My Drunk Best Friend Asked To Measure His Size But Then He…
I need to know.
Can my size fit you?
Do I fit in your world?
Just tell me.
Do I fit?
Yes, more than you can imagine.
What starts as a drunk joke becomes the most honest thing Collins has ever said.
It was past midnight when Collins knocked on Brent’s door in Leki.
No call, no text, just knocking loud and desperate like a man running from something.
Brent opened the door and found his best friend standing there in a half-open dress shirt, smelling like palm wine and Hennessy, eyes red and far away.
Collins had come straight from his brother’s engagement party.
The kind of party where every uncle smiles at you and whispers, “You’re next.”
Brent said nothing.
He knew that look.
Collins walked in, looked around the studio, and pointed at the Taylor’s tape on the sewing chair.
“Measure me, Collins.
You’re drunk.
Just measure me, Brent.”
Brent picked up the tape and pressed it across Colin’s chest.
42 in standard.
He wrote nothing down.
Then Collins did something strange.
He took Brent’s hand and pressed it flat against his own chest, right over his heart.
Brent felt it beating fast.
Way too fast for a man just standing still.
Do I fit?
Collins whispered.
In your world, do I fit?
The tape fell to the floor.
Brent had no answer.
Not because he didn’t know, but because the truth was too big for that room, too heavy for that hour.
Collins had fit in his world since university in Abadon.
Since they were 22 and young and free, and didn’t yet know how expensive honesty could be.
Collins nodded slowly like he heard the answer anyway.
Then he sat down on the floor.
Brent sat next to him.
Neither said a word.
Outside, Legos hummed its loud, restless night song, completely unbothered.
Brent made OG and fried plantins because his hands needed something to do.
Collins came out of the living room at 7:00 a.m. wearing Brent’s oversized unilag shirt, hair rough, eyes puffy.
He stood in the kitchen doorway and just watched Brent stir the pot without saying a single word for a full minute.
He just watched.
Did I say something stupid last night?
He finally asked.
Brent kept his eyes on the stove.
No, you were just drunk.
I feel like I said something.
You didn’t.
Collins pulled out a stool and sat at the counter.
Brent slid a plate in front of him.
Planton’s eggs, a small bowl of OG.
Collins stared at it like it had appeared from thin air.
“You still do this,” Colin said softly.
“Do what?”
“Remember how I like my food?”
He picked up his fork slowly.
“Nobody does that, B.
Nobody but you.”
Brent turned around then, and Collins was looking at him with that expression.
The one that had no name.
The one that only ever appeared in private, in spaces where the rest of the world couldn’t see.
Eat, Brent said.
They ate together in a silence that wasn’t empty.
It was full, full of 10 years of friendship, full of glances held one second too long, full of hands that always found small, innocent reasons to touch.
When Collins left at noon, he hugged Brent at the door.
He held on 3 seconds longer than a normal hug.
Brent stood in the hallway long after the elevator doors closed.
He was in serious serious trouble.
The name Adeared on a Tuesday afternoon.
Collins sent Brent a screenshot, a WhatsApp message from his mother with a photo attached.
Adon Quo, master’s degree.
Daughter of Chief Aon Quo from Augu.
A smile like warm sunlight.
Collins added just one emoji beneath it.
Neutral face.
Brent stared at the photo for 10 minutes before typing back.
She seems nice.
Three dots appeared, disappeared, appeared again.
Then my mother already set a dinner.
Sunday, Brent put his phone face down on the workbench and went back to sewing.
That evening, a senator’s wife came for a fitting.
She wanted her also a be taken in at the waist.
Brent kept making it too tight.
He had to redo it twice.
She gave him a long look but said nothing.
At 11 p.m. his phone rang.
Tell me the truth, Collins said, skipping any greeting.
Am I a man without direction?
What?
My mother said it today that I’m 42 with no wife, no plan, no direction, that Ade will give me structure.
His voice was tight and controlled the way it got when he was trying not to fall apart.
Is she right, Brent?
You run a company with 63 employees.
You built your mother a house in Abuja.
You have plenty of direction, Collins.
You just have a destination they cannot see.
The line went quiet.
A destination they cannot see.
Collins repeated slowly.
Yes.
A long pause.
Then, “Can you see it?”
Brent’s heart knocked hard against his ribs.
“Get some sleep,” he said, and hung up.
He sat in the dark for a long time, needle still in his hand, fabric in his lap, going absolutely nowhere.
She arrived in a yellow wrapper skirt and real easy laughter, and Brent knew immediately that none of this was her fault.
Adako was sharp and warm and completely herself.
She shook his hand like she meant it.
She walked around his studio touching fabric samples the way people touch things they actually love.
Within 4 minutes, she had made Brent’s apprentice tunn laugh so hard he knocked over a mannequin.
Collins stood near the window, arms folded, watching all of it quietly.
Brent got out the tape and got to work.
He was professional, precise.
He measured her arms, noted the numbers, kept his hands steady.
She would be a size 12.
He already knew the cut, something in burnt orange with a fitted bodice.
It would look beautiful on her.
He talks about you like you hung the moon, she said quietly.
Once Colin stepped outside to take a call.
Brent this, Brent that.
I finally asked him, “Who is this man?”
He said, “My best friend.
My oldest friend.”
She smiled at him carefully.
He said, “You understand him better than anyone alive.”
Brent wrote a number in his book that he would have to erase and redo later.
Then she asked the question soft, almost like she didn’t want to ask it, but had no choice.
Is he happy?
The studio went still.
Ton was in the back room.
Collins was outside.
It was just the two of them in that question and the quiet morning light coming through the louvers.
Brent looked at her.
She wasn’t testing him.
She wasn’t playing games.
She genuinely simply wanted Collins to be happy.
That was easy to see.
He will be, Brent said carefully.
Adise studied his face for a long moment.
Then she nodded, not like she believed the answer, like she understood something much deeper than the answer.
“Show me the orange fabric,” she said.
Brent handed it to her with very steady hands.
There was no Hennessy this time, no stumbling, no excuse.
Colin stood in the doorway in a plain white Igbata, completely sober, looking like a man who had made a very difficult decision and wasn’t sure yet if it was the right one.
I said yes.
His voice was flat and tired.
The dinner.
Ad’s family Saturday.
Her father wants to meet me.
Brent stepped back.
Come in.
I don’t want to come in.
Collins looked at him directly.
I want you to tell me to stay.
The apartment behind Brent was warm and ordinary.
His sewing machine was still running.
Jalof was on the stove.
A client’s agatada sat half-finish on the chair.
“Tell me to stay,” Colin said again louder this time.
“Just say it.
One word.
That is all I need and I will turn around right now and I will stay and I will figure out the rest.
Collins because I am tired.
His voice broke a little.
I am so tired of performing of going to parties and laughing and being the perfect son and meeting the right people and saying the right things.
I am exhausted.
He swallowed hard.
I just want to sit on your floor and eat your food and be known by somebody who actually sees me.
His voice dropped to almost nothing.
Do you see me?
Brent’s hand gripped the door frame so hard his knuckles achd.
Yes.
He wanted to say it so badly it sat in his throat like a stone.
I’ve always seen you since I bought on since you were 22 and laughing too loud at a party.
And I thought that man is going to ruin me completely.
Instead, he looked at Collins, the red eyes, the shaking hands, the 10 years of unsaid things between them and said, “You should go to the dinner.”
Collins went very still.
Then he nodded once, turned around, walked to the elevator.
Brent closed the door.
He sat on his kitchen floor and did not move for a very long time.
Tund left it on the workbench at noon on a Thursday.
Some man dropped it.
Tall guy, blue captain, said no need to wait for a response.
Brent recognized the handwriting before he even unfolded it.
He sat down his scissors.
He stood over the letter and read it standing because something told him if he sat down his legs might not work properly afterwards.
Brent, I’ve been writing this for 3 weeks.
This is the ninth version.
The earlier ones were better written but less honest.
I know what I am.
I have known for a long time.
I’ve spent 15 years trying to build a life around what I’m supposed to want.
And I am tired in a way that I cannot explain to anyone who hasn’t felt it.
You are the only person in my life who has never asked me to be something else.
You don’t know how rare that is.
The night I asked you to measure me, I wasn’t drunk enough to not mean it.
I needed to know if I was too much, too broken, too hidden, and you sat on the floor with me at midnight and said nothing, and it was the most honest conversation of my life.
I am not going to Saturday’s dinner.
I cannot build a life on a lie.
And I cannot keep pretending that the most important person in my life is just my friend.
I’m not asking you to save me.
I just needed you to know that I see clearly now.
Whatever comes next, I choose it with open eyes.
See, Brent folded the letter, then opened it again.
Read it one more time.
Then he picked up his phone and called Collins.
Four rings.
Nothing.
He called again.
This time on the second ring, Collins picked up.
Collins arrived at the studio at 6:00 p.m. After the apprentices had gone home, the evening light came through the louvers slow and amber, the kind that makes everything look like it belongs in an old painting.
The studio smelled of fabric and thread and the sandalwood candle Brent always burned when he worked late.
Brent met him at the door and led him inside without saying much.
In the center of the room, something hung on the tall mahogany stand, deep green eyes, handstitched lion patterns across the chest, a clean structured shoulder, a slightly longer hem, gold buttons, a quiet collar that didn’t try too hard.
Collins stood in front of it and said nothing for a long moment.
Put it on, Brent said.
Collins changed when he turned to the mirror.
Brent watched his face.
Watched the exact second it landed.
You made this for me?
Yes.
There’s no client.
No.
Collins looked at himself in the mirror.
The Isaiah goo sat on him like it had grown there.
Because it had Brent had memorized his measurements years ago without ever planning to.
I’ve been making things for you for 10 years.
Brent said quietly from behind him.
Every time I imagine my best work, the person wearing it was always you.
I just never never gave them to me.
Collins said, “No.”
Collins turned away from the mirror.
“They were standing close the way they always had been.
The way that had always had a name neither of them had ever said out loud.”
“Say what you didn’t say at the door,” Collins said.
“Just this once.”
The studio was completely still.
Brent looked at him, all of him, the man he’d known at 22, the man standing right in front of him now in a green eyes that fit like a promise and said, “Stay.”
Collins smiled.
“Slow?
Sure.
Real you stayed.
