I had a few years back written something with the same title as above on a writing site, but this is a different entry and the second chapter to my new writing series from the category. I originally said it would be a short series but think I will turn it into an online novel after the Diva made me realise I didn’t intoduce it properly. I now need to figure out a name for the complete book which I will intoduce on my instagram page.
Enjoy…
Yesterday’s rain was totally annoying for Idoreyin. She had spent the better part of the day in bed with a runny nose, used tissue paper thrown around her large bed, pillows scattered around the floor, clothes out of the drawers, the TV on but muted which made sense seeing as she wasn’t watching and the sound from the generator was driving her insane. It was a normal occurrence… The lights going out with the arrival of rain, no matter how light it was.
“Why did you not open the shop yesterday?” Her closest friend Edikan was asking, jerking her out of her reminiscing. Edikan had called a few minutes ago to grumble about Dayo’s usual crime. Why a woman such as herself put up with someone like him was beyond her. But she had learned a long time ago never to repeat an advice more than two times. If you didn’t listen the first two times, why the hell would you listen a third time was her thinking!
“Mehn Edikus, abeg I so wasn’t in the mood yesterday o. With my nose, there was no way I was going to interact with clients and I didn’t want to leave the shop for Daisy alone. Make tori no burst. I’m still suspecting her of taking my Tory Burch flats but with no evidence I have to let it go.” She sighed heavily, running her fingers through her 8 weeks old braids and making a mental note of taking the hair down.
“Still don’t believe her real name is Daisy! Who is called Daisy in Naija? Hahah anyway, it’s Lagos hence everything is possible. Meanwhile, I saw Kayode Harts today. He actually just left my office.
ID held her breath for a few nanoseconds and then released it. “What did he want?” she asked, pushing her chair back from the brown mahogany table and crossing her knees. She hadn’t seen Kayode in over two years, but every time his name was mentoned, her own life paused to ponder on what could have been.
He had been the love of her life and she could have done anything to make him happy. Hell, she did a lot of things that were out of her character just to please him but luckily, she had also been smart enough to finally realise he was never going to love her half as much as she did him. He wasn’t the tallest bloke in the room or the cutest but he was just a man who knew the right words at the right time and that had been the sealant for her. She prided herself in the notion that she could tell a fraud from the mix and boy had she been wrong with this one. But as her father once said to her, she just wasn’t made for him.
Still, that didn’t stop her from dreaming about the good life they could have had. She been hopelessly in love with him and basically lived to serve him. Which is why she was a sort of expert on failing relationships where her friends were concerned. Then again, listening was the issue here.
“He is getting married.” Edikan said softly, as if afraid to hurt her feelings. “We are designing every outfit and I’m assigned to making certain every thing goes right.”
“So are you asking my permission to take the Job? Or you are giving me heads up?”
“Permission ke? I just wanted you to know and…”
“So heads up it is then.” ID loved her friend Edikan and her ability to not get upset at her choice of words and complete character in general. It was probably why they remained friends. ID had a care-free like easy-to get-misconstrued character with no patience for whiners as her father called them and tried to see the humor in everything that happened to her. Edikan was soft spoken, gentle on people while sometimes basking in her innocent ignorance. When they had met up two weeks ago for Cocktails and she had gotten the news of her firing Damilola, it was sort of a surprise since she basically felt the need to give everyone a chance. “It was her non chalance with the job I couldn’t deal with,” Edikan had explained.
“It’s your job Edikan, don’t feel sorry for me. I may not have a great relationship right now but I’m in a good place clichéd as that may sound and have come to realise I won’t be needing any drama from a man.”
“Are we still on Kayode or is this about Dayo?”
“Me? Talk to you directly about Dayo? You know that’s never going to happen again.”
Later that evening as she waited for Daisy to finish up, Idoreyin sat in her car, watching the busy car park of the mall, kids being quickly ushered into the back seats, cars driving in and away into the religious traffic, a few couples holding hands and walking in and out of the building and she just couldn’t help herself with thoughts on her past love life. It was a habit, one she needed to break for the sake of her sanity.
Edikan believed she still had feelings for Kayode which in all fairness was a pretty basic assumption since she was yet to completely wipe him out of her mind. Given the state in which her relationship had been, it was easy to understand why she held on to it by a very thin thread bursting to break but still hanging on with the presence of hope. Yes, she had dared to hope that one day he would realize how good she was to him and come crawling back. Yes it was a direct opposite to who she really was, or the her everyone else saw.
If she was willing to admit it, she would say he was the major reason she found it pointless dating. Not that she had tried. Two years was a long time for someone like her to not have sex which had been the only part of their relationship that went extremely well. But two years it had been. Just for kicks, Edikan had gotten her a whole box of porn magazines and videos and yes she had delved into a few of them but she was human enough to admit it wasn’t the same for her. She needed to feel the skin of a male body touching her, she wanted to feel his breath whispering against her skin. She wanted the hands of someone holding her face and giving her complete pleasure. One she couldn’t get from books or videos.
The news of his wedding was the deal breaker. This very moment, right now, sitting in her car, the hot and sticky Lagos air, the blaring horns of the jalopy buses that struggled to maneuver the traffic, the huge BRT buses that smoothly drove past on their built lane, the general struggle, the fact that there was a whole world out there waiting to be explored was her wake up call.
