164 Pages
Contemporary Romance
Available on Amazon and OkadaBooks (E-book/Paperback)
SYNOPSIS
Tolu’s lover is a treasure in his heart, so the purity of his feelings flows.
Bola has lived her life like a sweet dream sometimes in the past, and she is satisfied with her lover, but she fears for the familiar comforts of their relationship; so she throws her lover a seemingly minor challenge.
Love Like Us, a popular romance game show on national TV, could work as a gift or a curse for lovers, due to its potential to unravel intimacy or lack of it.
When Tolu and Bola, following Tolu’s initiative, decide to appear on the show in order to give their relationship a brighter spark, they have to face deep-seated fears and irritating discoveries from the ruins of their past disappointments as they chart a new course for their union.
THE AUTHOR
Feyisayo Anjorin is a filmmaker and a writer.
His writings have appeared Litro, Brittle Paper, Bella Naija, Kalahari Review, and Bakwa Magazine.
He is the author of “The Night My Dead Girlfriend Called” and “Kasali’s Africa”
EXCERPT (Culled from the Chapter “His Exes”)
Tolu told me about Tolani, his first girlfriend in the early months of his undergraduate years at the University of Ibadan. They met one cloudy afternoon during the first semester registration week when as a fresh student you would have to ask around for this and that place in the large expanse of the university campus. Tolani wanted to go to the Jaja Clinic, and he too was on his way there, having been there very early in the day when the registration desk had not opened.
“Good afternoon.”
“Hi.” He had said.
“Please do you know where Jaja is?” Tolani had asked, looking at the document she
was holding to be sure she got the name right.
“This way.” He had said pointing. “I’m also going there.”
Tolani was just starting the registration process while Tolu has almost completed his’, so it was Tolu who offered to take her around, to help her, because she looked innocent and beautiful, and like she needed some help.
They dated for two months. At some point within the two months she contested for the Miss Queens hall beauty pageant; the competition that was meant to choose a girl as the most beautiful in that particular undergraduate residential complex, who would then be the pretty face of the hall in social gatherings. Tolani competed with twelve girls and won.
Tolu did not know that she had contested; he was not invited to Trenchard where the event took place on a Friday night, which was one of the things that annoyed him.
He only got to know about the pageant four days after the event when he visited Tolani at the Faculty of Social Sciences where her department, the department of psychology, was having a general lecture.
One of Tolu’s friends had seen them together and asked where he knew Miss Queens hall.
“Who is Miss Queens hall?”
“The girl you were talking with a few minutes ago.”
“No. I’m sure you must have mistaken her for someone else.”
But the guy was sure. So when she came to his place later that evening, probably for the sex, which she seemed to love like an addict, he asked her.
Tolu was stunned by her reply and he didn’t know that she could be interested in that sort of thing. He told her how disappointed he was.
“Tolani, what am I to you? You want to do something this big and you can’t tell me?” “It’s nothing.”
“No, it’s something. I thought you love me.”
Later he noticed changes. She became obsessed with looking good; she became a regular at campus parties, and the popular guys on campus were always trying to have her here and there. Tolu could not cope with the sudden changes.
They drifted after then.
Tolu’s second relationship was after his undergraduate years, a year before he travelled to the UK.
He met Debola at the poolside at Sunview Hotel on a sunny Saturday morning. He was in the Olympic-sized pool with her and two others, twin girls; they were all conscious of each other’s presence, even though no one seemed keen to engage with strangers.
Eventually Tolu saw Debola hurry out of the pool to attend to her phone, which was on the sun lounger beside the pool.
Tolu said he had been intrigued by the fact that she was able to pick the sound of her phone despite being underwater and being far from where the phone was.
Tolu had been nearer to the phone than she was; he was at the shallow end of the pool when she made her fish-like progress from the deeper end, so he listened to her conversation after she took the call. She had spoken with a trace of Australian accent; she was tall, oval-faced, and dark.
He got to know that she is a medical doctor whose attention was needed at the Mother and Child Hospital, which was about fifteen minutes drive from Sunview.
“Give me fifteen minutes.” She had said as she grabbed her bag and hurried to the changing rooms.
She was as swift as a battle-ready soldier summoned to the parade ground by the commanding officer.
Tolu’s observation was the backbone of their interaction the next time he saw her in the pool.
Debola is the same age as Tolu, a lover of books as he is, a lover of nature just like him, a fitness enthusiast just like him.
She had studied at the University of Melbourne and later specialized as a Pediatrician.
She could do things with speed and at the same time do it thoroughly despite the speed, as evident in her few minutes in the changing room that Saturday – when she got a call from the office – and her subsequent speed to work to see who needed to be seen.
She always kept to time.
She could finish a 600-page book, fiction or non-fiction, in a few days, and she would talk about the book as if she had studied to write a review on it.
“Why then did you not date her and marry her?” I asked in anger when I saw that Tolu had spoken so highly of this doctor and their time together for about ten minutes.
“We shouldn’t have dated.” He said.
“But you dated. You went everywhere together. You bought gifts for each other; you visited each other’s houses like lovers. You went to Idanre hills together, twice; you went to a hip-hop party in Victoria Island, together.”
“It was a mistake. And I blame myself for it.”
“A mistake? What sort of mistake? I’ve just heard the stuff of love songs.”
“We moved too fast based on wrong perspectives.”
“That whole process was too long to be a mistake.”
“Hmmm.”
“Tolu, what happened?”
“Calm down Bola, why are you jealous. Stop overreacting.”
“I am not overreacting. I would just like to know what makes me different from this
doctor lover of yours’. Looks like you guys had much more fun than we could ever dream of having.”
“Don’t say that. Please.”
“OK. Please, enlighten me.”
“Well,” he said with a shrug, “She was in a relationship.”
“What?”
“Her fiancé was in Sydney. They’ve dated for three years in Australia before she
relocated to Nigeria. Turns out that she had a disagreement with him at that time when we met.”
“So you were like the rebound guy.”
Tolu folded his arms. “Bola, it’s not funny.”
“Sorry.”
“We wouldn’t have been that close if she had not been ignored for a few weeks by her fiancé.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“So in that little time and space she had from her boyfriend you swept her off her
feet.”
“Bola, are you mocking me?”
“No. Please continue.”
“So, when I asked her about us, where we were headed, which was after like six
months of freely letting each other in, she told me about her fiancé. To deal the final blow she showed me an electronic copy of the invitation card they were planning to use for their wedding the following January. Debola weds Wale”
“Damn.” I said, my eyes on his face, looking for traces of regret.
“It was heartbreaking. I was a mess. I had imagined many picture-perfect tomorrows with this woman.”
“You didn’t ask her out. You were not specific about the relationship. You didn’t define it right from the start.”
“One cannot exactly start defining a relationship right from the start with a sort of formal attitude, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” I exhaled. “See where that got you.”
“Exactly. I was foolish I guess. I was carried away by the outings and dates and time together. I just assumed that when a man and a woman our age get as intimate as we had been, then normally, typically, such relationships were meant to head for the altar.”
“Were you sexually involved?”
“No. I’m sure sex would have ruined it. The fact that we were not sexually involved made it more intense. I mean that is the first woman other than my mother and my sisters that I got to know on a deep level.”
“Hmm. So how did you take it?”
“I thought I told you I was a mess. I was depressed for weeks even though no one really knew the intensity of my pain. That was why I was quick to tell you how I feel about you that day.”
When I asked him what he was looking for in a woman, he raised his eyebrows and said, “A friend, a soul mate, a sister. Someone I could trust with my life without fear. Sex is important to me, but I would rather have sex with my wife; which is why I would never date someone I do not see myself marrying soon.”
“So you didn’t have sex with Tolani too?”
“We had sex. We were young. We were infatuated with each other and we were experiencing life away from parents for the first time, so she spent some nights at my place off-campus, and there was a lot of sex.”
“Seems like a lot of fun.”
“Bola, do you want honesty or are you trying to compare yourself…”
“I’m not comparing myself.” I interrupted. “I’m just trying to imagine what you meant by there was a lot of sex.”
He looked at me in a way that revealed that he was trying to read me. “Are you sure you are ready for this? Because we are getting to know each other and…”
“Tolu, what do you mean by a lot of sex? You guys dated for two months.”
“Many times in a week and we were usually together all-through the weekends. I think that was why we sort of got tired of each other. That was why I felt betrayed when she entered into a pageant without telling me. I thought we were so close.”
“You were.” I said. “She was beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Very beautiful. But it was a doomed relationship right from the start. I mean, one day we were just getting to know each other, walking around the campus like friends, enjoying the company; the next we were in bed like lovers. From the very first time we got naked together to the end of the whole affair we would hardly be in the same room for five minutes without thinking of ripping each others’ clothes off.”
“Too much energy.”
Tolu nodded like he usually does when I say something he has been thinking. “You can say that again.”
“So, what now? Are you sated sexually? Is that why you are not so keen on sex in subsequent relationships?”
“Look Bola, sex is the easiest thing for a man and a woman, if they are able-bodied and attracted to each other. You know what is hard and rare?”
“Commitment that stands the test of time. Discipline of building something lasting.”
“Thank you.” He said. “And I would like to know about you too. I would like to know what a beautiful woman like you has gone through when you believed you were in love, or when you were infatuated.”
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