The first time Ada met Tunde, it was almost her last.
She was driving through Ojuelegba, sweating behind the wheel of her cousin’s old Corolla, when a man dashed across the road, clutching a carton of books. She slammed the brakes so hard the tires screamed. The carton exploded open, books scattering everywhere.
“Are you mad?” Ada shouted, her heart racing.
The man straightened, brushing dust from his shirt. “If I die today, at least it will be in the service of literature,” he said with a crooked grin.
Ada blinked. Who jokes about death in Lagos traffic? She got down, helped him pick up the books, and noticed one titled Written in the Stars.
“You believe in fate?” she asked.
“Not really,” he said. “But I believe some meetings are too strange to be accidents.”
Something in his tone lodged in her chest.
Weeks later, they bumped into each other again at a friend’s birthday party.
“You again,” Ada said, eyes narrowing.
He lifted a glass of Chapman. “Careful. Say that too often and it’ll sound like destiny.”
They laughed, but underneath, they both felt the pull.
They began to talk, then meet, and soon their conversations slipped into nights that stretched longer than Lagos power cuts. Ada found herself drawn to Tunde’s fire. He was a struggling writer, broke but brilliant, the kind of man who believed in chasing dreams even when the world laughed.
But Ada’s father had other plans. He had already promised her to Chike, a wealthy banker with polished shoes, a Lekki apartment, and connections that made parents beam with pride.
One evening, Ada’s father pulled her aside. “Marriage is not romance, Ada,” he said firmly. “It is survival. That boy Tunde, he has nothing. Don’t mistake hunger for passion.”
Ada’s throat tightened. “But Daddy”
“No buts. You will marry Chike.”
The pressure mounted. Chike began to suspect she was seeing someone else. One night, he showed up outside her office in his sleek Mercedes.
“Get in,” he ordered.
When she refused, his smile vanished. “Listen to me, Ada. That boy can’t protect you. He can’t even protect himself. Stay away from him or you’ll regret it.”
Her hands trembled long after he drove away.
Still, fate kept pulling her back to Tunde. At a wedding reception, they found themselves seated side by side. At a church vigil, they somehow ended up in the same prayer group.
“It’s like the city is conspiring,” Ada whispered one night as they sat on the rooftop of Tunde’s cousin’s house.
Tunde leaned closer. “Or maybe it’s just us refusing to let go.”
Their kiss that night felt inevitable, like something that had been waiting for years to happen.
But Chike was not done.
One evening, as Ada left Tunde’s small apartment in Yaba, she noticed headlights trailing her. Chike’s car. Her chest tightened.
The next day, Tunde received a warning note under his door: Stay away from her, or pay the price.
He laughed it off at first, but Ada saw the worry in his eyes.
“Maybe we should stop,” she whispered, tears gathering.
Tunde took her hands. “Stop? After all this? Ada, if I have to fight the whole of Lagos for you, I will.”
The fight came sooner than expected.
One night, Ada agreed to meet Chike at a café to “talk things through.” Tunde insisted on waiting nearby. When Chike realized Tunde was watching, his temper boiled.
“You think this is a love story?” Chike spat, slamming his fist on the table. “This is real life. People like him don’t win here.”
Ada’s voice shook, but she stood her ground. “This isn’t about winning, Chike. It’s about choosing. And I choose him.”
For a tense moment, silence reigned. Then Chike leaned back, his jaw tight. “You’ll regret this,” he muttered before storming out.
The threats, the warnings, the fear, it all tested them. But they held on. Against family pressure, against Chike’s intimidation, against the odds.
Two years later, Ada and Tunde opened a small bookstore in Yaba. They named it Written in the Stars.
On the day of the opening, Ada’s father showed up quietly, standing at the back. He didn’t say a word, but when Tunde offered him a chair, he sat. That was enough.
Later, as they closed the shop for the night, Ada leaned against Tunde’s shoulder.
“You know,” she whispered, “sometimes I still wonder… what if I’d listened to my father?”
Tunde kissed her forehead. “Then we wouldn’t be here. But Ada, some things, some people, you can’t avoid. We were written long before we knew it.”
And for the first time, she believed it.
Images from meta Ai