After thirteen years, Araromi Olamide returns to his hometown in Ibudun with his father, Biyi, and twin sister, Olamipo, to spend Christmas.
The experience takes a dramatic turn when he meets a beautiful new girl. Like most things, it starts out w...
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The days went by quickly with so much schoolwork and activities to catch up on. The drama rehearsals for the festival, including dance and music, the lectures and most importantly, my friendship with the beautiful Aderera. Yeah, the ship I’d built in my head was sailing. Though hadn't gotten to know each other as much as I’d like, we were cool.
We sat next to each other every day and even on days when I came late to class, my seat was always secured. I wondered if the other guys couldn’t also see her beauty as they never tried to secure a seat close to her too. Perhaps they weren't as desperate as I was to know more about mysterious and beautiful Rera but it didn't really matter much to me. As long as I got to sit next to her every time, I was fine. Back in Lagos, it was a first-come-first-serve kind of business. If you wanted to sit close to the finest girl in class, you had to be smart. Play smarter than the rest.
But I’d never been on that table before. Usually, it was always the girls that had to play smart to get seats close to me. Everyone wanted me. I was the Drip Lord. Hotcake. And it was nice to know that I was wanted everywhere too.
I'd caught a lot of girls in town staring at me when they thought I wasn’t looking. One of my admirers had caught my eyes. She was a short dark girl in my class and was rather pretty, to be honest. I probably would have hit on her too if I hadn’t already met Rera but something about her just seemed off.
Unlike the other girls, she was on low cut. Apart from that minor detail, she looked like every other girl in school but there was something about her that kept me away. Maybe it kept everyone else away too because she was always alone. I was yet to see her hanging out with someone but no one had ever approached her. Not a single person.
She did everything alone too. She sat by herself in class, walked alone, ate lunch away from everyone and went home alone.
It seemed really odd to me as I couldn’t think of a reason why she was that way. Could it be that she was too proud to mix with others? I decided to ask Aderera one day during lunchtime.
“Em…Rera, do you know that short dark girl in our class? I don't know her name,” I asked as we walked towards the tree behind the football field during lunchtime with our snacks in hand.
The tree served Rera and me well enough that it became our usual spot during lunch hours. We'd always sit on the bench fixed firmly to the ground at its base, eating and talking about random stuff.
“Short girl? There are lots of short girls in our class so you need to be more specific,” she told me. She sat on the bench as she struggled to tear her Pure Bliss biscuit open. "One girl like this...she is on low-cut." I swept my hair backward with my hands to demonstrate low.
"Oh! You mean Titi. Her name is Titi."
"That's her name? Cool."
Whilst munching on her biscuit, she mumbled something like, “Why’d you ask? You like her?"
