Like clockwork, it comes up. 

It seems like we’re designed to be slightly dissatisfied with everything, she says. 

They’re sitting outside at a street café in Lagos, he’s sipping scotch malt, she’s sipping wine. It’s kismet. He knows the line, and he remembers another line even better. 

I felt like someone was walking out of my head and into the screen – like a movie was my soul mate, he says in between puffs on his cigarette. 

Their conversation…was so real, they say simultaneously, finishing each other’s sentences in this first conversation. 

They are unbothered by the polyphonic melody of the other café-goers exhaling flavored tobacco in between bites of suya otherwise suspended in the air with toothpicks, as they laugh or exclaim disbelief depending on which response is appropriate to the speaker’s tale. It’s all part of the beginning of the charming duo’s cinematic clock. The café makes the perfect set. They spend five weeks together in-like and part ways when she wakes up one Sunday morning to the absence of noise from the generator and passersby on the street. She gazes at him as the sun peeks in through light blue curtains and watches him breathe in bed. She can feel a bit of thick in the air as his chest rises and falls, her own chest starting to itch. She decides  she cannot stand the way he inhales. He will go on to get married at 35, not to his soul mate (his wife hasn’t seen the film before, she’s certain of this), on some other set.

◆

He’s fake nice, she says.

What does that mean? her friend asks. You’re always finding something wrong. 

They’re sitting at the beach far from the shoreline as her friend pours a few splashes of ogogoro in a red plastic cup, still half full of the gin cocktail mixed with lemongrass syrup and soda water. She tries to explain while taking a sip that burns her throat, letting out a small cough before she continues, already feeling a bit woozy. 

Like the other day, I said I had a lot of work to do and wanted to reschedule our plans. Then he calls me in the evening and says he’s five minutes away with shawarma and suya. That’s fake nice, she says, her free hand doing the explaining while the other grips the plastic cup tightly to prevent her friend from filling it up again. 

I don’t have time to waste, she says.

Why exactly? 

She takes a slow sip, swirling the bitter cocktail in between her gums.

You wouldn’t understand.

She doesn’t mention that the man she’s referring to — the man who smiles so wide every tooth in his mouth becomes dehydrated while his eyes remain dull, has been asking her to see the film. She mentioned it to him in their first conversation and regretted it almost immediately. He hadn’t seen it before, and then he was too curious. Like clockwork, he texted her the evening after their first date to ask if he could come to watch the movie at hers over the weekend. 

I’ll bring edibles and red wine, he offered.

She didn’t feel like explaining that it couldn’t work that way. You couldn’t discover the film just like that — it required pain. Hurt. Instead, she made an excuse when the weekend approached, but he showed up at her house anyway. She didn’t connect her laptop to the TV, just sat while he played with her cat, waiting for him to read the room and leave of his own accord. 

Baby, you are gonna miss that plane, she said out of the blue when the room was quiet and even the cat had fallen asleep at her feet, ready for their guest to leave too. 

What was that? he asked sitting across from her on the green velvet couch.

Nothing, nothing at all.

She comes home from the beach post-post drunk and ready for sleep. She stumbles into bed and pulls the covers up to her armpits before she realizes her error. She walks around the hallway to the open living room and picks up her laptop from the dining table to bring it back to her bedroom. Like clockwork, she opens the folder on her desktop with a double click, turning her back to the screen as Ethan Hawke’s voiceover begins. She falls asleep within 45 seconds as the film animates the thoughts in her sleep, moving in and out of her dreams and nightmares, just how she likes it.

◆

The night of her thirty-first birthday our girl, who we’ll call Céline, finds herself in an argument with a soon-to-be-ex that won’t seem to end. 

We’re just not speaking the same language, Céline says, and presses her arms into the wooden armrest of the chair beneath her.

How is that? the soon to be ex asks wryly. He’s getting tired of the back and forth too. He stands and rests his back against the metal railing of the balcony across from her, creating more distance between the two lovers.

Don’t you think sometimes things just can’t be explained. Like either it is, or it isn’t?

What’s changed, you said you were happy?

Nothing has changed, everything has changed, she says.

He sighs and rubs his tongue back and forth against his front teeth. He can’t ever get a straight sentence from her. Say what you mean! He clenches his teeth and releases his hands from a tightened fist.

Men are so easily offended, Céline says, but recognizes almost instantly that he won’t catch the reference. Reference is the whole problem here – it’s just not in the cards for them, but she doesn’t know how to explain that to her soon-to-be ex, so instead Céline continues with the lines to the film that she’s watching alone—quite rudely. 

Reality and love are contradictory for me, she says. She stands up and presses her back into the railing beside her soon-to-be ex, swinging the braids hanging by her neck so they can float in the wind, recreating the scene.

I just don’t feel things for people anymore, I don’t believe in anything that relates to love, Céline continues as her soon-to-be ex stands beside her silently, gazing at her from the side. 

Céline is staring straight ahead now, looking at the blinds on the other side of the balcony sliding doors, imagining herself on the Seine in Paris, trying to explain why things have changed.

It’s almost like in a way, I put all my romanticism into that one night and I was never able to feel all this again. Somehow that night took things away from me, like I expressed them to you, and you took them with you.

Too far.

What…What the fuck are you talking about? Which night? Are you even here anymore? her soon-to-be ex asks, pointing to her forehead aggressively.

Our girl snaps back to reality, turns to the man who has certainly just become an ex. 

You know what—I want to get away from you. Stop the car, I want to get out.

We’re not in a car!

She knows she’s taken things too far, but she can’t help herself.

Baby, you are gonna miss that plane she says, pointing to the balcony door so this man can see himself out. She knows she shouldn’t be saying the lines like this. They used to bring her so much joy, the promise it held when Céline tells Jesse he won’t make it home, and he smiles brightly at her as he responds, I know. But lately our girl Céline has the feeling that time is no longer on her side and she’s starting to give up.

◆

I, Céline, am sitting in my apartment drinking tea. I’m writing a song about Jesse, sure Jesse. I’m thinking about the great work I do with organizations that bring students in remote parts of the world pencils.. I believe in the small stuff.  I’m proud of the work I do. I’m proud of the promise of being a person named Céline who at the age of 32 reconnects with her soulmate from the age of 23. I’m not 31 sitting at the kitchen table of my apartment in Lagos thinking about the fact that my impromptu day-to-night date that happened in Accra bar Paris, two weeks ago was a bust. I’m not thinking that the man who spoke to me about losing his mind and panhandling barefoot in Germany, was definitely not my Jesse. I, Céline, am not thinking that the clock is running out. I, Céline, am sitting here drinking tea, believing— beholden to my happily ever after. 

I am certain that my happiness is coming, and it is oh so painful.