I called Kunle Tuesday night.
"I need to come back," I said.
"To campus?"
"Just to visit, this weekend."
"What happened?"
"Nothing, everything, omor I don't know.. I just need to see it again."
He was quiet for a moment.
"You know it won't be the same, right?"
"I know."
"People have moved on, things have changed."
"I know that too."
"So why come back?"
Good question.
"Because I need to know if I made a mistake, or if I'm just romanticizing what I left behind."
"And you think one weekend will tell you that?"
"I think staying here without knowing will kill me slowly."
He sighed.
"Okay, come but don't expect answers, sometimes you just get more questions."
I told my supervisor I needed Friday off.
Family emergency.
She didn't ask questions, just approved it.
Thursday after work, I packed a small bag. I'd be staying for two days, maybe three, just enough to remember, not enough to stay.
Friday morning, I took a bus.. three hours back.
The city shrinking behind me, the campus seems like it's growing closer.
My chest tight the whole way.
I got there around noon. The campus gates looked smaller than I remembered, the buildings more worn, the students looked younger or maybe I was just older.
I walked through campus, past the faculty blocks, past the library where I used to hide, past the cafeteria where I used to count coins.
Everything looked familiar and distant, like visiting a memory.
Kunle met me at the lodge, our old room.
He'd gotten a new roommate, some guy I didn't know. The room looked the same but felt different, my old bed had someone else's things on it.
"How's Lagos?" Kunle asked.
"Exactly how everyone said it would be."
"And how's that?"
"Successful and empty."
We sat outside.
Bought drinks from the woman who still sold at the junction, she remembered me.
"Ah! Big man! You don come back?"
"Just visiting, ma."
"You don blow?"
"Not yet."
"But you will, I dey pray for you."
I thanked her.
Kunle and I drank in silence.
"Tunde still around?" I asked.
"Yeah, he's in his final year, again. He's writing project now, or supposed to be."
"And—"
"She's around, saw her yesterday, she knows you're coming."
"How?"
"I told her."
"Why would you do that?"
"Because she asked and I'm not going to lie to her just to protect you."
Fair.
"Does she want to see me?"
"I don't know, she didn't say."
We finished our drinks.
"You want to go find her?" Kunle asked.
"No, not yet."
"Then what do you want to do?"
"I don't know, just sit here and remember what it felt like before everything got complicated."
"Everything was always complicated, you just didn't see it yet."
That night, we went to the usual spot, a small bar off campus... they sell cheap drinks.. always on loud music.
Tunde was there, he saw me and smiled.
"The prodigal son returns."
We hugged.
He looked the same, maybe more tired.
"Lagos treating you well?" he asked.
"Depends on the day."
"Don't they all."
We bought beer, and sat in our old corner.
"You still with that writing job?" Tunde asked.
"Yeahhh, got promoted last month."
"Money good?"
"Better than here."
"Then why do you look miserable?"
I didn't answer.
He nodded like I'd confirmed something.
"That's what I thought, money doesn't fix everything."
"Says the guy who's still broke."
"Exactly, I'm broke and miserable.. but you? You're paid and miserable, atleast I have an excuse."
We laughed, a very bitter laugh.
"You heard from Amaka?" I asked.
"No, we haven't spoken since the wedding. Don't plan to."
"You over it?"
"Over her? Yeah, iver what could have been? No, that stays with you."
"How do you live with it?"
"You just do, you wake up, you keep moving, you accept that some things don't work out and you try not to think about it too much."
"Does that work?"
"Sometimes, other times you end up at bars drinking cheap beer and lying to yourself."
More students came in, loud, happy and carefree.
We watched them.
"They don't know yet," Tunde said.
"Know what?"
"How hard it gets, how fast things fall apart, how little control we actually have."
"Should we warn them?"
"What's the point? They'll learn. We all do."
Around midnight, Kunle leaned over.
"She's here."
I looked up.. I saw her, across the bar with some friends.
She saw me, our eyes met.. everything stopped..
She looked good, yeaahhhh,tooo good, healthier than last time I saw her... her hair was different, smiling cautiously.
She said something to her friends, and started walking over.
My heart was in my throat.
She stopped in front of our table.
"Hi."
"Hi."
Kunle and Tunde suddenly found reasons to leave.
"We'll get more drinks," Kunle said.
They disappeared.
Zainab sat down.
We stared at each other.
"You came back," she said.
"Just for the weekend."
"Kunle told me."
"Yeah."
Silence.
The music was loud but we heard it like it was far away.
"How are you?" I asked.
"I'm okay, you?"
"Surviving."
"That's all any of us are doing."
She ordered a drink, sipped it slowly.
"Why did you come back?" she asked.
"I don't know, needed to see if I made a mistake."
"And?"
"Still don't know."
She almost smiled.
"You never know, that's your specialty."
"I know some things."
"Like what?"
"Like I hurt you, like I was wrong, like leaving the way I did was cowardly."
"Took you seven months to figure that out?"
"Took me seven months to admit it."
She looked at her drink.
"You called me drunk, two weeks ago."
"I know, I'm sorry—"
"Don't apologize, I'm glad you did coz it told me everything I needed to know."
"What did it tell you?"
"That you're not happy, that Lagos didn't fix you, that running didn't work."
"It worked financially—"
"But not emotionally, not spiritually, not in any way that actually matters."
I didn't argue, couldn't.
"Can I tell you something?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"I was angry at you, for months, furious really. I'd see couples and think about us, what we could have been. I blamed you for everything."
"You should have—"
"Let me finish, I was angry but then I realized something. You didn't just hurt me, you hurt yourself, you chose survival over living and that's a different kind of pain. One you have to carry alone."
"I'm fine—"
"You're not, I can see it, everyone can see it. You're successful and miserable and that's almost worse than being broke and hopeful."
The music changed, it was slower now. Couples started dancing.
We just sat.
"Do you ever think about it?" I asked. "About us?"
"Every day."
"And?"
"And I realize we weren't ready. You weren't ready, maybe I wasn't either. We wanted different things or we wanted the same things but weren't willing to fight for them together."
"If I'd stayed—"
"Don't, don't do the what-ifs. They'll destroy you, I know, I've spent months trapped in them."
"So what now?"
She looked at me.
Really looked.
"Now you go back to Lagos. You live your life, you build your career and maybe, eventually, you figure out how to be happy, really happy, not just comfortable."
"And us?"
"There is no us, not anymore, not like before."
"But—"
"But what? You think you can come back for a weekend and we'll fix seven months of silence? Seven months of you choosing yourself over anything else?"
"I don't know what I thought—"
"Exactly, you don't know, and until you do—until you actually know what you want, who you are, what matters to you—you can't be with anyone... Including me."
She stood up.
"Where are you going?"
"Home, I have an early class tomorrow."
"Can I walk you?"
She hesitated.
"Okay."
We walked in silence.
Campus was quiet now, just a few students scattered around.
Night guards, street vendors packing up.
"It's smaller than I remembered," I said.
"Or you've gotten bigger."
"I don't feel bigger, I feel lost."
"That's growth, realizing how much you don't know."
We got to her street, stood under the streetlight.
"I miss you," I said.
"I know."
"Do you miss me?"
"Parts of you, the parts that were real, before Lagos before survival became your only personality."
"I'm still in here somewhere."
"Then find him, because this version—this closed-off, guarded, mechanical version—he's not someone I can love."
"You loved me before—"
"I loved who you were not who you're becoming."
That hurt more than anything else she'd said.
"Is there any chance?" I asked. "For us?"
She thought about it.
Long moment.
"I don't know, maybe.. If you figure yourself out, If you learn to be vulnerable again, If you stop running."
"And if I don't?"
"Then you'll be successful, comfortable, alone, just like you chose."
She turned to leave.
I grabbed her hand, gently.. she stopped and turned back.
"I loved you," I said. "I still do, I just didn't know how to hold onto you and survive at the same time."
Tears formed in her eyes.
"That's the saddest thing you've ever said, because love shouldn't be separate from survival, It should be part of it."
She pulled her hand away.
"Goodbye."
"Zainab—"
"Let me go, please, ust let me go."
I did.
Watched her walk away, again.
This time without calling her back, coz she was right about everything, I didn't know what I wanted.. didn't know who I was, didn't know how to stop running.
And until I figured that out—
I had nothing to offer, not to her, not to anyone, not even to myself.
I walked back to the lodge alone.
Kunle was still awake.
"How'd it go?"
"She's done with me."
"For good?"
"I don't know, maybe, probably."
"You okay?"
"No, but I will be, eventually."
I lay on Kunle's roommate's bed, he was gone for the weekend.
Stared at the ceiling.
"Kunle?"
"Yeah?"
"Was it worth it? Leaving?"
"Only you can answer that."
"I don't know the answer."
"Then you're asking the wrong question."
"What's the right question?"
"Not was it worth it, but what are you going to do now?"
I closed my eyes.
What was I going to do now?
Go back to Lagos? Back to work?
Back to the empty apartment?
Back to surviving?
But now I knew the truth, the truth I'd been avoiding for seven months.
Survival wasn't enough, money wasn't enough, success wasn't enough, none of it meant anything If you had no one to share it with. No one who knew you before you became this, no one who loved you despite everything. And I'd traded all of that for a salary, for comfort, for survival.
The truth was simple, brutal, undeniable.
I'd won, and I'd lost.
And I didn't know how to live with both.