…2

Will.

This young man was three years older than me. A university student at that time. By the way, why are they always older than me? Anyway, he had always been my good friend and confidant. In fact, at a point, he was closer than my brothers. We would stay up at night calling and talking about everything and nothing.

Sincerely yours, I had no intentions of having such emotions towards him. If I am allowed, I’ll say that he induced those feelings and fanned them into flame.

How?

He would always say, “Vic, you know I love you, my sweet baby”. I would laugh and tell him off. But when such statements are repeated over and over and read in almost all his messages to me, what do you think?

I started thinking that he actually meant them. My thoughts started aggregating on him as my ‘love’. It was quite simple at first. But, towards my final year in secondary school, it escalated and became… SERIOUS. I would stare at a page of a textbook for hours and the only thing I would see was his face. The teacher would be sweat-talking in class and my mind would stray.
Finally, I was advised to tell Will how I felt.

I did.

Oh, his response! His surprising, hurtful, headache-inducing yet extremely helpful and needful answer was what saved me from failing my exams.

That put an ‘end’ to that. Or i should probably call it a long pause, not an end.
Back to Richard. In my second year, I got his number and we started chatting, calling and exchanging messages. We discovered similarities, appreciated differences, compared family backgrounds and shared visions and dreams. We became good friends. But, we had not yet become as close as I was with Will.

Then, January of that year, things took a steep climb. We went beyond what I had with Will and into love.

“Angel, I think I am falling for you. Seriously, I believe my emotions have gone beyond just ‘like’. I thought at first that I was just over reacting to our extended talks but now, I know better. Permit me to say those three words…”

I told him that he was the very first guy that loved me and that I loved back. That was enough for him. From that moment on, things got deeper between us. I can boldly say, the distance between us, as per, different universities, was what kept us from getting all touchy and physically close. We would talk like we were already married.

Anyone who observed both of us at that time would have concluded that we were dating. We weren’t and it was ninety percent my fault.

#peo