DIARY OF A SHY COLLEGE GUY
EPISODE 12
Author
Daniel known as Senator Daniel
We hugged, and as we disentangled from the embrace, we stood face to face for a few seconds, saying nothing, just smiling at each other. She had on a simple, black sleeveless gown and black leather flat sole shoes. I wonder why I had spent almost two semesters in Unilag, and I had not even seen her once till today, when her faculty was more or less behind mine. I don’t even know why I didn’t look for her all this while, then I remembered that I had had romantic encounters with almost half a dozen girls since I got admission into Unilag. I had been too preoccupied with those to remember her.
“Tosan told me you had gotten into Lag, but I didn’t know what department you were in.” She said as she brushed off hair from the front of her face. She was holding a green jotter that had Harry Potter’s face in the front. I guessed being in final year she probably had just one course for the day, unlike me that had like five every day. “So, what department are you in?” She said, and I realized I had been silent for far too long.
“Oh, sorry, I’m just really shocked seeing you. Let’s walk.” I said and we started walking towards the senate building, which stood between my department and hers. “So…how have you been? It’s been really long.” I said, turning around to look at her with a smile on my face. It was really cool walking with someone close to my height for a change. Most of the girls I had been involved with the last couple of months had been almost a foot shorter than me.
“I’m fine. Yea, it really has been long.” She said with a distant look in her eyes.
“When was the last time we saw?”
“I don’t know. I really can’t remember.”
“I think it was that one time I came to your house to invite Tosan for a party and…”
“Oh yea, I remember that day.” She cut in and laughed lightly. Actually, my visit to her house that day had almost cost me my friendship with Tosan.
After meeting Temisan for the first time at Felicia’s sister’s party and instantly forming a bond, we had seen a couple of more times, but I had not been in the rare form I had been in the night we first saw, and gradually, the magic between us had died. The day I had gone to invite Tosan for an impromptu party, she was not home, but I met Temisan and their brother in the living room. After finding out Tosan wasn’t home, I had wanted to leave immediately when Temisan complimented the silver watch I had on. I sat back on the other end of the long couch she was on, and ended up spending about an hour there. We talked about a lot of different things, but never about what went wrong between us. During the course of our discussion, she had asked why I always invited Tosan for my parties, and I said it was because Tosan liked parties. Temisan and her brother didn’t like that answer, and when Tosan got back that night, they had a discussion with her concerning what I had said. They must have made her believe I saw her only as a party animal and not a friend, because after that day, Tosan didn’t talk to me for months. I cherished the friendship that I had with Tosan, and this made me hate Temisan for telling her what I had said. I kept on going to see Felicia to help me apologize to Tosa, and ended up falling in love with Felicia in the process. That’s a story for another day.
Seeing Temisan in Unilag and remembering the promise we had made so many years ago brought back the magic of that night, and made us forget all the in between periods were I was being a wuss. We exchanged numbers when I got to the front of her department building. We hung out later that night behind the big art block building on campus; it was a car park, but after the car park, just before the swamp was a long line of food canteens made out of wood. We were in one of them, sipping coke, and catching up on old times- laughing at all the silly mistakes I had made over the years.
She told me she had failed a major course last semester, and would have to stay back for an extra semester after her mates graduate in a few months. I was amazed at her nonchalant attitude as she talked about this. I knew I would be depressed if I failed any courses- little did I know I was going to experience something similar in the near future.
When we went our separate ways that night, I just knew nothing would happen between us romantically anymore. I knew we would be good friends, but it wouldn’t go past that.
To be continued
