His eyes were always the first thing you noticed about him. Deep blue and enthralling, like an ocean waiting to pull you in. They had made him the subject of many cruel jokes as a child, growing up in a place where everyone had deep brown eyes. “How can a Black person have blue eyes?” “His mother was probably a prostitute who slept with an oyinbo.” “Maybe he’s possessed.” These were some of the things said about him—many times to his face—by the silly children we grew up with.

Until one day, driven by a strange desire to defend him from the endless bullying, I screamed out a demand for it to stop, my little five-year-old voice travelling across the big hall as I hit one of the boys with a stick and said, “Leave him alone!” As if shocked into obedience, he was indeed left alone. Nobody spoke to him unless it was absolutely necessary, and in a few days he was at the front door of my father’s mansion saying, “I don’t have any friends because of you.”

“They were never your friends, blue eyes. They used to tease you,” I replied.

“At least it was better than nothing,” he said.

“So what do you want now, blue eyes?” I asked, hands on my hips.

“To play, blue eyes,” he said back with a mischievous smile.

“Why are you calling me that? I’m not like you,” I said, a little annoyed.

“My name is Dele. If you call me blue eyes, I call you blue eyes,” he said.

“Whatever, blue eyes, come in.”

We spent many days after that fighting and reconciling over little things, me stoic and unflinching and he with sheepish smiles. As our childhood years passed by, we became inseparable. And as we stepped into adulthood, I grew into what many would call a great beauty, with several suitors ready to win me over and show me off like a prized horse ready for breeding. Before long, one of them did claim his prize, and—persuaded by my father, who eagerly wished for a fellow high-ranking politician to become his in-law—I agreed to be married to my husband, Laolu.

Dele did not approve.

“He just seems like a pompous ass. I don’t trust him. Something is off about that guy,” he muttered at every opportunity, until my wedding day arrived and it became obvious there was nothing he could do to deter me. Before my husband and I left to begin our new life, Dele still found the space to whisper, “You’re just doing this because of your father, and that’s very dumb.”

“Stop it! I’m tired of hearing this rubbish. Have you ever considered that maybe this is what I actually want?” I fired back.

“I just want to make sure you’re doing the right thing. This guy just—”

“Enough! You’re not my father or mother. If you’re jealous, just say so,” I retorted.

“You’re an idiot. Do I—”

I cut him off swiftly. “You know what? I think I’ve outgrown this friendship. I’m a senator’s wife now, and let’s be honest—we were never really on the same level.”

He gasped, mouth wide open and ready to attack, but he swallowed deeply and sternly said, “Ok.”

Dele’s eyes seemed to grow darker as they glared at me. I glared back for a minute as we both seemed to consider the gravity of our words. After what felt like an eternity, I stepped into my husband’s jeep and slammed the door, Dele’s angry eyes flashing across my mind as we hurried away.

Those deep blue eyes now stared at me—tired, defeated, and beckoning—as I stepped into the special care unit of the state prison hospital. There were three beds in the room, but his was the only one occupied. Guess there aren’t many dying people in prisons, I quipped as I moved closer to where Dele lay dying. His brown skin was ashen and devoid of color. His chest heaved as he passed short, laboured breaths through cracked lips.

“Dunni, you came,” he managed with a whisper.

Hearing my name on his lips after so many years, his voice feeble and fading away, I considered fleeing the room. But that kind of thing could only be done before you looked the person in the eyes and noticed their decline—before you paid attention to their gaunt face and saw all signs of virility slowly ebbing away from their body with each passing minute. There was no avoiding it now.

“Yes, I left as soon as I got your message,” I said as I moved even closer to his bed.

He smiled and grabbed my fingers. In truth, it took me four days after receiving the message on my phone before deciding to visit the state prison. But I assume it must be hard to distinguish how many days have passed when you’re at death’s door. The message had come from an unknown number and simply read:

Hey blue eyes, I’m going under. Literally. They say I’m dying and I don’t have much time. Will you come?

At first, I had dismissed the message, willing it to be some kind of error on the part of the sender—or even a prank. But a few days of feigning ignorance and wishful denial soon left me uneasy. By the third day, I knew the message could have only come from one person.

“What is it? What is wrong?” A silly question to ask a man clearly dying, but I needed to know.

“Pancreatic cancer. Stage 4. Found too late,” he muttered between raspy breaths.

“When did you find out?”

“Six months ago,” he said.

“And you’re just telling me now?!” I raised my voice.

Dele smiled, sad and defeated. “Would you have responded if I had messaged sooner? You stopped taking my calls the day I got in here. I messaged for seven years and not a single reply from you. Your message was clear.”

“So why message now?” I turned away, face flushed with shame.

“Because I need you to take a letter to my mother. She may have disowned me, but she is all I truly have left in this world. She needs to know the truth after I’m gone.”

“What letter? What truth?” I bristled, shrinking back away from him.

His coughs grew stronger as he said, “Dunni, I told you I’d take the secret to my grave… and I am. So why are you worried? I served the time. I just want my mother to know I wasn’t all bad.”

“That’s crazy… you can’t do that,” I said, standing up and pacing around the room.

“She’s old. Very old. She won’t tell anyone. I’m sure she won’t be long behind me. Please, I just want her to know I wasn’t the kind of man she thought I was,” he said.

I stared in silence, debating the possibility of racing out the door and never returning. But again, I was here, drowned in those deep blue eyes that seemed to make it hard to discern my next move.

I walked back to sit on the bed and removed a notepad and pen from my handbag. “So what do you want to say?” I asked.

Gripping my hands firmly, Dele muttered a soft, “Thank you. Dearest mami…” he said, as I wrote down his every word. The letter was only two pages, but it took the whole night to finish as we had to stop several times while I held his hands through coughs and retching. He slept off a few times as well but continued after waking each time to meet my soft gaze. Once completed, I handed him the pen and held the notepad in the air as he inked his signature. Once she saw those initials, his mother would know instantly that the letter was truly from her son.

I tore out the pages containing the letter and neatly folded them into my handbag. “I hope this brings you the peace you deserve. I’m sorry I wasn’t much of a friend these last twenty-five years. Especially after everything you have done for me,” I said, my hands wiping away the beads of sweat on his forehead.

He heaved a sigh and muttered between coughs, “It’s okay. You were my friend. I couldn’t leave you alone.”

“I’m so sorry. This is all my fault!” I said as tears streamed down my wrinkled face.

“It’s okay, blue eyes,” Dele said as he took his last breath, his loyal and noble soul slipping away with the darkness of the night as the morning sun gleamed through the window.

I called the warden outside the door to inform him of the prisoner’s death, grabbing my bag to move away as the warden called out, “Don’t you want to stay for the burial? We can hand over the body if you’d like.”

I paused, wiping away the tears, and said, “No, I’m not family. But bury him close to the sea. He’d like that.”

My train ride back home seemed to drag on forever, but after five hours I was back in the little town where Dele and I became friends. The train station was not too far from my father’s house, so I decided to walk home. I walked for about five minutes before stopping at the front door of Dele’s old house. His mother still lived there after all these years, alone and defiant in her refusal to ever see her son after he was accused of killing a man. I took out the letter in my purse and reached a hand to knock on the door—but quickly put the folded paper back in my bag and rushed towards home.

Since my father passed away, I lived in the huge mansion alone after my two children went to work in the big city. I dashed into the house, panting and looking around to make sure nobody saw me. I had not stepped a foot in front of Dele’s house since he was locked up for the murder of my husband, Laolu, and it would certainly raise eyebrows to start doing so now.

Six years after I cut off all contact at my wedding, Dele came to the home I shared with my husband. The visit only happened at my request, after I called him sobbing and saying, “You were right… he raped my daughter and threatened to kill me when I found out. Please come, I need your help.” He agreed to come, making perhaps the biggest mistake of his life.

My vile husband overheard our conversation and met him with a gun as soon as he walked in. After several minutes of tugging and tussling, the gun landed in my hand and I did not hesitate before raining down bullets into my husband’s face. It was a messy and bloody death, which was why the judge who sentenced Dele to life imprisonment in solitary confinement gave him the harshest sentence possible.

Much like I defended him when we were children, Dele protected me from my actions, choosing to take the blame so my children would not grow up alone and abandoned. After he was sentenced to prison, I avoided any connection or contact with the entire horrid ordeal and focused on my daughters as I buried the past.

It may not have been the ideal thing to do, but I did it for the same reason I was about to burn Dele’s letter. Like my daddy used to always say, “In this life, you gotta put yourself first. Protect yourself at all cost, even if it brings you pain—else the world will trample you down beneath its gory feet.”

With a slight grimace, I lit the fireplace and tossed the letter into the flames, deep blue eyes flashing through my mind as I watched the ink turn to soot.