CHAPTER 20: THE COST OF SILENCE
915 Words
POV: Ayoola Davis
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Zainab wouldn’t stop pacing.
It was Saturday morning, but the air in her room was still thick with what neither of us wanted to say. She’d been watching me closely since last night, eyes full of concern, lips trembling with curiosity and guilt.
I hadn’t told her anything.
“You left without a word, Ayoola,” she said for the third time. “People were asking if you’d gone home. I was worried.”
I sat on the edge of her bed, arms crossed. “You were busy with Ken.”
Her shoulders tensed. “I told you to call me if anything happened.”
I looked at her then, and whatever she saw in my eyes made her flinch.
She sat down slowly. “Did something happen?”
Silence.
“Please,” she whispered.
I stood. “I need to go.”
“Go where?”
“My grandfather’s place.”
She opened her mouth to say something else, but I didn’t wait. I grabbed my bag and walked out.
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My grandfather’s restaurant sat quietly on a shaded corner of a less-busy road, a mix of wood and stone, with deep brown shutters and walls stained by age and sun. It wasn’t flashy. It wasn’t trendy. But it was home.
He used to say, “Let the big ones chase skyscrapers. I’ll take my firewood and stew any day.” And his food? Always spoke for itself.
I didn’t come here to help today. I just wanted peace. The smells of egusi, pepper soup, and fried plantain greeted me like old friends as I stepped through the side entrance. The front was for customers. The side was for me.
Or it used to be.
Because when I walked into the restaurant’s main seating area, I stopped cold.
Nate was already there.
Sitting at one of the corner tables like he belonged.
A bottle of malt sat in front of him, untouched. His head turned the moment I entered, and his face — tired, sober — broke into something like hope.
I took a step back.
“Ayoola,” he stood. “Please.”
“What are you doing here?” I said, not hiding the ice in my voice.
He looked down for a moment, hands shoved deep in his pockets. “I asked Zainab where I could find you.”
I almost laughed. “Of course you did.”
“She said this is where you go when you want to be left alone. I just… I needed to talk to you.”
“You went to my house, didn’t you?”
He nodded slowly. “I didn’t want to show up like that. I just— I didn’t know how else to reach you.”
I clenched my fists, fingers pressing into my palms.
“You shouldn’t even be here.”
“I know.”
We stood like that for a moment — him near the table, me near the door — the silence taut, stretched thin.
Finally, he said, “I came to say I’m sorry. And I mean it.”
“I don’t want your apology.”
“You deserve it anyway,” he said. “You didn’t do anything wrong. What happened at the party — it wasn’t you. It was me. My choices. I wasn’t just drunk. I was being… entitled.”
I swallowed hard, jaw tightening.
“You cornered me,” I said. “You kissed me after I said no. You touched me without permission. And now you think a sorry will fix it?”
“No,” he said quietly. “I don’t. I just wanted to face you. Not hide from it.”
His voice had dropped, as if even he was afraid of the words now.
“I didn’t kiss you because I thought you liked me,” he continued. “I kissed you because I thought I could take what I wanted. That’s what scares me the most. I saw myself afterwards — and I didn’t like who I was.”
I looked at him. Really looked.
He wasn’t pretending. He wasn’t smiling, or acting smooth, or brushing it off. He looked like someone who’d stared in the mirror and hated what stared back.
Still, that didn’t erase what happened.
“You don’t get points for regret,” I said.
“I know.”
“And Zainab had no right to tell you where I’d be.”
“She didn’t know what I did. I just told her I needed to make things right.”
I exhaled slowly and walked past him — not to leave, but to sit.
At a different table.
He stood there awkwardly for a second, then got the message and moved toward the exit.
When he reached the door, he paused.
“I won’t bother you again,” he said without turning around. “I just hope someday you’ll believe that I mean it.”
And then he left.
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I stayed in that chair for a long time.
The familiar scents wrapped around me, the sunlight hit the old wooden floor, and in the distance, I could hear the kitchen staff laughing at something behind the closed doors.
The world hadn’t ended.
But something had changed.
Inside me, something had shifted.
And though I couldn’t name it yet, I knew this:
I would never allow myself to be cornered again.
Not in a room.
Not by a boy.
Not by silence.
- Writer
