Always Yours (Lagos Romance Series)

I can’t deny it, I love the fact that I am a successful young woman living and working in Lagos. I like the fact that I have a nice car (
Toyota) a flat on Victoria
Island (tiny one bedroom) and my own office (it’s so small you won’t believe it). I love it that I am self-employed and doing what
I really like doing, writing.

I am the publisher and editor in chief of ‘Living Lagos!
’,
a weekly lifestyle magazine that presents the highlights and highpoints of Lagos life in an entertaining and engaging format. I own ‘Living Lagos!’, or at least I own a part of it, I have an investor, my close friend Eddie
Bakare
, but he’s more of a silent partner. We started the magazine together after years of co-editing a campus newspaper called campus greens (forgive the unimaginative title but we were really young). The idea for ‘Living Lagos!’ came to me during our serv
ice year and Eddie bought into it, literally. He invested over seventy per cent of the capital (he does have a lot of money, his grandfather was a well-known politician/public funds looter, who made a lot of money ruining the country, and Eddie suffers the ill-gotten wealth ver
y gracefully and generously.)

We worked very hard in the first year of running the magazine and by the time service year was over, ‘Living Lagos!’ had become a hit in Lagos, in the second year we started an online edition. By then we were getting very
good returns on our initial investments and Eddie was ready to leave me totally in charge and take a job in his
father’s oil marketing firm.

So here I was, two years after completing my service year, practically my own boss and boss of four others, five if you included the cleaner/messenger/delivery boy, Peace. We rented this really tiny office space on Lagos Island from where we pursued stories on fashion, lifestyle, arts, soc
ial events etc. within Lagos.

I usually relaxed on Friday afternoons. ‘Living Lagos!’ would have hit the stands in the morning so we had two days of relative rest before our hustle would resume on Monday. As usual I was relaxing in my office, losing the battle to not doze off, when Ada, our resident photographer cum graphic designer and
editor burst into the office.

‘Hey! Wake up
Soph
” she practically shouted, jolting me out of my doze.

I groaned and opened my eyes “What, what, what?” I said. “Can’t you see I’m trying to work?”

“Yeah right” she scoffed, impatiently brushing her braids away from her face and planting her rear on my desk. “Working with your eyes closed”

“I’m working on catching up my sleep, duh” I said with an unrepentant smile. “And I had a meeting with Morpheus”

She pursed her lips. “You will never change, Sophia
Aliu
”

I sniggered. “I hope not, Ada
Arinze
.” I said. It was comfortable to have Ada around, we had been casual friends in university,
even
though we hadn’t been very close I’d always liked her a lot.
When the guy I and Eddie had hired to do the graphic design had messed up the work, she had stepped in as a favour to me. Now she was an integral part of our organisation and apart from the other gigs she took as a wedding/ event photographer and portraitist, she seemed to be satisfied with being the ‘Living Lagos!’ photographer
and
graphics designer.

“Guess what?” She said, cutting into my thoughts. “I have a picture of Chief Mrs
Yetunde
Okocha
wearing the worst fashion disaster of the year. I want to put it in our fashion fail page. What do you think?” She handed me a picture of a middle aged woman wearing what seemed to be an orange balloon, red tights and brown suede boots with a sad looking fringe.

My eyes widened. “What was she thinking?” I exclaimed. “This is ridiculous!”

“I always get the nice ones” Ada said, with one of those Cheshire cat grins.

My mind churned,
Yetunde
Okocha
was a very prominent patron of arts and fashion, she had been born into a prominent family in Lagos and married into one of the most well-known families in eastern Nigeria plus she had bought a couple of hundred copies at our magazine launch to share amongst her friends.

“You like trouble
sha
!” I said to Ada in pidgin.

She frowned “Nope, I just don’t see class or wealth.” She said loftily. “I’m blind to social position and the like.”

“
Puhleeze
!”
I exclaimed. “You so do! That’s why you’re always so keen to show up a socialite.”

“
Sophieeeee
!” she pleaded.

“She's been too nice to us” I said. “Her friends and enemies would make her a laughing stock if that gets published, we don’t want that, do we? We shouldn’t be biting the fingers that helped us get started. P.S let’s concentrate on younger people. Hip, young and fashion forward” I paused.
“Or backward as the case may be.”

“Okay” she said sounding a little sulky as she gave up and got up.

“And don’t forget she’s Eddie’s godmother”.

That got her quiet, sometimes I imagined she had a crush on Eddie, she was always quieter and more reserved whenever he came around.

“Okay forget the picture” she said. “There’s this benefit as
Muson
Center
tonight.”

“Okay?” I nodded. One of the good things about working at ‘Living Lagos!’ was that we always got invites to the best events and nicest parties.

“We have two invites” she continued. “Obviously I am going, to take the pictures. So there’s one free ticket.”

“Get Oliver to go with you” I said. “So he can write something, or
Fadeke
, she needs to cut her teeth on events like this.”

“I would ask them, but I think you would like to go.”

“
Moi
?”
I laughed.
“
Er
, nope.
I am going to
Silverbird
to see a movie, get a facial, a foot massage and a pedicure, and then I am going home to sleep till Monday.”

“It’s a benefit for children with heart disease” Ada said.

“
Awww
!”
I said. “That’s sad, okay I’ll send a cheque on behalf of all of us.”

“It is organised by
Carelife
foundations” she said, her lips pursed.

I paused. My heart had just started hammering like a gong, my mouth was suddenly,
very
, very dry.

“
Carelife
?”
Ada continued sweetly. “You know
Carelife
? It is run by Cecilia Fernandez, who used to be Cecilia Ade-Cole.”

Of course I knew
Carelife
, and she knew I did. Why she was torturing me though, I didn’t know. I swallowed, hard. My heart was beating too fast, much too fast.

“You know her brother just returned from the US” Ada continued, trying and not succeeding to keep the smirk from her voice “What’s that his name again?”

“Michael” I said. It came out as a whisper “Michael Ade-Cole”

“Yes that one.” she nodded,
Obviously
pleased with herself. “I heard that he will be there, confirmed.”

“Confirmed?”

“Yes” she said.

“You’re evil.” I said when I could breathe.

“I know” she grinned. “So what should I do about the ticket, should I give it to Oliver or
Fadeke
?”

I glared at her “Not on your life.

Michael Ade-Cole! Long after Ada had left, the name kept running through my mind. In a world of Facebook, Twitter and even yahoo mail, it would seem really strange that I had not seen or spoken with Mike in more than four years. We hadn’t spoken since before he left the country after his national youth service. If other people wondered why we hadn’t communicated at all, I didn’t, because I knew. It was because I was afraid. I was afraid of how much I still loved him, still wanted him, I was afraid of how his being in my life would affect me.

I met Mike, as he was called then, in my first year at university, through Eddie
Bakare
. They were family friends. I think Mike was friends with Eddie’s older brother Julius. When we were introduced, Michael was in his final year, I was the greenest fresher ever and Eddie was my only friend. For some reason, Michael took a great liking to me. Whenever there was anything happening, like the cool parties he or his friends usually had, he’d invite Eddie and tell him to bring his “cute friend Sophia”. As for me, in those first days I was almost in awe of him, he was really handsome, tall, and slim with a smile that could do things to a girl’s insides. For a girl straight out of a
girl’s
only boarding school, he was like Mills and Boon come to life.

After a while, Eddie kind of dropped out of the equation. Michael would pick me up after my classes and take me to lunch, he knew all the best places to eat and the best places to just hangout. He used to listen to me talk and talk, in those days I had views on everything and I was always sure I was right. He would listen and laugh and call me a breath of fresh air. The first day he came to the girl’s hostel to visit me, my roommates were all agog. I hadn’t realized before then, how popular he was. It turned out that everyone either knew him, or knew of him. Rich, handsome, brilliant, funny and friendly, guys liked him and girls loved him. He was like a campus legend.

I was very innocent at the time. The fact that his interest in me seemed to be purely platonic made me very comfortable in my new friendship. It made me less insecure, I doubt that the fledgling confidence I possessed at the time would have supported a romantic attachment to the most desired guy in school. But if I was comfortable, his avuncular attitude also made me aware of my lack of siren power.

I wasn’t too bothered at the time though. I really didn’t want a relationship. Before starting university, I had heard countless stories about the ‘
Jambites
Rush’ the annual seduction of
freshers
by more experienced male students. Determined not to be a statistic, I had resolved not to date anyone in my first year in school.

But sometimes when I thought about the possibility of going out with Mike, I could feel my resolve weakening. I daydreamed about him so much it was a wonder that I got anything done that year.

One day, when I was presenting my views on the
Jambite
rush to him and making fun of the guys who had tried to ‘rush me’ I mentioned that I had no intention of going out with anybody for at least my first two years of school.

“Seriously” he had exclaimed teasingly. “So if I was dying for you right now, you would just tell me to get lost?”

Even though my heart had skipped a beat and was now pounding erratically and my mouth had gone dry and I couldn’t really arrange the thoughts in my head, all of which seemed to be screaming ‘Yes! Yes! Yes! Tell me you love me and see what happens!’ I shook my head stubbornly and gave him a challenging look.

Meeeeen
! Sophia! He had groaned
,
clutching his heart and pretending to be in pain, so I have to wait for like, two years?

“Yes” I nodded stubbornly, forcing myself to laugh as if I wasn’t taking it seriously.

“
Hmmn
” he shook his head. “Two years is really long, I might just have to polish my Casanova skills. By the time I
give you the smoothest lines ever invented, you won’t even know when you’ll marry me sharply.”