If you haven’t read Part 1, you will need to do that to get the full story…..
Okay, now let me finish this gist.
Kemi said she saw the first message in “The Originals” at 11:47pm and it was from Bisi, which honestly should have been the first sign that the night was not over yet. If you know anything about any friend group, you know there is always a Bisi, the one with zero filter, maximum energy and absolutely no regard for timing, and this Bisi had been sitting on something all evening.
She typed, “I think we all know why she left. Can we just be honest for once?” and that one sentence cracked the whole thing wide open.
“Don’t start, Bisi” and she replied, “Start what? Nobody is going to say it so I will say it. We all knew about Femi and Susan. All of us and no one said anything to Shade, now the man just proposed and we are all there clapping like everything is fine. How?
The chat went silent for about 3 minutes after that, and Kemi said she could see people typing and stopping, typing and stopping, that kind of silence in a group chat where everyone is clearly online but no one is committing to a single word.
Then Susan replied and it was just three words, “Please leave me,” and Kemi said her heart dropped the moment she saw it, because those three words carried everything, the pain, the exhaustion, the years of saying nothing, all of it molded into a message after watching the man she once loved get down on one knee for her best friend.
Bisi fired back, “If not tonight then when? After the wedding? After they have children? When exactly were we going to tell Shade the truth?” and nobody had an answer because there was no good one.
Then Ronke, who had been completely quiet the whole time, sent a voice note, and Kemi said she stared at it for a full minute before pressing play because Ronke was not a voice note person. In 7 years of that group chat she had always been the chill babe, so a voice note from Ronke meant whatever she had to say was too heavy to type.
Kemi pressed play and Ronke’s voice was low, it was obvious she had just finished crying. She said, “I have been carrying this for a long time and I am done. Femi and Susan dated for almost a year before he and Shade got together, and it was not a situationship, it was a relationship.
Susan ended it because he was not ready to commit and three months later he was with Shade. Just 3 months. And we all watched it happen and told ourselves it was not our place, and then one year became two years and two years became tonight, and now there is a ring on Shade’s finger and Susan is somewhere crying alone and I cannot pretend I feel fine about how we handled this. Shade is my friend too. She deserved to know.”
After that the chat went completely dead, no more typing, no more anything, just everyone sitting with the weight of what Ronke had said, and Kemi put her phone face down, stared at the ceiling and that is when she called me.
ICYMI: Dara’s Corner- The Proposal That Shook the Friend Group (Part 1)
Now here is the part that kept me up even longer.
While all of this was happening, Shade’s phone had died somewhere between the proposal and the drive home because when everybody and their mother is calling you to say congratulations, your battery does not stand a chance.
She had spent the evening happy, completely in love and completely unaware, and by the time she got home and plugged her phone in she was so exhausted.
But she could not sleep immediately because the messages were still coming in, and so she sat there in bed at around 2am going through her congratulations one by one, her ring catching the light every time she moved her hand, smiling at every single message until she opened “The Originals.”
I did not sleep after Kemi told me that part, because the story had moved in a way I was not prepared for. It was no longer about whether anyone should tell Shade the truth, because Shade already knew, she had read every word, and now she was lying on her bed with a ring on her finger and a question on her mind.
There is no ending here because the story has not ended yet, but I keep coming back to the same question and I think you will too.
Now that Shade knows, what does she do? Does she confront Femi and risk everything she just said yes to? Should she call Susan and finally have the conversation they never had?
Does she stay quiet and carry it the way Susan carried it for two years, swallowing it down until she convinces herself she is fine?
I do not know what Shade will do, but I know what I would be thinking if I were her: Should I still go on with this?
See you next Saturday.
Xoxo,
Dara.
