Everything He Does Right

Damilare cooked on Sunday mornings.

This was one of the things Nneka had stored in the part of herself that collected evidence. Evidence that she had chosen correctly. Evidence that the life assembling itself around her was real and good and worth the years it had taken to build.

He made eggs the way she liked them, soft in the middle, with tomatoes and a little curry that his mother had taught him. He brought the plate to her before she finished her first cup of tea. He sat across from her with his own plate and the Sunday newspaper folded under his arm and for a while there was nothing between them but the sound of the fan overhead and the distant noise of the street outside.

This is enough, she thought. This is more than enough.

“Your mother called me yesterday,” Damilare said, turning a page.

Nneka looked up. “About what?”

“The aso-ebi colours. She wants to confirm before she orders fabric.” He said it without looking up, the way people mention things that do not concern them. “I told her to call you directly. I didn’t want to get the colour wrong.”

“She should have called me first.”

“She probably didn’t want to stress you.”

Nneka said nothing. Her mother’s version of not stressing her was calling her fiancé to arrange things, which was its own kind of stress, delivered quietly and with complete deniability.

After breakfast they drove to Lekki. There was a furniture showroom Damilare wanted her to see, something about the dining set he had been considering for three months. She walked beside him through the cool air-conditioned space while he talked about wood finish and chair height with the kind of focus he brought to everything, measured and thorough and certain.

She loved this about him. She was almost sure she loved this about him.

They were in the car heading back when his phone buzzed on the centre console. She was not looking for anything. She was watching the expressway traffic and thinking about whether the burgundy chair looked better than the grey one when the screen lit up.

A name. One name. Reena.

Then Damilare’s hand moved. Not fast, not dramatic, just a smooth unhurried reach that placed the phone face-down on his thigh.

The movement lasted less than two seconds.

The traffic moved. He changed lanes. He said, “There’s a new place in Ikeja I want to take you next weekend. Small chops and live music. Somto can come if she wants.”

“That sounds nice,” Nneka said.

Her voice came out exactly right. She had always been good at that.

Reena, she thought. Who is Reena?

She watched his profile, the clean line of his jaw, the easy way he held the steering wheel. He looked like a man with nothing to hide. He looked like the man she had agreed to spend her life with. Both of these things were true and she held them together in her chest and told herself they were not competing with each other.

By the time they reached home she had constructed three reasonable explanations. A colleague. A client. A cousin she had not heard him mention. There were people whose names you did not know yet after a year. There were names in a phone that meant nothing.

She carried the furniture brochure inside and set it on the kitchen counter.

Damilare’s hand was on her back as they walked in, warm and familiar and right where it always was.

She smiled at him over her shoulder.

It’s nothing, she told herself.

She almost believed it.

To be continued…