Heartbroken in Lagos: An Amber Fire Excerpt
My little Christmas gift to you
‘Unbreak my Heart’ by Toni Braxton had been on repeat on the highest volume for the last three days in Toyin’s apartment. She was most likely being a nuisance and disturbing her entire neighbourhood, but not like they could report her to the police. This was Lagos, not the United States; everyone was a nuisance to each other in this city. Besides, none of them were in her shoes, so they didn’t know where it hurt.
She had taken a leave of absence for the first time in all the years she worked at the hospital. She was so dedicated to her work that she hardly ever took a break, even on holidays. This time, she’d had no choice. She couldn’t assist in any surgeries—even if she did try, the operating surgeon would kick her out of the operating room. If that happened, she would either lose her job or be sent to jail. Either way, it would affect her plans to further her studies.
So, better she stayed at home and nursed her injured emotions before going back to work. However, she didn’t think she would ever be able to recover from this.
She’d finally come to her senses after about an hour of walking without a particular destination in mind that night and had taken a cab the rest of the journey back to her apartment. Not for the first time, she was happy to have moved out of her mother’s home and into her own tiny flat. It was a rented space, but it was hers. She didn’t have to deal with anyone poking their nose into her business. She loved her mother, but she couldn’t deal with her infamous African mother policing, hence why she had gathered up the money to get her own place.
She laughed as she thought about how cliché she was when the song started playing all over again. Deciding to be as cliché as she could be, she turned off the music to binge-watch one of her favourite shows on Netflix instead.
Turning on her laptop, she was surprised to see it was quarter past seven in the evening. She was in the same spot on the floor in her tiny living room since she’d returned from the restaurant. She had only managed to peel the wet clothes off her skin and drop them somewhere in her house, put on her pyjamas, and press play on her heartbreak song. She only got up when she needed to pee, drink water, and then once to get her laptop from her bedroom. Even the approval of her four-week leave of absence had been done over the phone. Whenever she was feeling better, she would go to the hospital to have the necessary documents signed.
Maybe by then, she would have enough strength to deal with Nkem and Lola—her colleagues had been trying desperately to form a friendship with her. They weren’t bad people, but she didn’t have the energy for their type of friendship. They were extroverts who were always at one party or the other, and they knew almost everybody in the medical industry—how they had the time to do all that going out, mixing, and mingling with all their duties proved a mystery she would never be able to solve. They probably thought she was a snob, but she was just too introverted and self-conscious to be their friend. She loved her safe spaces. She’d thought she’d found one in Ṣẹyẹ. Just how well had that turned out.
Browsing through shows on Netflix, she heard the rumbling thunder.
What was with the weather in the middle of December when everyone was looking forward to that Christmas feeling? The decline in the environment had messed up the climate.
She shook her head slightly as she looked towards the pile of empty plastic bottles in the corner of the living room and that she knew she wasn’t going to recycle. She would throw them in the trash can outside her apartment building; they would most likely end up in an open-air incinerator like the one at Ojota.
The sight brought to mind how she needed to clean her apartment. Even the wet clothes she had dropped off somewhere were beginning to give off a terrible odour. Thinking of wet clothes reminded her of the ones she had washed and spread out three days ago before her date, still outside on the line.
She had half a mind to leave them there. After all, they had gotten drenched in the rain once, but she wasn’t so rich that she would let her clothes get soaked in the rain a second time.
With a resigned sigh, she pulled herself to her feet sluggishly, cursing the fickle weather. She went outside to take her clothes from the spread wire and cursed again as she descended the stairs.
“Why couldn’t I have gotten the apartment on the ground floor?” she muttered to herself.
“Because nobody really wants the ground floor, especially in an old building like this one?” an unmistakably masculine voice said behind her.
The voice surprised her so much, she turned sharply, missed a footing on the stairs, and went flying down.
This was it—this was how she was going to die. Her tombstone would read:
“Here lies a miserable young woman who died without getting her boyfriend to marry her. Immediately before that, it would have said; she failed to keep the promise she had made to her father on his deathbed. What a sad, terrible life she lived.
“No, it will not say that because you will not be dying today.”
Toyin opened her eyes to the realisation that she had been caught by the man who had startled her in the first place. She found herself staring into a pair of amber eyes. Suddenly breathless, she got lost in the beauty of his eyes for more than a moment, so much so, she didn’t dwell too much on how the man had replied to her thoughts.
“I think you should let go of my shirt now. It is one of a kind,” he said with an amused grin.
For a second, Toyin thought his unusual eyes flashed, but she had to be mistaken. Anyway, his words brought her back to her senses, and she instantly became self-aware.
She had always thought of the stairway as tiny, yet now, it felt extra cramped up with the imposing presence of this stranger with the bronze skin and cornrows. She gave him a once over from head to toe. He looked and smelled like money, and he didn’t have the look of a man who lived in Nigeria. He was probably an IJGB home for the holidays.
The only bulb lighting up the stairway flickered, reminding her she was standing alone with a stranger.
“Wh… who are you?” she stuttered and backed up the stairs a little, although she would have to admit it was a bit too late for that. He would have harmed her already if that were his intention. Besides, he had stopped her fall.
How had he done it? She was pretty sure he’d been standing behind her. She didn’t have time to ponder too long because he noticed her pathetic attempt at retreating and laughed.
Toyin didn’t think she had ever heard laughter that sounded this beautiful before. She shook her head. What was wrong with her? It had to be the break up messing with her common sense. She should be in the safety of her apartment behind bolted doors because, for all she knew, he could be a predator assessing his prey.
He laughed again as if reading her thoughts, but this time, before she had the opportunity to make another comment, he answered the question she’d asked him earlier.
“I am your new neighbour. I just moved into the apartment opposite yours,” he answered.
He had to be joking. That apartment had been empty in the four years she’d been living in the building. Nobody, whoever saw the apartment, wanted it. She had always thought it weird how no one wanted it when it was in perfectly good shape and cheap. Yet now, a weird guy was claiming he’d moved into it.
“The apartment being empty is Orí’s doing. I am destined to live in that apartment for a short while and—”
“Wait a minute, I definitely did not say that out loud. Are you reading my thoughts?” she asked, her eyes widening in horror. She was sure she hadn’t said those words out loud.
She backed up the stairs. Beautiful or not, she shouldn’t be anywhere near this stranger.
“You need to stop trying to run away from me. I do not mean you any harm,” he said, sounding amused, like he was watching a comedy show. “And,” he said, taking a step towards her while she automatically backed up. “We need to address this whole being weird thing.”
He had most definitely read her mind because she wasn’t one to call people weird to their faces, no matter how they looked or acted. She didn’t like to hurt people’s feelings.
“Who are you?” she asked again. She hated how weak her voice sounded. She’d read somewhere that you should never show fear, no matter how afraid you were, or something like that.
“Fine. This is getting boring, anyway,” he said with the air of a man who wasn’t used to being asked who he was, and Toyin had asked that question several times in the past few minutes. “I am Ṣango, and I am here because you summoned me.”
There—that quick flash of fire in his eyes.
Staring at him for a few seconds and seeing how the seriousness never left his face after such a ridiculous declaration, Toyin was now fully convinced a crazy guy had broken into her apartment building. Judging by how fast he had caught her when she was falling, she knew she could not outrun him.
So, she did the only thing she could think of at the moment.
She screamed.
Enjoyed this except? Read full book here
Amber Fire is a romance fantasy novel between an ordinary Lagos girl, Toyin and the mythical Sango, diety of Thunder and Fire. Written by me and published by Love Africa Press
This is so beautifully written.
Wow 👏 👏 👏 ❤️