Tola drove home in silence.
The city outside her window blurred into streaks of gold and gray - Lagos had a way of matching her moods. Every traffic light felt like a moment to think, but she didn’t want to.

By the time she got home, she’d already convinced herself she was fine. She took off her earrings, poured water into a glass, opened her laptop… and then just stared at the screen.

Her phone buzzed.
Daniel: “You handled that so gracefully. Thank you.”

She typed, ‘No worries’, then deleted it. Typed again, ‘It was good seeing you’, then deleted that too.
Finally, she locked the screen and dropped the phone face-down.

Tola had spent months trying to be intentional — to mean what she said, to not lead with emotion, to choose peace over impulse. But tonight, peace felt fake.

She walked to the mirror, studying her own reflection - eyes sharp, lips pressed, posture perfect. You wanted friendship, she told herself. This is what it looks like.

Except it didn’t. Friendship wasn’t supposed to feel like swallowing glass.

She lay on her bed and opened her journal, the one she started after the first mistake — the one labeled “The Work.”
She flipped past old pages filled with affirmations and quotes, until she found the entry that mattered:

“I want love that grows in daylight, not shadows.”

It had sounded wise when she wrote it. Now, it sounded naïve. Because Daniel was daylight once - bright, steady, present - until the night blurred everything.

And yet, she couldn’t deny it: seeing him again had awakened something. Not longing, exactly - more like unfinished business.

Tola closed the journal, whispering to herself,

“Maybe being intentional means accepting when the heart still stumbles.”

“The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”
— Psalm 34:18 (ESV)

She turned off the light, but her thoughts didn’t rest. Somewhere between guilt and grace, she realized — this wasn’t the end of their story. Just the pause before something shifted again.

Across town, Daniel sat in his car outside Amaka’s apartment. The night was quiet except for the hum of the streetlights. He hadn’t planned to stay this long, but Amaka had a way of keeping him still — calm, confident, unbothered by his hesitations.

She leaned into the passenger window, smiling softly.
“You were distracted tonight,” she said. “You kept checking the door. Was it because of her?”

Daniel looked down at the steering wheel. “It wasn’t like that.”

Amaka tilted her head. “Then what was it like?”

He hesitated. The truth pressed against his throat - that seeing Tola again had stirred something he thought he’d buried; that friendship felt harder than distance; that guilt still lived in the spaces they didn’t talk about.

But instead, he said, “It’s complicated.”

Amaka smiled knowingly, but her tone sharpened just slightly.
“Just make sure you’re not trying to fix something that’s meant to stay broken.”

She kissed his cheek - brief, deliberate - and stepped out of the car. The door shut softly behind her.

Daniel watched her walk away, his phone lighting up on the dashboard. A message from Tola:

‘Thanks for coming today. I’m glad we can still talk.’

He stared at it for a long time, thumb hovering over the keyboard, then finally turned the screen off.

For a moment, he sat there — two names in his phone, two unfinished stories, one heart that hadn’t decided what it really wanted.

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
— Matthew 6:21 (NIV)