Big Mommy’s Son & I (Part 3)

The burgundy dress was, objectively, doing what it was supposed to do.

I know this because when Tunde came to pick me up and I opened the door, he looked at me for a full three seconds before he said anything. Not in a rude way. In the way of a man whose brain had momentarily prioritized processing over speech, which I found both flattering and satisfying given that I had spent forty-five minutes on this outfit the last time and cancelled, and this time I had gotten dressed in twenty minutes with the energy of a woman who had already decided she was going and was not entertaining alternatives.

The dress had a sleek shoulder detail structure, a little architectural, the kind of thing that looks simple until you realize it isn’t. My locs were down. My glasses were on. I had done my makeup with the focused attention of someone who knew exactly what she was doing and was not going to pretend otherwise.

“You look—” he started.

“I know,” I said. “Let’s go.”

He smiled. That slow, arriving smile. I walked past him to the car and did not look back to see if he was watching.

He was watching.

The restaurant was good. Not trying-too-hard good not the kind of place that makes you feel underdressed even when you’re not — just genuinely good. The kind with low lighting and a menu that had been thought about and a noise level that allowed actual conversation, which I appreciated because I had things I wanted to say and I needed to be able to hear his responses.

We talked. That was the thing about Tunde that I kept running into. He was easy to talk to. He was someone who would actually listen rather than wait for their turn. He asked about my work in the direct, slightly blunt way he asked about everything, and I told him things I didn’t usually tell people, not because I’m private but because most people don’t ask the right questions.

At some point, halfway through the main course, he reached across the table and put his hand over mine.

Just like that. No announcement. He just put his hand over mine and kept talking about whatever he was saying like it was the most natural thing in the world.

I looked at our hands. I looked at him. He was not looking at me with any particular significance, just talking, hand over mine, completely unbothered.

I left my hand where it was.

We stayed for dessert, which neither of us needed, and then we stayed after dessert because neither of us was in a hurry, which I noted and filed under things that are probably significant that I am not going to examine right now.

He dropped me home.

We sat outside my building for a moment with the engine off, the way you do when a night has been good and neither person wants to be the one who ends it.

“Come up,” I said. “I’ll make coffee.”

He looked at me.

I looked at him.

We both knew I was not going to make coffee.

“Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”

We made it approximately four steps into my apartment before he kissed me, which I want you to know I was not expecting at that specific moment even though I was obviously expecting it at some point during the evening. His hands went to my face first, that was the thing, he always started with my face, like he needed to hold it before anything else and then into my hair, and then he bit my ear and I made a sound I was not prepared to make that early in the proceedings.

“Tunde—”

“Mm.”

“We just—”

“I know.”

He did not stop. I did not ask him to stop.

His hands moved to my waist, my hips, learning the dress from the outside before he bothered with anything underneath it. He grabbed my ass with both hands and I grabbed his shirt and we moved backward toward the couch in the ungraceful, slightly chaotic way of two people who want to be somewhere and keep getting distracted en route.

We did not make it to the couch.

He pressed me against the wall, my wall, in my apartment, and looked at me in the low light with an expression that was not performing anything. Just present. Wanting.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” I said.

Then he lifted the hem of the burgundy dress.

I am going to tell you what happened next because I started this story with honesty and I intend to finish it that way, and also because what happened next deserves to be documented for the historical record.

Tunde got on his knees.

While having me pinned against my wall. In his good trousers, on my floor, completely unbothered about any of that.

He looked up at me once, just once, checking and I said nothing because I had lost the ability to form words in any language I spoke, and he took that as the yes it was.

What followed was I need to find the right words for this and I am going to try.

He lifted my dress and kissed my thighs, slowly trailing kisses till he got to my pussy. He pulled the hem of my thong with his teeth, slowly sliding them down.

He rubbed his thumb on my pussy lips, making my breath get stuck in my throat, he puts his index finger in, and pulls it out, it was wet and glistening from my juice, and he licked his finger.

He kissed my pussy lips, then licked my fold without putting his tongue in. I shivered and he did it again and again, teasing me as I became undone.

He put his tongue in, and I gasped . He was thorough. That is the first word. Thorough in the way of someone who had decided this was the task and the task was going to be completed properly or not at all. He took his time in a way that should have been illegal given the circumstances, given that I was standing against my own wall in a dress I had been trying to keep nice, given that the evening had already been a lot, given that I had been thinking about this, in various forms, since a garden in Abuja.

He used his tongue like he had read a manual specifically about me and had studied it carefully before arriving. He found places I had forgotten existed and reintroduced me to them. He held my hips against the wall when I tried to move away from what he was doing not because I wanted him to stop, because I very much did not want him to stop, but because what he was doing was so precisely, specifically good that my body kept trying to escape it the way you try to escape something that is too much and exactly right at the same time.

He found my clit and sucked on them, licking me up slowly.

I said his name. I said it several times, in several registers, at several volumes that I was going to be embarrassed about in the morning.

He did not stop.

He did not stop until I was gripping the wall behind me with both hands and my knees had stopped functioning as structural elements and the sounds I was making were ones I had not known I was capable of. He did not stop until I came so hard I had to slide down the wall because standing was no longer a realistic option, and he caught me on the way down like he had been expecting it, like he had planned for it, like this had all been very carefully managed from his end and I had simply been along for the experience.

I sat on my floor.

He sat beside me, back against the wall, completely composed, like he had not just dismantled me entirely in my own hallway.

“Coffee,” he said.

“Shut up,” I said.

He smiled at the ceiling.

I turned to him. My hands went to his shirt. “Come here—”

“Next time,” he said.

I stopped. “Sorry?”

“Next time.” He said it like it was a reasonable thing to say. Like next time was a normal response to what had just happened. Like there were rules and he had them and I was simply going to have to accept them.

“Tunde?……”

“Mm.”

“What do you mean next time?”

“I mean next time.”

I stared at him. He was not smiling anymore, he was just looking at me with that direct, calm attention that was either deeply sexy or deeply irritating depending on the moment, and right now it was both.

He kissed me. Slow, thorough, the kind of kiss that was an entire conversation. Then he stood up, straightened his trousers, looked around my apartment once, and said: “Goodnight, Mabel.”

“You’re leaving.”

“Yes.”

“Right now.”

“Yes.”

“After—”

“Yes.”

I watched him walk to the door. He picked up his jacket from where it had ended up on the armchair. He checked his pockets. And then he paused, I saw it, the slight hesitation and he bent down and picked something up from the floor near the door.

He held it up briefly.

My thong.

“I’ll keep this,” he said, like it was a completely reasonable statement.

“Excuse me—”

“Goodnight.”

He walked out.

I sat on my hallway floor in my burgundy dress, which was somehow still mostly intact, and stared at my closed front door, and tried to remember how to be a person.

There is no way, I thought, this man just walked out of my apartment with my underwear.

I looked at the door.

The door confirmed it.

There is absolutely no way.

I texted Linda at midnight: I’m home.

She replied in thirty seconds: AND????

Go to sleep.

MABEL.

Goodnight Linda.

YOU CANNOT DO THIS TO ME.

I put my phone face down and went to bed and lay in the dark and thought about a man who had just done the most thorough thing that had ever been done to me in my own hallway and then left with my underwear like it was a completely normal Tuesday.

I thought: I am in trouble.

I went to sleep.

The next day at work I was, outwardly, completely fine.

I was a professional. I had code to write and meetings to attend and a standup at nine that I was not going to be weird in. I sat at my desk with my coffee and my headphones and I was normal.

Bayo appeared at noon. “Lunch?”

“Sure.”

“Linda’s coming. And—” he paused — “Tunde.”

I looked up from my screen. “Sorry?”

“Tunde. He wanted to join.”

I looked at Bayo. Bayo looked back at me with the expression he wore when he knew things and was choosing not to say them.

“Fine,” I said. “Lunch.”

The restaurant was casual, bright, the kind of place where you order at the counter and find a table and the food comes to you. Linda was already there when we arrived, and Tunde was beside her, and when I walked in he looked up and said “hey” in the easy, unbothered way of a man who had not been in my hallway less than twenty-four hours ago doing things that should require a formal apology and possibly a thank-you card.

“Hey,” I said, in the voice of a woman who was also completely unbothered.

We sat. We ordered. The four of us talked about nothing in particular, about everything in general, the kind of easy group conversation that happens between people who are comfortable with each other. Linda was watching me with the expression of someone who had been awake since midnight waiting for information and was now vibrating slightly with the effort of not asking for it at the table. Bayo was eating his food and occasionally saying something dry that made everyone laugh.

Tunde was sitting across from me acting like a completely normal person who had not stolen my underwear.

His phone rang. He looked at the screen and declined it.

“Everything okay?” Linda asked.

“Fine,” he said. “Work thing.”

It rang again. He declined it again.

And again.

“Someone really wants to reach you,” Bayo said.

“It’s fine.” He put his phone face down. “So—” he redirected the conversation smoothly and I watched him do it and noted it and filed it somewhere I would look at later.

After lunch, walking out, he fell into step beside me while Linda and Bayo walked ahead.

“You’re quiet,” he said.

“I’m digesting,” I said.

“Mabel.”

“Tunde.”

He looked at me sideways. “You good?”

“I’m great,” I said. “Completely fine. Totally normal. Having a totally normal day.”

He nodded slowly. “Okay.”

“Who was calling?”

A beat. “Work thing.”

“You said that.”

“Because that’s what it was.”

I looked at him. He looked back at me steadily. I made a decision to leave it there, which I would later reflect was the wrong decision, but I made it.

“I’m going back to Abuja,” he said.

The words landed flatly. I kept walking. “When?”

“End of the week. My mum needs me and I’ve been here longer than I planned.”

“Ohhh…,” I said.

“Okay?”

“Okay, Tunde.”

He looked at me for a moment. “That’s it?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know. Something.”

I stopped walking. He stopped too. Linda and Bayo were ahead of us now, almost at the corner, not looking back. I looked at Tunde, this man who had shown up in my city unannounced, who had held my hand across a restaurant table, who had been in my hallway, who was now standing on a Lagos street telling me he was leaving and apparently wanted me to have feelings about it out loud.

“Travel safe,” I said.

He looked at me for a long moment. “Right,” he said. “Okay.”

He left at the end of the week.

Here is what I did not expect about Tunde being in Abuja: I missed him.

Not dramatically. Not in a way I was going to announce to anyone. Just…. the absence of him had a shape, which meant his presence had had a shape, which meant something I was not going to put a name to yet.

We texted. More than before, if anything, like the distance had removed some of the self-consciousness and we were just talking, properly, the way we had been at the beginning. He sent me voice notes at odd hours. I sent them back. He told me about what he was doing in Abuja, about Big mommy, about the plans he was trying to figure out for what came next. I told him about work, about a project that was frustrating me, about a conversation with Linda that had made me think about things differently.

He was, in those weeks, the first thing I reached for when something happened. Good or bad or just interesting, my first instinct was to tell Tunde.

I noted this. I did not examine it.

The weeks passed. I fell into a rhythm. Work, Linda and Bayo, texts from Tunde at odd hours, the particular quiet contentment of a life that was mostly good and getting better.

And then on a Wednesday morning, someone came to the office and asked for me at reception.

I knew, when the receptionist said “there’s someone here for you,” that it was not a work thing. Not because I had any information, I had no information but because of the specific way the receptionist said it. Slightly careful. Like she had assessed the situation at the front desk and formed an opinion.

I went out.

She was standing at reception in a way that suggested the space had been rearranged around her by force of personality. She was…. I am going to be honest with you, absolutely stunning. The kind of woman who makes you do an immediate and involuntary inventory of yourself by contrast. Tall. Light-skinned. The kind of put-together that was not accidental, she was wearing something that I recognized, from the industry Linda moved in adjacent to, as someone who understood fashion not as decoration but as language. Her locs were longer than mine, honey-coloured at the ends. Her face was the kind of face that had been looked at a lot and knew it.

She looked at me the same way. Top to bottom, quick, assessing.

Then she said, in an accent that was British with Nigerian underneath it: “You’re Mabel.”

Not a question.

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m Kemi,” she said. “Tunde’s girlfriend.”

The word arrived in my chest like something physical.

“I know he came to Lagos to see you,” she said. Her voice was controlled, precise, the voice of someone who had decided exactly what they were going to say before they came and was saying it. “And I know whatever has been going on between you. I don’t know the details and I don’t want them.” She looked at me steadily. “I’m asking you, woman to woman, to leave it alone. We’re trying to fix what we have. You being in the picture is making that harder.”

I stood in the reception area of my office on a Wednesday morning and looked at this woman and did not say anything because I did not have anything to say. Not because I was afraid of her. I was not afraid of her but because the floor had shifted under me in the specific way it shifts when information arrives that reorganizes everything you thought you knew.

Girlfriend.

We’re trying to fix what we have.

You being in the picture.

She held my gaze for a moment longer. Then she said: “Thank you for your time,” and walked out.

I stood in reception until I was sure she was gone. Then I went back to my desk and sat down and picked up my phone.

I called Tunde.

It rang four times and went to voicemail.

I called again.

Voicemail.

WhatsApp. The message went to one grey tick. Not delivered. I typed: We need to talk. Call me. One grey tick.

I stared at my screen.

I called again.

The number you have dialled is not reachable at this time.

I put my phone face down on my desk and sat very still for a moment, feeling the specific, familiar shape of a situation I had not seen coming and should have.

I called Linda.

She picked up immediately. “Hey, what’s—”

“A girl just came to my office,” I said. My voice came out steadier than I expected. “She said her name is Kemi. She said she’s Tunde’s girlfriend.”

Silence.

“Linda.”

“I heard you. I just—” A pause. “I don’t know much about his life. He’s been away for years and Big mommy doesn’t—”

“His phone is not reachable.”

“What?”

“I’ve called him four times. WhatsApp is not delivering. His number is not reachable.”

“Mabel—”

“I’m always doing this,” I said. The steadiness in my voice was doing less work now. “I always end up with somebody’s man. Every single time. I don’t even—”

“Stop.”

“No, it’s true. It’s—”

“Mabel, stop. You did not know.”

“I should have known. The calls he kept declining at lunch—”

“You didn’t know.”

“Linda.”

“Listen to me. You. Did not. Know.” Her voice was firm, the voice she used when she needed me to actually hear something. “This is on him. Not you.”

I was quiet for a moment. Outside my office window, Lagos was doing what Lagos always did moving, indifferent, continuous. I pressed my fingers against my eyes briefly.

“She was so pretty,” I said, which was not the point but was somehow the thing that came out.

“That is not the point.”

“I know.”

“Mabel.”

“I know, Linda.”

“I’m coming over tonight. Bayo’s coming. We’re bringing food.”

“You don’t have to—”

“We’re coming.”

I didn’t argue.

I sat at my desk for the rest of the afternoon and did my work and did not look at my phone more than I needed to, which was a lie, I looked at my phone constantly, and it said the same thing every time.

One grey tick.

Not reachable.

They came with jollof and plantain and the specific energy of two people who had decided they were going to make this evening better by force of presence if necessary.

Linda sat beside me on the couch. Bayo put the food on the counter and did the thing he did, made himself useful without making it a performance, just quietly handling the practical things so we could handle the other things.

“Tell me everything,” Linda said.

I told her everything.

When I finished she was quiet for a moment. Bayo, from the kitchen, said nothing, which was the right thing.

“She came to your office,” Linda said.

“Yes.”

“In person.”

“Yes.”

“And his phone has been off since.”

“Yes.”

Linda exhaled. “Okay.”

“That’s all you have? Okay?”

“I’m processing.”

“Process faster.”

She looked at me. “I think,” she said carefully, “that we don’t have the full picture yet. I think there’s a version of this that’s as bad as it looks, and I think there’s a version that’s more complicated, and right now we don’t know which one it is.”

“His girlfriend came to my office, Linda.”

“I know.”

“She said they’re trying to fix what they have.”

“I know.”

“And he’s not picking up.”

“I know.” She put her hand over mine. “I know. And that’s awful. And you’re allowed to be upset.”

I was quiet for a moment. The food was on the counter and the apartment was warm with company and I sat on my couch and felt the specific weight of a situation that had arrived without warning and had no clean resolution.

“I liked him,” I said. “I actually liked him.”

“I know you did.”

“I don’t like people easily.”

“I know that too.”

I looked at the ceiling. “He took my underwear, Linda.”

A pause.

“He what,” she said.

“He took my underwear. When he left. He just — picked it up and walked out with it.”

Another pause. Then, from the kitchen, the sound of Bayo putting something down very carefully.

“Bayo,” Linda said.

“I’m not saying anything,” Bayo said.

“Good.”

I looked at my ceiling. Despite everything, despite the grey ticks and the not reachable and Kemi standing in my reception in her perfect outfit with her perfect face saying we’re trying to fix what we have — I felt the corner of my mouth move.

“It was a bold move,” I said.

“It was,” Linda agreed.

“Completely unhinged.”

“Walai.”

“I was stunned.”

“Anyone would be.”

We sat in the quiet for a moment. Then Linda put her arm around me and I let her and we stayed like that while Bayo plated the food in the kitchen and the evening settled around us, imperfect and warm and enough for now.

“What do I do?” I said.

“Right now?” Linda said. “You eat jollof rice. And tomorrow you see if he calls.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

She was quiet for a moment. “Then you have your answer.”

I thought about that.

I thought about a garden in Abuja and a man who labeled his contacts by context and was wrong about microservices.

I thought about next time, said against my mouth like a promise.

I thought about one grey tick.

“Okay,” I said. “Jollof first.”

“Jollof first,” Linda confirmed.

Bayo brought the food.

TBC

JoyzTheLostWriter ❤️