Even then, when she’d been dismissive, I had felt something. A pull I couldn’t explain, something that made me keep thinking about her. Something that made me remember the exact shade of her eyes, the way her jaw had clenched before she walked away.
And now, after months of being together, of her teaching me to drive in empty parking lots while cursing in German every time I hit the brakes too hard, of falling asleep watching movies with my head on her shoulder, of learning that her rudeness was just a shield around the softest heart I’d ever known, I couldn’t imagine existing without her.
How could I function without her terrible jokes in the morning? Without her hands braiding my hair when I was stressed about school or life in general? Without the way she always looked at me? Without her voice singing off-key in the shower, or the way she always saved me the last bite of whatever she was eating?
In the short time I’d been with her, I’d wanted forever. It wasn’t just the physical things, but everything. Growing old with her, building a life with her. Choosing her every day and having her choose me back.
A fresh wave of tears burned my eyes. I had always been the perfect daughter, always followed every rule, every carefully laid plan my parents had made for my life. Dad had warned me about the Western world, about losing myself to foreign ideas and values. He’d made me promise to remember who I was, where I came from, and what was expected of me.
“Don’t let them change you, Kelechi,” he had said. “Don’t forget your values and your culture. Don’t follow their ways.”
But I hadn’t listened. I had gone ahead and fallen in love with a woman. Deeply, completely, irrevocably in love. And not just any woman, but this complicated, beautiful soul who made me feel like I was coming alive for the first time in my life.
The perfect daughter had become someone her parents wouldn’t even recognise. Someone who wanted things they could never understand or accept. Someone who lay awake at night wondering what it would feel like to introduce Marley as “my girlfriend” instead of hiding what we were. Someone who dreamed of bringing her home to meet my family, of watching her navigate my world while I held her hand through it all.
Someone who wanted to choose love over duty, happiness over expectations, and her own heart over everyone else’s plans.
And yet I couldn’t have her, not really. Not in any way that mattered.
The sobs came harder now, my body shaking with the force of them. I pressed my face into the pillow, trying to muffle the sounds, but grief has its own weight, and it was crushing me. Each breath I took felt like drowning, like the air in my lungs was too thick to process.
March was only two months away. Then I would be back in Nigeria, back to Chukwuma, back to a life that felt suffocating.
Back to pretending I’d never learned what it felt like to be truly and completely free.
Back to pretending I’d never fallen so hard for someone that losing them felt like losing myself.
Marley stirred beside me, her arm tightening reflexively around my waist, and I held my breath until her breathing evened out again. I couldn’t wake her up with my stupid sobs, because that would mean explaining why I was falling apart in her arms when just hours ago we’d been dancing in the living room.
Because how do you tell someone you love them when you’re about to disappear from their life?
How do you say goodbye to the person who taught you what home feels like?
The tears kept coming silently, soaking into the pillow as I lay there wrapped in the arms of the woman I loved but could never truly have.
They say all good things come to an end.
I just never thought mine would end before it had even properly begun.
XIX
“Is love this misguided need to have you beside me most of the time? Is love this safety I feel in our silences? Is it this belonging, this completeness?”
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Chapter Twenty
Kelechi
“I’m feeling so nervous right now,” I said, my finger hovering over the send button.
“Jesus, baby, hit the damned button before the nerves start coming,” Marley replied from across the library table. We were both seated in our usual section, surrounded by our open laptops, empty coffee cups and crumpled notes. We’d finished compiling our project and were about to submit it, with the deadline just two days away.
“What if?—”
“What if we did brilliantly? Come on, don’t infect both our brains with negativity.” She cut me off, running a hand through her hair with that infuriatingly cute smirk playing on her lips.
“Okay… okay, here we go.” I closed my eyes and hit the send button.
