Love By Design

Chapter One

Aziza

I love my job Alhamdulillah but do you know what I hate the most? Men! And it so happens that I get to meet them a lot due to the nature of my work.

Yay me...note the sarcasm.

I've encountered a lot of men or customers that are men and I've come to the realization that that men dislike honest women. They dislike women who speak up, they dislike women who know their rights, they dislike independent women, they dislike women who say no. They absolutely despise women.

And you know what baffles me even more? The audacity and temerity they have. I do not know where they get it from, it's just there. Don't you wish you could just snap one man's neck as an example to others?

I think we should avoid men. It's common sense. Why get your heart broken when you can avoid the cause? I've been single for a while now and I won't say I'm enjoying it but it's liberating. After my last relationship ended in a spectacular, burning heap of betrayal eight months ago, I officially deleted the entire gender from my system. My heart was under lock and key, guarded by an invisible security detail.

Now, my mantra was simple: "I'm just going to wing it and see where it takes me." No expectations, no emotional investments, no nonsense.

Which brought me to this exact Tuesday morning, standing in my studio, suffocating under a mountain of fabric swatches, flooring samples, and the big neck choking ego of Alhaji Bashir.

Alhaji Bashir was a middle-aged businessman who had recently acquired a block of luxury short-let apartments. He had hired Ziza Studio to handle the interior design, presumably because we were one of the highest-rated interior design studios in the whole Abuja, but clearly, he had actually hired me to act as an audience for his terrible taste and to practice his patriarchal dominance.

"Aziza, look at this," Alhaji Bashir said, waving a thick, ring-heavy hand at the mood board I had spent three sleepless nights curating. "The minimalist style you are doing here... it is too quiet. It looks like the apartment is mourning. Where is the leather? Where is the gold? A luxury property needs to look like money. Put gold trimmings on the TV console."

Na ment? Please is this man making any sense or am I actually losing my marbles?

I inhaled slowly through my nose, invoking every ounce of patience left in my body. Gold trimmings? On a sleek, matte-black floating Scandinavian console? May Allah grant me strength to deal with this man.

"Alhaji," I began, my tone dripping with a carefully measured, professional sweetness. "The target demographic for a luxury short-let isn't looking for a 1990s Dubai hotel lobby. They want clean lines, neutral tones, and functionality. If we overlay the living room with heavy gold, the space will feel claustrophobic. It's a sensory nightmare."

"No, no," he deflected, completely brushing me off with that classic, patronizing uncle wave of his hand. "You young girls of nowadays, you like things too simple. Leave the design choices to me. Just order the gold wallpaper. I am paying for it, aren't I?"

He smiled then, that condescending, small smile men use when they want to remind you that they hold the purse strings, expecting you to swallow your pride, nod your head, and say na ji, Alhaji. He thought because I was a young woman running an interior design studio, he could step all over my expertise, treat me like a glorified personal shopper, and I'd just take it for the sake of the portfolio.