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Chapter 14: Safety Net
Ali never announced his protection. He didn’t need to. It lived in the small, deliberate things—the way he waited until she locked her helmet before starting his engine, the way his bike always positioned itself slightly behind hers at stoplights, like a shadow that chose to stay. Safety, with Ali, was never loud. It was steady, quiet, almost invisible—but that was what made it unmistakable.
Ifa noticed everything.
She noticed how he memorized her routes without asking, how he knew when to slow at corners, when to anticipate the traffic lights, how he texted “Home?” not to intrude, but to confirm. How he never pushed past her silences, only filled them when she asked. Somewhere along the way, safety stopped feeling like a fluke and began to feel like a pattern. That pattern was unsettling. That constancy made her uneasy because she hadn’t learned to trust calm. She had only learned to move.
That was what scared her.
Ali spoke of ordinary futures as if they were possible—weekends planned in advance, meals shared without urgency, a life that didn’t require constant scanning of exits. When he suggested they could be more than friends, his voice held no pressure. Only hope.
She declined him the first time gently. The second time with reasons. The third time with armor.
“You know your mum wouldn’t like me,” she said one evening, leaning against her bike after a ride that had gone longer than intended. “I’m divorced. I ride. I don’t even have a proper job right now.”
Ali didn’t argue immediately. That pause told her everything.
“She worries,” he admitted finally. “About… complications.”
Ifa smiled, because smiling was easier than saying I am tired of being complicated.
She gave him every excuse she could think of, stacking them neatly between them like bricks. Her life, she said, was unstable. Her focus had to be elsewhere. She couldn’t afford disappointment—not now, not again.
Ali persisted for a while, not with pressure but with presence. He lingered in the background of her life in ways she hadn’t noticed at first: the occasional text just to check she’d made it through the day, the subtle alignment of schedules, the small adjustments to accommodate her unpredictability without comment. It wasn’t dramatic or declarative—it was just… there. And that made her uneasy.
Yet in the quiet moments, when she thought no one was watching, she realized she had begun to depend on that quiet presence. The stability it offered, the feeling of being accounted for without obligation, was a strange comfort. She hadn’t felt it in years. It frightened her.
So she returned her focus to motion. Motion kept her alive.
She worked late shifts at the pizzeria, hands dusted white with flour, learning to read ovens by instinct. She stocked shelves at 7-11 during red-eye hours, when silence was louder than conversation. She rode whenever she could, the racetrack welcoming her like a secret, a place where no one asked questions—only respected speed and control. Tires hissed against asphalt, heartbeat thumped in her ears, and the wind laced her face with clarity. There, she didn’t have to be anything but herself.
And then, one evening, her MSN blinked.
Saw you at the track this morning! You are fast.
She stared at the message. The avatar meant nothing to her—a silhouette, anonymous and unassuming. Curiosity stirred. Who was this? Why now?
Thanks, she typed back.
The chat went quiet.
Then it happened again. A comment here. A remark there. Never invasive. Never demanding. Just… there. Watching, waiting. The subtle regularity of the messages created a tension that was not threatening but insistent. A sense of being observed, not scrutinized, but remembered. Suspicion mingled with a strange curiosity. She found herself checking her screen more often than she intended, wondering if she had missed a pattern, a hint of intent, a trace of familiarity she could not place.
She didn’t ask questions. Neither did he.
Around the same time, life shifted. She landed a job at a small local firm—nothing flashy, but honest. The directors spoke to her like an equal. She found herself drawing plans again, attending site meetings, measuring progress in something other than survival. The days began to take shape again, solidifying around small accomplishments and familiar routines.
Ali noticed. “You look lighter,” he said once, handing her coffee without asking how she took it.
She didn’t correct him. She didn’t explain that the weight hadn’t lifted—it had just been redistributed, stored in corners of her life she didn’t speak of.
And all the while, the MSN presence continued, subtle, deliberate. She tried to reconstruct it in her memory: when it had appeared, who it could be, whether it had always been there, watching from the periphery. Every time a message came through, her pulse skipped—not in fear, but in anticipation, in the quiet pull of a connection she didn’t yet understand.
When he finally asked if they could meet, Ifa surprised herself by agreeing. She set three simple conditions. First, a public space. Second, they would arrive separately—no pillion, no hitching rides, no shared cab. Third, they would go dutch.
He accepted without hesitation. That should have unsettled her. Instead, it grounded her.
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