FICTION — SHORT STORY

Girls Like That

A STORY OF UNREQUITED LOVE IN LAGOS

It all began with a simple tweet.

I need a book lover in my life.

Girls like her, I mused, didn’t often talk about books.

My timeline was usually filled with her kind.

Girls whose dresses hug their coke bottle curves, whose breasts spill out of their cleavages, and whose silky flesh peeps out of their thigh-high slits.

The French would call their fashion choices Risqué. But in my Oluyole neighborhood, it is called “Aso Awon Onishina” — a term synonymous with provocative clothing.

For girls like her, life seemed like a perpetual whirlwind of extravagant dates, private parties on Lagos Island, tables brimming with Azul bottles, and snapshots from trips to the Burj Khalifa. All of it peppered with captions that read “soft life” or “princess treatment.”

On Instagram, they are usually tagged in posts about girls whose talents include, amongst other things, breaking marriages and shattering moral boundaries, but never about books. Eventually, I double-tapped the heart icon.

Minutes later, I glanced at the tweet again, watching as the two likes beneath her picture multiplied to two hundred. The comment I had hoped would be the first fell behind those of the fiftieth male, each vying for her attention with comments ranging from “Sit on my face, Chiomsky” to “I can sell my family for a night with you.”

Swiftly, I composed my response, Look no further, hit send, and muted my notifications before sliding my battered iPhone 6 beside my equally beaten-up HP laptop.

I had 2,800 words to write to meet my daily target of 4,000. I turned my attention back to the screen, fingers dancing across the keyboard.

Three hours later, with my back hurting worse than a breakup, and my body throbbing with dopamine upon my task completed. I picked up my phone.

My inbox had always been a barren wasteland, populated only by messages from Forex scammers from Binomo or relics from a defunct follow-train group I joined in my bid to bolster my Twitter followers during the pandemic. So, I was hesitant to open the unread message.

Eventually, I did.

You were the only one that sounded reasonable among them, the message read. I quickly checked the profile picture to ensure I wasn’t about to reply to a catfish account.

Girls like her didn’t usually message guys like me; their inboxes were exclusive VIP sections of a stadium, accessible only to the highest bidders. I had read enough Twitter stories to know that much.

I downed two sachets of water — one to wash down the lingering garri sediments, the other to quench my parched mouth.

So, you were serious? I replied nonchalantly, my fingers inching towards the home button. With just two gigabytes of data left and a few hours before expiry, I prepared for my post-work ritual. Even if I was faced with two choices: Download movies from Netnaija or Stream content from Pornhub.

So, you were unserious she asked. I couldn’t help but wonder if she had been doing nothing but sitting and waiting for my response.

Four hours later, we were locked in a debate over who was the better writer between Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka. A week later, I found myself wrapping my copies of Chimamanda’s “Americanah” and Chiemeka Garrick’s “Tomorrow Died Yesterday” in a perfumed brown wrapper. D’banj’s “Fall in Love” played softly from my phone as I wondered whether I had revealed too much in the letter I slipped between the pages.

“Still sending those books to that Unilag baddie?” Tunde, my roommate, asked with heavy sarcasm in his voice. His unspoken words echoed in his question: “You’re a fool. In 2023, you still trust Lagos girls? Have you forgotten what happened with Amaka?” After my breakup, he assumed the role of unofficial brother-guardian. Even though he had a very terrible way of doing it.

“It’s just books, not money,” I replied, as I smoothed the edges of the brown paper. Tunde may have had a heart chiseled from ice, but mine was made of whatever hearts were made of.

“Ojodu Berger ni last bus stop,” the conductor barked beside me. I was enveloped in a mélange of alcohol, body odor, and fried fish. I winced and clutched my school bag closer to my chest.

“Owa,” I grunted, mimicking the other passengers who had been on the bus with me for nearly two hours. I was met with peculiar glances; they must have known that this was my first time in Lagos. I looked away and dialed the speed dial for what felt like the hundredth time in the past forty-eight hours.

“Bro, the person you wan go see neva pick up yet, and you dey travel?” Tunde had asked me the previous night. It had been three months since I told him about Chioma, but his opinion hadn’t faltered. ‘ Na omo wobe full that place,” he would always say.

“Leave me, guy; nothing will happen,” I’d replied, brimming with confidence. Chioma and I had meticulously planned this trip over the past month. I had dipped into the savings for my new gadgets to secure the short-let apartment. Hours of text and phone calls had stripped away layers of our lives, revealing our true selves. We could both say that we were no longer strangers. I had even told her I loved her, and the sound of her laughter was as enchanting as if she’d told me she loved me back.

I pulled the phone away from my ear when it beeped thrice. A WhatsApp message from Chioma. And two images from Tunde. My face lit up with a smile as I tapped on Chioma’s message first.

I don’t like how you’ve been calling me; I just hope you’re not on your way because I’m not around.

My heart plummeted to my feet.

“Not around?”

As I contemplated my response, I switched to Tunde’s message. The world seemed to crumble around me as I stared at the screenshots from Twitter.

“Guy, No be your Chioma they propose to for Dubai?”

GLOSSARY

Na omo wobe full that place - That place is filled with crazy girls.

Ojodu Berger ni last bus stop - Ojodu Berger is the last busstop

Chiomsky - Another way of saying Chioma.

Guy, No be your Chioma they propose to for Dubai?”- Pal, isn’t that your Chioma that was proposed to in Dubai?

Owa - I will stop here.

Bro, the person you wan go see neva pick up yet, and you dey travel?- Dude the person you are going to see hasn’t answered their call, yet you’re traveling.

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