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Chapter 15: Neutral Gear
Ifa arrived early.
She always did—whether to jobs, meetings, or moments that might matter. The café sat near the edge of the city, open-faced and loud with Saturday traffic. She parked her bike where she could see it clearly, helmet resting beside her on the table like a boundary she could cross or not.
Neutral ground, she reminded herself.
When he arrived, she recognized him instantly—not from memory, but from posture. Riders carried themselves differently. He removed his helmet slowly, respectfully, as if aware that first impressions could bruise.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m glad you came.”
No compliments. No assumptions.
They ordered coffee separately and paid separately, exactly as agreed. The conversation unfolded without urgency. He asked about the track, about bikes, about lines taken too tight or too wide. He listened more than he spoke, and when he spoke, it was with precision—as though words were tools, not weapons.
She relaxed without meaning to.
There was no probing into her past. No searching questions disguised as curiosity. Just the present, laid out between them.
“I like how you ride,” he said eventually. “Not reckless. Intentional.”
That word again.
Intentional.
She felt something settle—not spark, not ignite, but anchor.
They parted without promises. No follow-up texts demanding meaning. Just a simple, Ride safe.
In the days that followed, Ifa noticed how differently this connection behaved. It didn’t compete with her life; it fit alongside it. Messages came and went without expectation. Some days, none at all.
Ali remained in her orbit, unchanged, or so it seemed at first. He never asked about the café meeting. Never demanded clarity. He watched her rebuild with quiet pride, even as he accepted the distance she maintained.
She respected him deeply for that.
But constancy, she learned, could be deceptive. It did not mean immunity to change.
Gradually, Ali began to fray at the edges. The replies that once came easily started arriving late, sometimes not at all. He was always tired now—bone-tired, like someone carrying a weight he hadn’t named out loud yet. Work bled into evenings. Even weekends seemed to exhaust him. When they spoke, his laughter felt borrowed, his silences longer than comfortable.
And then there were the rants.
“My mother’s looking for a bride,” he said one night, voice threaded with a weary sort of disbelief. Not anger exactly—more resignation. “She’s already found someone she likes. Or thinks she likes.”
He spoke about the girl in fragments, as if saying too much might make her real. How she took up his time. How every conversation felt like an obligation dressed up as interest. How she was nothing like Ifa - said with no bitterness, just a quiet comparison he couldn’t stop himself from making.
Ifa listened. Always listening.
She didn’t flinch. Didn’t argue. Didn’t claim space she had already stepped back from. Instead, she held her distance with the same care she’d used to rebuild herself.
“Maybe you should give it a chance,” she said gently, when he paused. “Sometimes what feels unfamiliar isn’t wrong. A girl your mother likes might be what’s best for you.”
The words surprised him. They surprised her too.
Ali fell quiet after that, the kind of quiet that wasn’t absence but reckoning. He hadn’t expected her to be so reasonable, so unselfish. Part of him had hoped, foolishly, that she would object. That she would ask him not to go. That she would make it harder.
But Ifa didn’t. She never did.
She watched as he became more unavailable, more caught between duty and desire, between the life unfolding in front of him and the one that had almost been. She saw how he changed—not dramatically, not all at once, but in the way tiredness settled into his bones, in how his presence became sporadic, in how even his rants began to thin out.
Ali was learning how to let go, just as she had.
And in that quiet, mutual unraveling, they remained connected, not by promises or proximity, but by a shared understanding: sometimes care means stepping aside, even when it hurts.
Her work grew busier. More projects stacked. Site meetings ran long. Her hands remembered purpose. Her mind stopped rehearsing exits.
One evening, as she locked up her bike, her phone buzzed.
Track this Sunday? Same time. No pressure.
She stared at the message longer than necessary.
Motion, she thought. Motion survives.
She typed back, Maybe.
And for the first time, maybe didn’t feel like avoidance. It felt like space.
/--- Please leave a comment if you want to read the next chapter. :)
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