“We’re all girls here,” she laughs. “Now eat up. Paid forty-five quid for this.”
I force a laugh and pick up my brownie, my intestines knotting, as though I’m really having menstrual cramps. I don’t think Aunty Debbie has told Ola about my nonexistent promotion. Or that things didn’t work out with Alex. I chew miserably.
Right. As soon as the rest go home, I’m just going to tell Ola and Rachel the truth.
“So, who’s next?” says Jasmine. She has been prying into everyone’s love life for the last hour. And now she’s started this stupid conversation about when everyone first met their other half.
Jasmine surveys the table. “How about you?” she says, nodding to Ola. “I see a ring on your finger. How did you and your husband meet?” She obviously only thinks hetero relationships count.
Ola picks up her teacup and blows over the rising steam. “At uni,” she says.
“Oh, how sweet,” says another girl called Gemma after Ola fails to elaborate.
“Very,” Jasmine agrees. “So, how did he propose?” She bats her long lashes.
Ola has her hands clasped around her cup, still blowing over her tea.
I wonder what she’s going to say. It’s not like her and Jon got married after years of being uni sweethearts. They got married because their parents believed it was the right thing for them to do. So there was no proposal. No engagement. No big wedding—well, at least not by Nigerian standards.
“Well, it wasn’t as fancy as yours,” she says eventually.
I take a sip of my lukewarm tea.
“But it was perfect. Jon took me out for a picnic and hid the ring in a cake.”
“Ohmigod, that is so sweet,” cries Jasmine over a chorus of “aww’s.” “Sorry, excuse the pun.” She cackles.
I squint at Ola, who seems quietly pleased with the table’s reaction.
“I didn’t know this,” says Nana. She is sitting to my right and can clearly read my mind.
Ola shrugs. “Well, now you do. Okay, that’s me done. Gemma?”
While Gemma recites how she met her husband, I take fleeting glances at Ola. Did she—did she just make that up? It’s common knowledge that Ola and Jon didn’t have a traditional engagement.
“And how about you?” says Jasmine, tilting her head toward me.
I blink as though I’ve been caught sleeping while on the job. “How about meee . . . ?”
“Are you in a relationship?” she clarifies, her eyes sparkling with curiosity.
“Not yet,” I say abruptly, followed by Nana, who quickly says, “Neither am I.”
“What about Alex?”
I stare back at Ola. She knows. Dammit. Aunty Debbie has only gone and told her.
“Are you guys still taking things slow?” she says, raising her pinkie as she brings her tea to her lips. From the corner of my eye, I can see Nana watching me.
“Ooh. Who’s Alex?” Jasmine gushes.
I sigh. “Things didn’t work out.” And as casually as I can, I shove a large piece of the brownie into my mouth before dusting my fingers.
“No!” Ola looks genuinely shocked.
Okaaay. Maybe she didn’t know.
“He likes someone else,” I say to Ola, ignoring Jasmine’s whiny cries to be looped in. “So you can go ahead and say, ‘I told you so.’?”
“I wouldn’t do that,” says Ola with an empathetic expression, and I search her face for an inkling of a smirk. “I had my suspicions about you and Alex, yes—” She breaks off, as though knowing this line of thought wouldn’t be helpful right now. “But at the end of the day, there’s no shame. We’ve all been there before.”
I hear Rachel cackling in the background as she takes multiple selfies with her friends. Ola gives me a tiny smile. It sends a warm feeling through me. Of course Ola would be understanding. She went through something similar. Granted, what Rachel told me about her and Jon happened years ago. But still, she can relate.
“When did you find out?” she asks. I’m so touched by Ola’s kindness that I think, Sod it. I might as well tell her everything.
“I actually found out on Valentine’s Day,” I admit.
“He broke your heart on Valentine’s Day?!” An overdramatic Jasmine blinks at me, aghast.
“But I thought—” Ola’s brows knead together in confusion.
“So did he say who he liked?” Funny that this question comes from Jasmine. The girl who knows nothing about anyone in this scenario.
I turn to Nana, who seems pretty preoccupied in straightening her utensils right now.
“Yinka, you don’t have to say who it is,” she says. But it’s too late.
“Nana?” Ola’s compassion morphs into shock. She’s wearing the same expression that I probably had when I sat across from Alex all those weeks ago. “You mean Nana? Our Nana?”
“Yes, me.” Nana breathes out, and Jasmine says, “What the fuck?”
“How? When?” Ola can’t even get her words out. She tries again. “Okay, start from the beginning. When did Alex and Nana meet?”
“Like I said, it was on Valentine’s Day.” I turn to Nana, and she glances down like she’s embarrassed. “Nana popped into the kitchen briefly while Alex and I were having lunch—”
“Hold up. This doesn’t make any sense.” Ola pushes her chair back. She places both hands on her temples. “What about what you told me and Rachel? You know, that evening we were at the bridal shop.”
“Eh? I heard my name.” Rachel stops taking selfies and sits up. “What about me? What happened at the bridal shop?”
“Don’t you remember?” says Ola while the fifteen women in the room stare at me, my insides tangling like headphone wire. “You said that Alex saw you as wifey material, that he couldn’t believe you were single but because his sister had recently passed, you guys were going to take things slow. Was that all a lie?”
“No!” I say louder than I intend to. “Why would I lie about his sister passing? But the other bits . . .” I breathe out, irritated with myself. “I might have exaggerated. Well, no, I lied. The truth is . . . he sees me as nothing more than a friend. After he met Nana, he actually asked me to set him up with her—”
“But I’m not interested so that’s the end of that,” Nana jumps in before I can finish and further embarrass myself.
Ola’s mouth falls and to dramatize her shock, she looks side to side. “Wow,” she says, as though she’s out of breath. “I didn’t see that coming. So do you mean to tell me, yeah”—she covers her mouth, and to my surprise, her shoulders begin to bop—“that Alex fell for Nana?” In hysterics, she reaches for a napkin, her eyes welling.
“Okay, let’s just drop the entire conversation,” says Nana.
But Ola is rocking back and forth like a neighing horse. Meanwhile Rachel, clearly having a delayed reaction, says, “Wait. So Alex likes Nana?”
“I’m sorry.” Ola dabs the pointy end of her napkin against her lower lash line. She bites her lip, only for a bubble of laughter to burst out of her again. “Come on, you have to admit,” she says between splutters. “This is friggin’ hilarious. And you made all that food!” Tears are leaking now. “Sorry, Yinka. But I can’t. I can’t.”
I watch Ola laugh away, and my body heats up like an iron. I’m aware that Nana’s calling for Ola to stop, but all around me goes black, my blinkers on Ola.
I can’t believe she’s laughing at me. At my heartbreak. At my pain. Just because Alex and I were never together, doesn’t mean my feelings don’t count. I thought that of all people, Ola would understand. I thought she would understand because she had been cut in the same way.
“Fuck you, Ola.”
Like bullets, my words fly out.
“Excuse me?”
“She didn’t mean that.” Nana puts a hand on my shoulder.
“How dare you?” I spit, and there’s a scraping sound as Rachel pushes back her chair and rushes over. “How dare you sit there and laugh at me?”
Ola, still finding the situation funny, pulls one of those faces that commuters exchange on the Tube when someone gets a bit prickly. “Okay, calm down. No need to make a scene. And don’t speak to me like that. Who do you think you’re talking to?”
“You’re such a bitter person.”