by Kiru Taye
The sound of the door clicking shut sounded as a reminder of why he was here today instead of enjoying the movie marathon with Gloria and Henry.
“Do you want a drink? I’m going to have one,” Kezie asked as he strode towards the side bar that stored his liquor.
“No.” James stepped into the living room and followed his lover’s movement. “Tell me what’s going on.”
His friend took a bottle of whiskey, grabbed a glass and poured a generous shot before speaking. “There’s nothing to tell.”
He tipped his head back and drank from the glass.
Kezie was the king of avoidance. James wouldn’t let him off easy.
“You got engaged,” James gritted out, standing in the middle of the room.
“Yes. So?” Kezie still wasn’t facing him.
“What do you mean, so?” The hands in James’s pockets curled into fists.
“Millions of men get engaged every day across the world.”
James’s head jerked back, and he glared at Kezie as his knuckles cracked. He strode up to Kezie and shoved him so the man would turn around.
“Those millions of men, as you put it—” James bit out “—are not my boyfriends. I don’t give a damn about them. I only care about one man. You.”
“I know.” Kezie let out a sigh and placed his hands on James’s shoulders. “Calm down.”
James’s insides gnarled up. He didn’t think he could calm down until he got proper answers.
Yet, he took a deep breath and puffed it out before speaking. “Tell me why you got engaged. Only weeks ago, we were discussing the two of us moving in together.”
Kezie dropped his hands and stepped away. “That’s exactly why I had to get engaged. You talking about us moving in together was a bad idea. We can’t live together like partners. This is not Europe or America. I have to get married to a woman and so do you. That way, we can still keep seeing each other without anyone getting suspicious.”
James’s insides turned to ice. “What did you just say? You didn’t want us to move in together?”
“Of course not. How do you think it will look if we lived in the same house? We can get away with being together now because we are best friends and we hang out with each other often. But if we share the same space, day in, day out, then people will get suspicious about us.”
“Best friends can live together. We can have separate rooms to keep up the charade. No one will know what we do in the privacy of our home.”
Kezie shook his head. “My parents have been making noises about Goz and I getting married, especially after our sister’s wedding. And as the older one, I’m expected to tie the knot first.”
James let his words sink in. His lover had a point. He could understand the pressure from family to get married. However, one thing cut James’s heart deeply—Kezie hadn’t considered him as first choice for a marriage proposal.
Although legally, there would be no way to perform a same-sex wedding in the country.
Still, his best friend of almost fourteen years hadn’t given James the option, nor spoken about his intentions. Springing them on him like this was cruel.
“You could’ve told me about your concerns. We could’ve come up with a plan,” he said after a few seconds of silence while his friend drank.
“I was worried about how you would take it. You can be sensitive,” Kezie said.
James stiffened, not liking the implication. “What do you mean, I can be sensitive?”
“Well, look at the way you’re reacting.” The other man lifted the hand holding the glass in James’s direction.
“I’m reacting this way—” James stabbed his chest with his right thumb “—because your fiancée called me to tell me that you proposed to her. How would you feel if I had pulled a stunt like that?”
“I didn’t know she was going to call you.” Kezie paced. “She saw me sending you a text message and asked who I was chatting with. I told her it was you and she wanted to call you immediately to share the news. I couldn’t stop her. She would’ve gotten suspicious.”
James’s anger returned. “And the other thing? Why does it have to be Ify? She’s like a sister to me, for fuck’s sake.”
“You introduced her to me last year at your brother’s engagement party. She’s nice and from a good family. She’s the kind of woman my parents would expect me to marry. So, I asked her.”
“You’re just marrying her to make your parents happy?”
“Yes. It doesn’t change what we have. We can still get together whenever it’s convenient.”
“You want to turn me into your bit-on-the-side. Your small chop. Fuck that.”
“It’s not like that, James. You’re special.”
“Really?” James flung his hands into the air. “I’m so special that you’re getting married to someone else.”
“Don’t be difficult, James. You can marry a woman, and we can carry on like nothing has changed.”
James glared at Kezie. How could he say that nothing had changed? Everything had changed. He was going to lose the man he loved.
James’s heart raced and his mouth dried out. Desperation gave him a manic energy, and he clung to Kezie’s arms and pleaded, “Don’t do this. There are other ways around this.”
Kezie shook his head. “There is no other way.”
James closed his eyes as his throat locked tight. “I love you.”
“I love you, too. I’m doing this to protect what we have. As I said, you’re special.”
Bile rose in James’s throat. There was something in Kezie’s voice that he didn’t like. The way he said ‘special’ had a condescending connotation.
He opened his eyes and stepped away. “No. You’re doing this to protect yourself. When you were in the USA, did you fuck other people?”
James had always wanted to ask Kezie that question after the man returned to Nigeria. He hadn’t been brave enough to face the answer until now.
He hadn’t minded when Kezie had dated women in Nigeria as it had been for show, to keep others from getting suspicious about their relationship. Now, he wasn’t so sure.
Kezie’s eyes narrowed. “What has that got to do with anything?”
“Well, if you say that I’m so special, I want to know if I’m the only person you’ve fucked since we got together.”
Kezie turned away, breaking his gaze.
“Answer me, damn it. Have you fucked others since we got together?”
“Yes! Damn it. But they didn’t mean anything. You’re the one that I love.”
James saw red. All this time, he’d thought that Kezie loved him.
“No, you don’t. You just like to eat your cake and have it. Does your future wife know that you like getting your dick sucked by a man? Does she know that you like to have another man’s dick up your ass? Hmmm?”
“Stop it!” Kezie said in a low, menacing voice.
“I wonder what she’s going to say when I tell her that we fucked right here in this apartment just hours before you proposed to her.”
He pulled his phone out of his pocket. Kezie didn’t let him do anything before shoving him against the wall.
James shoved back but the other man didn’t budge, his hardness pressing against James, holding him in place.
One moment, they glared at each other. The next, his friend kissed him.
His muscles tensed. Between the solid wall behind him and Kezie’s whiskey-tinged taste in his mouth, arousal mixed with all the other emotions raging through him.
Not thinking, he returned the kiss aggressively, teeth and tongues clashing. His hands went under Kezie’s tunic, pulling it up and his vest out of the trousers.
Kezie groaned as James’s palms met warm flesh.
The sound of a trilling phone broke him out of the haze, and he jerked back. They stared at each other, chests heaving.
What the fuck was he doing?
He couldn’t just dive into make-up sex as if that would solve their problems.
Instead of reaching for his ringing phone, Kezie leaned towards James as if to kiss him again.
James dodged and slipped away from the wall, heading for the exit.
“James, wait,” his lover called out behind him.
He didn’t stop.
A hand gripped his arm as he reached the door. He glanced over his shoulder. “We’re over.”
“No,” Kezie said. “You’re being irrational.”
“Fuck you, Kezie. Keep your hands off me.” He jerked the door open and hurried down the corridor to the lift.
A few minutes later, he sat in his car, on his way to a local wine bar. When he got there, he found a quiet corner, ignored everyone else and drank his misery into oblivion.
Chapter Four
Ethan Eze sensed impending peril the moment the man walked into the music lounge.
Maybe it was the way the new arrival stomped across the tiled floor and yanked out a chair in the corner two tables away, making a scraping sound.
Or the despondent bow of his body and hunched shoulders as he waved a server over and spoke in a low tone.
Other patrons seemed intent on making the best of the last hours of the weekend before starting the weekly hustle all over in the morning. Conversations flowed, blending with the rhythm of the background music, and tinkling glasses.
No one else paid any attention to him.
Ethan did.
He’d spent most of his adult life as a trouble-shooter, first in the military involved in combat search and rescue missions in war zones, and now as a civilian working as a security consultant. His skills included being able to anticipate problems as well as finding solutions to difficult situations.
The distress signals the man displayed in his body language alerted Ethan’s instincts.
Senses heightened, he scanned the bar area. Satisfied there were no immediate threats, he focused his attention on the source of his hyperawareness.
The man seemed familiar, although Ethan hadn’t met him before. He was young, late twenties or early thirties, cared about his appearance and had disposable wealth, based on his stylish and expensive casual clothes. He stooped over the table, his left hand fiddling with a mobile phone while his right hand twirled the straw sticking out of the copper mug in front of him.
From the brief glimpse when he’d arrived, he was good-looking, a ‘fine boy’, his skin the shade of pure dark chocolate.
Wait... what?
Ethan sucked in a sharp breath and felt lightheaded.
Had he just compared the man’s skin to one of his guilty pleasures?
Where had the thought come from?
He lifted his glass of beer and gulped down the remainder, seeking to quench a suddenly parched throat.
Skin flushed with heat, he raised his hand. Perhaps the alcohol was messing with his head, although he’d only had one small bottle.
He came here regularly. The venue was a block away from the apartment he shared with his cousin. The atmosphere was casual, and they showed sporting events on large TVs mounted on the walls.
“Big Easy, should I get you another beer?” TJ, the bar owner and an old friend, approached.
The nickname had come about because his old friends had called him by his surname ‘Eze’ but had pronounced it as ‘Easy.’ Over time, the nickname had changed to Big Easy and had stuck.
“Nah. Just a bottle of Coke, please.” He pulled out his wallet, tapped on the card reader and paid.
TJ slid the bottle across. Ethan popped the cap, tossed his head back and downed almost half of the dark amber liquid.
He couldn’t get intoxicated. His job required being available twenty-four-seven in case his clients needed his services. Although he mostly provided advice and implemented preventative measures, sometimes, when people called him, they were already in deep shit, and his task would be to get them out of it.
The thought made him glance at the young man.
Fine Boy was on his fourth mug of Moscow mule. He drank like a man who’d walked miles through a desert, or one who was intent on drowning his sorrows.
What kind of shit storm brewed in his life that he felt the need to blaze his way through back-to-back vodka cocktails?
An ache bloomed in Ethan’s throat. He knew enough about catastrophes, having experienced his fair share. He empathised with the man’s obvious pain.
Empathy was good. He was human, after all.
The man pushed back his chair, making scraping sounds.
Ethan tilted his head and spoke in Pidgin. “Who be Fine Boy over there?”
TJ glanced at the man staggering towards the corridor leading to the gents. “That nah James Coker.”
“Oh, of course. No wonder he seemed familiar.”
“Do you know him?”
“No. I know of his family. His cousin, Kamali, is one of my clients, and I met his brother once.” Ethan took a sip of his drink and returned the bottle to the counter. On a hunch, he asked, “Does he own a car?”
“Yes,” his friend replied. “His car is parked outside.”
Ethan’s stomach sank as his suspicions were confirmed. James had driven to the venue. “Hopefully, he’s called an Uber to take him home.”
“Hopefully,” his friend replied, wiping the counter with a cloth.
The man in question staggered out of the hallway and headed towards the exit.
“I’ll catch you later, TJ. Let me just make sure Fine Boy gets an Uber,” Ethan said, and got off the stool.
“Good idea, Big Easy. Later.” The men shook hands.
Ethan followed James. Hopefully, James had used the app to request a taxi. Ethan would make sure he got into the cab and he would take the car details for security. Then he would walk home.
Outside, the night was muggy, and orange lamps lit the dark car park. No idling taxi sat on the forecourt.
Instead, James stumbled towards a grey sports car. He dropped something on the concrete paving, bent to pick it, and banged his head on the door panel.
“Are you okay?” Ethan called out as the man struggled to straighten up.
James mumbled something unintelligible, closed his eyes and leaned against the car.
In his current state, even walking home would be dangerous this late at night, unless he lived next door.
Ethan pulled his phone out of his pocket, unlocked it and pressed the button to dial his cousin’s number. He didn’t have anyone else close by tonight who could help at short notice. Also, she knew the Coker family.
“Ethan, hi,” his cousin answered after two rings.
“Hey, Joce,” he replied. “Are you home?”
“Sure. What’s up?”
“I need your help. Can you bring your car over to TJ’s Bar?”
“Why?”
He heard the frown in Jocelyn’s voice.
“I need to take James Coker home.”
“You’re with James? What happened?”
“He’s drunk, and I can’t let him drive in his current state. I’ll need you to bring me back after I drop him off. Otherwise I have to get a taxi back.”
“Okay. Give me a few minutes. I’m coming.”
The line went dead, and Ethan returned his attention to the man fumbling with the fob.
“James.” Ethan stepped forward. “You can’t drive in your condition.”
The man straightened, squinting up at him and struggling to keep his eyes open.
“I’m... okay. Don’t... worry,” James slurred his words, swaying.
Ethan caged him in his arms so he wouldn’t fall. “I don’t think so.”
The memory and associated guilt of catastrophic events from long ago assaulted him. He wouldn’t let another young life end tragically if he could help it.
He heaved James onto his shoulder in a fire-fighter’s lift and walked over to the passenger side. Then he took the bunch of keys from James’s hand and pressed the fob. The door popped open.
He lowered James into the car, being care
ful so he didn’t hit his head again. He secured the seat harness, ensuring the man wouldn’t hurt himself while they waited for his cousin.
A few minutes later, another car pulled up, and the window rolled down.
“Is James okay?” Jocelyn asked from the driver’s seat of the blue Jeep Compass.
“He’s fine. He’ll have an awful headache in the morning, though. Do you know where he lives?” Ethan asked. He would bet the satellite navigation system in the car stored the home address. Worst-case scenario, he’d take James to Henry’s house.
“Yes, he lives with his brother on Banana Island. I can text you the address,” Jocelyn replied.
“In that case, I think I know the place. Text it anyway.” He strode to the other side.
“Okay. I’ll follow you,” she replied.
He got in and checked the man slumped in the seat.
Even with James’s eyes closed, in close proximity, his resemblance to Henry was evident in the high cheekbones, broad nose, and full lips, although he was slimmer and shorter than his brother.
“I’ll get you home,” he said, and spent a few seconds adjusting the seating position, pushing back for legroom and lowering for headroom under the cabriolet roof. The supple leather of the sport seat snuggled around him like a fitted suit, and the aluminium surrounding the cockpit and console gleamed.
As soon as he pressed the start button, the dashboard flashed with key information, the engine growled to life and the headlights lit up the car park. The automatic transmission meant he didn’t have to worry about shifting gears.
He scrolled through the satnav until he found an entry for ‘Home’. He’d been right. He selected the destination, nudged the gear lever into drive mode, pressed his foot against the accelerator paddle and steered the vehicle onto the main road.
In the rear-view mirror, Jocelyn followed in the modest SUV, which probably cost less than a quarter of the luxury sport car’s price.
Anyone who could afford a vehicle like this one was wealthy and privileged, a class above millions of ordinary Nigerians. But having money didn’t shield people from problems, as James displayed.
What if Ethan hadn’t been at TJ’s tonight? What if James had gotten behind the wheels of the car in his current state?