TDoCAJ 1: 0.1

“…so she's standing there with the gele on her head and nothing else," Dedi was saying, "and she has the nerve to tell the photographer she wasn't ready."

Fade made the sound she always made when she was trying not to laugh and losing, a kind of pressurized exhale, like she was holding back a sneeze. "Dedi, that's somebody's auntie."

"Somebody's naked auntie."

Kiiti smothered her laugh with the back of her hand. Across the table, Mike shot her a look.

She mouthed sorry and pointed at her phone, which he received with the expression of a world-weary man who had long resigned to his fate.

"Okay, I have to go," she said into the phone. "Mike is legit about to start actually hating me."

"He already hates you," Dedi said. "You don't plan weddings. What exactly do you bring to this partnership again?"

"Character. Vision. Looks."

"Mm." A pause that meant Dedi disagreed but couldn't be bothered to argue it. "Call us when you've picked up Tiise. I want to speak to my baby."

"Your baby will be too tired after all that swimming. He won't want to speak to you."

"He'll want to speak to me."

He absolutely would, Kiiti thought, but she wasn't giving Dedi the satisfaction.

"Bye, Fade."

"Bye, love." Fade's voice, warm and unhurried, was the same whether she was saying hello or talking Dedi, or every now and then, Kiiti, off a ledge. "Don't be too mean to Mike."

"I'm never mean."

Dedi cackled with no restraint and Kiiti hung up before she could get the last word.

Mike had stopped sketching by the time she set her phone down.

He was looking at the layout in front of him, a sprawling pencil map of a reception space she didn't recognize yet, with the particular focus he deployed when he was working very hard not to say something. She'd learned to read the difference between Mike thinking and Mike waiting years ago. This was waiting.

She pulled her chair closer and looked at the sketch. It was good. It was always good. He had an instinct for scale that she'd never fully been able to articulate to clients, the way he understood that a room wasn't just an empty space but a sequence of moments people would move through without noticing. She'd told him once that he should have been an architect. He'd retorted he'd consider it if she started planning weddings.

"The Osinubi brief," he said, without looking up. "Reception's at Ilashe. They want something on the water."

"I saw the email." She reached for her pen. "What are you thinking for the entrance?"

He tapped the left edge of the sketch. "Jetty approach. Guests arrive by boat, the whole arrival is the first act." He picked up his pencil again and added a line. "I need someone who can run the ceremony side without me having to be in two places."

There it was.

Not an accusation. Mike didn't do those. Just a fact, placed on the table between them like an invoice she was supposed to sign.

She looked at the sketch instead of at him. The jetty approach was good. Of course it was.

"I have three interviews tomorrow," she said. "I'll have someone by end of month."

"You said that last month."

"I mean it this month."

He made a sound that wasn't quite agreement and went back to his pencil. Kiiti watched him draw for a moment, the small deliberate strokes, the way he tilted his head to check proportion, and felt the discomfort of being in the right and the wrong at the same time. He wasn't going to push it. He never pushed it, which was its own kind of pressure.

She picked up her pen. "Can I see the water coordinates? I want to think about the lighting approach from the jetty."

He slid the sketch across without a word.

Her phone buzzed twenty minutes later, the reminder she'd set for pickup, and she started gathering her things.

"I have three interviews tomorrow," she said again, because she meant it differently this time and she thought he'd hear that.

Mike looked up from the sketch. Something in his face shifted, not softening exactly, more like setting down a weight he'd been holding in one hand while he worked.

"You know I'm not—" he started.

"I know."

He nodded, then waved her off. "Go and get your son."

She grabbed her bag and came around the table to squeeze him from behind, her chin hooking briefly over his shoulder. He sat still, letting a tolerant sigh escape the way he did whenever she ambushed him with affection.

"End of month," she said into his collar.

"If it's not, I'm telling Lawale I'm done with you for real this time."

"You wouldn't."

"Try me."

He laughed despite himself. "Go and get my godson."

She went.

The Falomo bridge traffic was already a slow grind of brake lights stretching from the island toward Ikoyi. She let her mind wander briefly, musing on the Osinubi wedding, the jetty, the water, what it would feel like to walk guests through an arrival like that.

Then she stopped and let Lagos do what Lagos did. Filled the silence with noise and color: hawkers haggling, a danfo driver leaning on a horn for reasons, the general business of the road.By the time the driver turned into Ikoyi Club's parking lot, the city had done its job. Her head was clear.