"I know it's not easy to meet someone nice.
Everybody wants to but no one seems good enough for anyone - and the less willing you are to compromise, the more alone you find yourself."
All Gigi wants from life is to get through her work day with...
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So.
There were a couple of things I expected to happen over the next couple of days;
I expected work to be annoying and exhausting.
I expected avoiding Akudo to make it even more stressful.
I expected Maminat to buy a tree and become (for the time being) convinced that horticulture is actually a religion and for Dienye to continue to hibernate leaving me with no resources to fend off Akudo if she was determined to hang with me after work.
I expected I would have to therefore lie a lot and end up spending my evenings swapping bureaucracy war stories with my Aunt, sweating in the living room while waiting for the bedroom ACs (which the Generator just barely carried) to cool our rooms enough for us to turn in for the night.
What I didn't expect was to be plagued.
By Derin.
Trying to get me a boyfriend.
I mean... It's not that I thought he wasn't serious when he suggested it that first time. I just thought he wasn't serious, serious!
But then a few dour days after the disastrous Rib Night, I got a call at work. I was so surprised to see his name on my phone that I stopped everything I was doing and just stared at it.
Foluso peered over at me from his desk. "Sis - are we ok?" he asked dryly making me look up at him with what, I'm afraid, must have looked a lot like guilt.
When I didn't say anything one of his brows quirked up. "You no go answer?" he asked suspiciously referring to my still ringing phone and that made it officially past when I could have not answered and it wouldn't have looked all that weird even without an explanation.
"I'm answering," I said and tapped the green button jerkily. Foluso snatched up the open bag of plantain chips on his desk and positioned himself to watch me take the call. I didn't want to turn and block him and make myself look even more suspicious so I cleared my expression and raised the phone to my ear.
"Hey!" I said breezily and with a huge emphasis on not calling him by name, "This is a surprise! What's up?"
"Gigiiii!" Derin chirped happily into my ear, "Are you busy? Akudo says it's usually okay to call you anytime. Must be nice."
I laughed weakly at this inference that my job was a seat warming appointment, "I don't know about all that but I'm free to talk now. Anything?" I asked.
"What are you doing after work today."
I felt my face freeze a little and the sound of Foluso crunching plantain chips in the background suddenly heightened. "Uhhh - ," I said while my mind feverishly worked to find a response that sounded friendly, impersonal and like I wasn't being asked out, "Regretting life choices, how about you?" I finally choked out.
