it.

When we finally said goodnight, I stayed awake long after the call ended.

I kept thinking about how quickly something good could become temporary. How a person could go from being a daily presence to a name on a screen. How I had spent so long believing no one would choose me, only to be chosen and then face the possibility of losing it before I had even fully accepted it was real.

Sleep eventually came, but it was thin and restless.

In the early hours of the morning my phone lit up again.

A message from Chioma.

“They just booked the transport. Two weeks.”

I stared at the screen until the words stopped making sense.

Two weeks.

The future I had been quietly dreading had just been given a number.