“Charis”

A short story.

The way she was bent over by the well reminded me of why it’s sometimes good to be adventurous on a hot Thursday afternoon.

I had no business being there.

My room was fully air-conditioned, with a porter who called me “sir” even though I was twenty-two. I paid my way out of inconveniences, well, technically, my folks did. But when the pumping machine packed up and the caretaker launched into his signature “God willing, I will fix it” speech, something in me felt restless. I don't know why.

I had walked past the neighbouring cool kids’ hostel where there was a tap—and all the way there, to a crumbling concrete ring in a hostel I wouldn’t normally be caught dead in.

“Life Hostel,” the rusted sign read. I’d always found that funny. Nothing about this place had ever looked alive.

Until now.

She was light-skinned, the kind that makes a Nigerian man stop and wonder if she’s actually from this world or the one beneath the water. She had this air of mystery. I’ve always believed that if one must die, they might as well die happy. And a woman like her? Absolutely worth it.

Her skin caught the hot sun and sent it back polished. And that angle she stood, whew. Hot, in the most innocent way I’d ever seen.

“Focus,” I muttered to myself, adjusting my grip on the bright blue bucket that had never in its short life seen the outside of my room.

⁂

“Here to draw?”

Her voice hit me like a splash of cold water. She had straightened up, dropped a heavy bucket effortlessly with one hand, watching me like someone who knew I couldn’t.

A smirk played on my lips. “Any other reason people come by a well?”

“You’d be surprised,” she said.

I flashed my signature smile, the one that made the XX chromosome swoon in real time. She watched it happen and looked, if anything, slightly amused, the way a doctor looks at a patient wondering if they’re fine.

“I’m Tobi. And I have a feeling you’re about to tell me your name is something as pretty as your face.”

She didn’t giggle. Most of them giggled. “Tell me, Tobi, am I not the fifth girl you’ve tried that line on in two weeks?”

I didn’t have an exact count. But I knew she might be right.

“Okay, psychic.” I kept smiling. “Are you going to tell me your name?”

“Charis.” She said it softly, offering it like a password.

“Charissa,” I teased, but before I could go any further, she corrected:

“My name is Charis.”

“Sorry,” I said, then I glanced at the fetcher, then back at her. “Well, Charis, I have a confession.”

She looked at me. “What?”

“I’m sort of a well-virgin.”

With an arched eyebrow, she asked. “Are you?”

“A well-virgin” I let my smirk widen. “Or a virgin-virgin?”

It sounded worse out loud, so I added quickly: “Don’t mind me. My hostel’s pumping machine packed up and I thought—I don’t know. I thought I’d come look for water.”

Charis leaned against the well, crossing her arms. She looked at me with an intensity that made me feel like my black shirt was transparent. “You could have fetched water anywhere else. Why this well?”

“Maybe God knew I’d meet a pretty lady here.”

“God,” she repeated softly.

There was something about the way she said it. “What? You don’t believe?”

“In you or God?”

“Me, obviously.” I scoffed. “God has nothing to do with this. Or anything else, for that matter.” I paused, the words trailing into something I hadn’t meant to say out loud.

She smiled, not exactly warm. There was something quieter underneath it. “But you just said God knew you’d be here. You wouldn’t say that if somewhere inside you, you didn’t believe He cared.”

I tilted my head. “Are you about to preach to me?”

She paused.

“You’re lucky that’s not in my job description.”

I wanted to ask what she meant by that. I decided against it.

⁂

“Do you need my help?” She eventually asked.

It felt like a trick question.

Because the honest answer was yes—obviously, I had no idea what I was doing, but saying yes to a girl I’d just tried to impress felt like a different kind of surrender. One I wasn’t ready for.

“I’m fine,” I replied. “This should be easy.”

She smiled like she’d expected that exact answer.

I gripped the rope, dropped the fetcher into the well. It hit the water with a hollow clack and just sat there, bobbing like something confused. I tugged. It came up dripping and empty.

I dropped it again. Same result.

Charis said nothing. She just watched me fail patiently like she had all the time in the world to humour me.

“Okay,” I said finally, releasing the rope. “How do you do it?”

Her lips tipped in a satisfied smile. “Ask me properly.”

I looked at her. “What?”

“You said you were fine.” She tilted her head. “So ask me properly.”

I exhaled and held out the rope. “Charis. I need your help.”

Something in her eyes settled, like a thing clicking into place. She stepped forward.

“Here’s the trick,” she said. “You have to lower the bucket like you expect something to be there. Right now you’re dropping it like you’ve already decided it won’t work.” She paused. “You’re holding on too tight because you’re used to being in control. To get what you need, you have to learn to let go.”

I had a flirtatious rebuttal ready on my tongue but the look in her eyes stopped me. I felt this was a moment I needed to take more seriously.

“Watch,” she said quietly. Then she demonstrated, her arms moving with an ease that made the whole thing look less like fetching water and more like a life lesson. We heard the deep, satisfying glop as the fetcher tipped and drank. Then she poured it into my bucket.

“Your turn,” she said, handing the rope back.

Her fingers brushed the cord just above my hands. Her skin was cool, startlingly so, against the hot afternoon.

I tried to mimic her.

The fetcher hit the surface and I forced myself to let the rope go slack, and immediately felt the panic rise, the fear of losing my grip entirely. Then the weight shifted. The rope pulled taut, thrumming with something drawn up from the deep.

“I got it,” I breathed.

She smiled. “You did.”

I did it two more times until my bucket was filled up. I hauled the water up, muscles working harder than I'd expected.

By the time I was done, I was breathing through my mouth, sweat breaking through the expensive cologne. I felt something I couldn’t immediately give a name, quieter than pride. More like relief.

Charis just stood there, watching me in amusement.

“Most people spend their whole lives at the edge, afraid to let the fetcher draw. They think holding on is the same thing as having something. But anything worth having is first worth surrendering,” she said.

“You’re very—” I paused, searching for the appropriate word, but I decided to cut to the chase. “Let me take you out sometime. Or at least, have your number. You saved me from a very dry weekend. And I don’t do dry; I do the other one.”

She looked at me like I’ve learned nothing.

“I don’t have a number.”

I stared at her. “Everyone has a number.”

She shrugged.

“So what…no phone? No WhatsApp? You’re telling me you don’t have a—”

“I’m telling you that you already have what you came for.”

I looked at my bucket, full and heavy. Then back at her. “What I came for,” I repeated slowly, “was a bucket of water. But what made me stay was. . .you.”

“I know,” she said. “But you came to this well because your own supply ran out, Tobi. That will keep happening. Your strength, your control, your ability to pay your way out of things, it will run out. And when it does, you’re going to need a source to draw from that is beyond you.”

I smiled. “So what you’re saying is…I need you.”

“I don’t doubt it,” she replied.

Damn, I thought. I really liked her. But I decided not to push further. If not today, tomorrow, I told myself.

We said our goodbyes.

⁂

I went back the next day.

It wasn't for water. My hostel’s pumping machine had been fixed the previous evening. I went back because I’d been replaying the conversation since I got home, the way you replay a song that stays with you.

Charis wasn’t there.

I tried twice more that week. Different times, same well, and still nothing. I eventually asked one of the porters, an old man, if he’d seen a light-skinned girl named Charis fetching water in the afternoon.

He looked at me like I was confused. He said that well had been dry since the previous semester. Nobody had drawn water from it in months.

I stood there for a moment, running the logic back through my head. I had been there. I had held the rope. I had felt the weight of actual water pulling against my hands. My bucket had been full, heavy enough that I’d switched arms twice on the walk back. I didn’t imagine it. I wasn’t the type to imagine things.

I was a student of physical science. The universe, I had learned, doesn’t lie. It doesn’t make exceptions and it doesn’t hallucinate on anyone’s behalf. If something happened under observable conditions, it happened. Full stop.

So either the porter was wrong, or I was losing my mind.

I walked over to see for myself. The well was boarded up, padlocked, and swallowed by weeds. It looked like it had been that way for a long time.

I stood there for a while. Nothing about it made no sense.

Eventually, I walked back to my hostel and never told anyone.

⁂

It’s been ten years.

I still don’t have proper language for what Charis was. An ancestor? A ghost? An angel? I don’t know.

What I know is that a well that hadn't worked in months produced water that afternoon.

What I know is that her name, in Greek, means grace, something I only looked up years later, long after I’d stopped trying to make sense of it and started trying to live by it.

I came to that well full of pride and empty in ways I didn’t yet have words for.

She was right, by the way. My supply ran out. More than once. The ability to pay my way through every inconvenience—all of it ran out, in ways that my family’s wealth, my degree and my looks couldn’t fix. And every time, I came back to what she said by that well:

You’re going to need a source to draw from that is beyond you.

I was never meant to be my own source. And the moment I stopped pretending I was enough on my own, that was the moment something greater finally filled what I’d been carrying empty for years. Grace changed everything.

The End.

---

Author’s note:

Sometime in February, my pastor was preaching about the woman at the well when the idea hit me: “How can I reimagine that narrative entirely?”

That question became this story.

If you’ve read my previous works, you’ll know this isn’t the usual. I mostly do light-hearted romcom/feel-good stories, but I’m learning to make room for whatever form a story needs to take.

Hope this blessed you :)

Yours in Quality Time,
Adébọ́lá. 🦋