Yesterday's Future 1✔️

8. The lilies and valleys.

Sent 2 days ago 13/2/2025
From: adamcoker198@hotmail.com
To: lilylilycgrace@hotmail.com
Subject: (no subject)

Hi Lily, you're okay? I've been trying to reach your line but it keeps going to your voicemail. Is everything alright? My friend Dylan says you been asking about me. I'm currently in Nigeria with my family. Give me a call on my current number +23480 6544 5218 or a reply when you get this. My regards to JayJay.

Received today 15/2/2025 10:30pm
From: lilylilycgrace@hotmail.com
To: adamcoker198@hotmail.com
Subject: I MISS YOU

Hey baby, my iPhone broke some days ago. Just getting a new one today after work. I had no idea you were going to Nigeria. Are you okay? Are you coming back? I miss you. Ill call you when I get a new phone soon xoxo

He sat frozen, spoon in one hand, phone in other still reading the reply from Lily all over. It was nothing that he expected. When he first got the notification of her e-mail at dinner, his heart had skipped a beat but when he saw the subject 'I Miss you' his forehead furrowed. He read it all over again and it didn't make sense to him, it only puzzled him that he just had to excuse himself from the table. He didnt understand it, why she missed him or what was going on.

It had been almost three years or more that he had last heard from her. So what was she up to now? What games were she playing this time? He knew Lily could be funny and psycho but he hadn't thought she'd ever reach out to him ever again especially after all that happened between them and how they ended things .

She was once his wife, yes. Six years ago in 2018, they had fallen in love and secretly gotten married in New York while they rounded up their degrees in the university, a marriage that lasted roughly two years. They had believed it was just perfect timing but it had been nothing but chaotic puppy love. He had thought he was once in love with the red-head. Uncle Will had told him that the surest way to get the Green Card in the white man's land was getting married to a citizen just as he had done and married Sara.

It was no lie because that was what most Africans, Nigerians particularly did to get their papers. Adam was no exception and really at the time he and Lily had been together for five months, moved in the third month and he thought they were really in love. Lily Grace, young and sophisticated, very soft, sensual and attractive woman with pale skin, chiseled look and short red hair. Not only her eccentric poise and good looks had won him over, but she was also a bright, articulate woman. He had thought she was perfect for him. He was young, naive. And now when when he thought about it, he was just stupid.

There had been no big wedding, no church, no fancy party, no tuxedo or long white dress, there was no priest. They only went to the courthouse to sign the certification of marriage with Uncle Will and Dylan and some of Lily's friends. He wore a cheap suit and she wore a small pink gown, he'd tucked a beautiful yellow flower behind her ear that she thought was sexy. They kissed and managed to take some photos before heading back to their new place for small party with their guests.

Lily knew her racist parents wouldn't consent because Adam was a traditional black man, a Nigerian for that matter and Adam too, knew that his family would never ever say yes, they would never understand that he was in love with a white woman. That didn't matter to them, they went ahead anyway and for some seconds there, he'd been happy. He told himself maybe his mother would have no choice when they had their first child, which never happened. And now, whenever he reflected on those years, he knew it was the stupidest thing he had ever done.

They were happily married for the first five months until he discovered that what he first thought was love was something else, mere physical infatuation, no connection whatsoever. They started fighting and arguing over the littlest things, he would get angry, break things, get angry and out of control and leave the house for days.