I had nothing.
No plans, no people, no reason to leave.
So I stayed.
Ordered a third beer, the alcohol wasn't helping tho, just making the loneliness quieter but not gone.
A woman sat two stools away. She's in her early thirties maybe, tired eyes, she was on office clothes.
She ordered gin, straight.
We didn't talk.
Just two people drinking alone in the same space.
After a while, she spoke.
"You look how I feel."
I glanced over. "How's that?"
"Like you're here but not really, like you're going through the motions."
"Accurate."
She smiled, barely. "What's your excuse?"
"For what?"
"For looking like that, like life is happening to you instead of with you."
I thought about it.
"I don't know anymore, I used to have reasons, now I just have routines."
"That's the worst kind of existing, when you can't even remember why you're unhappy."
"You speak from experience."
"Ten years of it, worked my way up, got the salary, got the title and lost everything else along the way."
"Everything like what?"
"Friends who knew me before I became this, a man who loved me when I was broke. Family dinners I stopped attending because I was always working, small joys I traded for big achievements."
She finished her drink and ordered another.
"You married?" she asked.
"No."
"Smart, marriage in this city is just two people being lonely together while splitting bills.. lol."
"That's dark."
"That's honest." She looked at me properly. "How old are you?"
"Twenty-four."
She laughed, bitter laugh.
"You're just starting, you still have time to turn back, to choose differently."
"Turn back to what?"
"To whoever you were before Lagos convinced you that making money was the same as making a life."
She paid her bill.
Stood to leave.
Paused.
"Can I tell you something?"
"Sure."
"In ten years, you'll be exactly where I am, successful, comfortable, empt, and you'll look at people your age now with envy coz they still have choices. They still have people, they haven't traded everything for stability yet."
"Maybe I'll be different."
"That's what I said too."
She left.
I sat there.
Staring at my reflection in the mirror behind the bar.
Didn't recognize myself.
I got home past midnight, drunk.
I pulled out my phone.
Scrolled to Zainab's number.
This time I didn't hesitate, I pressed call.
It rang, once, twice, three times, I almost hung up.
Then she answered.
"Hello?"
Her voice, after seven months, was clear, cautious and sounded confused.
"It's me," I said.
Silence.
"I know."
"I'm sorry, I know it's late, I just—"
"Are you drunk?"
"A little."
"Why are you calling?"
Good question.
Why was I calling?
"I don't know, I just... I needed to hear your voice."
"After seven months of silence, you needed to hear my voice?"
"Yes."
"That's selfish."
"I know."
More silence.
I could hear her breathing.
Could imagine her, sitting somewhere, her phone pressed to her ear, trying to decide whether to hang up or stay.
"How are you?" I asked.
"You don't get to ask me that."
"I know, I'm asking anyway."
She sighed.
"I'm fine, better, moved on with my life."
"Good."
"Is it? Good? Because you sound disappointed."
"I'm not disappointed, I'm just—"
"What? Lonely? Regretful? Finally realizing what you left behind?"
"All of it."
She went quiet.
When she spoke again, her voice was softer.
"What do you want from me?"
"I don't know."
"That's not good enough, you can't just call me drunk at midnight and not know what you want."
"I want to know if you think about me."
"That's not fair—"
"I know it's not fair, nothing about this is fair but I need to know."
(Silence... long... heavy.)
Then, she replied.. "Yes, I think about you, happy now?"
I closed my eyes.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because thinking about each other doesn't change anything, we're still in different places, living different lives and I don't know how to bridge that gap."
"You could come back."
"To what? To campus? To struggle? To being broke again?"
"To people who actually knew you, who cared about you when you had nothing."
"I can't go back, Zainab, I've come too far."
"Or you've gone too far, there's a difference."
I didn't respond, couldn't.
"You sound different," she said.
"How?"
"Tired, older, like the city took something from you."
"It did."
"What did it take?"
"I don't know, joy maybe, hope, the ability to feel things properly."
"That's sad."
"That's Lagos."
She was quiet again.
"I should go," she said.
"Wait—"
"What?"
"I'm sorry, for everything, for leaving the way I did, for not fighting, for choosing this over us."
"You're only sorry now because you're lonely, If you were happy, you wouldn't have called."
She was right.
"Maybe," I admitted.
"I can't be your cure for loneliness, I can't be the person you call when Lagos gets too hard, that's not fair to me."
"I know."
"So what do you want me to say? That I forgive you? That we can try again? That everything will be okay?"
"I just want to know if there's anything left. Between us."
"Left? You mean after you walked away? After you built a whole new life without me? After seven months of nothing?"
"Yes."
She laughed, sad laugh.
"You want honesty?"
"Please."
"There's something left, some feeling, some memory, some version of you I still care about but I don't know if that's enough, I don't know if caring from a distance is the same as loving up close."
"It's not."
"I know, so where does that leave us?"
"I don't know."
"You never know, that's your proble. You never know what you want until it's gone."
I heard voices in her background.
Someone calling her name.
"I have to go," she said.
"Okay."
"Don't call me like this again, not drunk and confused. Not unless you actually know what you want."
"And if I figure it out?"
"Then maybe we'll talk, but right now? Right now you're just hurting both of us."
She hung up.
I sat there.
Phone still pressed to my ear.
Listening to the dial tone.
Feeling worse than before I called.
I woke up Monday morning with a headache, not from the alcohol, but from the conversation, from the realization that I'd called her looking for comfort and only caused more pain.
I got ready for work.
Went through the motions, meetings, deadlines and emails.
Everyone asked if I was okay, I said yes.
Lied easily now.
Lunchtime, I sat alone in the office cafeteria, picked at rice I wasn't hungry for.
Bimpe sat across from me.
"You look terrible."
"Thanks."
"I'm serious, what happened?"
"Nothing, just tired."
"You're always tired, this is different."
I put down my fork.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"Do you ever regret it? The choices you made? The people you left behind?"
She thought about it.
"Every day, but regret doesn't change anything, It just sits there. Reminds you of roads not taken."
"How do you live with it?"
"You don't live with it, you live despite it. You wake up, you work, you try to build something new, and some days it works, ither days it doesn't."
"And the people you hurt?"
"You hope they're better off without you, you hope they found what they needed, you hope your absence made space for something good."
"You really believe that?"
"I have to, otherwise, what was it all for?"
She stood up.
"Whatever you're going through, don't let it destroy you. Lagos is already hard enough without adding self-destruction to the mix."
She left.
I sat there, in a cafeteria full of people, eating alone.
Thinking about Zainab's voice.
About the woman at the bar.
About Tayo and his expensive emptiness.
About everyone who'd warned me.
Everyone I'd ignored.
And I realized—
I wasn't alone in a crowd, I was alone despite the crowd. Surrounded by people but disconnected from all of them, present but absent, here but gone.
And the worst part?
I'd chosen this, every step, every decision.
Every time I picked money over connection.
Survival over softness.
Progress over presence.
I'd chosen this, and now I was living with the consequences in a city that didn't care, among people who didn't know me, carrying regrets I couldn't fix and missing someone I'd pushed away.
That evening, I didn't go home.
I walked around Lagos instead.
CMS, Obalende, Under the bridge.. lol.
Saw people hustling, selling, begging.. All of them alone together, all of them fighting invisible battles.
sigh... I wasn't special, I was just another person trying to make it, another face in the crowd, another story the city would forget.
I bought groundnuts from a woman, she was old, tired, smiled anyway.
"God bless you, sir."
I nodded.. kept walking.
And somewhere between the noise, the chaos and the endless movement, I realized something.
The city hadn't taken anything from me, I'd given it away, freely, willingly, piece by piece, until there was nothing left but efficiency and emptiness.
And now— now I didn't know how to get it back.
Or if I even could.