Chapter Sixty-Nine – Sankofa?

I was so livid with Lara, I sent her an angry voice note.

“I can’t believe you would tell Boateng that I’m talking to Sly. You know there’s nothing going on there. I would never have done that to you and you know it. Whatever is going on with you, I don’t know but I hate it.”

Lara had received the voice note and realized that maybe she’d gone too far. Why was she even so upset? Pastor Dave told her that maybe she was deflecting all the rage she felt about her parents’ situation onto me without realizing. He advised that she apologize to me.

Lara knew Pastor Dave was right but how to apologize to me was something she wasn’t sure of yet.

***

About three days after Boateng confronted me about Sly, he’d come to see me. He seemed much more cheerful and at peace.

“I know the last time we spoke about our situation, I said I didn’t know if I could wait any longer” he said, taking both my hands into his and making such strong eye contact I nearly fainted.

“I came to tell you, Araba Arthur, that I will wait for you. I will wait for you until I’m old and gray. I will wait for you even if it means waiting till Jesus comes. I will wait for you because I am in love with you. I love you.”

Foolishly, I’d frozen at the time. Luckily, Boateng was okay with that and we’d sailed through the exam together on the best terms.

With my roster cleared now and him reassuring me, I could see the path forward now. The only thing that remained was to reconcile with Lara.

Kwame had decided to offer his two scents about the situation; “Lara is having a really tough time navigating the situation with her parents. She’s feeling all types of things. Not to mention this is a new dynamic in your friendship. She was usually the one doing the wrong thing and then there was you being the voice of reason. It was her first time having to do that for you and she just didn’t handle it too well.”

After that conversation, I decided it was best if the two of us spoke properly. We’d only been having civil and curt conversations at Bible Study and it was eating me alive.

It was nice to tell Mara about what Boateng said but her commentary fell flat. Lara would have had much more to say and more good advice to give.

I was still thinking of how best to fix things with Lara when Sly came to see me. He’d said he wanted to bring me a pre-exam gift. This was going to be our first-time meeting since he came to visit me earlier in the semester. We’d met at the same place he’d broken my heart and he handed me a spa voucher he’d used his meagre NSS allowance to buy. We sat down to talk.

“I wanted to see your face. You know you look beautiful even on video call but just seeing your face in real life – I needed that” he said.

I smiled.

He adjusted himself and got serious. “These past few weeks that we’ve been talking again, it’s just felt right and I missed it. When we weren’t together, it sucked. Sometimes, I thought I was losing my mind. I guess I’m saying, I realized that I made a mistake. I knew I made a mistake the moment I made my decision and then every day after that I felt it.”

Silence.

“I got the offer to go and study in the UK.”

“That’s great, Sly. I know that’s what you always wanted” I said, wondering how the two topics were related.

“And I won’t go if you tell me that you still have feelings for me and you want us to try again. I want us to try again. I’ll stay and we’ll figure it out.”

I couldn’t believe what Sly was asking me. He was always a well-reasoning person and so this all seemed strange.

“Sly. What are you…”

“You don’t have to answer now. Just think about it. I don’t have to send my acceptance in until the end of the year.”

I was at a loss. I mean, there were definitely feelings there. My time with Sly had been the best two years of university and the semester that we’d been apart had been an absolute disaster. I mean, think about it reader. This season has been all about me and my messed-up heart. Barely any of the characters not directly involved in my love life have had page-time.

If I got back with Sly, maybe everything would make sense. I kept remembering Kwame’s advice about already knowing what I wanted and being too afraid to claim it.