THE ORDER OF KORES

Sewe

"Ama, I'm actually really nervous," I breathed out nervously as I spoke into the phone, my fingers playing nervously with my light blue satin dress. The dress was absolutely beautiful, it had long butterfly sleeves and it moved with the grace of expensive satin. It had a ruched front and the dress reached mid-thigh. I wore the dress with a pair of stockings that matched my natural skin tone and a pair of Alexander McQueen heels.

"Don't be, friend, everything's going to be okay," I saw her face through the screen, her eyes were giddy and she looked so excited.

"I haven't been on a date in like...what?" I pretended to think but Ama was forever an enemy of letting me live in my own delusional world.

"In 9 months, 2 weeks and 3 days," she provided the exact date. She had a calendar in her home, and she circled any date that went by where I hadn't gone on a date. I laughed and so did she.

I felt my nerves leave me a bit and I could breathe easier. I took a few more breaths, "it's okay...it's okay," I kept repeating to myself.

"It absolutely is, friend. Look at you, you look like the most beautiful woman to ever walk this earth." She spoke, her eyes peering into mine and even though she was far from here, it felt like she was right there. Her eyes beamed with an adoration that I was almost too used to in her eyes. Ama had a way of looking at me like I was everything. How could I go out there in search for love, when I had it in my own best friend?

"Do you have any idea how beautiful you are, Evelyn?" she asked me with a gentle smile, and that sweet voice of hers.

I felt myself become bashful under her stare, "oh please, have you seen you?" I took the question back to her, the dark night sky and world surrounding me as I was parked in the parking lot, silent and trying very hard not to run as fast and far as I could.

"We're not talking about me though," Ama managed to expertly divert. She knew me better than I knew myself, and she knew the ways that I avoided ever hearing anything good about myself. I didn't do well with compliments, didn't do well with all attention on me. I hated every bit of it. "We're talking about you, Evelyn. You're so beautiful, no matter what you wear, no matter if you're rolling your eyes or laughing hard...you, my friend, are really the most beautiful woman that I've ever seen."

I met her eyes and smiled, silent and letting her words wash over me. "Thank you..." I mouthed softly, her words and the way that she said them, building my self-esteem in a way only she could. "Love scares me, Ama. I mean, I know that I don't love this guy, obviously, but love scares me. I run from it, not towards it." Because I've seen the things that it's done to you, I wanted to say, but I bit my tongue, keeping those words to myself.

Ama was my best friend though, she knew exactly what I wanted to say, knew exactly what I was getting at and that it was the fact that I couldn't point out any good relationship among my small friendship circle. Love didn't exist anymore, especially in this generation.

I didn't want to be like Ama, I didn't want to be made a fool of on television, didn't want to completely settle for a man who I knew was entertaining other women. I was the kind of girl who wanted to be the only one, wanted to be the kind of woman that a man looked at and thought the world of. I wanted a man to freeze heaven and hell over for me. For a man to see in me what he's never seen in any other woman, I wanted a man to love me like how fictional men love their fictional women.

In this day and age, I was asking for too much.

I didn't want to settle. Not when I was only 20 years old.

Ama nodded her head, I could hear the music blaring from the club that she was standing outside of as she spoke to me. She wore a sparkly silver dress and her makeup was all sparkly to match it. Her cheeks were flushed showing me that she was drunk, "I know, friend, but...at the end of the day, it doesn't hurt to try. It's better to cry knowing you've tried, than to never cry at all." She fell silent, "wait...did that make sense?" she asked me and I laughed, nodding my head because I understood what she was trying to say. "Let's picture this, let's picture that Adam is the perfect guy and this is how your forever begins. You walk in there, you see him, you make eye contact and the whole world falls away, and suddenly you blink, and it's years down the line, and you're still meeting his eyes...but the setting is different. You're walking down the aisle, and he's at the end of it, and he's smiling, just as he did tonight, and suddenly, you realise it's all worth it. Especially when you see me standing right there in my maid of honour dress."