Seven Word

The first thing Emeka noticed that morning was how happy she was.

Not the performative kind. The real kind — the kind that comes from somewhere inside a person and leaks out without permission. Sade was in the bathroom singing Tems off-key, her voice bouncing off the tiles, and even that sound — slightly wrong, completely unbothered — made him smile from the bed.

Four years of marriage and she still sang in the shower like nobody could hear her.

He loved that about her.

His phone was dead on the charger, the screen black. He needed to confirm a transfer before his site meeting. He reached across to her side of the bed, grabbed her phone, pressed the button.

The screen lit up.

And the world as he knew it ended in seven words.

Baby I can still feel you from last night. 🖤

The name above it: Dayo.

Emeka did not move. The phone sat in his palm like something that had just detonated and was waiting for him to realize it. The shower was still running. Sade was still singing — Essence now, the part where the chorus opens up and lifts.

Baby I can still feel you from last night.

He read it again. Then again. The way you reread something hoping the meaning will change if you look long enough.

It didn’t change.

The shower stopped.

He put the phone back on her bedside table. Exactly where he found it. Screen down. He sat up, put his feet on the floor, and pressed both hands flat against his thighs. The room was the same room. The curtains he hated but she loved — burnt orange, too loud. The photo from their Zanzibar trip on the wall. Her perfume on the dresser. Everything in its place. Everything exactly as it was twenty seconds ago.

Except him.

She came out with a towel twisted on her head and shea butter in her hand, already talking.

“You’re up. I thought you were sleeping in.” She moved to the dresser, unscrewed the butter, started working it into her arms. “You want eggs?”

He watched her hands. The same hands that had typed a reply to that message. Last night, while he was in this same room, she had typed something back to a man named Dayo and he had no idea what she said.

“Emeka?”

“Yeah.” His voice came out normal. He didn’t know how. “Eggs is fine.”

She smiled at him in the mirror and went to the kitchen.

He sat there listening to her open the fridge, listening to the gas click on, listening to oil hit a hot pan. Normal sounds. Saturday morning sounds. The sounds of a life he had built and believed in completely.

Baby I can still feel you from last night.

He stood up. Walked to her side of the bed. Picked up the phone.

Their wedding date unlocked it. August 16th. She hadn’t changed the password in four years.

He opened WhatsApp.

He found Dayo.

And then he stopped breathing — because the chat didn’t start last week.

It started eight months ago.