WE WERE TOLL WE WEREN'T.... NOW WE ARE

The bustling streets of Lagos Island had witnessed many love stories, but none quite like theirs. Adebayo and Omotola had grown up in the same neighborhood, attended the same secondary school, and shared the same dreams of escaping the crowded tenements of Lagos Island for something better. Yet for all their proximity, they remained strangers to their own hearts. She would catch him staring during assembly, his dark eyes lingering on her face as she sang the national anthem. He would notice how she tucked her hair behind her ear when nervous, the way her laugh carried across the school compound like music. But words remained trapped in their throats, locked away by teenage shyness and the fear of rejection. Years passed like Lagos traffic, slow and relentless. They dated other people, kissed other lips, but something always felt incomplete. Omotola would close her eyes during intimate moments, imagining it was Adebayo's hands that touched her face. Adebayo would find himself distracted, his mind wandering to memories of a girl who smiled like sunrise over the lagoon. When Adebayo announced his engagement to Funmi, a banker's daughter from Victoria Island, Omotola felt her world tilt on its axis. She sent him an email the night before his wedding, her fingers trembling as she typed words she'd never had the courage to speak aloud. But she never clicked send. Instead, she saved it in her drafts folder, another confession that would never see daylight. The marriage lasted two years and eight months. Not because Funmi wasn't beautiful or kind or intelligent, but because love cannot be forced into spaces where it doesn't belong. During their most intimate moments, Adebayo would close his eyes and see Omotola's face. The guilt ate at him like acid, and eventually, the marriage crumbled under the weight of his divided heart. Omotola had moved to Ibadan after university, working as a teacher and sending Adebayo emails he never responded to. She wrote about her day, about books she was reading, about how the red earth of Ibadan reminded her of his favorite shirt. She wrote about the men who pursued her and how she turned them all away, keeping a flame burning for someone who might never return. The emails came monthly at first, then weekly, then daily. Each one signed the same way: "Still waiting, still hoping. O." Adebayo never replied, but he read every single one. They became the soundtrack to his loneliness, the only authentic thing in a life that felt increasingly hollow. He would sit in his Victoria Island apartment, scrolling through her messages, feeling the distance between them stretch like an ocean. It was during another sleepless night that he finally opened the latest email. The subject line made his blood freeze: "Goodbye, my love. This is my last letter." His hands shook as he read her words. She wrote about the job she'd lost, the depression that had settled over her like a shroud, and how tired she was of waiting for a love that would never come home. She wrote about the bottle of pills she'd purchased and how peaceful she felt knowing the pain would finally end. "I kept myself for you," she wrote. "I kept my heart for you. I kept my dreams for you. But I can't keep living for someone who doesn't want me to." The email was timestamped three hours ago. Adebayo didn't pack a bag. He grabbed his car keys and drove through the night, his heart hammering against his ribs as Lagos gave way to forest, as familiar became foreign. He called every hotel in Ibadan, every hospital, every friend whose number he could remember. His phone battery died somewhere near Shagamu, but he kept driving, following an internal compass that pointed toward her. He found her address through her landlord, a kind woman who remembered the quiet teacher with sad eyes. The apartment was on the third floor of a faded yellow building, and Adebayo took the stairs three at a time, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He pounded on the door. "Omotola! Omotola, please!" Silence. He pressed his ear to the wood, straining to hear any sign of life. Then, faintly, the sound of crying. "Omotola, it's me. It's Bayo. Please open the door." The crying stopped. Footsteps. The click of locks being undone. When the door opened, she looked exactly as he remembered and completely different. Her face was thinner, her eyes red-rimmed and hollow. But when she saw him, something flickered there. Hope, perhaps, or disbelief. "You came," she whispered. "I came," he said, and reached for her hands. They were cold, so cold. "I'm sorry I'm late. I'm sorry it took me so long to be brave." She collapsed into his arms then, and he held her as she sobbed against his chest. Over her shoulder, he could see the empty pill bottle on the table, and beside it, a glass of water that remained untouched. "I couldn't do it," she whispered against his shirt. "I kept thinking, what if he comes? What if today is the day he finally comes home?" "I'm home now," he said, his voice breaking. "I'm home, and I'm not leaving again." They talked until sunrise painted the Ibadan sky pink and gold. They talked about the years of silence, about the loves they'd tried to force, about the emails that had kept them tethered across the distance. They talked about fear and faith and the terrible courage it takes to love someone completely. "I love you," Adebayo said as dawn broke over the city. "I've loved you since I was seventeen years old, and I'll love you until my last breath." Omotola smiled through her tears, the first real smile she'd worn in months. "I love you too," she said. "I've been waiting my whole life to say that to you." Outside, Ibadan was waking up. Hawkers called their wares, buses honked their horns, and life continued its relentless march forward. But inside that small apartment, two hearts that had wandered in circles for decades finally found their way home to each other. Love, Adebayo realized, wasn't about perfect timing or grand gestures. It was about showing up when it mattered most, about choosing each other again and again, even when the distance seemed impossible to cross. They had found each other just in time. Not a moment too soon, but exactly when they were ready to be brave enough to love without fear, to trust without reservation, to finally, finally come home. The emails stopped that day. There was no more need for words sent across the void. They had each other, at last, and that was more than enough.✨🧡💌

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