He traced a flexion crease. ‘Just other things, you know, like godly men in the Bible,’ he said and leaned closer, ‘and avoiding temptation from jezebels.’
‘I’ve never tried to seduce you!’
He raised a brow, reminding me of our first kiss; he’d mastered the art of communicating with his body parts – a raised brow, a sly smirk, a subtle swipe of his fingers.
‘Well!’ I blustered. ‘I was excited, that’s all.’
He laughed, throwing his head back, and for a second I forgot my annoyance. ‘For the record, I don’t mind being seduced by you,’ he murmured. ‘You know we only agreed to this so they wouldn’t invite our parents for a chat. How do you feel about my father asking your mother why her daughter is trying to corrupt his son?’
‘It’s none of their business. We haven’t even done anything.’
It was a silent agreement between us that we weren’t ready, and so we kissed, exploring with our hands, but nothing else.
Emeka sighed, no longer joking. ‘You’re right. You don’t have to go. I can talk to Kamsi if anything comes up, but God knows that fellow is stubborn.’
I decided to attend one more service, to satisfy my conscience that I’d indeed tried my hardest. That afternoon, we prayed. Sister Charity stood at the pulpit pronouncing prayer points and waiting for the congregation to repeat them after her, before dissolving into a deluge of rapid-fire tongues.
‘Sisters, slap your thighs and say after me – my laps shall not be the graveyard for any man, I shall not be a Delilah!’
I did not attend the sessions after that; Pastor Kamsi decided that the only appropriate measure was for me to be placed under his direct supervision.
Valentine’s Day ’01 was when I looked in the mirror and decided I liked the face I saw reflected in it, the year I decided I was beautiful.
‘You’re so beautiful,’ Emeka said often, but I dismissed it as the words of a young man with eyes coloured by bias.
I did not like my face. Whether this was because it reminded me of my mother’s face, or the fact that it was too ordinary to be called pretty, or the way it crooked at the side when I smiled, showing the least attractive of my teeth, I wasn’t sure. But then again, I did not like myself very much. I was not ‘cute’ or ‘portable’ as the boys said, the kind of girl that made them want to offer protection, be nicer, kinder, instead they joked I was one of them.
But around Emeka, I wore shiny block heels with pointy fronts, and it wasn’t because he was taller. He did not make me dislike my height, nor the fact that I wasn’t a useful sort of tall: skinny and stretching upwards like a band, worthy of walking a runway or athletic with shapely arms.
Valentine’s Day the year before that, the one just before Sisqó’s ‘Thong Song’ was released, radiating through every student radio, making the girls desire thighs and butts thick enough to move, Emeka and I were at a crossroads. We’d survived several tests by then: the test of patience when he’d taught me to drive, his screeching matching the car brakes as I desperately tried to pull to a stop; the test of fundamentally disagreeing on animals, he liked dogs but I could not stand any living creature that wasn’t human. But there was no way over this.
‘He’s not officially asked me to be his girlfriend,’ I had complained to Zina in our hostel room the week before.
She had no interest whatsoever in Valentine’s Day, having recently separated from Chuka. ‘He wasn’t good enough for me,’ she’d said simply with a shrug and I wondered what had made her finally realise that.
Zina had created her own dance floor in the middle of our room, arching her back and gyrating.
Eriife looked up from her position reading on Zina’s bed, chewing on kuli-kuli, her face lined by mild bemusement. ‘What have the both of you been doing since?’ she said to me.
‘I don’t know,’ I mumbled, suddenly frightened.
Kr-kr-kr-kr, Eriife chewed, waiting for me to answer; kuli-kuli was a noisy snack. Zina paused her dancing, the music blasting around us.
‘Can you stop that? How can I think when you’re both making all that noise,’ I snapped.
‘Ewo, so I shouldn’t eat again because you’re in distress? You’re not even happy I’m visiting? Please please,’ Eriife replied, her chewing getting even louder.
Zina wiped at a sweat drop at the corner of her forehead. ‘I don’t even know why you’re stressing yourself, that boy literally carries you on his head like a basket. Send someone to call him now and he’ll appear. You don’t need any official status to confirm what’s going on.’
But I did; I needed an assurance that it wasn’t a figment of my imagination.
Zina shook her head. ‘You worry too much. That boy likes you a lot.’
On Valentine’s Day, the hostel buzzed with anticipation. By eight in the morning, the usual suspects had already begun receiving gifts, cakes and cards. At noon, wild screams shook the hostel walls as four double-layered cakes arrived, hoisted by hefty delivery men, one with a proposal in the form of a fondant ring and the icing letters Will You Marry Me? Zina and I stopped by the lucky recipient’s room, one of the many pilgrims present to confirm the stories with our own eyes.
‘Congratulations o. Have you told him yes?’ Zina said, perusing the cakes at length.
The girl stared at Zina like she was simpleminded. ‘He’s just one of my toasters, we’re not even dating.’
‘Maybe he should have proposed with a real ring and not icing so she can take him seriously,’ Zina murmured on our way out of the room.
Zina was yet to broadcast her unattached status so it wasn’t too much of a surprise that for the first time, no one came knocking at our door announcing that she had a visitor waiting. I had no expectations myself; Emeka had never asked me to be his girlfriend.
Roses arrived by three, so red that they looked like they’d been carefully painted, then a box of chocolates and finally, a cake in the shape of a heart.
‘Whoever this boy is must really like you o. Real roses are expensive,’ I told Zina, convinced they were for her. But a note accompanied the cake, one that read: I love you so much Ego – E.
Love. We’d never used that word before. Were we truly in love? What was it to be in love? Was love the intensity of warmth I felt around him? The awareness of completeness? Like life would be okay no matter what?
‘So, you didn’t get me anything?’ Emeka asked me later that evening, in the alcove of a restaurant on campus, the walls decorated in red balloons, Westlife’s ‘Swear It Again’ playing in the background.
‘I didn’t expect anything. You never asked me to be your girlfriend,’ I confessed.
He stared at me. ‘I have to ask? I thought it was obvious.’
Then he asked.
‘Sometimes I feel like you have no expectations of me,’ he said later that night as we walked back to the university dormitory.
