Red Flag District.

Chapter Three (Part 10): Morolake; Wife Material.

FOLARIN’S P.O.V:

For a moment, none of us moved.

The phone sat on the table between us with the message glowing on the screen, and the four of us sat around it the way men sit when they did not know which way was up.

Somewhere behind us, life continued.

The screens above the bar kept screaming about football. The waiter kept taking orders. Burna Boy kept playing. Two men three tables over were arguing loudly about whether VAR was destroying the integrity of the sport.

The rest of the lounge did not know. The rest of the lounge had no reason to know. The rest of the lounge was just having a Friday night.

But for us, life had paused.

Seyi was the first to speak.

“Flo.”

I didn’t answer.

“Flo.”

I kept staring at the screen.

Two words.

I’m pregnant.

That was all.

No follow-up. No explanation. No emoji. Just a sentence that had arrived in my pocket while I was sitting at a table trying to figure out if I had been raped.

Now that conversation was discarded and had been replaced by a new worry. Because once again, Morolake had taken the floor. She had taken the entire floor.

Tunde reached for the phone slowly.

I let him take it.

He read it once.

Then twice.

Then placed it gently back on the table.

“Is she trying to say this happened because of that night?” he asked.

“That night.”

I replied

“The night she—” Kunle said

“Yes.” I answered

“That was—” Tunde asked

“Four weeks ago.”

He nodded once.

The nod of a man processing something he had not yet permitted himself to feel.

Seyi reached across me and grabbed the phone.

He read the message.

Then read it again.

Then put the phone face-down on the table like it was something he could not look at any longer.

“No.”

It was the smallest sentence I had ever heard come out of his mouth.

“No, what?” Kunle asked quietly.

“No. This is not happening.” Seyin continued,

“Seyi—” Kunle started

“This is not happening, Kunle.” Seyi said again

Kunle was reading the phone now too. His face did the thing his face did when his mind was working faster than the room around it. He did not raise his voice. He simply went very still and let the implications arrange themselves.

After a moment he placed the phone down too.

“Is it yours?”

The question was Tunde’s earlier question reworded by a more careful man.

I stared at him.

“Well… How would I know? Except she raped another man after me. The timing fits.”

It was ironic. She had been the only one.

Because in the months before her there had been nobody, and in the weeks since her there had been nobody, and the only sex I had had in close to half a year was the sex I had not consented to.

That was the part that flattened me. That was the part that pulled the air out of the room. Not the pregnancy.

The fact that the first time I was going to be a father, it was from an act that violated me. Because if she was pregnant—then she was pregnant from the night I had said no. And the boys understood that without needing it spelled out.

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