Written by Idayat Jinadu
Adejare whispered to Oribamise as she lay on his mattress beside him, “I don’t know what I would do without you.” She wasn’t looking at him; her gaze was fixed on the OX ceiling fan, which spun noisily but no longer distracted her. Her naked body was sticky with the perspiration left from the lovemaking she had shared with Oribamise an hour before. She twitched continuously on the mattress, trying to find a comfortable spot, but the mattress felt the same.
“Oribamise,” she muttered under her breath.
“Oribamise,” she murmured.
“Oribamise,” she whispered.
She slowly removed her gaze from the fan’s lively blades and cast it on Oribamise, who lay beside her. His eyes were closed. His nostrils flared like a balloon a child was trying to blow. His eyelashes were still, his eyebrows, full and black. She turned to her side to watch him, raised her index finger, slowly traced it along his right eyebrow, and smiled. She turned her gaze down and monitored the rhythmic rise and fall of his stomach. She wondered if he was dreaming and if his dream had her in it. He was always in hers. The night before she came over to his place, she had dreamt she was sitting on a fence with amoeba sketched on its side. He sat beside her, his arm across her shoulders. She rested her head on his chest and she heard his heartbeat meowing like a cat. Amidst the wonderment and slight apprehension of why she was hearing a cat meowing in his chest, she woke up to find her cat, Annalise Kitten, on her chest, meowing.
In the room, Oribamise’s eyes twitched, and for a second, Adejare thought he would wake up, but the twitching stopped. He has such a beautiful face, Adejare thought. I want to always kiss him. I like how I feel when I’m with him. It doesn’t matter that he barely talks about himself; he will eventually open up to me. We only started talking three weeks ago, which is a short time to determine someone’s genuine feelings. Things like this take time, Adejare convinced herself. It doesn’t matter that he didn’t even cuddle her after they made love; he was just tired.
Adejare felt the pinch of her bladder and rolled away from Oribamise’s side. She sat up, used her feet to drag her slippers from underneath the bed, wore them, and stood up to walk to the bathroom. Inside, she bent over the toilet, careful to not sit on it, and closed her eyes. She felt the urine gush out of her urethra and imagined it drowning and flushing the germs that might have latched onto her urinary tract. Slowly, the fervour of the urine dwindled to nothing. She stood straight, flushed the toilet, and turned on the tap by the sink to get water to wash herself, but the tap only gurgled. She hissed and looked up at the mirror above it. Her face looked back at her. She caught sight of toilet paper behind the mirror and took enough to relieve herself of the inconvenience of the urine sliding down her thighs. She threw the soggy tissue into the toilet and remembered there was no water. She watched as the tissue drowned. She looked up at the mirror and concentrated on her face. She affirmed to herself how beautiful she was: her round eyes, her shiny forehead, her full lips, and the scattering of old acne scars on her cheeks.
Most people wanted their acne scars gone, but Adejare loved hers. She thought they added distinct markings to her identity. If she got into a ghastly accident that left her unrecognisable, the acne scars would be a way for her family to identify her. She could see her mother nodding, yes, this is my daughter, in between wails as the doctor showed her pieces of Adejare’s cheeks with the acne scars.
Adejare sighed. She allowed this thought to spend its time in her mind; like that, it would leave as it came.
Adejare heard Oribamise move in the room. She opened the tap in a forgetful spell, heard the familiar empty gurgle, hissed, and walked away. In the room, she said to Oribamise,
“You are awake.”
“Yes, I am. It is a miracle I could sleep in this heat,” Oribamise said while using his palm to blow air on himself, a futile attempt to cool down. He hissed in frustration and looked up at Adejare.
“Were you able to sleep?” he asked.
“Yes, but briefly. The heat woke me up too.” Adejare sat on the bed and faced Oribamise. “I had a funny dream while I slept last night.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Do you want to hear?”
“If you want to tell me.”
“But do you want me to tell you?”
“Yes, Deja, I want you to tell me.”
“Okay. In the dream, I was listening to your heartbeat and it was meowing,” Adejare laughed incompletely as she looked at Oribamise’s drawn face and struggled to continue. “I woke up and it turned out that my cat was on my face and meowing, probably why I was hearing your heart meow,” she finished the laughter.
“Interesting” was all Oribamise had to say.
Adejare became silent. She listened to the OX fan and muttered to herself that her dream should have garnered more than a mere note of interest from a man she had feelings for and was intimate with. Adejare had come to detest the word “interesting” since she started talking to Oribamise. She cherished her anger for the word. Whenever it was from Oribamise, it felt bland and dismissive. Songs are interesting, Adejare thought in the heat; movies are interesting, buildings are interesting, and that is all these things have to be.
So, if I were placed beside a building, would there be no difference between myself and the building in Oribamise’s eyes? Am I not better than a great movie? A great song walks hand in hand with me, and nobody thinks it strange because we are both interesting? Adejare brooded.
She had been deluding herself into thinking she was connected with Oribamise, but what if it was just a shallow familiarity?
Adejare looked at Oribamise, who was not looking at her. He lay on his mattress, staring out the window as if summoning air.
Adejare tried again.
“There is no water, even though there is light.”
It took him about 15 seconds, which felt like an hour in the heat, to respond.
“I don’t know” was all he spat out, annoyance in his voice.
Maybe it is the heat, Adejare thought.
Oribamise stood up, went past her, and entered the bathroom barefoot. She heard him urinating, and as he did, she put on her clothes: her panties first, then her jeans, and her bra was flung on irritably. She put her top on backward, hissed at the error, and wore it again. As she removed her bag from the arm of the chair where she had hung it when Oribamise had held her by the waist and kissed her upon her arrival, he came out of the bathroom, still barefoot. This irritated Adejare. It was a clear lack of consideration. He entered his bathroom, which had no foot mat or rag to clean his feet, without slippers. He would lie on his mattress with the same feet; the same mattress he would expect Adejare to lie on. The love of her life would not be so thoughtless, she resolved.
“You are leaving?” Oribamise asked Adejare when he came out to see her fully dressed.
“Yes.”
“I thought you were staying the night and leaving tomorrow?”
On your bathroom-bacteria-infested bed? No.
“Oh no, I have to go today. I will call you.”
“Okay,” Oribamise said and went over to hug Adejare.
“I am sorry for the way I acted earlier. It was the heat; it was almost unbearable. Mabinu, shogbo?”
Adejare smiled a little.
“Oh, I understand. I wasn’t really bothered by it.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Will you stay then?”
“No, no, I have to go.”
“Okay, let me wear my clothes and see you off.”
“No wahala.”
Adejare sat on the chair and watched him put on his clothes. She must get over him in three working days.
About the Author:
Idayat Jinadu is a brand strategist and PhD student working on the culture of waste disposal and its effect on environmental security for her dissertation. She is inspired by impact and wants to create things that matter for people who need them to be free, liberated, and who they truly want to be. She is on the writing track for the 2025 Adventures Creators Programme.
