Nobody took Tiwa seriously, and she had stopped pretending that didn’t sting. It was the laugh, they said. Too loud. It was the outfits. Too pink. It was the way she gaslit herself into thinking that walking into a room smelling like a luxury dessert counter in a Mayfair hotel was a *personality trait* and not a *problem.*
She was twenty-six, ran the fastest growing lifestyle page in Lagos, had two hundred and forty thousand followers, and at every industry dinner somebody’s boyfriend still asked her what she actually did for work.
Tonight was the Afro Fashion Week afterparty. Rooftop, open bar, the kind of event where everyone was beautiful.She got ready alone in her Oniru apartment, the windows open to the night breeze coming off the water.
Two sprays of the Kayali first. The opening bloomed immediately; pink apple and lemon fizzing up like something uncorked, freesia threading through it clean and bright, nectarine blossom making the whole thing smell like the first hour of a very good day. Light, alive and criminally cheerful.
She smiled at herself in the mirror. She did that deliberately every time because she had read somewhere that you should dress for how you want to feel and she had added spray for it too as her own amendment.
The party was on the forty-second floor of a tower. Tiwa arrived alone, signed for her wristband and found a spot at the edge of the rooftop overlooking the city.
“Excuse me.”
A woman with natural hair in an immaculate white jumpsuit appeared beside her. Tiwa recognised her immediately as Adaora Mensah, the creative director at one of the biggest fashion houses on the continent.
“Sorry to just…..what are you wearing?” Adaora asked.
Tiwa blinked. “Kayali. Yum Boujee Marshmallow.”
Adaora looked at her with an expression that was not quite surprise and not quite delight but something in between, like a window being opened. “I’ve been trying to place it all evening. I kept thinking, why does this whole rooftop smell like somewhere I want to stay?”
By now the heart of the fragrance had settled in fully, the marshmallow gone soft and round, coconut flakes lending it that barely-there tropical warmth, strawberry threading through everything like a rumour, sweet without being loud. Orange blossom water keeping it from tipping into candy, keeping it somehow elegant. Fluffy but not frivolous. Indulgent but not childish. Just like a pink velvet sofa in a museum. Completely itself and completely unbothered.
“I like things that smell happy,” Tiwa said simply.
Adaora laughed heartily. “I need to remember that sentence.” She paused. “You are Tiwa. The content creator. I follow your page.”
“You do?”
“My whole team does. We’ve been wanting to reach out actually. We’re doing something next quarter that’s a different direction with younger energy and less serious.” She tilted her head. “Would you be open to talking?”
By the time the drydown had settled - whipped vanilla warm against her skin, raspberry sugar leaving just the ghost of sweetness, pink musk making it smell less like a perfume and more like her, the ambroxan giving it that skin-close sillage that made people want to stay in the conversation — Tiwa had Adaora’s number saved in her phone and a meeting pencilled in for Thursday.
She leaned against the rooftop railing and looked out at Lagos glittering below her. Two hundred and forty thousand people already knew what this one woman had just figured out. Tiwa wasn’t too much.
She was exactly enough aaaand she smelled incredible. Oh, and she had stopped apologising for either.
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Pink apple and freesia. Marshmallow and coconut. Whipped vanilla and pink musk.
Sweet, unapologetic, unforgettable.
Yum Boujee Marshmallow — for the girl who takes up exactly the right amount of space.