He cooked jollof rice with chicken and fried plantains and the apartment smelled like something warm and certain from the moment I walked in.
I sat on the kitchen counter the way I used to do when I was a student and watched him move around a kitchen that was not his, using it like it was, and thought about how comfort in unfamiliar spaces said something important about a person.
"Tell me something about yourself that I don't know yet," I said.
He thought about it while he stirred. "I almost didn't become a site manager. I had a place at an architecture school in London. Full scholarship."
"What happened?"
"My father got sick. I came home. By the time he was better, the window had closed."
"Do you regret it?"
"Some days," he said. "Most days I think the version of me that went to Lo
