Biodun

Emeka ate every bite of those eggs.

Not because he was hungry. Because he needed Sade to see a normal man eating a normal breakfast on a normal Saturday morning. He needed her to feel nothing, no alarm, no suspicion, no reason to check her phone and notice anything out of place.

She sat across from him scrolling through Instagram, one leg tucked under her, a cup of Milo going cold beside her. This was their Saturday. This had always been their Saturday. Slow mornings, no rush, the kind of quiet that belongs only to people who are comfortable with each other.

He used to love this.

“I’m stepping out,” he said, pushing the plate back. “Need to see a site in Ajah.”

She didn’t look up. “On Saturday?”

“Client is travelling Monday. Won’t take long.”

She nodded, already back in her phone. “Okay. Pick up tomatoes on your way back.”

Tomatoes.

He grabbed his keys.

He didn’t go to Ajah.

He parked three streets away under a neem tree and called Biodun.

It rang twice.

“Emeka! My guy, how na—”

“How long have you known?”

The silence that followed was not the silence of a confused man. It was the silence of a man who had been waiting for this call and hoping it would never come.

“Known wetin?” Biodun’s voice had shifted. Careful now. Smaller.

“Biodun.” Just his name. Nothing else.

A truck rumbled past on the main road. Somewhere nearby a woman was selling akara, her voice cutting through the heat — akara, akara, fresh akara. Lagos carrying on completely indifferent to the fact that Emeka’s life was sitting in pieces on the floor.

“E, listen…”

“How long.”

“It’s not, I only found out like three months ago. I swear I didn’t know from the beginning. Dayo is my friend from NYSC, I didn’t even know he knew Sade until—”

“You knew for three months.”

“I was going to tell you. I didn’t know how to—”

“You collected forty thousand from me in April.” His voice was quiet. Steady. The steadiness was costing him everything. “You sat in my house. You ate my food at Christmas. Three months Biodun.”

Nothing.

“You looked me in the face.”

“Emeka I’m sorry. I swear on my mother I wanted to tell you. Dayo said it wasn’t serious. He said it was ending. I believed him and I didn’t want to destroy your marriage over something that was going to end by itself—”

“Is it ending?”

Silence again.

Longer this time.

And in that silence Emeka got his answer. Not from words. From the way his cousin — this man who had shared a bedroom with him for two years when their parents couldn’t afford separate space, who had been his best man, who knew every version of him that had ever existed — from the way that man could not find a single word.

“Don’t call me,” Emeka said.

“E, please—”

He ended the call.

He sat in the car for a long time. The neem tree threw shade across the windscreen, moving slightly in the breeze. He watched it. Just the shadow of leaves. Just light and dark shifting against each other.

It’s not ending.

His phone buzzed. Biodun. He cut it. Buzzed again. Cut it. Then a text:

There’s something else you need to know about Dayo. Please pick up.

He stared at the message.

Something else.

He looked up through the windscreen at nothing in particular. A keke driver cut across traffic. A child balanced a tray of pure water on her head, perfectly, without looking down.

His thumb hovered over Biodun’s name.

Something else you need to know about Dayo.

What could be worse than what he already knew?

He was about to find out.