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Above all, his first conviction was that she could murder him and drop the rigidifying body out of a moving vehicle alongside the expressway like the gory headlines from Lagos gossip blogs about dead girls whose bodies were rolled out of speeding cars on the island. That she could, for months, withhold from him a profound secret such as intercontinental migration only to appear in their bed, in their shared apartment, saying, while stifling the joy that wished to unveil in her smile, “My Canadian visa was approved. I have sent my passport to Abuja.” The thing about Úrọwọlì was how she spoke with no room for questions, a characteristic he loved her for. She was not asking if she should send her passport or apply for a visa; instead, she stated. She was, cruelly, cutting off the conversation about the landlord’s rent increase notice and letting him know; there and then, it had been done because there would be no better time to inform him. She could have taken a knife and stabbed him in the neck on both sides instead, he thought. Through this withheld secret, she now seemed capable.

For days, he let the news simmer between them slowly, like a falling leaf settling gradually to the ground. They only spoke when they needed to. Like when she needed him to get a loaf of Grand Square bread on his way back from the island,      when he needed her to pass the remote or the salt, or finally, her passport, when it came back home with her, stamped with a temporary resident visa valid till its expiration date. They sat at both edges of the three-seater sofa, the documents and passport between them.

“What now?” Odébáré asked her, afraid to maintain eye contact because, although she had broken him when she announced the passport matter, she could break him further. The question followed after she had shown him her conditional admission into the PhD program at the University of Manitoba and explained that it was all her father’s doing. He believed her because he heard their phone calls, and she often complained about him. “He is always instructing. Do this, or do that—like bro, nothing is set in stone,” a characteristic that she had well inherited from him in how her decisions were firm and immovable except by her, like Arthur with the magical sword of Merlin. Still, he blamed her, but from within.

He blamed her because she had met his mother, who consistently invited them for Sunday brunch at the end of every month, and his younger brother, who threatened to steal her from him, yet she had not told her parents of him. It had initially led him to believe that he was inadequate. Still, when he finally told her, all sour-faced, failing at pretending not to be bothered by something in that way, she blamed it on distance and confessed that if she told her conservative parents who lived in the country’s capital that she was sharing an apartment in Lagos with a man, let alone a romantic partner, they would lose it and buy her the next plane ticket to Abuja and make her work in her father’s company, as though it was not bad enough that she had graduated from her mother’s secondary school. As always, they let it simmer until it faded out—until his mother casually brought it up at brunch.

“I would like to meet your parents.” The simplest statements were always so light that they were swiftly delivered, yet so heavy that they lingered in the room like Arabian ouds long after their user had left. It came with a loud silence that she added, “I know so much about you, Rọlì, but I’m sure you were a stubborn child, and I want to hear those stories too.”

After brunch, his mother would tell him that Rọlì was not the one for him, and he would fight her and defend their love with the clause, “We’re just too young to get married,” only to return to his lover, who would tell him that she was not ready to discuss him with her parents and pleasure him as an apology.

“My dad booked a flight for next month. He is giving me two weeks to say my goodbyes in Lagos, and then I am going to Abuja.” Rọlì said, looking at him from where she sat, hoping he would look back at her and into her eyes.

“How convenient.” He wanted to stop with that sizzling remark, but he couldn’t. “You know very well what I mean by what now?”

“Us?”

“Yes, Rọlì. Us. If there ever was an us.”

“Báré, you can’t say that.”

“Actually, I can.” Unlike hers, his baritone voice remained flat, missing the appropriate emotional rise and fall in how words were said so they could be felt and not just heard. Úrọwọlì said nothing, and it was not because keeping quiet was the best answer at the moment but rather that she had nothing to say, and for Odébáré that was everything that she needed to say.  He had gotten the message.  There would be no Us anymore because if there were supposed to be, she would have made room for him. She would have let him in on the secret that were her father’s plans so that they would plan together, as a unit; an Us. He would have moved through countries for her, fished on the most expansive seas and burrowed through the deepest coal mines to make a living, but all that had meant nothing to her, and there was no need to pretend he could do all of that for her now that this was his conviction. Gradually, they let the ruining of their rich love simmer as they did with all their issues, accepting their fates. They spoke in the last two weeks like all was well, and Odébáré pretended to let bygones be bygones as he supported her through the days, and worse when her friends held a farewell dinner. Did they know, or did she keep it a secret until it was perfect? Was he a fool?

His mind rummaged with these questions every time they kissed, his lips dry and eager to be freed, and on the last night before she left, he stared at the ceiling as he came, glistening tears rolling down his cheeks in the purplish LED-lit room, the melancholy that was goodbye sex and its succeeding clarity. He abruptly broke into loud sobs about moving back home where he would spend every day remembering his late father because he could not afford the rent here alone, and Úrọwọlì cradled him like a baby, their bare bodies touching, falsely assuring him that all would be well. The condom remained on his limp penis, and he felt like a loser, making him cry all the more.

~

After Rọlì left, Odébáré returned home to his mother and brother in Magodo and let himself fill with hope. With every text and video call, his faith in them burned hotter. Faith, the substance of things hoped for—them—the evidence of things not seen—love. His brother, who returned home from his private hostel in Yaba every weekend, always mocked him, calling him, “Two legs up!” in a sing-song manner that made the phrase one word because whenever he walked into his room and caught him on the phone with Rọlì, his legs were always up against the wall. His torso was on the bed, and the phone was pressed against his ears or in his hands when she showed him parts of downtown Winnipeg on video. Odébáré loved that he could play the role of the mesmerised Nigerian as though he had not spent most of his summer holidays at Uncle Bakare’s in London before his father died or he did not have a US visitor’s visa that had only just recently expired, and what was once disposable income that made them rich had to be prudently managed by his mother.

It was as though Úrọwọlì’s move to Canada had rekindled their love and birthed in him a new spark to dream. He began to look into a master’s program in computer science in the United States and Canada, one that would either be fully or at least partially funded. He was confident that his father left behind more than enough to fully fund a master’s abroad for him and his brother, so he presented his idea to his mother, brimming with hope and delusions of holding hands with Rọlì as he walked down Main Street, downtown.

She hissed mindlessly, dishing herself some basmati rice onto a blue chinaware that Odébáré believed was as old as he was. He stood in the background, resting against the refrigerator. “Is it because of Rọlì?” She asked, focused on what she was doing.

“No. Maybe.”

“Débáré, there are many fishes in the sea.”

“And so?”

His mother sighed and placed the plate of rice on the countertop. By then, she had garnished it with steamed carrots. She opened her mouth to speak twice but closed it as if still looking for the right words to say, only to settle with, “You are young; you will move on.”

Her words triggered him almost immediately. He slapped the refrigerator so aggressively that it scared her and yelled, “Fuck it. You’ve never liked her. Just say it. Just fucking say it.”

It wasn’t true, and he knew. His mother had only disapproved of Rọlì agreeing to live with him, unmarried as they were, and engaging in premarital sex. It hurt her that her son, whom she had tried to raise in the ways of the Lord, chose to fornicate without remorse. Still, it was easier to hold Úrọwọlì to a higher standard because she was a woman and, as it was now becoming evident, also had higher stakes in their relationship. Odébáré valued Rọlì more than she valued him, if there was a value scale, and his mother knew. Still, he had her support, maybe not verbally, but she was his mother, and she owed him her support in a positive pursuit of love or education.

In the following days, he consumed much research and opinions about Canada and the North Americas so they could have more extended discussions over the phone at two in the morning, West African time, silent as it was. As usual, his brother would come into his room on Friday night to show him a funny video or two and stay an hour there, but that was an aside. He asked if she had encountered microaggressions because he had read in a blog post that Canadians were pros in the game of subtle racism. She complained about bureaucracy and how she had had to get up at six to wait in line at a Service Canada branch to get her social insurance number. He responded with all the things he read that international students could not do that protected people could do; he compared them and theorised that Nigerian international students were almost like refugees running from their haunting government, and she shrugged it off with talks about the weather as one who could not contribute to what they were not sure of. There was a lot to uncover and a lot to discuss when she was on the bus or in her room in the apartment she shared with a mature Ghanaian student and her four-year-old daughter because she had no friends. He ended every call by reminding her that he loved or missed her, and his mother, hearing his laugh reverberating through the corridors in the dead of night, began to believe in their love. She was not a supporter of long-distance relationships, but she took a chance on them and showed it by forwarding partially funded Postgraduate opportunities to Odébáré on WhatsApp.

There was hope until one day—there was not.

~

Before their friend, Kẹ́wà, would introduce them to each other, they had previously met years before at the regionals for a national debate competition for senior secondary school students held in Abuja, and that would be the basis for their conversation at that beach house party in Sencillo Lagos, Ilashe. They had just wrapped up three rigorous weeks at the NYSC orientation camp in Lagos in the middle of August. So there they were, sipping sex on the beach cocktails in red plastic cups with other kids, a lot of whom had just returned from their studies abroad for the holidays to have fun and enjoy the conversion benefit of a plummeting naira against their glorious pounds and dollars.

In the social scene of Lagos, anyone could look rich or middle class. It was easy. You simply had to look presentable and up to date, be in the right place, pronounce your words without a tribal accent, and, to make it more convincing, garnish it up with a British accent or an American accent, but not both because people can see through that. The social scene was also classist, as the country was corrupt, and people needed to size each other up quickly and put them in their social stratum. Hence, like airport security, people scanned themselves daily—on the road, at the club, in the bank—gauging what weight they carried, politically, financially, or historically, by their surnames and the amount of respect worthy of a person or not. For the kids, some oblivious to it, it rested on one question. “What school did you go to?”

“What secondary school did you attend?” Odébáré asked Úrọwọlì. She was standing opposite him, dressed in a bright yellow swimsuit and a green and blue peacock-like sarong tied around her tiny waist, revealing more of her left thigh like a long, ungodly slit on a skirt. Kẹ́wà, who had prepped her to meet him, her secondary school colleague, telling her that she was confident they would be the suitable match days earlier, was standing between them. She had only just told them their names.

“You wouldn’t know it,” she said. “It’s in Abuja, and it is not well known.”

“Try me,” like one who had a catalogue in his head, he spoke confidently, his voice neither rising nor falling as was with him. He was also without a shirt but had a white towel wrapped around his neck like a stole, blue swim shorts, and dark shades, which he wore on his hair.

“Cornerstone North,” she said quickly, believing he wouldn’t know it. To her surprise, he did.

“With the purple uniforms?”

“Stop it,” she said in utter disbelief. “No freaking way!”

“Yes-way. I went to Nobel, and I remember this debate competition, and this pretty girl was representing Cornerstone and—”

“And you tried to get her phone number by passing her a book.”

Now, he was the one who froze, surprised. Odébáré’s eyes were wide as saucers.

“There is no way!” he exclaimed.

Kẹ́wà, now a shadow in this conversation, butted in. “Have you two met before?” Odébáré answered her, but Rọlì brushed her off in a familiar manner. For her friend, this was her “I told you so moment,” she would not indulge her in the moment, not when the boy had yet to woo her.

They spent the rest of the night participating in activities together, and it was clear that they were nothing alike in the way that they were very alike. Together, they verified that opposites did attract. Odébáré was a boy with the conscience of an aspiring politician who feared that someone somewhere was recording, waiting for him to slip up, but it was that he was a Christian with standards he tried to live by, and Úrọwọlì was as liberal and dauntless as they came. She was the first to participate in the game of dare or drink, not because she had a point to prove, but because she wanted to. She agreed to the dare of kissing Odébáré to satisfy herself, not him. Every standard his mother would raise in a partner for her son, Úrọwọlì agreed or did not agree to on her terms alone. At that moment, when she kissed him again by the palm trees after the sun had set, both mouths hinting at alcohol, he wanted her to be his forever because he knew he could not control her. He could not control her to be his forever, and he liked that challenge. Every day would be living on the edge for him, and that was, for him, heaven.

“Let’s go upstairs,” she told him, and he immediately obeyed. He hadn’t had sex before, but he decided then that he wanted to, even though God could see him. Everybody seemed to have done it, and now he felt it was his rightful turn. However, when they got into the room, they ended up talking about their school experiences, sitting side by side on the bed where his sinewy body could have been pressing against hers in calculated yet unrhythmic novice thrusts, gossiping and laughing as though they had known each other for years. They spoke about Kẹ́wà and how they both knew her and other mutuals they shared, showing pictures of people at intervals, hailing some and mocking others till it was time to go home, sober as they were. Those days were the best days of Odébáré’s life, discovering something new about Rọlì every day. She was dynamic, changing patterns daily like an infinite kaleidoscope with much to discover, like an endless word search.

She was his forever, until one day—she was not.

~

Their separation was gradual, like diffusing gas. It was the time difference. Rọlì became busier with school and research and needed to spend more time in the library, and Odébáré required rest before work because he had gotten a notice for sleeping at work. When she could call in the morning or evening, he was busy at work midday or sleeping at midnight. When he was available, she was asleep at midnight or caught between classes and commuting midday, so they stuck to texting with delayed replies. Then she made her first friend, who introduced her to three other girls, and slowly, they were becoming a friend group—two Nigerians, a Togolese Canadian and a Bajan. There were fewer reasons for her to discuss her most intimate immigrant struggles with Odébáré because not only could he not relate, but he could not comfort as one in the physical would have. He became a dead weight from her past, something that she was coming to terms with that she would soon forget.

Odébáré’s attempts to accommodate her excuses were to no avail. He calculated when best to call her, but she never picked up and followed up with texts that claimed she was in class until she began to vaguely text, “I’m busy,” to subtly let him know that she did not owe him explanations on her whereabouts. At the same time, he, who never really cared about social media, began to surf more frequently, waiting for her stories on Snapchat or Instagram while trying to convince himself that he wasn’t so he could reply with an emoji or anything good enough to start a conversation. Then he realised that she had begun to post scarcely on her Snapchat stories, and at first, he assumed that she was too busy to post and that he was overthinking it. Afraid to be obsessed with her, he confirmed in a crypt question when he bumped into Kẹ́wà at a mutual friend’s birthday party, only to discover that she had created a private story and had not included him. For the first time, the separation was absolute. It had solidified like a big red brick wall in the room.

From what he understood, breakups happened in a single moment, like a wedding or a graduation ceremony, when one was single or an undergraduate until the vows or the call to stage, and suddenly, they no longer were. He understood breakups to be one of those; one moment, they were partners, and the next, it wasn’t someone; it was the other, but that had not been the same for him and Rọlì. Theirs, as was everything with them, simmered slowly. They had taken months to break up, to loosen themselves free of the other, leisurely and gradually without causing a knot in the peace until they fully unravelled and justifiably so. And for this, Odébáré knew not how to grieve the breakup. It was as though he had stepped out of a VR game—the delusion that was them regardless of the distance—and into the real world—the truth that was the day she came home with her passport stamped, saying nothing when asked: “What now?” He realised she had long broken up with him from the day she agreed to her father’s decision without his knowledge. For this, he hated her—even if for a few minutes. She had months to grieve the end of them that only she knew was ahead, but he had just begun.

On the day he realised all of this, he was in the living room when his mum came home to meet him, slung on the sofa, hopeless and in a stupor, as a dead weight hung on his shoulders, pulling him groundward. She pulled him up from the chair, counteracting the invisible weight, and hugged him, letting him cry on her shoulder; her baby boy, perfect in her eyes, forever and always; her stand-in husband and lover, Olorí ẹbí. She would say to him, as one who could relate, what she had said before, “You are young; you will move on,” and his whimpering would rise to sobs.