FOLARIN’S P.O.V:
I used to think Lagos traffic was the greatest mirror a man could face.
Stay with me.
Nothing exposes your true character like being trapped on Ozumba Mbadiwe with nowhere to go, no lane to cheat, no LASTMA official to negotiate with, and one danfo driver connecting his rickety condemned bonnet into your bumper like he was sent by village people.
In traffic, you learn the truth about yourself.
Some people pray. Some curse. Some call everyone they know, so that if they must suffer, the suffering at least has witnesses. And some people form maturity—windows up, music playing softly, hand resting light on the wheel like they’ve mastered the chaos.
That used to be me.
Not because I was above it. Because I had spent years learning how to look composed in the middle of things I hadn’t actually dealt with. Smooth. Pleasant. Presentable.
The kind of man people trusted because he never looked unsettled—even when he was avoiding the very thing that would unsettle him. Good job, good suits, good family, good friends, good skin. Apparently, very bad emotional judgment.
Nobody tells you how unglamorous healing is.
People think it’s a spa package. Scented candles. Journaling by a window. A woman in linen telling you to forgive yourself.
Lies.
Healing is sitting in a room with a woman who charges more per hour than some people’s rent, and letting her call you out with a calmness that feels personally violent.
It’s hearing yourself say the thing you used to package as I don’t want boring, and realising the correct translation is I don’t want serious commitment. It’s discovering that the problem with all your relationships was never the women.
It was you.
*********
Dr. Tomilola Adesanya sat across from me, legs crossed, notebook on one knee, pen loose in her hand. She had one of those therapist faces—soft enough to make you trust her, right up until it switched and called you out on your nonsense.
The first time I met her, I thought she was even-tempered. By the third session I understood that temperance and danger don’t always sit in different chairs. Sometimes they sit in the same one, and ask you:
“So, Folarin. What did you actually want?”
I hated that question. Simple on its face. Questions with simple answers are the worst kind—they take away your hiding places.
I looked past her at the plant near the window. She had a lot of plants. I think it’s meant to suggest that growth is possible in that room.
“I wanted peace,” I said finally.
She waited. Not the polite kind that gives you room to think—the other kind, where silence is a weapon and she has a license to carry it.
I exhaled. “I wanted peace. But I also wanted… I don’t know.”
“You know.”
I looked at her. She said nothing.
“I wanted to be wanted,” I said.
She nodded once. Not approving. Not surprised. Just marking the truth, the way you would note we’d finally arrived at the correct bus stop.
“By whom?”
I laughed softly. “No. Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Ask me questions you already know the answer to.”
“I may know the answer,” she said. “But I’m not the one in therapy.”
There was a point in my life where women found me charming. Now here was one of them, billing me to be honest. Growth is expensive.
“By all of them,” I said. “Morolake. Derin. Even Amaka, in a way.”
“Go on.”
“I wanted to be the good guy in everyone’s story.”
“And were you?”
There it was. The knife—clean, sterile, straight to the point.
“No.” Quiet. Not dramatic. Just true. “No, I wasn’t.”
She wrote something down. I hated when she wrote things down. I felt like my foolishness was entering a permanent record.
“You weren’t choosing clearly. What do you think made it difficult for you to choose clearly?”
I rubbed my jaw. “I don’t know.”
She looked up. I corrected myself.
“I think I chose in a way—bottom line, I’m afraid of choosing wrong.”
“Wrong for whom?”
That was always the thing. I’d told myself for years I was afraid of hurting people. Maybe I was more afraid of being named as the one who did. Hurting people makes them bleed. Being the villain makes them point. Maybe I’d always preferred to wound quietly rather than be identified loudly.
“I don’t like disappointing people,” I said.
“That’s not the same as loving them.”
I looked at her. She held my gaze.
“Sometimes the most loving thing you can give someone is clarity,” she said. “Even when it disappoints them.”
I laughed, with no humour in it. “You make it sound easy.”
“No. I know it’s not easy. But it’s necessary.”
Outside her window, Lagos moved without apology—cars, horns, heat, everybody going somewhere. Except me, apparently. Thirty-two years old, successful by every metric that impresses fathers and mothers and women with good taste in restaurants, and still—emotionally—a man waiting for somebody else to decide his life for him.
She closed her notebook. That usually meant we were done. I liked and hated that part in equal measure. I liked it because therapy was exhausting. Hated it because the moment I left the room, I had to go and live with whatever we’d just uncovered.
“This week,” she said, “pay attention to the moments you avoid a decision by calling it patience.”
I groaned. “I don’t like assignments.”
“You don’t like accountability.”
“This is why people don’t come to therapy.”
“No,” she said, standing. “This is why they should.”
At the door, she said my name.
“Folarin.”
I turned.
“You are not beyond repair.”
I don’t know why that sentence hit harder than all the others. Maybe because I hadn’t realised, until she said it, that I’d been afraid I might be.
I nodded once. “Thank you.”
“See you next week.”
*****************
The air outside her office always felt different. Not lighter exactly. Just less restricted.
My phone buzzed in the lift.
Anjola.
I looked at the name a second longer than necessary—not because it was unusual, but because it had become normal. Too normal.
Over the past few months she’d drifted back into my life quietly, without ceremony, until I’d started liking the idea of her looking in on me. Not romantically. That’s what I told myself.
She checked in after therapy sometimes. Not “how did it go?” in a way that demanded labour. Just small things.
Hope today’s session was useful.
Eat something decent.
Don’t overthink the session before you sleep.
Anjola had a way of caring that didn’t grab your shirt and beg to be noticed. It just sat beside you until you realised it had been there the whole time.
Anjola:
How was therapy?
Me:
Violent.
Anjola:
Good.
Me: …
Anjola:
That means it’s working.
Trust Anjola to make emotional assault sound like progress.
Me:
You are enjoying this too much.
Anjola:
A little. Are you still coming for Dele’s thing tonight?
I read that line twice. Dele’s thing. Not the event, not the dinner, not “the Naija Tapas private tasting.” Dele’s thing—the small, easy shorthand of a woman who has folded a man fully into her life.
I’d known about Dele for six weeks. Six long, character-building weeks.
Dele Dawodu. Founder and executive chef of Naija Tapas. Calm. Christian. Intentional. The kind of man who probably prayed before sending “good morning” texts. The kind of man women call safe and actually mean it as the highest compliment. The kind of man who would never accidentally end up with another woman’s number on a date that wasn’t his.
In other words, a deeply irritating person.
Anjola was dating him. Properly. Not “talking.” Not “seeing how it goes.” He’d asked her clearly; she’d answered clearly. Apparently that’s how emotionally mature people behave.
Disgusting.
I’d met him twice. The first time, I wanted to dislike him. Unfortunately, Dele made that difficult. He didn’t overdo humility, didn’t perform niceness, didn’t size me up the way men do when they’re deciding whether you’re a threat. He just shook my hand, looked me in the eye, and said, “I’ve heard good things about you” — and it sounded sincere, which was the most annoying part of all.
Me:
Yes. I’ll come. Should I bring anything?
Anjola:
Yourself. On time.
Anjola:
And behave.
I laughed out loud in the lift. A woman beside me glanced up from her phone. I cleared my throat and faced front. Lagos people don’t like joy in enclosed spaces.
By the time I reached my car, the evening had started doing that Lagos thing where it pretends to be beautiful so you’ll forgive it for everything it did to you earlier. Orange sky. Warm air. Traffic gathering its strength for the night ahead.
I sat behind the wheel a moment before starting the engine.
Therapy had stirred things. Anjola had stirred things. Dele was about to irritate things. And underneath it all sat one quiet, inconvenient truth: I liked who I was around Anjola. Not because she made me feel impressive. Because she made me feel honest.
Desire can confuse you. Chemistry can deceive you. But honesty has roots, and roots are harder to pull out.
**********
Naija Tapas didn’t look like a restaurant trying to prove it was high class. It looked effortlessly artsy-class. Warm lighting, dark wood, burnished brass, art on the walls that felt Nigerian without turning into costume.
The room smelled of pepper, smoke, citrus, and money—not loud money, tasteful money, the kind that says if you have to ask what the tasting menu costs, perhaps this evening isn’t for you.
Dele was good. I hated that. He stood near the open kitchen, sleeves rolled, murmuring to one of his chefs—not shouting, not fussing, just guiding. There was a stillness to how he occupied a room. I recognised it, because I’d spent years performing the same thing.
The difference was, Dele wasn’t performing.
That made it worse.
Anjola saw me before I saw her—standing near a table of women, laughing at something one of them had said. Cream outfit, simple, elegant, annoyingly beautiful in a way that doesn’t demand your attention so much as reward it.
She turned, smiled. My chest did something stupid. I ignored it.
“Folarin.”
“Anjola.”
She hugged me—brief, warm, correct. There’s a very specific kind of pain in being hugged correctly by a woman you once had the chance to love incorrectly.
“You came,” she said.
“I was invited.”
“You obeyed.”
“I’m in my obedient era.”
She laughed softly. “There’s hope.”
Dele walked over before I could say anything else. “Folarin. Good to see you.”
“You too, man.” We shook hands. Firm grip. Again. Annoying.
“Glad you could make it,” he said. “Anjola tells me you have good taste, so I’ll be watching your face tonight.”
I glanced at Anjola. “You said that?”
She lifted one shoulder. “I said you’re picky.”
“That’s different.”
“It’s adjacent.”
Dele laughed—comfortably, no tension in it, no hidden male competition, no need to mark territory. Just a man standing beside the woman he was dating, entirely at ease. I respected it.
I disliked respecting it.
The tasting began soon after. Small plates, one after another—suya-spiced beef tartare with plantain crisps, smoked catfish croquettes with ata din din aioli, ofada arancini, peppered goat-meat empanadas, palm wine granita.
Dele introduced each course with just enough detail to show he cared, and not so much that he sounded like he’d swallowed a culinary dictionary. The room loved it. Of course they did.
Anjola watched him with quiet pride. Not worship. Pride—a softness in her eyes I recognised.
I looked away and drank my water. Healing is also knowing when to mind your business.
*************
Halfway through the evening, Anjola found me at the wall, where I’d retreated to watch the room.
“You’re quiet,” she said.
“I’m eating.”
“You’re analysing.”
“I’m an investment banker. We don’t experience things. We evaluate them.”
She smiled. “And?”
“He’s good.”
Her smile deepened. “He is.”
That was all. No defence, no explanation. Just agreement.
“You look happy,” I said.
She looked across the room at Dele, then back at me. “I am.”
It should have been a simple thing to hear. A friend hears that and is glad. I was glad, mostly.
But there was another feeling underneath it, cooler and heavier than jealousy. Regret wears expensive perfume—you don’t always recognise it right away.
“I’m happy for you,” I said.
She studied me a beat too long. Anjola had always had that gift—hearing what you said, and also what it cost you to say it.
“Thank you,” she said softly. Then, because she’s Anjola and not a cruel woman, she changed the subject. “How was Dr. Tomilola today?”
“Rude.”
She laughed.
“She told me to notice the moments I avoid a decision by calling it patience.”
Something shifted in Anjola’s face—not surprise. Recognition.
“That sounds accurate.”
“You people are in a group chat?”
“No.”
“Because the speed of that agreement was suspicious.”
She smiled. “I’ve known you a while, Flo.”
Flo.
She didn’t always call me that. When she did, it felt like memory.
For a second the room thinned—the laughter, the clinking glasses, the low music, Dele explaining fermented locust beans to an investor by the kitchen—all of it blurring around the quiet fact of her standing beside me.
“Anjola?” Dele’s voice, from across the room.
“I’ll be right there.” Then, to me “I should go.”
“Of course.”
She walked away, and I watched her—not the way I used to watch women. Not hunger. Not curiosity.
Awareness. Worse, because hunger passes and awareness doesn’t.
*************
The boys were already seated when I got to the hangout later that night.
Seyi had a drink in one hand and was arguing with a waiter about peppered turkey. Kunle was replying emails, because apparently marriage and senior partnership weren’t enough suffering for one man. Tunde sat quietly, phone face down, looking like he’d arrived early to his own thoughts.
“Ah,” Seyi said when he saw me. “The prodigal red flag.”
“Good evening to you too.”
Kunle looked up. “How was therapy?”
“You people are too comfortable asking me that.”
Tunde’s mouth curved. “That means it’s working.”
I pulled out a chair. “Everybody is suddenly a mental health advocate.”
“Because your madness used to affect all of us,” Seyi said.
“Fair.”
Kunle closed his laptop halfway—not fully; consultants never close anything fully. “So? How was it?”
“She said I avoid decisions and call it patience.”
Seyi slapped the table. “Dr. Tomilola for president!”
“Accurate,” Tunde said.
“Very accurate,” Seyi agreed.
“You people don’t even want to pretend?”
“No,” said Tunde.
“That’s growth for us too,” Kunle added. “We used to pretend for you.”
I laughed despite myself. That was the thing about the guys—they could drag you and still make you feel held.
“So where are you coming from?” Kunle asked.
I hesitated half a second too long. Seyi’s eyes lit up immediately.
“Ah. There’s a woman.”
“There’s always a woman,” Kunle muttered.
“There is not always a woman.”
Three faces stared at me.
“I went for Dele’s tasting.”
Seyi blinked. “As in Anjola’s Dele?”
“Don’t call him that.”
“Why, is he your Dele?”
Kunle laughed under his breath. Tunde stayed quiet, but his eyes sharpened.
“How was it?” Tunde asked.
“Good.”
“Food good, or event good?” Seyi asked.
“Both.”
“Ah.” Seyi leaned back. “Nice.”
I ignored him. Kunle studied me. “And Anjola?”
“She looked happy.”
The table softened—not visibly, men rarely do visible softness in groups, but the air shifted.
“That’s good,” Tunde said.
“It is.”
“Does it feel good?” Kunle asked.
“You people should stop weaponising questions.”
“Answer,” Seyi said.
I exhaled. “I’m happy for her.”
“That’s the press release,” Seyi said. “Give us the boardroom version.”
I looked at the table. “I’m happy for her. And I think I’m realising that some things don’t wait for you forever.”
Silence. Even Seyi didn’t joke immediately.
Tunde turned his glass slowly. “Good.”
“Good?”
“Regret is useful when it teaches,” he said. “Dangerous when it performs.”
Seyi frowned. “Wait, say that again. I want to tweet it.”
Tunde ignored him. “I’m not trying to interfere. But if Anjola is happy, let her be happy. Don’t turn your healing into disruption.”
That one went in clean and deep.
“I know,” I said quietly.
“Do you?” Kunle asked.
“Yes.”
“Because you have a history of arriving late and expecting the room to remember your seat.”
Seyi whistled. “My God. Kunle woke up violent.”
“I said I know.”
Tunde watched me. “Then prove it. Don’t need anything from her that she hasn’t freely offered.”
I nodded. Didn’t like it, but I nodded—one terrible thing about healing is that your friends get more comfortable telling you the truth once they notice you’ve stopped running from it.
To avoid further surgery, I turned on Tunde. “How’s wedding planning?”
Seyi gasped. “He has deflected.”
“I’ve redirected.”
Tunde rubbed his forehead once. “That question is wicked.”
“Why? I thought you were marrying the love of your life.”
“I am.”
“So?”
“So wedding planning was designed by people who hate peace.”
Seyi burst out laughing. This was new—Tunde complaining. Not deeply, not loudly, but enough to notice.
“What happened?” Kunle asked.
“Nothing major,” Tunde said, which meant something major.
“Talk,” Seyi said, leaning in.
Tunde sighed. “Lamide wants a small wedding.”
“That sounds good,” I said.
“My family says small means five hundred people.”
“Correct,” Seyi said gravely.
“Her family says small means one hundred and fifty.”
“That’s six hundred and fifty people in total,” Kunle said.
“Yes.”
“What do you want?” I asked.
A pause. “To marry her.”
Seyi laughed. “You just dey start.”
“And Lamide?” I asked.
Something softened in Tunde’s face before he could stop it. That’s how we knew.
“She’s tired,” he said. “She won’t say it. But she is.”
“Wedding stress?” Kunle asked.
“Wedding. Motherhood. Work. Grief showing up at odd moments.”
The table quieted.
“She okay?” Seyi asked, gentler now.
Tunde nodded, not convincingly. “She will be.”
Very Tunde. Controlled hope, like even optimism needed discipline.
“Just don’t focus so much on protecting her that you stop letting her tell you what she needs,” Kunle said.
Tunde looked at him. Something passed between them—a married man speaking to an almost-married one.
“I hear you,” Tunde said.
Seyi took a long sip. “Look at us. Therapy. Weddings. Marriage advice. What happened to this table?”
“We aged,” Kunle said.
“No. You people aged. I’m still vibrant.”
“You’re thirty-three,” I said.
“Vibrantly.”
“You slept with a twenty-four-year-old last month,” Kunle said, without looking up.
Seyi paused. “That was unnecessary information.”
“It was necessary for the record.”
“You need to stop,” Tunde said.
“Sleeping?”
“Yes.”
“With twenty-four-year-olds?”
“Also yes.”
Seyi laughed, too loud. We all noticed. He noticed we noticed, and reached for his drink.
“Please. I don’t need intervention. I need enjoyment.”
“One day enjoyment will send you an invoice,” Kunle said.
I raised my glass. “It already sent me one. Her name was Amaka.”
The table erupted. Even Tunde laughed. For a moment everything felt like before—four men, one bad table, Lagos humming around us, jokes carrying the weight of things too heavy to say directly.
Then my phone buzzed.
Unknown number. I ignored it.
It buzzed again.
Seyi caught my face. “Who’s that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Pick.”
“No.”
“Pick it,” Kunle said. “Might be work.”
I answered. “Hello?”
A pause. Then a woman’s voice.
“Folarin?”
My body recognised it before my mind could arrange it. Everything in me went still.
“Derin?”
The table went quiet—not because they heard her, but because they heard me.
Her voice was calm. Clear. Older, somehow. Or maybe I was the one who’d changed.
“Hi,” she said.
One word.
And Lagos, wicked city that she is, shifted under my feet.
Author’s Note: Season 2 is back and bigger! The drama coming your way? you’re not ready.😎
Seyi and his 24-year-old babes...😂 His POV is coming in the next chapter. Who's excited? 😁
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Catch up here: Missed season 1? Catch up here.
See you next week.❤️
Derin get down biko!
I laughed out loud at Seyi saying let me tweet it🤣🤣🤣 such a buffoon