Chapter 1: Yes I Do- By Olaitan Femi Oboye (Nigeria)
BY: OLAITAN FEMI OBOYE
She hurriedly climbed up the stairs leading to the landing of the second floor in front of her two-bedroom apartment. It took her almost two minutes searching for her bunch of keys and another four minutes to insert the right key from the bunch as she kept inserting the wrong keys to unlock due to over excitement.
When she finally gained entry into her room, she flung her bag on her double settee, but gently dropped the bouquet of rose flowers on the settee and pulled off her three inches red high heeled shoes. She rolled on the tiled floor not minding what happens to the red Senegalese evening outfit she had on.
She rolled to and fro about five times. After which she knelt down, rested her head on one arm of the settee and burst out in low tones in her soprano voice as she sang:-
This is my day of joy
My day of joy
My day of joy
This is my day of joy
My day of joy.
She sang this song over and over again and again, after her presentation, she looked at the platinum ring on her third left finger. She rubbed her right thumb and second finger around the ring and kissed it twice. She stood up, picked up the flower and walked into her bedroom, she dropped the flower gently on her bed, watched her full frame in her standing mirror, appreciating her chubby figure, she hummed her song again and danced shaking her waist.
"Could this be true?" She asked herself. "It should be true and must be true." She prophesied.
She looked at the ring again and rolled it round and round again and tears began to trickle from her eyes to her cheeks. It was tears of joy, tears of happiness and tears of assurance. Was she dreaming, she thought, no she wasn't, and she assured herself. This is real, and must be real, she told herself.
She knelt down resting her head on her bed and went soliloquizing.
"Tunji my love, you are the only man in my life, I will love you for life even in death." She soliloquized into the ring. She paused and gave the ring a long and passionate kiss.
"Do not go the ways others went, do not play the game others played with me," she pleaded, sobbed and sucked some air with her nose. "I will be a good wife to you and a good mother to our children. I will be a good mother-in-law, cousin-in-law, aunt-in-law, niece-in-law to your people. Tunji, your people will be my people and my people will be your people..... She kept soliloquizing as she kept rolling the ring round her third left finger. The finger ring.
Gbemisola played back her past relationships and how they all crashed like a pack of cards based on deceit and jilt.
Gbemisola graduated from Lagos State University (LASU) with a second class degree honors upper division in Business Administration.
She was posted to Dutse in Jigawa State for the mandatory one year National Youth Service program. There she met Augustine also a youth corp member who taught in the same school that she did: Dutse Community High School. One thing led to the other and resulted in a relationship, but before the service year ended, Augustine had impregnated the school bursar.
After the service year, she came back to Lagos and got a job as a trainee manager in the human resource department of a leading pharmaceutical company on Coker Avenue, Ilupeju,
After about a year and a half, Kunle came into her life. They met at a youth singles program, she thought because the meeting was on a religious platform, things would work out and never doubted it not flourishing, until one Monday midday when a lady of about twenty-two years old walked up to her as she was about to go for her lunch break. She introduced herself as Modinat and warned her to stay away from Kunle. Modinatu flashed and flaunted a golden ring at her face that Kunle was her fiancé and would deal and destroy her physically and spiritually if she ever hears or sees her near Kunle again. In fact, the lady was about to create a scene if not the gentle manner Gbemisola handled the situation based on her human resource acumen.
She remembered how two months to Christmas in 2010, nine months after the crashed relationship with Kunle, that she met Olasukanmi at a friend's father's 70th birthday. The relationship started on a very good note and looked promising until it went sour again when she discovered that Olasukanmi was married with two children whom he relocated abroad in France.
Somehow Kodjo came into her life. One and a half years after, she was now careful and watchful despite Kodjo spoiling her with money and endowed her with gifts. It was at the point Kodjo was about to relocate her to a duplex in Gbagada Phase 2 from Shomolu that she discovered he was a drug peddler.
Finally, she came to the conclusion that men could or should never be trusted. She would never go into or honor further any relationship, that all men are liars, deceivers and jilters. Her only consolation from all the broken relationships was that she was very careful and tactful never to allow herself to be touched.
Then she thought deeply that if she had known or foresaw that only jilters and deceivers would come into her path she would have opted for the catholic seminary and ended up as a nun, Reverend Sister or Reverend Mother before now. She lamented that they come looking sincere, gentle and honest at the beginning, only when the relationship is approaching a glorious end that it goes the way the cookies crumble.
But when she thinks about her parents and saw the sincerity and honesty at play in their relationship, she would console herself again that one day she would and hope to meet a sincere and honest man.
Then came that Wednesday afternoon when her path crossed with Tunji Arowolo at Eko Towers on Adetokunbo Ademola Street on Lagos Island.
Tunji was the only passenger in the lift on his way to the ground floor from the 16th floor when Gbemi intercepted the journey of the lift on the 10th and joined him. The moment Gbemi entered into the lift and initiated the button to the ground floor, his heart skipped a beat and he felt somehow. She was immediately attracted to him. He just liked her immediately. "Could this be what is called love at first sight?" He asked himself. He felt uneasy but managed to break the few moments of silence as the lift embarked on its journey to the ground floor. After a brief conversation, they exchanged complimentary cards and bid each other bye.
Two days after he started WhatsApp chats with her and along the line they exchanged biographies.
Tunji later initiated a relationship which Gbemi turned down that she would be more comfortable with him as a friend with no further strings attached even though she was not in any relationship.
Tunji was an I.T expert and consults for high profile companies in Lagos and Abuja. He was never into any relationship, he got scared off any because of the trauma those affected by broken relationship pass through, therefore he has made up his mind to be a bachelor for life until this day he met Gbemisola.
But Gbemisola did not stop at that, she went underground investigating Tunji unknown to him.
Then came Friday 14th of February, he invited her out for a date at Country Club Ikeja—their second after they met four months before. She consented. He further craved her indulgence to come with a friend and her younger sister. Tunji was also at the country club with his friend and his younger brother. They sat around a reserved table by the swimming pool having a good time, chatting, eating and drinking. All of a sudden Tunji proposed to Gbemisola with a bouquet of live rose flowers and a platinum ring.
She was dazed and managed to resist teardrops from her eyes until she got home that night.
She finally rose up, sat on the bed, picked up the bunch of red roses, looked at it, hugged it, and sniffed it appreciating its fragrance. She looked at the ring again and put a call through to Tunji and in a low mellow tenderly voice, she spoke slowly into the mouthpiece of her Infinix phone "Yes I do.''
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