Bayo's Bill.
Who's deciding?
While listening to Alina’s Electric.
__
Bayo prided himself on choosing well. They had to be decent, societally pretty and ambitious. He’d usually pick them at sort of pricey restaurants, cafes, or stores like Zephans. For him, to see them there alone meant they could fit his bill.
He’d perfected the approach over years. Never too eager because eagerness was the enemy of mystique. He’d linger near the counter long enough to make a purchase, have a quick chat with the staff, then manufacture a moment. A question about their order. A half-smile that said I noticed you but I’m not desperate for you to notice me back. It had worked on Simi, on Debby, on the quiet one whose name he couldn’t quite remember. It would work again.
Today his eyes had settled on the only woman at the counter with him. Good posture. Her phone in one of those glam lanyards. Sun dress without wrinkles, and that at 8.15AM. He filed each detail like evidence building a case.
She may more than do, he thought. And hated, briefly, that he thought in those words.
He ordered an Americano he didn’t want and positioned himself two seats down at the counter. Close enough. She was scrolling with one hand, the other wrapped around a latte that had barely been touched.
“First time here?” he asked hoping he sounded casual, unattached.
She glanced at him the way women who have been approached too many times learn to; a quick full assessment, almost clinical. Then she smiled, polite and perfectly boundaried.
"Third time this week," she said, and turned back to her phone, already sitting. He felt the small rebuff and recalibrated. Not disinterested. Guarded.
Those were different problems with different solutions, and Bayo had solved both before.
He didn't push. He simply existed opposite her, unhurried, and flagged the barista for a recommendation — oat or regular? — loud enough that she might glance over again.
She did.
The barista responded, “Oat is lighter, so you’d prefer it. We can try it for your next order?” nodded and moved off, and for a moment there was just the low hum of the café machine and the soft scrape of chairs against tile.
She looked up again, this time not because he engineered it.
“You always order things you don’t need?” she asked, still half on her screen.
It caught him slightly off balance. He smiled anyway. “Depends. Are we calling coffee a need or a habit?”
She finally put her phone down properly. Not fully facing him yet, but enough.
“Depends on who’s asking.”
There it was. A door half open, half shut.
“Bayo,” he said, as if that explained something.
“Mm,” she replied, like it didn’t. “I didn’t ask for your name.”
A pause. He laughed softly, not offended. “Fair.”
She went back to her latte, but slower now. He should have left it there. He usually did, at this stage when the script started to feel like repetition. But something about her didn’t fit the usual pattern. Not softer. Not easier. Just… less interested in playing along.
“So what do you do, Third-time-this-week?” he asked.
She finally turned properly, shoulders angled toward him now, eyes steady.
“That’s not how conversations work, it’s how interviews do.”
He nodded like he’d been corrected before. “Alright. Then don’t answer it like an interview.”
A beat passed. Then she surprised him by leaning back slightly, studying him like he’d done her earlier.
“You pick people up here often?”
And just like that, he felt the rules tilt.
He hadn’t been asked that directly before, without accusation, just plain curiosity, like she was cataloguing him the same way he’d catalogued her. It was disorienting in a way he didn’t entirely dislike.
“I come here often,” he said carefully.
“That’s not what I asked.”
He looked at her then. Really looked. Her latte was now almost empty. She hadn’t checked her phone since she put it down. Whatever she was doing before he arrived, she had fully abandoned it maybe for the puzzle of him.
“Sometimes,” he admitted. First honest thing he’d said since sitting down.
She nodded slowly. “I figured.” She picked up her latte, took a sip. “You have a rehearsed quality. Not fake exactly, more like it’s practiced.”
The café machine hissed behind them. Someone laughed too loudly near the door.
Bayo felt something he hadn’t felt in a long time in a place like this, doing a thing like this.
Slightly embarrassed.
“Is that bad?” he asked and was immediately annoyed at himself for asking.
She tilted her head and gave a small smile. “Depends on what you’re rehearsing for.”
He relaxed into his chair, some of the performance really falling away. “Okay. Fair question.” He wrapped both hands around his now empty cup. “What are you rehearsing for?”
She laughed, short and surprised, like she hadn’t meant to. “Honestly? Avoiding my apartment. My landlord is redoing the pipes, and the noise is unbearable before 10.”
“So, this is refuge.”
“This is survival.” She gestured at her latte. “A little overpriced survival, but still.”
He smiled, and this time it wasn’t the calibrated half-smile. “I’m Bayo.”
“You said that already.”
“You didn’t respond to it already.”
A beat. Then, “Tiwatope.”
“Tiwatope,” he repeated, not making it a big moment.
“Don’t.” She pointed at him lightly. “Don’t do the thing where you say it back like you’re tasting it.”
He laughed, caught. “I wasn’t—”
“I’m the queen of those insane romance novels and movies, you absolutely were.”
The barista slid a plate of small biscuits onto the counter between them unprompted. A quick thank you from both of them, then Tiwa broke off a piece first and pushed the plate slightly toward him.
He took it.
“Tiwatope,” he tried again, slower this time, deliberately terrible.
She shook her head, but she was smiling properly now; he knew cause her eyes looked brighter. “It’s Tiwa. Unless you’re my mother or you’re in trouble.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“Jury’s out.”
He broke off another biscuit. The café had filled up loudly around them, the 8AM crowd thinning into the busier 9AM kind with laptops open, and “can you hear me?” chants. Somewhere behind them a child was negotiating loudly for a chocolate croissant and losing.
“So the pipes,” Bayo said. “How long?”
“He said three days. Which means five or more seeing as we’re at day four.”
“Classic Lagos landlord, pele. Any other survival locations mapped out?”
“Well I’ve spent three days here already, but I plan to spend the final ones in the room I rented.”
For some reason, he hadn’t expected that. “You got a hotel?”
“Serviced apartment. Two streets away.” She finished the last of her latte, unbothered. “I’m not actually a suffer-in-silence person. I just like the coffee here.”
“So, the café was never really survival.”
“The café was a bonus.” She was already reaching for her lanyard, looping it back around her neck. “It’s walking distance from the apartment; I get a brisk walk in, get a good coffee with some pastries then walk back. Its a good morning ritual.”
Bayo found himself doing something unfamiliar, trying to extend a conversation without a strategy behind it. No next step being calculated, no door being held open for later. Just not wanting the past twenty minutes to end the way time usually ended in places like this.
“Okay,” he said. “I have to ask—”
“The answer is no.”
He blinked. “I haven’t asked anything.”
“You were about to ask for my number.” She stood, tucking her phone into the little glam pouch at the end of her lanyard. “And the answer is no. Not because this wasn’t nice. It was.”
“But?”
She looked at him, almost pitifully. “But I came here for a walk and good coffee and I got both. I don’t need to turn it into something.”
She picked up a crossbody he hadn’t noticed next to her, gave him a small wave and slid off the chair.
Then she was gone. Out the glass door, into the hot and busy Lagos morning.
He sat with it for a moment while the barista came to clear her cup.
He thought about Simi, who had given him her number before he’d even asked. About Debby, who had texted first. About the quiet one — Amara, he suddenly remembered, her name was Amara — who had rearranged a Thursday for him after knowing him two days. He had filed all of them as wins.
He looked at the half-empty biscuit plate.
The thing about choosing well, he was only now considering, was that it required knowing what well actually meant. He’d been measuring everything — the posture, the linen, the lanyard, the unread latte — and had still somehow missed the most obvious thing about Tiwa.
She must have been measuring too.
And she had chosen differently.
He ordered a latte to go and two croissants then stood to leave, pulling out his car keys — and then saw it. A business card, tucked under the edge of the biscuit plate.
He turned it over. Nothing on the back. Just the front, clean and unambiguous.
He stood there, keys in hand, and felt something shift in his chest. Light. Stupidly light, he thought, like the morning had just recalibrated.
He was already scanning the QR code before he’d fully thought it through and thankfully got a WhatsApp chat.
I know one other survival location. Good coffee, no one asks if you’re waiting for someone. Nothing more than it should be — I just thought you might want to know it exists.
He stared at it. Sent it before the strategy part of his brain could edit it into something smoother.
Then immediately considered that a woman with a title like Deputy Director at the almost certainly had an EA screening her messages. That this number probably rang at a desk somewhere. That he might be composing his most unguarded text in years directly into the inbox of someone who sorted her correspondence by priority.
Too late, he summed, pushing open the glass door.
The Lagos heat hit him immediately. In his pocket, his phone buzzed.
Only if there are biscuits.
He grinned. Wide and unguarded, standing in the middle of the car park like someone with nowhere to be and no performance left to give.
Hii my loveee,
You good? How’s the ending of April treating you?
Last Tuesday (I think), I went to one of my favs, XO Bakery, and met a fine fellow who looked at me five seconds extra and smiled kindly as he said bye. I thought two things:
Kai, why must I be looking like my struggle right now?
I can spin such a story around this.
Bayo’s Bill is the result of the money I spent and overly active imagination I use. Tell me what you think? :)
Meanwhile, this has been such a month. Rollercoaster of work, packing and unpacking travel bags (Kigali was gorg btw!), emotions and always something to give. It’s made me especially grateful for those who allow me take - their time, energy, mental strength, love and even money.
For example, I saw some of my core friends last week and the weight off my chest felt like a rock. I yapped a lot, laughed plenty and slept well after. Lucky for me, I also spent some good time with — hm, how to say someone who’s tickling my fancy? — well, that. And wheww, what a time. *insert giggly girl covering her face*
I’m however, also thankful for work. For tasks to be done, for deadlines approaching, for being involved. What a blessing to be needed, to contribute and to strive for excellence.
Closing out now but here’s all my best wishes for so much joy and moments that keep tickling your fancy. May you have love to give and to receive as well.
Cmon!!! This is a goood oneee!!!!