Part I: The Meeting

It rained, unexpectedly, the day we finally met. I knew the weather would shift her mood — not the kind of mood a lover hopes for, but to a spiraling descent. Months ago, she’d told me how the rain, the smell and the grayness of it, sent her spirit sinking into a state of deep unhappiness. I was certain that by the time we reached our destination, she’d be retreating into herself, seeking the safety of silence. As I drove, my mind ticked away like clockwork, frantic and rhythmic, trying to engineer a way to keep her spirits up.

She was wearing a black T-shirt with primary-colored geometric shapes on a white squared background, like a piece of modern art. Her denim pants and black boots made a definitive statement with every stride. Her locs were styled to frame the sharp angles of her jawline, and her brown eyes were so magnetic I had to fight to keep my gaze on the road; I didn’t want us to become a tragedy. I could almost see the headlines on the gossip blogs: Lesbian Lovers Perish in Ghastly Motor Accident on their Way to a Tryst. I shrugged the thought off, though it wasn’t entirely foreign to us. We’d bonded over death and the idea of “ending it all” — the kind of conversations you only have with someone who truly understands the weight of a depressive episode. In our shared madness, we had realized we weren’t afraid of dying. But today wasn’t the day. Death would have to wait its turn.

Fifteen minutes later, we reached my apartment. She didn’t look as moody as I had feared. Maybe she was just as tense as I was… finally breathing the same recycled air after six months of digital proximity. We were in the moment we’d rehearsed a thousand times in text bubbles. Now that we were in it, it felt… heavy. I wanted to blame the weather, but there was a phantom tension in the room I couldn’t quite name. I watched her pull her phone from her pocket. Our eyes locked, and she gave me that tucked-lip smile I loved, the one where she covers her mouth with her hand because she can’t hold my gaze or handle the intensity of being seen.

“Could you believe I’m still on Bumpy?” she asked, waving the screen at me. “I just got a text from someone I’ve been chatting with for a few days.”
A twinge of jealousy spiked in my chest, sharp and cold. I kept my voice level, “Oh, that is… interestingly interesting.”

Bumpy was where we’d started. Six months ago, I’d swiped right on her profile, drawn to her brief, relatable bio. She’d swiped back instantly. It’s A Bump! Her first message had been a simple, Hi, Happy New Year. Then came the icebreaker, What superpower would you possess if you could? I’d chosen Creativity. She’d chosen Invisibility.

I watched her now, distracted by a stranger on an app and wondered if she was already trying to disappear.

“What would you like to drink?” I asked, clearing the static from my throat.
“Water would do,” she said.

I went into the kitchen, came back and handed her a sparkly glass of iced water. I turned on the TV to fill the silence and went to change. When I returned, she hadn’t touched the drink. She was just staring into the glass, cradling it in both hands like a mother holding a fragile child.

“You’re still on it,” I said, my voice sounding thinner than I intended. I sat on the edge of the armchair opposite her, the distance between us feeling like a physical weight. “Is that why you’re holding the glass like that, like it’s a lifeline? Are you looking for an exit strategy or just checking if the grass is greener on the other side of the screen?”
She didn’t look up. Her thumb traced the condensation on the glass, carving a clear path through the fog. “I think I’m just looking for a version of us that makes sense in the light,” she whispered. “On the app, we’re poets. Here, we’re just two people in a room where it’s raining.”

Is that what this was? Was she trying to disappear into her phone? I thought.

 

Part II: Superpowers

The TV was murmuring some mindless daytime talk show, but the real dialogue was happening in the silence between us. She was still holding the glass, her thumbs tracing the rim.

I couldn’t formulate a better response to her statement about us being here, together, trying to be normal… act normal. It was easier being ourselves behind a screen, it appeared.

“Is the water not okay?” I asked, not knowing what else to say. I lowered myself on the opposite end of the sofa she sat on. The fabric felt like a vast desert between us.
“It’s perfect,” she whispered, though she still didn’t drink. She finally looked up, her brown eyes looking darker in the dim apartment light. “I’m sorry. About the Bumpy thing. I talk silly when I’m nervous. I say the wrong things.”
“It’s okay,” I said, though we both knew it wasn’t. “Is she or he… interesting?” I asked, making an effort to have a decent conversation.
She let out a short, dry laugh and finally took a sip. “Kinda. They want to know what my favorite color is. Such a bore question, you know? They don’t know how I get when it rains. They don’t know about the… other stuff.”

She set the glass down on the coffee table with a soft clink. The “other stuff” hung in the air like smoke. She shifted, tucking one leg under her, and the statement boots were finally still.

The other stuff— I wondered if it could be any of the secrets she’d shared with me…
From her drug addiction and almost committing suicide to being raped, getting pregnant in the process and having an abortion…

Or to her having dreams that never appeared in colors but in grey visuals, that were dark and hauntingly terrifying…

Or to her daily battle with staying sober after years of being an alcoholic…

I knew of the other stuff and was grateful that she told me about them, grateful that she trusted me to keep them safe, which I intended to do.

“You remember that superpower question?” she asked suddenly.
“Mm hmm,” I replied, nodding my head. “You chose invisibility,” I said, shifting my thoughts back to her. I quickly asked, leaning forward. “Is that what this is? You’re trying to disappear into your phone? Into the glass of water?”
“No,” she said, looking around my living room, her gaze lingering on a stack of my sketches in the corner. “But being here, with you… it’s the first time in a long time I haven’t felt the urge to vanish. It’s actually kind of terrifying.”

I reached across the desert of the sofa, my hand hovering near hers. The rain tapped against the windowpane, no longer a threat, just a rhythm. “You don’t have to vanish,” I said. “You’re already here.”
She didn’t move her hand away. Instead, she turned her palm upward, waiting for me to close the gap. “I think that’s what I’m afraid of,” she whispered. “Being found.”
I felt my heart sink to my stomach. From the beginning, she’d never wanted to be seen, never wanted to find love, never wanted me to fall for her. I exhaled. “I’m still looking… you’re pretty difficult to find.”
She rolled her eyes, a smile teasing her lips. “Do you remember what superpower you chose? It was creativity, yeah?”
“Yep, that was it.” I wondered where she was heading with this.
“So, create something, then. Create a version of this moment that isn’t so… heavy.”

I looked at her, really looked at her. Beyond the square jawline and the brown eyes that had haunted my screen for months. I remembered the way her knuckles were white against the glass. She wasn’t bored; she was drowning in the transition from pixels to pulse.

I didn’t reach for her hand. I reached for her phone. Gently, I slid it from her palm and placed it face-down on the coffee table. The silence that followed was deafening, punctuated only by the rhythmic tap of rain against the glass.

“In this version,” I whispered, sliding off the armchair to sit on the rug by her feet, “the rain isn’t a downer. It’s a perimeter. It’s keeping the rest of the world out, so we don’t have to be poets or tragedies. We just have to be here.”

I rested my hand near her boot… the one that had made such a statement earlier. For a second, I thought she’d pull away, retreating back into her superpower of invisibility. But she didn’t. Her hand found mine. It was colder than I expected, but she didn’t let go.
“Okay,” she breathed, a small, genuine smile finally breaking through the fog. “Let’s see what we can make out of the silence.”

Outside, the rain suddenly continued, but inside, the air finally felt like something we could both breathe.

Part III – The Final Act: The Shared Madness

After a little while, I looked at her. Really looked at her. The square jawline, the locs, the statement boots — she was fine, no doubt. But the silence in the room was starting to taste like stale air. I realized that if we kept trying to act like characters in a foreign film, we would both just sit here and choke. We weren’t those people. We were two Nigerians who had bonded over the “mental health” wahala we usually hid from our mothers.

Instantly, I pulled out my own phone, the screen light hitting my face in the dim room. My thumbs clicking away with a smile on my face, saying nothing but staring at her at intervals as I typed.

“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice hovering between a hiss and a laugh.
“I’m trying to use my superpower,” I said, my thumb flying across the keypad. I hit send.
A second later, her phone buzzed in her lap. She looked down. I knew what she was seeing, a new notification from the girl sitting just three feet away.

I’m currently in a room with one fine girl who has the superpower of being invisible, even though I can see her locs are on point. I think the rain wants to give us fever, so I’ve decided to postpone our “Death by rain and silence” for a plate of fried noodles. Please ask that person you’re chatting with on Bumpy if she has sliced carrots, beef, and eggs in her kitchen. If she doesn’t have, just unmatch her sharp-sharp. She’s not on my level.

She read it, her thumb frozen. Then, that tucked-lip smile I loved finally broke through. She looked up at me, the poet persona finally cracking.
“You have pride o,” she said, her voice finally losing that brittle, I-want-to-be-alone edge. “And for your information, the person I’m chatting with is actually very charming. She doesn’t have your shakara.”
“She’s a ghost,” I said, standing up and nodding toward the kitchen. “She’s just data and profile picture. I’m the one who actually knows how you like your carrots. And I’m the one who is here, breathing the same hot air with you.”

She didn’t hesitate. She set her phone down—no longer holding it like it was her last hope in this Delta rain—and stood up. Her boots made that solid clack on my floor.
“Oya, let’s see the noodles, Chef Chef,” she said, a spark of our shared madness returning to her eyes. “Let’s see if your cooking can cure my mood.”
“Trust me,” I said, leading her to the kitchen. “If we’re going to battle this depression today, we’re doing it with protein. If the gossip blogs find us later, let them say we died with beef, eggs, and full bellies. No regrets.”

As the smell of seasoning cubes and searing beef filled the air, the apartment stopped feeling like a cage. The rain was still falling, but as I handed her a knife to help with the carrots, the heaviness lifted. We weren’t just two people on an app anymore. We were finally, dangerously, home.

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by allison christine on Unsplash