Out of Reach

Chapter 2: Something Real

The dinner party was Efe’s idea.

It was always Efe’s idea.

Tega had learned early in their marriage that the social events they attended together were never really about togetherness. They were business. Everything in Efe’s life was business the handshakes, the conversations, the carefully chosen restaurants, even the way he dressed. It was all strategy. It was all performance.

And she was part of the performance.

“We are hosting on Saturday,” he told her on Wednesday evening, not looking up from his laptop. He was sitting at the dining table with three empty plates around him dinner had long been cleared away and his eyes were fixed on spreadsheets that meant more to him than anything else in that house.

“This Saturday?” Tega asked.

“Yes.”

“That is three days away Efe.”

“I know when Saturday is.”

She looked at him for a moment. He still had not looked up.

“How many people?” she asked.

“Twenty. Maybe twenty five. Business associates. Some people from Abuja flying in.”

“And you are telling me now.”

It was not a question. There was no point making it a question. He would not understand why three days was not enough notice. He had never once been involved in the actual work of hosting the calls to the caterer, the flowers, the table arrangements, the careful management of twenty five personalities in one space for an entire evening. That was Tega’s department. That had always been Tega’s department.

He finally looked up.

“You always handle it perfectly,” he said, in the tone of a man offering what he genuinely believed was a compliment.

Tega smiled. It was the smile she had perfected over two years warm enough to pass, empty enough to cost her nothing.

“I will handle it,” she said.

She went upstairs, sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall for a long time.

Then she picked up her phone and called the caterer.

By Saturday evening the house had been transformed.

Extra tables had been brought in and arranged in the large reception room. White linen tablecloths, fresh flowers in tall vases birds of paradise and white lilies, elegant and unfussy. The caterer had confirmed the menu pepper soup to start, a full spread of jollof rice, fried rice, assorted meats, fish, plantain, small chops circulating on trays. A bar set up in the corner with two attendants.

Tega had done all of it.

She had made seventeen phone calls in three days. She had driven to the market herself because the florist delivery had fallen through. She had tasted the caterer’s samples and given precise feedback. She had selected the playlist, arranged the seating, ironed out every detail until the house looked like it belonged on the pages of a magazine.

Efe had walked through the reception room that evening, looked around briefly and said

“Good. This works.”

Then he went back upstairs to take a call.

Tega stood alone in the middle of the beautifully arranged room, surrounded by flowers and candlelight, and felt the particular loneliness of being completely unseen by the one person whose eyes should matter most.

The guests began arriving at seven.

They came in pairs and small groups men in agbadas and sharp suits, women in elaborate gele and evening dresses, everyone carrying the particular energy of Lagos wealth, that combination of ease and performance that came from years of moving in certain circles.

Efe transformed the moment the first guest walked through the door.

That was the thing about him that never stopped surprising Tega, the switch. At home he was distant and distracted, a man moving through rooms without really inhabiting them. But put him in front of people and something lit up in him. He became warm and magnetic, shaking hands with both of his, laughing at the right moments, remembering details about people’s lives and businesses that made them feel important and remembered.

He was excellent at this.

Tega stood beside him for the first hour, smiling and greeting and playing her role. She was good at it too, in her own quieter way. She asked people about their families, remembered names, made sure glasses were never empty and that everyone felt welcomed.

She was the perfect hostess.

She was completely invisible.

It was past nine when she slipped outside for air.

The party had reached that stage where it no longer needed managing conversations had settled into their natural rhythms, the food had been eaten and praised, the bar was busy. She had done her job. Nobody would notice her absence for a few minutes.

The compound was quiet and cool compared to the noise inside. The outdoor lights cast a warm yellow glow across the driveway. She stood by the side of the house, her heels in her hand because her feet had been hurting for the last two hours, and tilted her head back and breathed.

“Good evening ma.”

She turned.

Akin was sitting on the low bench near the garage, a small bottle of water in his hand. He had been on standby all evening in case any guests needed driving. He started to stand when he saw her but she shook her head slightly.

“Don’t get up,” she said.

He settled back, watching her with that steady quiet attention of his.

She leaned against the wall of the house and looked up at the sky. Lagos never really got dark the city threw too much light upward for that but you could still find stars if you looked in the right places.

“Long night,” he said after a moment. Not intrusively. Just an observation offered gently into the space between them.

“Very long,” she agreed.

Silence. But it was comfortable silence, the kind that did not demand to be filled.

“You organized all of this?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“It looks very good ma. The flowers especially.”

She glanced at him. He was not flattering her she could tell the difference between flattery and genuine observation by now, she had been surrounded by enough of the former to recognize the latter.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “I drove to the market myself for the flowers. The delivery fell through.”

“I know,” he said. “I saw you leave yesterday morning. You were back in two hours.”

She looked at him fully then. “You noticed that?”

He met her eyes briefly then looked away with a small careful expression that was not quite a smile. “I notice most things ma.”

The words landed softly but they landed deeply.

She looked back up at the sky.

They sat in comfortable silence for a moment, the noise of the party floating out from inside the house like it belonged to a different world entirely.

Then Tega asked the question that had been sitting quietly in her chest all evening.

“Akin,” she said softly. “What does love feel like?”

He turned to look at her slowly. Not with shock. Not with judgment. Just with that steady careful attention of his.

“Like being seen,” he said simply. “Like someone knows exactly who you are and chooses to stay anyway.”

Tega was quiet for a moment, letting the words settle over her like something warm and unfamiliar.

Akin looked at her gently. “But ma you are married. Should I not be asking you that question instead?”

She smiled. But it was the sad kind of smile. The kind that knows exactly what it is hiding.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “I am married.”

She did not say anything else. She did not need to. The silence that followed said everything that words could not.

After a moment she looked at him sideways.

“Are you married Akin?”

He shook his head slowly. “No ma. I am not.”

“Why not?”

He thought about it for a moment, turning his water bottle slowly in his hands, looking at the ground with the expression of a man who had considered this question before and arrived at an honest answer.

“Because I would rather wait for something real,” he said quietly, “than settle for something that only looks right from the outside.”

Tega felt those words land somewhere deep and tender inside her chest.

She looked away quickly before he could see it in her eyes.

From inside the house Efe’s laugh floated out through the open windows that big warm social laugh he reserved for guests. The laugh of a man having a wonderful evening.

Akin spoke again, his voice lower now, careful.

“My mother used to say that waiting is not the same as being still. She said you can be waiting and moving at the same time. Waiting for the destination but still walking.”

Tega turned to look at him.

He glanced up and their eyes met in the warm yellow light of the compound.

“The problem,” he continued quietly, “is when we stop walking and just wait. That is when it becomes painful.”

She stared at him for a long moment.

He was just the driver.

She kept telling herself that.

He was just the driver and she was a married woman and none of this meant anything at all.

But sitting here in the quiet of the compound, her heels in her hand and the party noise fading behind her, listening to this man speak with more honesty and warmth than she had received in two years of marriage she found that particular lie harder and harder to hold onto.

From inside the house someone called her name. A guest looking for the hostess.

Tega stood up slowly, smoothed her dress and slipped her heels back on.

“Something real,” she repeated softly, almost to herself.

“Good night ma,” Akin said quietly.

“Good night Akin,” she replied.

She walked back inside.

But his words followed her through the rest of the evening, through the goodbyes and the cleanup and the long silent ride up the staircase while Efe took one final call in his study.

Waiting is not the same as being still.

She lay in bed that night staring at the ceiling while Efe slept beside her and she thought

I have been still for so long.

When did I stop walking?

And is it already too late to start again?