The Three of Us

by Ore Agbaje-Williams

It’s partly my fault, I introduced her to him, I even gave his sister her number, but I thought she would have her fun with him, he would fall in love with her, and then she would abandon him like excessive Amazon packaging.

So I went to San Francisco to intern at a law firm where my aunt—the allegedly lonely single one—worked, and stayed with her in her penthouse. She was divorced with a son who went to a faraway boarding school and lived as though she had no responsibilities. She took me to art galleries, painting classes, and film screenings, and let me sit in on meetings with her clients. She took me to her holiday home in Mexico, somehow got us into Cuba using her work connections, and took me shopping in Miami. Some days when she woke up and didn’t want to work, she would email her assistant and say she was taking a personal day and to move all of her meetings, then she would ask me what I wanted to do and I could name an activity in a different state and she would make it happen. She opened my eyes entirely to the idea that living for yourself was the only way to even come close to being satisfied.