It was strange how lost of luster everything was without Ifemelu; even the taste of his favorite beer was different. He should have brought her with him to Abuja. It was stupid to claim that he needed time to think things over when all he was doing was hiding from a truth he already knew. She had called him a coward, and there was indeed a cowardliness in his fear of disorder, of disrupting what he did not even want: his life with Kosi, that second skin that had never quite fit him snugly.
