Episode 3: Echoes of What We Were
The apartment felt bigger now — not because Tunde was gone, but because his absence echoed louder than any words he could’ve said.
Ifeoma didn’t cry.
Instead, she moved like a ghost in her own home, drifting from room to room, replaying scenes that once held laughter, now reduced to silent memories. Her bed smelled like him. The balcony still had the cup he used that morning. His forgotten toothbrush mocked her from the sink like a cruel leftover of love.
She deleted his number.
Then blocked him.
Then unblocked.
Then blocked again.
Heartbreak is rarely linear.
Two weeks passed.
She told no one — not even Zinny, her best friend since NYSC. She didn’t want pity. She didn’t want advice. She wanted time. Space.
But time, she was learning, only softened pain — it didn’t erase it.
She drowned herself in work, designing branding concepts for a new African luxury fashion line. Her emails were perfect. Her pitches sharp. But inside, she was a mess of unsaid things and uncried tears.
Then, one late night, her phone buzzed.
Ama.
No name. Just a Ghanaian number she vaguely recognized from that one time Tunde mistakenly FaceTimed her when he meant to call Ama.
Her stomach flipped.
The message was short.
“You don’t know me. But I know you. Can we talk?”
She stared at it for minutes, unsure if it was a trap, a prank, or karma wearing lipstick.
She replied.
“What could you possibly want from me?”
The response came instantly.
“The truth. I didn’t know he was seeing you. Not until last week.”
Ifeoma’s world tilted again.
She expected betrayal. But what she didn’t expect… was another broken woman.
Over the next hour, texts flew between Lagos and Accra. They compared timelines. Messages. Screenshots. Receipts. And what emerged wasn’t a love triangle.
It was a web.
Tunde wasn’t torn between two women.
He was entertaining four.
Ama was just the one he got caught with. There was another woman in Kigali. One in Abuja. A digital Casanova, weaving half-promises and sexy lies across borders.
He wasn’t a man confused about love.
He was an architect of emotional scams.
By the time they ended the chat, Ifeoma’s fingers were trembling.
“We deserve better,” Ama had said.
“We believed him because he made us feel seen.”
Ifeoma replied with a heavy heart.
“He only saw what he could take. Not who we truly were.”
The next morning, Ifeoma took down all the photos on her wall. The couple shots. The love notes he once scribbled on sticky pads and hid in her bag. She tore them carefully — not out of rage, but finality.
She needed to let go.
But heartbreak doesn’t leave overnight.
It lingers. Whispers. Rewinds.
Especially when the love felt real.
That night, she took a long walk around her estate, alone, wearing a hoodie and headphones playing Asa’s “Bibanke.”
The moon followed her — loyal and watchful.
Somewhere deep inside, she knew this wasn’t the end of her story.
But it was the end of something important.
And endings, when embraced fully…
Are also the beginning of something new.
