# My Brother’s Best Friend
## Episode 2
I convinced myself, sitting on that balcony beside Damilare, watching the Lagos sunrise, that whatever I was feeling was simply the natural aftermath of heartbreak, a starved heart mistaking any kindness for something deeper than it actually was.
I held onto that explanation for exactly four more days.
It fell apart on a Sunday evening, when Chibuike and I returned from a family friend’s birthday lunch to find a woman sitting comfortably in our living room, feet tucked beneath her on the couch, laughing at something on her phone while Damilare made her a drink in the kitchen with the easy familiarity of someone who had done it many times before.
“Amara,” Chibuike said, dropping his keys on the counter, “this is Tolani. Damilare’s girlfriend.”
The word landed harder than I wanted to admit, harder than made any logical sense given how briefly I had known this man.
“Ex-girlfriend,” Damilare corrected quietly, not looking up from the drink he was preparing. “We’ve been broken up for four months, Chibuike.”
“Could have fooled me,” Chibuike muttered, though not unkindly, more like a man commenting on a pattern he had witnessed too many times to fully believe was actually over.
Tolani rose from the couch, and I understood immediately why my brother had struggled to accept the word “ex” attached to her presence in this flat. She carried herself with the kind of effortless confidence that suggested she had never once questioned her welcome anywhere, gliding across the living room to greet me with a warm, practiced smile.
“You must be the sister,” she said, taking my hand briefly. “Damilare mentioned you were staying. I hope I’m not intruding on your first proper week here.”
“Not at all,” I said, my voice carefully neutral, though something in my chest had tightened considerably since walking through that door.
Tolani stayed another hour, easy conversation flowing between her and Damilare in a rhythm that spoke clearly of genuine history, inside jokes I could not follow, references to people and places that existed entirely outside anything I knew about him.
I excused myself early, retreating to the guest room under the pretense of unfinished work emails, and spent the following hour staring at my laptop screen without actually reading a single word on it.
When I finally emerged for water around ten that evening, the flat was quiet, Tolani apparently gone, Chibuike already in his room. Damilare sat alone at the dining table, a single lamp illuminating whatever he was working on, his camera equipment spread across the surface in careful, methodical organization.
He looked up when I entered the kitchen.
“She’s not actually my girlfriend,” he said, without preamble, as though he had been sitting there specifically waiting for an opportunity to clarify this. “We ended things properly, months ago. She still comes around sometimes, and I haven’t figured out the right way to create actual distance without feeling cruel about it.”
“You don’t owe me an explanation,” I said, filling my glass at the sink, keeping my back to him longer than necessary.
“I know I don’t,” he said quietly. “I wanted to give you one anyway.”
I turned around then, meeting his eyes properly for the first time since Tolani had left, and found him watching me with an expression that made the careful distance I had been constructing over the past four days feel considerably more fragile than I wanted to acknowledge.
“Why does it matter to you whether I understand the situation?” I asked, genuinely needing to hear his answer, needing some clarity in a week that had otherwise felt like standing on increasingly unstable ground.
Damilare set down the lens he had been cleaning, considered his answer with the same careful deliberation he seemed to bring to everything, and finally said something that undid whatever remaining resistance I had been holding onto.
“Because since the morning you walked out onto that balcony and sat down beside me, I have not been able to stop thinking about you, Amara. And that terrifies me, given everything you’re currently carrying, given who your brother is to me, given how genuinely inappropriate the timing of all of this happens to be.”
The kitchen felt suddenly very small, very quiet, the weight of his honesty settling over both of us in a silence neither of us seemed inclined to break.
Then, from down the hallway, Chibuike’s bedroom door opened.
*What would you have said in that moment, standing in a kitchen with your brother’s best friend just confessing something you weren’t ready to hear, footsteps already approaching?*
@ Rayowrites
