It’s Nothing
July 19, 2026 2026-07-19 17:39
It’s Nothing
She had already started telling it.
“That reminds me of—”
The words were out before she looked up.
Around the table, someone was reaching for the salt.
Someone else is asking for more water.
A phone lighting up beside a plate.
She stopped.
Actually…
She smiled instead.
“It’s nothing.”
The conversation carried on.
Nobody noticed that a story had just disappeared.
Not because they wouldn’t have listened.
They would have.
Kindly.
Patiently.
She simply knew where the story was about to go.
Before anyone understood why it was funny, they’d need to know who everyone was.
Why one person could never be mentioned without another.
Why something that sounded ordinary wasn’t ordinary at all.
By then, the conversation would already have wandered somewhere else.
It happened so quickly now that it no longer felt like choosing.
The sentence simply changed direction while it was still being spoken.
Every so often, another story made it this far.
“That reminds me…”
She almost tried anyway.
Maybe she could begin with the door.
No.
A broken door wasn’t funny on its own.
Not unless you knew the flat.
So perhaps the flat.
Four adults.
Three bedrooms.
One leaking tap.
No.
The flat only worked if you knew Kelechi.
Not the Kelechi everyone knew now.
The other one.
The one who ironed his only good shirt on the kitchen floor because there wasn’t an ironing board.
Except Kelechi brought Sir Reginald with him.
Whose name wasn’t Reginald.
Nobody could remember when that joke had become permanent.
Explaining that would take longer than the joke itself.
Maybe she could start there instead.
No.
Sir Reginald only became Sir Reginald after the flat.
Every version of the story reached backwards for another story.
She wasn’t trying to remember anymore.
She was trying to find a place where it could begin without bringing everyone with it.
There wasn’t one.
By now, Kelechi had wandered back in.
Sir Reginald was standing behind him.
Someone was still checking whether the front door was locked.
A voice from the kitchen wanted to know whose turn it was to buy bread.
Someone else was complaining that the electricity had gone out again.
The flat was getting crowded.
She still hadn’t reached the story.
“Ada?”
She looked up.
“Sorry?”
“Could you pass the pepper?”
She passed the pepper.
The salt had already reached the other end of the table.
The person beside her was laughing at something she’d completely missed.
Someone else had already begun,
“That reminds me of…”
Another story had quietly taken the place that hers never reached.
She smiled.
“It’s nothing.”
The conversation carried on.
The strange thing was that it almost never happened with old friends.
Someone would begin,
“Do you remember…”
“No,” somebody else would laugh.
“You’re starting in the wrong place.”
“That’s because you’re forgetting Musa.”
“Musa came later.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“He absolutely did.”
Someone remembered the next line before you said it.
Someone else supplied the part you’d forgotten.
Nobody stopped to explain who anybody was.
Nobody needed to.
And perhaps that was why, every now and then, someone would begin,
“That reminds me of—”
pause,
smile,
and quietly decide,
“It’s nothing.”
When, really, it had been almost an entire life.
