The normal Nnamdi would have closed
his eyes and sang along to the song on the radio but he still had not gotten over what happened moments ago.
He shifted to the window looking
gaunt and rather out of place in the vacant bus. It was not as if someone
had died or anything like that, it was just the need to understand who in the world
she thought she was.
About 20 minutes ago
No, his heart did not Summersault to the drums of love when he saw her, he only felt piqued curiousity; what was she looking at so intensely? He followed her gaze and sighted a mad man causing a scene across the road. The man was balancing a bulb of banana on his head
while dancing passionately to a music only he could hear. There and then, it was impossible to tell if she- the girl- was moved to pity or just thought him-the mad man-short term entertainment.
Looking back now, he knows that this
is the point he should have faced his front without a word, you know, head fixed straight ahead, eyes on the road, but he did not, he started talking…
“the bus would soon leave”…
She turned to stare at him, Nnamdi was thrown aback. She was someone he knew; someone he would like to know. He had seen her a few times and was almost sure she recognized him. She had to, after all he had caught her staring at him a few weeks back.
‘Hey, you remember me right?’ he asked
‘No, I don’t’ she replied.
He squirmed in his sit and reassured himself; she had to be pretending, *you know girls now.
‘My name is Nnamdi…you attend “New Life Church” right?’
Instead of a reply, she hurriedly turned
to alert the conductor of her need to alight immediately.
He needed to understand something: Was his conversation so discomforting that the poor girl had to get down from the bus midway? Or was he perhaps over analysing the situation because that may have been her final destination?
The fact was this: She was gone, but not without leaving with him a plethora of thoughts.
*** *** ***
Like cubes of sugar in water, Rotimi’s smile disappeared when Nnamdi asked about “the proposal”.
How was he supposed to explain the embarrassment he had felt? See some things are better left unsaid.
Nnamdi pressed on: ‘ tell me jor, or did she say “no”? My guy, “soja go, soja
come, barrack no go ever empty”’.
Rotimi examined Nnamdi’s face and thought it unfair that he had to narrate how his proposal went to this guy whose love cycle fluctuated more often than *NEPA light. Just last month he had talked about some Cassandra girl to the point that even though Rotimi had not seen her yet, he would still have found it easy to point her out in a crowd. Now, just yesterday, he was was talking about another “fish” who had no name
just yet. To be honest, he was thankful that she was nameless, he could not
stand to have another Cassandra engraved in his mind.
‘Well…’ Rotimi started,
‘I…errm…technically, I did not get to tell her my feelings?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that after I finished saying
all I had to say the way you taught me in igbo, she asked me to translate to English. She doesn’t speak Igbo …’
Nnamdi interrupts…‘chai…ultimate messop!! So what did you now say?’
‘…Hmmm…err… I told her it was something someone had said to me and since I thought she understood igbo, I came to her for explanation’
Truthfully, now that Rotimi thinks about everything that happened, he knows that God is not dead, afterall He had saved him from further embarrassment with Nkem.
*NEPA: Former electricity provider of Nigeria.
Photo credit- Source: google images
PS: Thanks to Blessing and Jewel for the feedback on the first draft, you are the reason this came out better💕💕.
