TWO SUGARS

MANDY

I don’t take sugar anymore.

I stopped three months ago, around the same time I stopped sleeping past five. Heartbreak is an excellent diet if you don’t mind crying in the shower.

He didn’t know that.

Good.

“Daniel,” I said.

“Mandy.”

“Amanda,” I corrected.

He smiled. “Mandy.”

He said it the old way, and he said it on purpose. Soft on the first syllable. Like the name belonged to him and he was only letting me borrow it.

He put the coffee on my desk, right on top of my spreadsheet, the way he always used to. I turned my phone over like I was checking the time, opened the voice recorder, pressed the red button, and turned it face down again.

Clause two. Full disclosure. Dami would want every word. Fine. He could have them.

“You can’t be here,” I said.

“It’s my office.”

“It was your office. Now it’s the office you abandoned with your name still on the door.”

He glanced at the door. At the gold foil. ‘Okorie & Cole Events.’

“You didn’t take it down.”

“Are you fucking serious?” I asked. “You took a loan in our business name. How the fuck am I supposed to change it without first clearing it, not to talk of all the paperwork, legalities and formalities involved? But you already knew that, didn’t you? You just wanted to rile me up. Imeela!”

He laughed. A real one, or a very good copy. Three years, and I couldn’t tell.

He sat down in the client chair without being asked and looked at his old desk. At the mug still sitting on it. ‘World’s Okayest Boss.’

“You kept my mug,” he said.

“I use it for pens.”

I did not use it for pens. It had sat exactly where he left it for ninety-four days. I had dusted around it. I am not proud of that.

……………….

“I came to explain,” he said.

“You had three months. And all you gave me were eleven words. Then you came here on Monday. That was you at the door, wasn’t it? And yesterday night?”

“Yes.” He leaned back, fingers smoothing invisible lines on his trousers without meeting my eyes. 

“I had come that Monday to apologise and call you out on your bullshit, because I knew there was no way in hell you were dating Egbon.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “But I froze when I heard it… Dami. No one calls him that and the way you said it.” 

He met my eyes. “That was how you used to call me. Danny. So I had to leave. Then I heard he cleared your loan. Egbon doesn’t give just like that. You must mean something to him for him to do that, unless…”

“Unless what?”

He smiled and I hated myself for being so curious.

“Unless he’s just using you. I know what he told you. He investigates everyone. I assumed he’d hand you my file with your loan.” He held my gaze. “Somadina. You can say it. It’s still my name.”

I paled.

I had rehearsed using that name against him. The pause, the look, his face falling.

He’d taken it off the table before I could even pick it up.

He took a brown envelope from his back pocket and laid it beside the coffee.

“Your registry papers. You did ask so nicely.” He tapped it. “Birth certificate. National ID. Daniel Cole, born in Enugu, 1994. All very official.”

“You just told me that isn’t your name.”

“For you, it isn’t.” He smiled. “For the government, it is.”

“Then why did you leave?” I said. It came out smaller than I wanted.

“When my father died, Ezenwa Haulage died owing people. Not banks. People. The kind who don’t send letters.” His voice dropped. “Two years ago, they found me. I took a loan against Okorie & Cole to pay them. I didn’t tell you. I thought I could pay it back before you noticed.”

“The First Meridian loan.”

“It wasn’t enough. They came back for more. If I stayed, they would have come for you. For the business. For your dad.” He looked at the floor. “So I ran, and I made sure they saw me run. I was ashamed, Mandy. I couldn’t tell you I’d put your name on my father’s debts.”

“That’s what I meant at the tasting.” He looked up. “Everything I did, I did for you.”

“And Tiwa?” I said. “A year of Tiwa. Was that for me too?”

“Tiwa was the way out.” He said it gently, like I was slow. “For both of us.”

For one second, it worked.

One second where the tired, stupid part of me that still checked my phone at 2:14 a.m. sat up and said ‘see, there was a reason’.

Then the rest of me remembered a boy on a courthouse step. Four transfers out of a trust. A history that started the year he met me. A man who said he was hiding from lenders, and had spent that same year being seen all over Lagos with an heiress. And the part of me that knows exactly what a man sounds like when he swears the venue will be ready on time said ‘no’.

My phone buzzed against the desk.

I picked it up like it was a client. Daniel didn’t even glance at it.

‘Believe him’, Dami had written. ‘Let him think he’s winning.’

So I did the hardest thing I have ever done in that office.

I let my eyes fill.

“You should have told me,” I said, and I let my voice crack on ‘told’. It wasn’t difficult. That was the frightening part. Or not so frightening, because for months I’d had to go on without knowing anything. Months of carrying the shame and pain. I wasn’t faking any of it.

“I know.” He reached across the desk, and I let his fingers touch mine. Just the tips. “I’m marrying Tiwa for the money. That’s the truth. I’m not proud of it. Once it’s done, I pay everybody. I pay you back, every kobo. And then…”

“And then?”

“And then us.” He said it like a vow. “I still love you.”

The fan creaked. Downstairs, the phone man was playing Yemi Alade and Rudeboy’s “Deceive”, low for once but on point.

I withdrew my hands. “I like Tiwa. I can’t let you do that to her.”

“That’s because you don’t know her. Underneath all that sham of kindness, she’s not as sweet as you think. I don’t love her.”

“You don’t get to say that,” I said. “Not with that ring on her finger.”

I wanted to throw the coffee at him. Instead I pressed my palms into my lap, running them over my skirt to stop them from shaking. I made sure he saw, though, and I let him watch me bow my head and sob. 

Somewhere across Lagos, Dami was watching too.

I hoped he was taking notes. I hoped they weren’t in red.

……………….

He stood. Straightened his cuffs. The watch caught the light. New. Swiss. Paid for by someone who wasn’t him.

“Don’t believe Egbon, Mandy,” he said softly. “The Ajayi-Williams don’t just give, they take. And when they do, you’ll wish you hadn’t met them.”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Just be careful.”

“After you, I had to be.”

He smiled. Not the warm one. The other one.

“Good. At least I taught you something.”

He walked toward the door, then paused by his old desk. He rested one finger on the mug and turned it, very slowly, so the words faced the window.

“Did you change the locks?” he asked lightly.

“Tomorrow.”

He smiled at that. Just a little. Like I’d told him the weather.

“You always were organised,” he said. “Except when you were being dramatic.”

“I am not dramatic.”

“Hot tub, remember?” he said, and winked.

Then he opened the door.

I let out a breath. My hand was already moving toward my phone to stop the recording.

He turned back.

“Oh. And Mandy?”

I froze.

He nodded toward the window. Toward the snake plant. Toward the little black box I had tucked between its leaves with my own hands not two hours ago.

“Tell your boyfriend the camera in your plant is crooked.”

He let that sit. He always did know how to let things sit.

“Come to my house next Friday,” he said. “Lekki. I’ll cook your father’s ofe onugbu. No cameras there.”

He smiled.

“Just us. I’ll tell you the rest, Mandy. Why it had to be her.”