The Line We Shouldn’t Cross

If there was one rule Zainab had always lived by, it was this: never fall in love with your best friend’s man. But life, as she’d come to learn, didn’t care much for rules.

It started with a call on a rainy Thursday evening in Lagos. She was curled up in bed, listening to Asa’s “Bibanke,” when her best friend, Amaka, called with her usual excitement.

“Zee! You won’t believe it! Remember Jide, the guy I met at that Tech Summit last year?”

“Tall, beard gang, always talking like he read too many Chimamanda books?” Zainab teased.

“Yes! He just got a job in Lekki, and guess what? He asked me to help him find a place. I told him You’re the queen of house hunting. I hope you don’t mind?”

Zainab didn’t mind. Until she did.

Jide was charming in a quiet, intentional way. He wasn’t loud like the other men Amaka usually dated. He listened when you spoke, he laughed with his eyes, and he had a habit of leaning in—like your words were the most important thing in the world.

At first, Zainab ignored the butterflies. She told herself they were just flutters of admiration. Appreciation. But things got blurry the day they went apartment hunting in Ikoyi, and it rained heavily. They had to wait out the storm in his car, and that’s when he said it.

“I feel like I can talk to you about anything, Zainab. You get me.”

She smiled politely, even though her heart was already galloping. “That’s what friends are for.”

But they both knew the word friend was starting to feel too small for what was growing between them.

Days turned to weeks. Jide started texting more—about work, music, politics, and the strange sadness that sometimes haunted him at night. Zainab responded, telling herself she was just being a good friend. Amaka, oblivious, gushed constantly about how “perfect” he was and how she felt this was the man she would marry.

Guilt became Zainab’s shadow.

Then came the night everything changed.

It was Amaka’s birthday. Zainab hosted a surprise dinner, and Jide was the last to arrive. He didn’t take his eyes off Zainab all night. When they finally found a moment alone in the kitchen, he whispered, “I can’t pretend anymore. I’ve tried, Zainab. But it’s you. It’s always been you.”

She froze. Time slowed. In that moment, she realized she had been standing at the edge of a line for weeks, toes curled on the border of betrayal and longing.

“You can’t say that,” she whispered. “She’s my best friend.”

“She’s not the one I think about,” he replied. “It’s you I see everywhere.”

She should have walked away. She should have told him it was wrong.

But instead, she kissed him.

What followed was a month of stolen glances, secret meetings, and quiet heartbreaks. Zainab lived in constant fear—fear of discovery, fear of herself, fear of what she was becoming.

And then, one Saturday morning, Amaka showed up at her apartment. No warning. No knock. Just walked in with a wide smile and a box of pastries.

“I think Jide is going to propose,” she said breathlessly. “I found the ring in his drawer.”

Zainab felt her world tilt. “Oh.”

“I just wanted to thank you, Zee. I feel like if you hadn’t helped him settle in, we might never have gotten this close.”

Zainab nodded, tears stinging her eyes. “You deserve the best, Amaka.”

That night, she ends things with Jide. No dramatic speeches, no tears—just a quiet goodbye outside his apartment, with the streetlights casting long shadows between them.

“I can’t be the reason her world shatters,” she said.

He nodded, pained. “But what about us?”

“There’s no us,” she whispered. “There never should have been.”

Years passed.

Zainab never told Amaka the truth. She watched her marry Jide in a lavish wedding and cheered with the rest of the guests. Their friendship continued, slightly fractured, but intact.

Sometimes, when Zainab walks alone by the water, she remembers a man she once loved—deeply, desperately—but could never call hers.

Because some lines, no matter how tempting, are better left uncrossed.