I used to pride myself on reading people. One lingering glance across a crowded room, and I’d have you figured out, your hopes, flaws, and secrets. At least, that’s the lie I told myself until David crashed into my life like a meteor, and later, appeared like an apparition in the last sanctuary I expected to find him, my new church.
We collided at the Nairobi International Book Expo, where exhibition booths created a vibrant maze of literary worlds beneath the soaring glass ceiling of the Kenyatta Convention Centre. David stood mesmerised at the Kwani? Publishing display, thumbing through Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s “Dust” with such absorption, I couldn’t help but stare. When our eyes met across the crowded aisle, something electric passed. His smile, God, that smile, caused the corners of his eyes to crinkle like well-worn pages of a favourite book. He listened to me ramble about my graphic design work for the festival brochure with such intensity that I forgot to breathe between sentences. By the time the evening keynote speeches ended, his number burned in my phone, and my heart hammered against my ribs with a forgotten rhythm.
Our first date left me dizzy. We huddled in mismatched armchairs at Artisan Brew, my fingers tracing the rim of my mug as he described growing up with four sisters. I caught myself memorising the constellation of freckles across his left cheekbone, the way his voice dipped lower when he spoke about his dreams.
The second date stretched into five glorious hours at Abyssinia, where we fed each other morsels of spiced lamb with our fingers. The Ethiopian waitress winked at me when he wasn’t looking. “He likes you,” she whispered while refilling our water. “I can always tell.”
By our third date, a sun-dappled walk through Karura Forest, I was falling. Hard. His hand enveloped mine as we navigated gnarled roots and hidden stones, steadying me when I stumbled. We paused at the waterfall, spray misting our faces, and I felt a terrifying certainty settle in my chest: I could love this man. The thought both thrilled and terrified me.
Then, silence. A deafening, crushing silence.
My messages evolved from casual to desperate. “That weird documentary you mentioned is on Netflix!” became “Hope everything’s okay?” became “Did I say something wrong?”
Nothing.
By day five, I’d stalked his Instagram (still posting sunset photos), called our mutual friend Wanjiku (who awkwardly confirmed he was alive), and finally collapsed onto my bedroom floor, hugging my knees to my chest, feeling sixteen again, unwanted, discarded, invisible.
I’d been ghosted before, this was Nairobi dating, after all, but this was different. I’d shown him parts of me I usually kept hidden. I’d mentioned my father’s alcoholism. I’d admitted I sometimes felt like an impostor at work. I’d been real.
And he’d evaporated.
I deleted his number after one pathetic, wine-fueled final text that I still cringe every time I remember. I threw myself into redesigning the company website, working until my eyes burned and my fingers cramped around my mouse. I told myself his absence was a blessing, better to know now than later that he was just another coward with a charming smile.
Two months crawled by. The wound scabbed over but remained tender to the touch.
“Come to my church,” Zuri pressed during our lunch break, her eyes earnest. “The music will heal your soul, I swear. And Pastor Mbogo? His sermons crack you open and pour in light.”
I’d been feeling spiritually parched, drifting through motions at my parents’ traditional congregation. So that Sunday, I found myself in an unfamiliar sanctuary, the morning sunlight streaming through stained glass, painting rainbows across wooden pews.
Zuri was right. The worship band played with raw passion, and I found myself raising my hands, tears streaming down my cheeks as something tight in my chest began to unravel. Pastor Mbogo spoke about seasons of wilderness and unexpected grace, and I drank in every word like rain after drought.
As the congregation bowed for the final prayer, I felt lighter than I had in weeks. I was mentally planning to return when my gaze drifted across the aisle.
The world tilted.
There stood David, eyes closed in prayer, sunlight haloing his familiar profile. The same full lips that had smiled against mine. The same strong hands that had held mine on forest paths. So close I could smell his sandalwood cologne.
My body reacted before my mind could process, heart racing, palms damp, stomach plummeting. Fight or flight surged through me. I could slip out now, preserve my dignity, pretend this cosmic joke wasn’t happening.
Instead, I remained frozen, Pastor Mbogo’s words about forgiveness and second chances echoing mockingly in my ears.
When the service ended, I watched David embrace an elderly woman with tender familiarity. He looked both achingly familiar and utterly foreign in this sacred space, like seeing a character from one movie suddenly appearing in another.
I should have walked away. Pride demanded it. Self-preservation screamed it.
Instead, my feet carried me forward, as if pulled by some invisible thread.
“Hello, David.”
His head whipped around, eyes widening with recognition, then darkening with something that looked suspiciously like shame.
“Anita,” he breathed my name like a confession. “I… never expected to see you here.”
“Funny how life works,” I replied, my voice steadier than the earthquake in my chest.
The congregation flowed around us like water around two stubborn rocks. Someone laughed nearby. The worship team unplugged instruments. We stood suspended in our private bubble of unfinished business.
“I owe you an explanation,” he finally said, his voice rough. “And an apology. A massive one.”
I crossed my arms, armour against whatever excuse he’d manufactured. “Do you?”
“Please,” he gestured toward the exit. “There’s a café next door. Ten minutes of your time. Then you never have to speak to me again.”
Every rom-com heroine’s best friend would have advised against it. Every dating advice column would have screamed, “MOVE ON!” But beneath my hurt lurked curiosity, and something else I wasn’t ready to name.
At a corner table in Heavenly Brews, David’s story tumbled out between nervous sips of too-hot coffee. After our perfect third date, he’d received a call at 2 AM. His father, his hero, his rock, had collapsed in their family home in Kisumu. Massive stroke. “Critical but stable,” the doctor had said, which David now knew was medical-speak for “prepare yourself for any outcome.”
He’d thrown clothes into a duffel bag and caught the first morning flight home. The next two weeks dissolved into a blur of hospital corridors, family tensions erupting under pressure, and the terrifying responsibility of medical decisions as the eldest son.
“I thought about texting you,” he said, eyes fixed on the table between us. “I even drafted messages. But what would I say? ‘Hey, great kiss yesterday, by the way, my dad might be dying’? And then days passed, and it felt too awkward, too late. I convinced myself you wouldn’t care that much anyway, that I was just one of many guys you were seeing.”
The wound reopened, raw and throbbing. “You could have sent anything, David. Even just ‘family emergency, can’t talk.’ Do you know what it feels like to be erased? To wonder what you did wrong?”
He flinched, his face crumpling. “I know. It was cowardly. When Dad finally stabilised and I came back to Nairobi, I felt so ashamed of how I’d handled things. Then weeks had passed, and I figured you’d hate me anyway.” He hesitated. “I’ve seen you here before, I’ve been coming to New Life for years. But I kept ducking out early or hiding on the balcony.”
I absorbed this revelation, recalibrating everything I thought I knew. The ghost who had haunted my thoughts wasn’t a callous player but a frightened son, making bad decisions under unimaginable pressure.
“I’m not asking for another chance romantically,” he added quickly. “I know I destroyed that. Just… wanted you to know it wasn’t you. It was never you. I’m truly sorry for the pain I caused.”
Something shifted in my chest, not forgiveness exactly, but the first crack in a wall I’d built. Pastor Mbogo’s sermon about grace in unexpected places whispered through my memory.
“Thank you for telling me,” I said finally, my voice softer than intended. “How is your father now?”
His eyes glistened. “Learning to speak again. Still the stubbornest man in Western Kenya.”
A small, genuine smile crossed my lips. “Must run in the family.”
In the weeks that followed, we navigated an awkward new choreography, distant nods across the sanctuary evolved into brief “hellos,” then into actual conversations about the sermon or the worship music. We were careful, tentative, building something entirely different from what we’d started before.
We did not go back to dating; that tender shoot had been trampled too thoroughly. But something else grew in its place: a deeper understanding that humans are messy, complicated creatures who sometimes fail each other spectacularly. The stories we tell ourselves when we’re hurt are seldom the whole truth.
Six months later, I found myself visiting the hospital in Kisumu with a church group. David’s father gripped my hand with his good one and whispered with effort, “He was a wreck when I was sick. Not himself. Good boy.”
I nodded, thinking about the ghosts we all carry and the grace of second chances, not always for romance, but for something perhaps more valuable: the opportunity to see people as they truly are, flawed and human and worthy of compassion despite it all.
Sometimes, the apparitions from our past materialise in the most unexpected sacred spaces. Sometimes, that’s exactly where they need to be seen clearly at last.
Check out:
The Singlehood Series: He Ghosted Me Then Asked Me Out Again But I Have Doubts
The Singlehood Series: He Ghosted Me After Three Years Living Together
The Singlehood Series: My Blind Date Turned Out To Be A Guy I Had Ghosted
He Asked Me To Go On A Trip With Him But Ghosted Me On The Day We Were Supposed To Leave
Let’s Get It On: She Bumps Into The Guy She Ghosted Because She Was Embarrassed
We Met At Heaven’s Gate Prayer Retreat. The Chemistry Was Not Holy
