I didn’t know what to say. So I said nothing.
The time slipped away like water through fingers.
We talked about everything and nothing. She told me about Idorenyin — how he had learned to ride a bicycle last month, how he had called her on her birthday and sung a song he had learned in school, how she kept his photograph under her pillow so she could see his face before she slept every night.
I told her about my childhood. About my father who worked too hard and died too young. About my mother who still called me every Sunday to ask when I was going to give her grandchildren.
“And what did you tell her?” Inemesit asked.
“I told her… soon,” I said. “But soon never comes.”
She didn’t say anything. She just nodded, as if she understood.
When the waiter brought the bill, I glanced at my phone.
3:47 P.M.
“Inemesit,” I said, “we should start heading back.”
She looked at the time and her eyes widened.
“Oh no! I still have work to do! The sitting room needs —”
“Inemesit.”
I said her name firmly but gently.
“Today, you are not the cleaner. Today, you are just Inemesit. The work will still be there tomorrow. Let it wait.”
She hesitated. Then she relaxed.
“Okay, Emmanuel,” she said. “Okay.”
The drive home was quiet.
Not an awkward quiet. A comfortable one. The kind of quiet that exists between two people who don’t need to fill every silence with words.
Inemesit held the bags on her lap, occasionally looking down at them as if to confirm they were real. The gold necklace caught the sunlight and threw small reflections across the dashboard.
When we pulled into the compound, she turned to me.
“Thank you,” she said. “For today. For everything.”
“You don’t have to thank me,” I said.
“Yes, I do,” she insisted. “Nobody has ever… nobody has ever treated me like this before. Like I matter.”
Her voice cracked on the last word.
I reached over and squeezed her hand.
“You matter, Inemesit,” I said. “Don’t ever forget that.”
She nodded, blinked away something that looked like tears, and stepped out of the car.
Inside the house, Inemesit was over the moon.
She laid out her new clothes on the couch in the sitting room — the green dress here, the blue one there, the red one carefully draped over a chair. She tried on the shoes, walking around the sitting room to test them. She held the handbag up to the light, admiring the way it caught the glow from the window.
“Emmanuel, look!” she called out, holding up the gold necklace. “It sparkles!”
I leaned against her doorframe, watching her with a smile.
“It does,” I said.
She was about to say something else when my phone rang.
The screen glowed with a name I had not expected to see tonight.
Kola calling.
“I need to take this,” I said to Inemesit.
She nodded, gathered her new things, and exited to her room, still humming that Akwa Ibom gospel song.
I walked over a couch and sat down and answered the call.
“My brother!” Kola’s voice boomed through the speaker. “How far? How many points you don score with that baddest girl?”
I sighed.
“Kola, I dey win her two zero,”
I lied.
There was no point explaining the truth. Men like Kola — men who measured everything in wins and losses, in points and scores — they did not understand things like emotional connection or respect or the slow, uncertain process of learning to see someone as more than a body.
“Two zero? My brother! Na my coaching be that o! You suppose dash me something!”
“Thank you for your advice,” I said. “It really helped.”
“So wetin next? You don lock her down?”
“Actually,” I said, choosing my words carefully, “I think I am going to sack her.”
Silence on the other end.
“Sack her? After all this?”
“Kola, think about it. I cannot live under the same roof with a woman I have had those… fierce moments with. That is digging my own grave. What if my wife finds out? What if something else happens? No. It is better she goes.”
Kola was quiet for a moment.
“You know what? You are right. But my brother, don’t throw away the baby with the bathwater. Keep her as a side chick. That way, you can be visiting her from time to time. No risk of your wife finding out. No drama.”
I hesitated.
“That… might work,” I said, pretending to consider it.
“Of course it will work! Na me talk am!”
Then Kola’s voice changed. Became softer. Almost pleading.
“Emmanuel, my brother, I need one small favour from you.”
“What is it?”
“Abeg, pass Inemesit’s number to me. Since she won’t be living under your roof again, make I show her my own kind of hospitality.”
I smiled into the phone.
“Never,” I said.
“Ah! Emmanuel! No dey stingy with woman na! Just one number! I beg!”
“Goodbye, Kola.”
I ended the call.
Good riddance, I thought.
If not for a woman talk, wetin concern agbero concern overload?
I stood in the sitting room for a moment, staring at the dark screen of my phone.
Now I needed to concentrate on what really mattered. On how to take this new thing developing between me and Inemesit to the next level. Not the physical next level — the emotional next level. The kind where two people could look at each other and see past the masks, past the performances, past all the walls they had built to protect themselves.
I was about to go upstairs when I heard footsteps behind me.
I turned.
And my breath caught in my throat. Inemesit had changed again.
Gone was the floral dress. Gone were the soft curls and the light makeup.
In their place was something else entirely — a short skirt that stopped high on her thighs, a tight blouse that left little to the imagination, and that smirk.
That same smirk she had used to turn my head on the very first day.
She stood at the bottom of the staircase, one hand on her hip, the other hanging loose at her side. Her eyes glinted with something familiar — something dangerous.
“Emmanuel,” she said, her voice low and playful, “I thought about what you said. About today being special. And I want to show you how grateful I am.”
She walked toward me.
I stood there, transfixed like the Statue of Liberty — frozen, unable to move, unable to think, unable to remember why I had decided to do things differently.
She stopped inches from me. Reached up and placed a hand on my chest. I could feel the warmth of her palm through my shirt, could smell the perfume she had put on — something sweet, something floral, something that made my head spin.
“Now,” she whispered, “it is time to quench some fire.”
She turned and began to walk back toward her room, her fingers trailing from my chest to my arm, pulling me gently but firmly.
And like a sheep — like a foolish, hungry sheep — I followed.
But then something struck me.
Something deep in my chest. Not my heart — my conscience.
Emmanuel, a voice said, clear and steady. You want to do things right. Don’t follow your body. Follow your mind. Follow what you know is true.
I stopped.
My feet froze on the floor. My hand shot out and grabbed her wrist — gently, but firmly.
She turned, surprised.
“No,” I said.
Her smirk faltered.
“No?”
“No,” I repeated. “Things have changed, Inemesit. I have to do things differently now. I want to do things the right way.”
I could not read the expression on her face. She stared at me as if trying to read my mind, as if searching for the lie, the trick, the hidden agenda.
I forced myself to let go of her wrist.
“Go to your room,” I said, my voice softer now. “Freshen up. Do some house chores if you want. But rest early. Today was a long day.”
