# My Brother’s Best Friend
## Episode 4
“You should ask Chibuike whether his feelings for you have actually changed,” I told Tolani, choosing my words with as much care as I could manage while Damilare watched me across the dining table, his expression unreadable in the low evening light. “That’s not a question I can honestly answer for either of you.”
“That’s not what I asked,” Tolani said, her composed voice finally cracking slightly around the edges. “I asked whether you feel something. I think you already know the answer, Amara. I think we both do.”
I closed my eyes briefly, aware of Damilare’s attention on me, aware of how carefully I needed to navigate a conversation happening simultaneously in two directions, one audible to him, one entirely private to the woman on the phone.
“Tolani,” I said finally, “I think whatever exists or doesn’t exist between myself and Damilare is genuinely separate from whatever needs resolving between the two of you. Two years of history deserves an honest conversation with him directly, not conclusions drawn from a phone call with someone he’s known for less than two weeks.”
The line went quiet for a long moment.
“You’re right,” she finally said, something in her tone softening slightly, though not entirely. “I’m sorry for calling like this. I think I already knew the answer before I dialed. I just needed to hear it confirmed, even indirectly.”
She ended the call before I could respond further, and I set my phone down slowly, aware that Damilare had heard enough of my side of the conversation to understand precisely what had just transpired.
“She called you,” he said quietly. Not a question.
“She did.”
“What did she ask?”
I met his eyes across the table, deciding, in that moment, that whatever careful professional distance I had been maintaining could not survive complete honesty about what had just happened.
“She asked if I felt something for you,” I said. “I told her that wasn’t my question to answer, that whatever needed resolving between the two of you deserved a real conversation, directly, with each other.”
Something shifted across his face, a mixture of tension and something that looked almost like relief.
“You should call her,” I said, before he could respond. “Properly. Whatever this is between us, it can’t move forward honestly while something with her remains genuinely unresolved.”
He studied me for a long moment, then nodded slowly, picking up his phone and retreating to his room for a conversation I deliberately did not try to overhear.
I sat alone at that dining table for nearly forty minutes, staring at unfinished brand strategy notes I could not focus on, listening to the low, indistinct murmur of his voice through the walls, unable to determine anything meaningful from tone alone.
When he finally emerged, his expression had settled into something calmer, more resolved than I had seen since Tolani’s unexpected arrival days earlier.
“It’s genuinely over now,” he said, sitting back down across from me. “Properly over. I should have had that exact conversation with her months ago, honestly, instead of allowing ambiguity to linger simply because ending things cleanly felt unnecessarily cruel at the time.”
“How do you feel?” I asked.
“Clearer,” he said. “Considerably clearer.”
We returned to the business proposal that evening, though something had undeniably shifted in the space between us, an honesty that no longer required careful management or deliberate redirection.
Three days later, working late into the evening on his brand positioning strategy, surrounded by scattered photographs spanning his six years behind the camera, he set down the print he was holding and looked at me with a directness that stole whatever breath I had been holding onto.
“Amara,” he said, “I need to know if what I’m feeling is genuinely mutual, or if I’ve been reading something into these past two weeks that exists mostly in my own imagination.”
*How would you have answered him, sitting across that table, everything with Tolani finally resolved, nothing left standing between the truth and whatever came next?*
@ Rayowrites
