Na-bee-la
“Nabila, beat of my blood… hum of my heart. My, uh, calm, my chaos. Na-bee-la: the tongue tapping the roof to start… then a collision of the lips at two… to, um, unspool into…”
“What exactly are you saying and doing with your face?” Nabila asked. Her coffee cup hovered just below her chin, her expression an even split between genuine confusion and mild concern.
“I was trying to do that thing,” I admitted, the heat rising in my neck. “The opening paragraph of the novel Lolita. The narrator breaks down the syllables of the girl's name, talking about how the tongue takes a trip down the palate to tap on the teeth. I was trying to do it on the fly.”
“So, let me get this straight,” she said, her voice dangerously calm. “You were trying to introduce me using the internal monologue of a famous literary pedophile?”
“Not the creepy part!” I backpedaled. “Just the linguistic part! The prose is considered a masterpiece.”
“There is no separating the prose from the creepiness,” she said, setting her cup down on her bedside table with a definitive clink. “People who haven't read the book always think it’s some edgy, forbidden romance. They see the heart-shaped sunglasses from the old movie posters and think it's just an aesthetic. But at its core, it's a story about a grown man pushing forty who grooms and steals a twelve-year-old child.”
“I know,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “It’s wild how culturally sanitized it became for so long.”
“Because the abuser is the one telling the story,” she pointed out, while sitting up straight on her bed. “He dresses up his predation in pretty, hypnotic words so the reader gets swept up and forgets what he's actually doing. All that beautiful wordplay like the one you just butchered is a trap. He's just romanticizing his crimes.”
She took a slow sip of her coffee, her eyes never leaving mine.
“Which, for the record, makes it a terrible way to set the mood.”
"I feel you," I said, letting a smile break through my lingering embarrassment. "But for the record, if I really wanted to set the mood, I wouldn’t need to borrow lines from a dead author."
"Oh?" Nabila raised an eyebrow, leaning back on the countless pillows lined up against the headboard of her bed. "What would you do then?"
"I'd probably just tell the truth. I'd point out that you get this tiny crease right between your eyebrows when you're defending something you care about. And I'd tell you I've been looking forward to lying across from you again since the second we said goodbye on Tuesday."
The defensive posture she’d held during our book debate just melted away. She looked down at her duvet, a soft, genuine smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. The silence between us suddenly shifted. It wasn't a debate anymore. It was just quiet, charged, and focused entirely on each other.
"You are surprisingly smooth for twenty-seven," she murmured, glancing back up at me. "I don't think I've ever been with a younger guy before."
"It's two years, Nabila. It barely counts."
"Two years is a lot when you're a Nigerian woman staring down thirty," she laughed softly, tracing a loose thread on the blanket. "I spent my whole twenties swearing I was immune to the pressure. The aunties asking 'when is your turn?' at every traditional wedding and family gatherings, the quiet pity from married friends. I really thought I had freed myself from all that society nonsense. Instead, I’m sitting here in my tiny apartment feeling guilty about getting actual butterflies because a guy two years my junior is flirting with me with bad wordplay.”
"Hey, the wordplay was top-tier," I joked, reaching across the pillow between us to grab her. I let my fingers brush against the inside of her thighs. "The delivery was just flawed."
She didn't pull away. If anything, she leaned into the touch just a fraction, her eyes locked on mine.
"Flawed delivery or not," she said quietly. "It's working."
“Okay…. I’m not going to pretend you didn’t just say you’re feeling guilty.”
She looked up, her guard completely down. "Guilty for being here with a man I could never end up with."
The words dropped between us, heavy and sharp. I felt a sudden shift in my chest and stopped smiling.
Nabila caught my reaction and immediately panicked. "Wait, no. That came out wrong. I didn't mean it like that. I'm not just fooling around with you." She paused, searching for a quick way out of the corner she'd painted herself into. "It's just... you're twenty-seven. You don't exactly look like a guy ready to go pay a bride price and settle down anyway. You might just be the one fooling around with me."
"So because I'm not rushing to carry wine to your family, I'm just a placeholder?" I asked, keeping my voice level.
"That's not what I said."
"You said you could never end up with me. So what exactly are we doing here, Nabila? Is this just sex to you? A distraction until a guy with the right age bracket comes along?"
She let out a frustrated breath, dropping her face into her hands for a second before looking back at me. Her eyes were bright, defensive, but completely honest.
"You know it's not just sex," she said quietly. "If it was just sex, I wouldn't be sitting here terrified. I wouldn't be overthinking the age gap, and I definitely wouldn't be getting butterflies over your terrible wordplay."
I let the silence hang between us for a moment. The hum of the AC suddenly felt very loud. I looked at her, at the absolute vulnerability pooling in her eyes, and decided right then to match her honesty. No more wordplay. No more smooth lines.
"You're right," I said, keeping my voice steady. "We aren't going to end up together."
She flinched slightly, dropping her gaze, but I kept going.
"I'm not going to lie to you, Nabila. When this started, I was just exploring. The idea of being with an older woman was intriguing. But you're right about the endgame. And it's not because I don't want you. It's because I know you. You've fought hard to be this independent woman, but the conditioning is still there. You are a Nigerian woman at heart, and you could never bring yourself to fully submit to a man you are older than. The cultural math would never add up in your head. The respect dynamic would always feel off to you."
She opened her mouth to argue, to defend herself, but nothing came out. She just stared at me, her defenses stripped completely bare.
"But just because it doesn't end with me paying your bride price doesn't mean it isn't real," I told her. I leaned forward, closing the space until I was just inches away. "What we have right now is pure. I want to fully enjoy this. I want the late nights, the arguments over books, the butterflies. All of it."
I held her gaze, offering her the cleanest exit she would ever get.
"If that's not enough for you, or if the guilt is too much, tell me to leave. I will walk out of your apartment right now, and I will perfectly understand."
The room went completely still. I watched the conflict play out on her face and the sensible, almost-thirty woman fighting against the girl sitting on the mattress. But I already knew her answer. She could talk about societal expectations and the fear of age all she wanted. Deep down, beneath all that armor, she was an absolute sucker for love shaped exactly like this. Messy, honest, and completely ours.
She let out a shaky breath, her eyes searching mine for a long second. Then she reached across the duvet, grabbing the front of my shirt, and pulled me in.