Nia Kaseke & Rowan Dube

For a week after our first meeting, Nia kept my umbrella by her front door. She says she was waiting for a sensible opportunity to return it. I say she could have asked for a second date without inventing an equipment exchange. Neither of us has changed our position.

We had started chatting on WaBanja because she mentioned repairing clothes in her profile, and I had a jacket with a zip that trapped me whenever I was in a hurry. She asked whether I wanted a conversation or free tailoring advice. I said I hoped there might be room for both.

Our first meeting ended in rain. I had brought an umbrella because my work bag contained everything except the thing I was looking for. Nia had brought a light coat and a confidence in the weather that the weather did not deserve. We walked to her transport stop together. When mine arrived first, I handed her the umbrella and ran.

I sent a message the next morning, then spent the day dealing with an unexpected stock delivery at the shop where I worked. By evening, I was tired and answered her question with three words. They were perfectly polite words. They were also the kind of words that made her decide I had only been friendly because we were already standing under the same umbrella.

Nia was organised. She liked knowing what her Saturday would contain before Friday became stressful. I worked in a small hardware shop, where a quiet morning could turn into an argument about a missing order before you had finished opening the shutters. I used that unpredictability as an explanation for more things than it actually explained.

When she proposed meeting to return the umbrella, I said I would try. She replied that trying was difficult to put into a calendar.

I laughed at the message. She had not intended it as a joke.

We did meet. She brought the umbrella, folded more neatly than I had ever managed. We sat down, and she asked whether I actually wanted to see her again. I was startled enough to answer without performing any version of myself.

“Yes. Very much. I thought that was obvious.”

She shook her head. “You keep telling me about deliveries.”

It was a useful thing to hear. I had been giving her information about my day and assuming it also communicated interest. For someone who had only known me a short time, a list of obstacles did not sound much like an invitation.

I began making plans I could keep. That sometimes meant meeting earlier than either of us preferred or choosing something near my work. It also meant admitting when I couldn't manage an evening instead of leaving a hopeful maybe floating around until it was too late to use the time for anything else.

Nia made an adjustment too. When a plan changed for a real reason, she tried not to treat the change as a verdict on how much I cared. She asked what the new plan was. If I didn't have one, she went ahead with her own evening. We both found that less dramatic than quietly testing each other.

We enjoyed different things. I liked spending an afternoon browsing stalls without buying anything. She liked a destination and a reason to go there. She introduced me to a small exhibition I would never have found myself. I took her to a market where we spent twenty minutes discussing a lamp neither of us wanted. She still maintains that this was not an activity. She also remembers the lamp.

The first time I cooked for her, I read the recipe too late to notice that one ingredient needed an hour of preparation. She asked whether I wanted help or someone to talk to while I caught up. It was the first time I noticed how often she offered choices rather than taking over. I chose help and then had to stop pretending I knew where I kept the measuring jug.

By the time this photograph was taken, we had become comfortable enough to arrive at a garden gathering without treating every minute as a test. I wore my navy sweater. Nia put on her black dress and carried the beige coat because she had decided to be realistic about the evening temperature.

I put my arm around her while someone tried to organise a picture. She looked up and asked whether I had checked the weather. I said I had brought the umbrella. She laughed as if I had finally remembered my lines.

We have kept that first umbrella, though it now lives wherever the person who last used it forgot to leave it. It is no longer an excuse to see each other. We have become better at asking directly.