(We have been holed up in an Aberdares home for the last two weeks with my boyfriend. He is a writer,an excellent one, and seeing him write his own works and sometimes poems and even songs for me prompted me to write about us. This book was aimed at narrating our life as a couple, and not the nineteen years we have known each other. As such this is purely a prologue, despite it's length, aimed to open up to the part where me and him found sexual awakening together)
I'm seated on the front porch of our vacation home. This has been a tough year. A global pandemic has been raging across the world for eight months now. And yet,at this single moment everything seems perfect. At 4000ft the views I am treated to are breathtaking. And the air,oh the air. It's clean and rich and thick. I sense his footsteps as he is trying his best to sneak in behind me. I smile and feel his ever comforting hands on my shoulder. For a few brief seconds it's just me and him,two souls so deeply entwined we might as well be sharing a body. He kneads my upper back, slowly but firmly, hitting all my pressure points as he continues his descent. He lifts me off my chair and carries me to the small dining table. I weigh in at 130 pounds and yet he picks me up like a doll. More impressive considering he himself is 124 pounds. Nineteen years have led up to this very moment. And it's been totally worth it
February 18,2002. It's the day I was born. I'm not one to brag but I've seen my baby photos, and I was a beautiful baby. Soft velvety chubby cheeks, brown eyes so deep and intense it seems like staring into a deep hole and the cutest nose you ever saw anywhere. I've had a lot of people narrate stories to me about my escapades as a toddler but the one that makes me laugh is the story of the day I tried to ‘eat fire’. It was Christmas the year 2006. My dad had just learned the trick and was impressing everyone. As a child I obviously became fascinated and tried it myself, although with a matchstick. I burnt myself much to the amusement of everyone else. Either out of shame or annoyance I'll never know but I grabbed a flaming piece of wood and tried to burn everyone who was laughing. Eventually they managed to calm me down,and according to my father that was the day he knew I would be a force to reckon with. Our families were extremely close,and that is how I met Roger. We were best friends from the onset. This one time some rogue neighborhood kids had chased us after we'd called them names. Roger had gotten me to hide and bolted with them in hot pursuit. Five minutes later the tables had turned with him becoming the hunter,along with a huge dog they owned. He had circled back and released their dog. Those kids had been so terrified I don't recall a single moment I've laughed so hard in my life.
When we were thirteen Roger had gotten his first girlfriend. He talked about her from morning till evening. It got to a point where I started feeling as if he was weighing me down. Now,you have to understand that I was just blossoming into a young woman and my expectations were that boys would be falling over themselves trying to impress me. None of that happened. Mostly because my dad was one of the most infamous people in our community. About a year ago when I'd been twelve a young boy had been smiling shyly at me during the church service. My dad had spotted it and had right away picked him u and delivered two heartbreaking slaps on his face. Everybody feared him,and me as a consequence after that. I guess that was when I started developing feelings for the Roger. He was fearless, he would come all the way to our front door, without caring whether my dad was around. He was Shrek, I was Princess Fiona and my dad was the dragon,and he always got me away. It used to irk my dad so much because he couldn't hit him as our families were extremely close so he was stuck watching us grow fonder. That is until Naomi moved in to our neighborhood. She was hot. I remember we'd gone to welcome them together,me,Roger and his brother. The moment she walked out Roger had called ‘dibs’. And I was stuck watching him go after her like a rabid hyena. Let me tell you about Roger's theory of relationships,or how he determines whether a girl is worth pursuing. The moment he sees a lady the first question he asks himself is whether she's beautiful enough and whether he'd sleep with her. Looks are important to him. If she isn't he won't even talk to her. If she is he will initiate a conversation. After a short conversation with the girl in question he determines whether she's smart enough to sleep with. If he feels she is not that is the end of their association. If she is intelligent enough for him,he now decides whether he's interested in her as a friend,a girlfriend or just plain old banging. He does not date anyone he feels he can have a strong future with,he says that by doing so he leaves open a door that he can use when he's older and ready to start a life with someone. Back to Naomi. Naomi was drop dead gorgeous. At fifteen, two years older than us,her body was so well toned I felt less like a human in front of her. A small angelic face and a ponytail to die for. Couple that up with a crop top and low rider shorts that revealed legs so shapely I almost fell in love with her myself. I was just becoming a young woman,and at the time I had started realizing what the ideal woman's body should look like. Now I was beautiful,I recognized that at the time but the rest of me was just plain bland. My chest was almost flat,I had a somewhat big belly and I was not proud of my legs. Naomi embodied everything I could ever wish for. And now she'd stolen the one person who was always there for me. Over the course of that holiday I had to live with his adorations of her. But I always remember that holiday as one of my favorite because it was the holiday I got my first kiss. Naomi had told him that she would give him a kiss and the boy was devastatingly nervous. At the time we were both rookies, learning about romance from novels and movies. We all knew there was a right way to kiss,and a wrong way. Problem was no one knew how to do it right. We'd taken my mother's phone and spent the day on Google trying to figure out how to do it. And then I'd come up with the ingenious idea that we should try it more practically to ensure he'd gotten it. I was just a child then and the idea that we were doing something so forbidden sent tremors through my entire body. Have you ever built up a scenario in your mind about a certain experience to a level you thought was almost unattainable? And then it happens and it is so much better than what you had anticipated it to be? That was what that first kiss felt like. And the second. And all the rest that followed that afternoon. We were holed up in my room for more than two hours, experimenting. I think that's what makes this memory so special to me years later. We were not expecting anything from each other,it was just two kids being caught in the moment. It set a standard that no one would ever live up to until six years later when me and Roger found ourselves single at the same time. He'd gone out with Naomi the following day and for the first time I'd seen him become infatuated with someone. I didn't like her but I have to admit she was an amazing human being. She only had nice things to say about people and at the time I thought she was one of those people who pretend to be all cute and cuddly. I didn't know how to let things go so I'd asked her about this and she had said,“The world is so full of people willing to say bad things about people but no one who wants to highlight the good in people. I choose to be the one who always has a good thing to say about people.” That was Naomi for you. Kindness unbound. They spent days on end together. They did invite me to almost everything they did but I always declined. I didn't want to feel like a third wheel. Eventually they did break up to my delight. It's not that I didn't want him to be happy but I was glad to have my best friend back. They did however remain great friends,a friendship that would rival ours and see them get back together more times than I care to remember
