February 14th.
I wake up at 6 a.m. with the energy of a woman who has been planning something for three weeks and is ready for the day to begin.
Valentine’s Day.
Romeo’s position on Valentine’s Day is the position of a man who loves consistently enough that he finds the designated day slightly redundant. He has not said this in those words and he does not need to.
I know this man. I know the face he makes when something feels performative. The small, almost imperceptible tightening around his eyes, the patience of someone who is not going to argue with a thing he simply disagrees with quietly.
I told him in January: I love Valentine’s Day. I have always loved it. I know that it is commercial and constructed and none of that has ever once reduced my enthusiasm for it. I am a sucker for celebrations of love anytime anyday. So, a dedicated day to it? Count me fully signed up.
He looked at me.
“Okay”, he said.
“That is all?” I said.
“What else should I say?” He said.
“Some people have opinions about Valentine’s Day yunno”, I said.
“I have an opinion”, he said.
I looked at him for a long" moment.
He has not brought up Valentine’s Day since. Neither have I. We have been, apparently, planning in parallel without telling each other.
I found out about the parallel planning two days ago when Juliet called to tell me — without being asked, which is entirely Juliet — that her brother had been on the phone with her for forty-five minutes in January asking questions she described as very specific and very Romeo.
I did not tell him she told me.
I am ready.
The plan.
My plan. The one I have been building since January has several components that I have been coordinating with the specific project management energy that used to go into Ministry briefs and now goes into the people I love.
I ordered the gifts three weeks ago. I wrapped them myself not because I could not get them wrapped elsewhere but because the wrapping process is part of it. I love the intentionality of choosing the paper and the ribbon and the note for each one, the physical evidence that this was not delegated.
I booked the restaurant for dinner. Not a Valentine’s prix fixe, not the crowded couples-performing-romance version, but the quiet Wuse 2 place with the excellent fried rice and the table in the corner that the host knows is ours now and keeps without being asked.
I planned a morning.
And then Romeo called at 8:30 a.m. and said:
“Wear comfortable shoes. I will pick you up at nine.”
I looked at my phone.
“Reo”, I said.
“Yes.”
“I had a morning planned”, I said.
“So do I”, he said.
A pause.
“Oka now, babe, whose morning goes first"?” I said.
“Mine”, he said. “Yours is better in the afternoon.”
“How do you know mine is better in the afternoon?”
“Because I bet yours involves food”, he said, “and food is better in the afternoon.”
I stared at the ceiling.
“How do you know mine involves food?”
“Sewa”, he said. “Everything you plan involves food.”
He was not wrong.
“Fine”, I said. “Nine a.m. Comfortable shoes.”
He arrives at 8:58.
Two minutes early. For Romeo this is practically running.
He is at the door before I have fully finished deciding which comfortable shoes are the right comfortable shoes, which is a decision that deserves more time than he has given me. I open the door in the grey trainers. The ones I bought for the Botanical Gardens date in August and which have become my official A-Z date shoes and he looks at me the way he looks at me and the shoe deliberation immediately becomes irrelevant.
“Happy Valentine’s Day, Tesoro”, he says.
“Happy Valentine’s Day, Reo”, I say. “You are early.”
“I am two minutes early”, he says.
“For me that is essentially yesterday”, I say.
He almost smiles.
He is holding something.
Not the gifts. Those come later, I discover. This is one thing. A single peony. Not a bouquet. One. The specific pale pink of the ones I order every Friday from Sapphaster Ltd., the ones that have been on every surface of every important moment of the last year.
“One”, I say.
“One”, he confirms. “For now.”
I take it.
I look at it.
“For now meaning—”
“You will see”, he says.
I put the peony in a glass of water.
I get my bag.
We go.
He drives to Adetokunbo.
I know this street. I know this street the way I know all the Maitama streets — automatically, from three years of living in the neighbourhood, from driving it without thinking.
He parks.
He gets out. He opens my door.
We stand on the pavement.
I look at the street.
Then I look at him.
“Romeo”, I say.
“Yes.”
“This is the street”, I say.
“Yes”, he says.
“This is where you—”
“Where I was not supposed to be walking”, he says. “On a Tuesday. October 10th.”
I look at the street.
The Maitama morning. February light, cooler than October, the harmattan still faintly present in the quality of the air. The same buildings. The same pavement. The same geometry of a street that does not know it is significant and is significant anyway.
“You are going to walk again”, I say.
“We are going to walk”, he says. “Together. The full route. The one I took that day.”
I look at him.
This man.
My Man.
“Reo”, I say.
“Yes.”
“You planned this.”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Since January fifth”, he says.
I stare at him.
“January fifth”, I say. “The day after the proposal.”
“Yep”, he says.
“You proposed on January fourth and on January fifth you were already planning Valentine’s Day.”
“Well, I had a free morning”, he says.
I put my hand over my mouth.
He is looking at the street with the expression of a man who is not going to acknowledge that he has just said something that has undone me completely.
“Come”, he says. “I will show you where I first saw you.”
We walk.
He narrates.
Not continuously but in the usual Romeo way, which means he speaks when something is worth saying and not before. He shows me where he turned onto the street. The pace he was walking. The point at which he heard a voice before he saw a face — loud, certain, the kind of voice that does not ask permission from a space — and looked up.
“Here”, he says. We stop outside a building I recognise — a block of offices, the ground floor a dry cleaner’s that has been there since before I moved to the neighbourhood.
“You were standing approximately here. Your back was to me. You were arguing into your phone.”
“I remember that call”, I say.
He looks at me.
“You do?” he says.
“It was a work call”, I say. “A colleague had submitted a brief with multiple factual errors and was arguing that they were not errors but interpretations.”
I pause.
“I was explaining, at length, why he was wrong.”
“At considerable volume”, Romeo says.
“He was wrong at considerable depth”, I say.
Romeo looks at the spot and we laugh.
“I walked past”, he says. “I did not stop. I did not even speak to you. I just—” he pauses.
“I noticed you. The way you notice something that rearranges the air around it.”
I look at him.
“You walked past me?”, I say.
“Yes.”
“And you came back?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
A pause.
“I don't know. The Holy Spirit kept nudging me to”, he says. “and then seeing that you were there because you had issues with your GPS. I had to be your knight in shining armour.”
We both laugh.
“You are so weird, Reo”, I say.
“Am I now?.”
“You fell in love with me while I was arguing about a work brief.”
“Okay now, pause, pause. I did not fall in love with you”, he says. “I noticed you. There is a difference.”
“When did you fall in love with me, Mi lord?” I say.
He thinks about it.
Properly. The way he thinks about everything.
“I can't even lay my hands on when”, he says. “But I remember one day when it dawned on me. The day you told me about your fears. And you said, ‘I am not okay’.”
A year and four months since a Tuesday that changed everything.
I look at the spot where he first saw me.
Then I look at him.
“I am not okay is what did it for you. Wow!”, I say.
“Vulnerability is the most attractive quality a person can have yunno. A considerable amount”, he says. “I have believed this for a long time.”
“You are going to be a very easy person to be married to”, I say.
“I am going to be an extremely easy person FOR YOU to be married to”, he says. “This is well established.”
I laugh.
He takes my hand.
We keep walking.
The gifts are in the car.
I have been coordinating this since January and the coordination has involved Juliet, Mum, Dotun, and a woman named Mrs. Chiamaka who runs a gift curation business in Abuja that Juliet found and whose entire professional philosophy — gifts should be specific and thoughtful, not impressive — aligned so completely with mine that I gave her the brief and trusted her entirely.
The brief was simple.
“Tell me about her”, Mrs. Chiamaka said, in our first call.
I talked for an hour.
She said:
“I have all I need.”
She was right.
After the walk we go back to the car.
I open the boot.
The gifts are in individual boxes — not a tower of identical packaging but different sizes, different wrappings, each one its own specific thing.
Sewa looks at the boot.
Then at me.
“Romeo”, she says.
“Yes.”
“How many—”
“Open them”, I say.
She opens the first one.
A bottle of the rooibos she drinks. Not the standard version — the imported blend she has been ordering online since before I knew her, the one she mentioned once in passing as being difficult to find in Abuja, the one I tracked down through three different suppliers and ordered in a quantity that will last her through the year.
She looks at it.
Then at me.
“You found the rooibos”, she says.
“A year’s supply”, I say.
“Romeo.”
“Next one”, I say.
The second box.
A skincare set. Not generic. The specific products she mentioned to Dr. Yetunde in a session I was not in and which Dr. Yetunde mentioned to me in passing when I called her, with Sewa’s permission, to ask if there was anything Sewa had been wanting that she had not asked for.
“She mentioned a vitamin C serum she has been meaning to try”, Dr. Yetunde said. “And a night cream she saw on a content creator’s page and bookmarked”.
I found both.
Plus the facial oil she already uses, in the large size, because she always buys the small size and then runs out.
Sewa opens the box.
She is very still.
“You called Dr. Yetunde”, she says.
“With your permission oh”, I say. “She confirmed I had it before she said anything.”
“You called my therapist to ask what I wanted for Valentine’s Day.”
“I called your therapist to ask what you had been wanting that you had not asked for”, I say. “Again, there is a difference.”
She looks at the skincare.
“Next one”, I say.
The third box.
A journal.
Not the Tuesday Journal — a new one. Blank. With her name on the cover the way the Tuesday Journal had her name on the cover, the same Aurora Ltd. craftsmanship, the same specific hardcover quality.
Inside the front cover, in my handwriting:
For the woman who is learning to be quiet enough to hear herself. Fill this with the true things. — R.
She reads it.
She closes the journal.
She holds it tightly to her chest. And I can tell she is trying so hard not to cry. My crybaby.
“Next one”, she says. Her voice is different. The managed version is gone.
“There are more”, I say.
The spa appointment.
A booking. For the full day. A private suite at the Transcorp Hilton spa. Deep tissue massage, the kind that addresses the tension she carries in her left shoulder. She mentioned it once in October, in passing, the way she mentions things she does not think require action. Facial. The works. Every element chosen by a woman named Georgina at the spa who I spoke to for thirty minutes and who confirmed: this is exactly what she needs.
The appointment is for tomorrow, February 15th.
“Because today”, I tell her, “is for us. Tomorrow the spa gets you.”
She looks at the booking confirmation.
“Ife Mi”, she says.
“Yes.”
“My left shoulder”, she says.
“Yes.”
“I only mentioned that once.”
“You mentioned it last week”, I say.
“Outside the Botanical Gardens. You said your left shoulder had been tight for three weeks and you kept forgetting to do something about it.”
She looks at me.
“I forgot I said that”, she says.
“I know”, I say. “That is why I remembered it.”
The fourth box.
Three books.
The first: a collected volume of African poetry she mentioned wanting after a conversation about literature that happened on the rooftop in November and which she then forgot about because the conversation moved on.
The second: a biography of a Yoruba statesman she has been meaning to read for two years, which she mentioned to Fewa on a video call I was not on but which Fewa told me about because Fewa, it turns out, has been quietly feeding me information since January and I owe him.
The third book.
I did not plan this one.
I found it three weeks ago in a second-hand bookshop in Wuse. A small, specific shop that I have been going to for years and which does not always have what I am looking for but occasionally has exactly what I did not know I needed. The book is a first edition. Published 1987. A collection of short stories by Nigerian women writers. The kind that existed before Nigerian women’s writing was celebrated internationally. The kind that circulated quietly and shaped everything that came after.
Inside the front cover, in someone else’s handwriting from 1989: To my daughter, who will write better than all of them. — Mama.
I held it in the shop for a long time.
Then I bought it.
Sewa opens the box.
She takes the books out one by one.
When she reaches the third one she opens it.
She reads the inscription.
She puts the book down.
She looks at the February sky above the Maitama street.
She does not cry.
She is close.
“A mother gave this to her daughter in 1989”, she says.
“Yes”, I say.
“And it ended up in a shop in Wuse.”
“Yes.”
“And you, Reo, found it.”
“Yes.”
She looks at the book.
“Reo”, she says.
“Yes.”
“I am so going to write in this one”, she says. “In the front. After the inscription. I am going to add a line.”
“What line?” I say.
She looks at me.
“I do not know yet”, she says. “But when I know I will tell you.”
I nod.
“Fifth box”, she says.
The fifth box is small.
She opens it.
Inside: a key.
Not a car key. Not a house key she recognises.
She looks at it.
“Reoooo”, she says.
“The house in Maitama”, I say. “Bisi’s team finished the first room yesterday. The study. Your reading chair is there. The lamp is at the right height.”
I pause.
“You have a key now. Soooo, you can go whenever you want. Even without me. It is already yours.”
She holds the key.
The study with the floor-to-ceiling shelves.
Her reading chair. My chair, now hers.
The lamp at the right height.
“The first finished room is the study”, she says.
“Yes”, I say. “I thought you should have somewhere to be quiet in before anywhere else.”
She looks at the key.
Then at me.
She steps forward and she puts her arms around me and she holds on with the quality of someone who is not performing a hug but actually needs one and has stopped being embarrassed about needing one.
I hold her back.
One peony in a glass of water upstairs in her apartment.
A year and four months from a Tuesday.
I film the day in pieces.
Not the private pieces. Those stay private. But the pieces that can be shared. The walk. His hand in mine visible at the edge of the frame. The gifts on the kitchen counter. I lay them all out and I film them slowly, one by one, with music underneath. The rooibos. The skincare. The journal. The books. The key.
No face.
No name.
Just:
He found the rooibos I have been importing for three years. He remembered the shoulder thing from last week. He called my therapist with my permission to ask what I had been wanting that I had not asked for.
Valentine's Day couldn't have been any better.
The comments begin within minutes of posting.
@gracefulliving_ng: SHE FOUND HIM. THE WAY HE REMEMBERED THE SHOULDER THING?? I am not okay
@missdoyin: wait he called her THERAPIST?? this man is doing research on how to love her properly i am going to pass out
@abuja.girl.codes: the rooibos. the ROOIBOS. a year’s supply. I need to lie down God when
@temilolaadeyemi: the book with the 1989 inscription from a mama to her daughter… sewa if you don’t marry this man immediately, I will marry him for you
@lifewithsomto: No face reveal and I am already in love with him. As if peppering us with hands were not enough but NOW THIS
@faithandfire.ng: somebody should pour me water am I a spoon
@naijacontentqueen: if my man doesn't pay attention like this, it is over
@realtalkswithremi: God abeg. All these fake people. Show us the man if e sure for you
@oluwakemiA: Sewa you have been holding out on us and I respect it so much. But the hands. The ring. The key. The rooibos. We deserve a face reveal. We are invested. We are FAMILY now.
@praiseandpurpose: The journal inscription: for the woman who is learning to be quiet enough to hear herself. I need to sit with that. That is a whole sermon.
@adenikefashola: 1 million YouTube subscribers incoming. Sewa we see you building. Imani AND this man AND 1 million. God is faithful.
I read the comments for a long time.
Then I put the phone down.
Romeo is in the kitchen making tea. He has learnt exactly how I take it, which took approximately two attempts and he has not been wrong since, which is both impressive and slightly annoying.
He brings it to the counter.
He sits across from me.
“The comments?” he says.
“They love you”, I say. “Without knowing you.”
“They love what you have shown them”, he says. “There is a difference.”
“They love what you did”, I say. “Which is you.”
He is quiet.
“Ro”, I say.
“Yes.”
“One day”, I say. “Not today. But one day — I am going to do the face reveal.”
He looks at me.
“Okay”, he says.
“You are not going to argue?”
“Why would I argue?” he says. “It is your channel. Your audience. Your decision.”
He pauses.
“And I trust your judgment about what to share and when.”
I look at him.
He picks up his tea.
I pick up mine.
“My turn”, I say. “My plan. This afternoon.”
“The food plan”, he says.
“There is food”, I confirm. “But there is more than food.”
“What else?”
I look at him.
“Come and see”, I say.
My plan, it turns out, is the things he loves that are not things.
Not objects but experiences. Hours. The currency of a man who does not need more things and needs more of the specific quiet that recharges him.
I booked the bookshop.
The one in Wuse he has been going to for years. The small, specific one where he found the 1989 book. I spoke to the owner — a man named Mr. Bello who has been running the shop for twelve years and who, when I explained that I was buying my fiancé two private hours in his shop after closing time to browse without being watched or spoken to, said: I will leave the good section unlocked.
Romeo walks into the closed bookshop at 4 p.m.
He stops.
He looks at the empty shop.
At the note on the counter in my handwriting: two hours. the good section is unlocked. I will be outside. take your time.
He looks at me.
“Sewa”, he says.
“Go”, I say.
“You are going to wait outside?”
“I have rooibos”, I say. “I have my phone. I have forty-seven thousand Imani comments to read. Go on.”
He looks at the shop.
Then at me.
“This is the best gift I have received today”, he says.
“I know”, I say. “Go.”
He goes.
I sit in the car with my rooibos and I read Imani comments for two hours and I feel the joy of a woman who knows exactly who she is loving and loves him accordingly.
Dinner.
We sit across from each other in the specific ease of two people who have spent a whole day together and are not tired of each other and are not going to be tired of each other and both of them know it.
“Best Valentine’s Day?” I say.
He thinks about it.
“I do not have previous Valentine’s Days to compare it to”, he says.
I stare at him.
“Reo.”
“Yes.”
“You have never celebrated Valentine’s Day.”
“No.”
“Not once.”
“No.”
“In twenty-eight years.”
“Correct.”
“So this is your first Valentine’s Day.”
“Yes.”
I look at the ceiling.
“And?” I say.
He looks at me across the table.
The corner. The fried rice between us. The Wuse 2 evening outside the window.
“It is the best day”, he says. Simply.
“Not because of the day. But because of who I spent it with.”
He steps closer, takes my hands in his and places a kiss on them.
“That is the cheesiest thing you have ever said”, I say.
“It is accurate”, he says.
“Accurately the cheesiest”, I say.
He picks up his fork.
I pick up mine.
“Ife”, I say.
“Yes.”
“The bookshop”, I say. “That was your favourite part, abi?”
“No, the walk was my favourite part”, he says.
“The bookshop was your favourite part”, I say.
A pause.
“Okayyy, maybe the bookshop was also my favourite part”, he says.
I point at him.
He eats his rice.
I eat mine.
February 14th.
The first Valentine’s Day of the rest of our lives.
Narrator's Nook
Love is specific or it is nothing. Romeo’s gifts are not impressive — they are accurate. The rooibos he tracked through three suppliers. The skincare from a therapist’s observation. The shoulder he remembered from October. The book with a 1989 inscription that a mother wrote to a daughter. The key to a study finished first because she needs somewhere to be quiet before anywhere else. None of these things required money. All of them required attention. The series has been arguing this from the beginning: the most intimate act is not grand gesture but specific remembrance. Seeing someone so clearly that you remember the things they mention in passing and act on them months later.
Sewa’s gift — the private bookshop, the two hours, the note, the waiting outside — is the series’ most complete image of a woman who has learned to love in the language of the person she loves rather than in her own language. She is a celebrator. She loves volume and colour and abundance. And she gave him silence. A room full of books and no audience and two hours of nobody needing anything from him. That is not her love language. It is his. And she is fluent in it now.
The comments section is the NLI work completing itself in public. One million people about to witness a love story that has been teaching them — without announcing it — what it looks like when two people build something real.
She has not revealed his face.
She has revealed everything that matters.
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