The boy and the girl sat. The girl on the only mattress in the room. A wide queen-sized one, which laid bare on the floor. No wooden boards, just a bed on the floor. The bedsheets had flowers all over, dahlias, roses, peonies, all crisscrossed all over. The girl on it, however, was the opposite of the bed. She sat still, in dark clothes and a similar dark expression, while the flowers looked like they were dancing, their colours stark in contrast.

The boy, he sat on a bean bag in the middle of the room. There were two of them, a red one and a yellow one. On a bright, round, wineish carpet. The bean bags were the only other furniture in the room. The boy sat on the red one, he was not comfortable. The other bean bag was too close. He thought it would be rude to move the bean bag so he could stretch his leg. So, he sat, all six foot of him, on the bean bag, uncomfortably still, wondering what he was doing sitting there with the girl, alone, in this very small room. The girl was also uncomfortable. She did not know what to do with herself with a stranger in the room. So, she also sat uncomfortably on the bed, pretending to scroll on her phone.

This was the girl’s room. She waited three hours on the school portal before she could access the ballot for the hostel. She hated the lottery system the university used to assign rooms. It was two folds of unnecessary headache, the first being actually getting a room and the second being having good roommates.

The day before the lottery, the girl burned incense in her childhood bedroom. She lay on the plain blue sheets in the purple room she had begged for when she was 11, “manifesting” as she liked to call it. She did not like the word praying anymore, she did not think she deserved to do that anymore. She manifested getting a room, she manifested getting a chill roommate. So, the next day when the portal opened for the lottery and her home wifi shut down, she wondered if she had manifested hard enough or if God was punishing her for calling it manifesting. When it came back up immediately after the stray thought, the thought slipped into nothingness and she faced the task. After three hours of incessant tapping and crossing her finger till they started to cramp, she got a room. Room 40, Block A, a two-person room.

Move-in day came, and by 9 am, she was there. Being the first in the room would be an advantage. To her surprise, the resident assistant who signed her in said her roommate was already in. So, she took one heavy step after the other, spiralling about who she would meet at the end of the hallway and how it was going to affect the rest of her year.

She hesitated a beat at the door, then twisted the handle and opened it to a face of smoke. Her chest tightened, was there a fire? Was her roommate burning before she could even meet her? Was this because she called it manifesting instead of praying? Please, don’t let my roommate be dead, she thought, while finally realising there was a twinge of watermelon in the puff of smoke.

Someone was giggling in front of her. After a couple of dry coughs and batting around the smoky air, she finally saw the giggling culprit, her roommate with the bong. It was like something out of a cutesy romcom and a raunchy college comedy all at once. The way her face, hidden by the smoke, revealed itself little by little, like a cloud slowly revealing the sun, the sun after one of those seven-day-long Lagos rains, where the rain isn’t even that heavy, but it just does not want to stop. Then, when the sun finally comes out, you greet it like an old friend who you once loved, eager, expectant.

It was like she was an alien who had never seen the human face before. She noticed every single feature, from the high cheekbones to the way her nose widened at the end and her ears seemed permanently perked for whispers of secrets. She gawked.

The roommate broke the silence that was momentarily headed towards awkwardness. “Oh God, I’m so sorry, are you alright?” She gushed out in a fit of nervous giggles. Adesua would later find out the giggles were a nervous habit. “I’m Tomi,” she said, hand stretched.
“Adesua,” she muttered in reply, taking the strange palm into hers for a handshake that had to be the worst in history. It was as if the two girls had never shook hands with another human before, thumbs were wandering and pinkies were hanging.
Adesua dropped Tomi’s hand, watching her mutter her name under her breath,
“Adesua. Adesua. Adesua.”
It was like she was tasting it. Savouring the feel of the four syllables
“A-De-Su-A”
And before she knew what was happening, Tomi was pulling the bag she had been holding, helping her carry her things, open windows, arrange clothes and at the end of that first day, they sat crisscrossed watching romcoms and eating rice and the ayamase Adesua’s mom had packed for her.

The boy interrupted Adesua’s thoughts
“So, how long have you and Tomi known each other?” he asked, silently tapping his knees with his fingers.
She finally noticed his discomfort. “Eight months,” she replied, without looking at him. She was contemplating wearing her headphones so she wouldn’t have to talk to him, or better still, just walking out of the room.
“Oh, I thought you guys knew each other from secondary school, she speaks about you so familiarly.”
She replied with a noncommittal grunt. She did not know what to say to that, but the boy was not waiting for her reply.
“She talks about you all the time, maybe a little too much.”

She wanted to be petty. She wanted to say that Tomi never spoke of him and that she did not even know his name. The latter was the truth, of course, she did not know the boy’s name, not because Tomi never talked about him, though. Her absence of knowledge was all thanks to her superior ability to not hear things she did not want to hear and therefore not know things she did not want to know.

“We are very close,” she said instead with a tone of finality. Whatever she felt was not the boy’s fault. All her complicated feelings were not his fault. But the thought that had crossed her mind the minute she saw him through the peephole was slowly taking form.

She could ruin Tomi’s relationship with the boy. She thought about doing it. She knew she could. The first time Tomi had told her about him, she had burst out laughing.
“What do you mean you have a boyfriend? Don’t you have like four different sugar daddies you’re fucking right now?” She did not wait for her to reply and went on. “Or wait, does he know? Is it like an open thing? Have you found the only truly polyamorous guy in Lagos?” she said with a hint of mockery.
Tomi, who had been lying casually beside her, jumped off the bed, turned away from her without saying a word, and went into their shared bathroom. Adesua knew she had taken it too far.

Adesua had found out about Tomi’s escapades when she noticed an older man dropping Tomi off at their hostel gate. Assuming it was her father, she had asked if she could meet him. That had led to the awkward conversation where one tried to explain how somehow older men were always attracted to her and she did not mind having sex with them for money, and the other tried to be supportive and non-judgmental.
“It’s not like they require that much energy,” she said, with her signature nervous giggle. “They are so old, they don’t last 5 minutes, and then… I get money to do whatever I want, I think it’s a fair deal.”
Adesua had been preparing silently in her head to go on about how sex work is work and she could do whatever she wanted with her body but instead she said, “As long as it’s consensual, you do you,” which she regretted saying immediately. But Tomi did not mind her reply and they never really spoke about it again.

Tomi came out of the bathroom as abruptly as she went in, and before Adesua could muster up an apology, Tomi interrupted.
“Look, I don’t get why you’re freaking out because I said I have a boyfriend, what happened to you do you? You have no right to judge me.”
“Judge you? Oh my God, I’m not judging you! You thinking I’m judging you says a lot about how you feel about whatever it is you’re doing.”
“It says nothing, don’t try to psychoanalyze me, I just don’t get where this energy is coming from. You didn’t care that I hooked up with older men or all the weird randos we meet at parties, so what’s one more?”
“You said he’s your boyfriend, that’s different,” Adesua shouted.
This time she was the one that walked out of the room slamming the door behind her.

She did not say that she thought this was different because “boyfriend” connotes not just sex but a relationship. She did not say that she did not want Tomi to be in that kind of relationship with anybody. Instead, she walked out of the room and they never spoke about him again.

They never spoke about the boyfriend again nor did Tomi ever speak about her sex life to Adesua again. The girls lived under a pact of silence none of them had agreed to out loud, but individually, silently, they both yearned to talk, to air it all out, but they didn’t. Instead, they cooked together, cleaned together, slept on the same bed, watched the same movies, laughed together, cried together, pretended together. Until the fragile glass that was their act, finally shattered.

Tomi brought it up.
“I think (boyfriend) suspects me of cheating,” she said out of the blue, two days before Adesua and (boyfriend) would be stuck in a room together. They were lying on opposite ends of the bed, head to legs, legs to head. Adesua turned towards her, she said nothing, just stared at her legs.
“I mean he has been asking me crazy questions, I think he suspects something,” she continued, filling the silence left by Adesua “I don’t want to lose him.”
“I think you should just tell him. If he’s that important to you, you should tell him,”
Adesua finally said after what seemed like hours. She told herself she only said that because she wanted her friend to be free of guilt, but she knew deep down that if her advice was taken, it would mean the end of Tomi’s relationship with the boy.
Tomi sighed, “I don’t think I can do that, I can’t lose him, Adesua. I love him very much.”
“Then you would not want to keep deceiving him or, you know, just stop fucking sleeping around, that’s an option.” She regretted her tone immediately.
“You know what, fuck you, Adesua.”

The boy abruptly yanked Adesua back to the present with a question.
“So, do you know what’s up with her?” He wasn’t seated anymore. He was standing by the window, his hands were in his pockets and he was staring into the distance.
“Who?” Adesua replied, feigning ignorance.

He turned now to look at her, his jaw was clenched so hard, it looked like he was in pain, and the stray thought crossed her mind, that they were alone in the room and he was capable of hurting her. The silence dragged on. She thought about just spilling everything, she could just say, “Tomi’s actually sort of a sex worker and she sleeps with other guys, that’s why you think something’s up.” Then, she could add, “She loves you though, that’s just work, you know sex work is work,” to ease her guilty conscience a bit. She would go on and on about how all labour is exploitative and is no different from sex work under capitalism, and how it’s not a big deal.

She would know fully well that he would never understand. She knew most Nigerian men never understood anything that did not conform to the status quo. Like how they did not understand a woman who did not want children voluntarily, or a woman who did not want to get married. He would never understand that Tomi doing what she did to survive had nothing to do with her love for him or her worth as a human being. She could just say it all, and when Tomi breaks down, betrayed and lost, she would pick up the pieces. She would say that he did not deserve her, that she should not date someone who made her feel less than and that she deserved to be loved for who she is, not who she pretends to be.

“She’s….” Adesua started and trailed off.
The boy watched her expectantly
She started again, this time she was going to say it all, lay all her cards on the table
“She’s… She’s…”
“She’s what?! I have a right to know if something is wrong.”

That sentence did her in. He did not have a right to know anything about Tomi from her, and she did not have the right to reveal her friend’s personal business.
“She’s okay,” she finally said.
The boy looked unconvinced, like he wanted to ask more, but said nothing.

So, they sat in silence, both staring at the door, waiting for the person whose affection they both yearned for. One silently and secretly, the other aloud and unabashedly.

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Laura Pineda on Unsplash