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U nlike the standard progression of grief, Timi felt acceptance first.

Alex was gone. Time would bring back normalcy. A fallacy he clung to for the first couple of days of shooting, until Maxwell stormed towards him after shooting a scene with Nonso for the eighth time.

“Get your shit together, Zik, and stop letting yourself get bitten.

Look around you. You fucking own this establishment.

By pure grit, you crawled through the dirt and sold your family to achieve this.

Now, a spoiled kid, riding on his father's wealth has the audacity to think himself a worthy rival?

Put him in his gaddamn place. You're an actor. Be one!”

And Timi stood there like a blind regaining sight amidst boom poles, props, and cameras flashing like strobe lights, voices whining like police sirens, trying not to cower from the truth.

Things would never return to normal because he had no fucking clue what that was anymore.

All his life, he'd been told his feelings were wrong, so he'd stopped feeling. Then, Alex appeared, and all he did was feel. The greats, the worsts, the hideous. He'd hoped Alex's absence would relieve him of the burden of emotions. How naive.

Acceptance shifted then to a loss so profound, he whipped out his abandoned phone later that day and began typing series of messages and deleting.

“Hey Alex, quick one, I can't find my slippers.”

“Hello. Got my wrist twisted in one of the scenes yesterday, and Sulei called in sick. Have time for one little drive?”

“You remember the song you sent me; they used it as a theme song in this movie I'm watching.”

“What's up? You good?”

As he got up to fetch some yoghurt, his gaze fell to his screen, and he froze.

He flung his phone away. Nearly retching at the blunder and the warring expectations that followed. Would Alex reply or ignore?

After minutes of pacing his bedroom without his phone chiming, anger slowly took form.

The first and second of him had been forged under the influence of family and society. He'd been so sure the last of him would be whom he truly was, and not whom he'd become with anyone. Had he grown so weak, he couldn't do something as simple as coming onto his own without an external influence?

D'Yoyo bore the brunt of this stage.

“What do you mean we're cancelling plans?” he asked, leaning against the reception desk on the ground floor of the ten-storeyed filming site where Timi had sought him out .

“You should call back that intimacy conductor,” Timi replied. “We'll be needing him after all.”

D'Yoyo tucked his folded script under his armpit and opened a bottle of water. “You must be high on generator fumes.”

'I'm serious,” Timi said. “And can you speak to Maxwell about a schedule change? We can shoot the fight scenes first, then come back to these boring ones later.”

D'Yoyo finished drinking, squeezed the bottle and threw it into a nearby bin.

“Your problem, Lawson,” he said, “is that you think you matter in the grand scheme of things.

You, just like other A-list celebrities I've been unfortunate to work with, suffer this only-character syndrome.

You think you're that important to disrupt everyone's plans because you can't handle your emotions?”

“Emotions? See, I hear how selfish it sounds, but I'm thinking of others. I know I'm holding everyone back, so give me the scenes I can effortlessly be Zik.”

D'Yoyo rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Go get your shadow, Lawson. I never approved of him, but hell, he knew how to get you functioning.”

He licked his lips. “What shadow?” When D'Yoyo raised both eyebrows, he laughed, rubbing clammy palms against his trousers. “Seriously, what shadow?”

D'Yoyo looked at him with pity. “Don't. Stop this laughter you've been tormenting us with for the past week. You sound ridiculous and you're not fooling anyone. I'll tell you as your boss and…partner, go get that guy back. So, we can finish what we started.”

This should have made him angrier being told he'd become incomplete without Alex, but a faint hope stirred.

Alex's chapter couldn't close just like that.

They'd done so much together that he'd see through Timi and come back to fix things.

A ridiculous expectation the rational part of him knew to shove into his well of delusions.

As the reasons he couldn't return Alex's confession still outweighed his regrets for chasing him off.

Nejeere's occasional presence on set also served as a reminder.

She appeared as professional as always and only mentioned Alex's absence when she informed Timi of his resignation email.

But Timi could see through her mask. And the fact that she was just as miserable pleased him perversely, even if he'd removed himself from the equation partly for her sake.

Though, the thought of Alex touching anyone as he'd touched Timi stabbed him in his guts, and he hoped they got together only after he was out of the country. Or better still, dead.

Despite what she'd said about him; he held no bitterness towards her.

The truth she stated took all the sourness.

But it seemed a different case for her as he'd caught her occasionally staring at him with an expression so cold, shivers had run down his spine.

He shouldn't fear her, but he'd fucked her man.

He probably deserved to be burnt at the stakes of the friend code.

And yet, his eyes wouldn't stop darting towards doors. His heart leaping at any squeal or unexpected flurry of activities from the assistants. Nose sifting through smells for that fresh lemon scent.

Anticipating the impossible kept him feeling alive enough to embody Zik, and he held on to the big break.

Two weeks into shooting, while taking a breather after an argument scene with one of the foreign guest actors, Nejeere brought him his phone.

“Dr Badmus,” she mouthed.

The administrator of the Jude Lawson foundation had only called thrice after his best friend's funeral. Once to offer his gratitude for Timi's thoughtful gift. And twice after the scandal broke.

Timi's chest tightened with dread as he picked the call.

“I know you must be busy,” Dr Badmus said, voice hoarser than usual. “But I need to let you know before the news carries it.”

The hand holding the phone began trembling. “Carries what?”

“There's been some investigations. About, uh, Jude's activities. Which, unfortunately, has caused some organizations to, uh, keep their distance. At least until things clear up.”

“What investigations?” Timi asked, his words echoed as they bounced off the walls of the hollowness gripping him.

“His association with boys like…you,” Dr Badmus said.

“You and I know how completely twisted this is, but in the light of current happenings, there was bound to be some bad seeds in the NMA. I and some others tried to keep this development in house, but with his pictures being taken down from award sites and stuff, the people are bound to find out.”

Also, according to Dr Badmus, the sponsorship deals the foundation had secured had been put on hold, with conditions that they either change the foundation's name or wait until Uncle Jude was cleared of suspicion.

The document Dr Badmus later sent, showed Timi wasn't the first boy to be Uncle Jude's medical assistant.

There were boys before him and after him, whom Uncle Jude had apparently either sponsored their education or set them up with good jobs.

Timi had his own column too, but with a giant red question mark on his background details.

The only information they had on him was after the adoption.

And the fact that Uncle Jude had not only rescued him, but scrubbed off his past to protect him, drowned Timi in an ocean of regrets.

When the online comments descended a day later, Timi, who had called in sick, had been too intoxicated to follow the rules.

And soon, a blurry video of Timi Lawson slurring out insults and begging the people to focus on him the true sinner, and allow his father rest in peace, took the number one spot.

Timi had no idea about the damage, until he woke up the next morning to twenty-seven missed calls.

For his outgoing call log, however, only one number appeared.

The same one lined in an unending row that abruptly stopped two weeks ago.

He stared at the call duration, clawing at his brain to vomit whatever the hell he'd said to Alex for three whole minutes.

But it was like sawing through a dense fog.

Several hours later, after a scalding bath and with a clearer mind, he opened the file Dr Badmus sent and began making phone calls.

He was done feeling sorry. For himself, his father and their situation. He may have lost access to Sporax Media when he let Alex go, but he still had one more weapon in his arsenal. One he could refine into a Tsar Bomba and decimate the grand finale he and D'Yoyo had mapped out.

He resumed work two days later, a different person. Cold, hard, angry, and terribly unsuitable for the scenes he had to shoot with Eketi.

By day three, Maxwell was out of his mind with frustration.

“You don't glare at the person you're subtly asking on a date, Lawson. ”

“Delighted, Lawson, not tormented. You're delighted to see her.”

“Oh, for God's sake, pull gently, don't drag. Cut! Cut! Cut!”

Eketi withdrew her hand from Timi's grip, pulled off her hidden microphone, and slipped an arm through his. “Come with me. Max, give us two hours, please.”

Maxwell nodded in resignation, and D'Yoyo gave an order to turn off the cameras.

Timi didn't budge. “No. Let's have a go at it one last time. I'll get it, promise.”

She yanked at his arm. “We all need a break, Timi. Let's chill a bit, okay?”

As they stepped out, D'Yoyo pulled Eketi aside to whisper something in her ear. She laughed, smacked him on the arm and caught up with Timi.