"Took you long enough."

I squinted my eyes at him and placed a determined look on my face. The determination to wipe off that smirk on his face. With my arms and legs akimbo, I gave him a questioning look to understand what he was doing in my room, but the dude ignored me.

"How was the talk?" He asked instead.

"Why don't you tell me!" I yelled and ran towards him. I bounced on him, straddling him. A smile spread across his face, but that smile was soon wiped off when I started throwing him series of punches. He tried holding my hand, but I evaded it all.

"Calm down tigress, what's the issue?" He managed to ask between trying to hold my hand off.

"You told her. All this while she knew, and you knew she knew. But you didn't tell me she knew, and you knew she knew! And instead, you made me look like a fool, which I wouldn't have looked like if I knew she knew, like surely knew." I yelled out. I couldn't say if I was making any sense, but I made sense to myself. My state of stupidity was confirmed when Ademide started laughing. This got me angry, so I increased the intensity of my punches. But as we all know, he's a guy. Before I could say Jack Robinson, he had already changed our position, and I was lying underneath him, with my hands safely pinned over my head.

"I had to tell her. I'm not so irresponsible that I would live under a person's roof and date their daughter without their consent." He said with that stupid smile of his, staring down at me.

"Pele o Mr Responsible, (Sorry o Mr Responsible)" I deadpanned, with a straight glare at his face. He laughed to my face, letting go of my hands.

"Was the talk that bad?" He asked, shifting his weight off me. He laid down beside me and placed my head on his chest. My hands naturally went around his body, holding him tight.

"No, it wasn't. For once, I felt really close to her, thank you." I said.

"And why are you thanking me?" He asked. It thought about it, I really couldn't pinpoint why I was thanking him, but I was just grateful for everything. I felt a lot closer to my family, my brother, I couldn't stop thinking that it was because of him.

"Just for everything." I smiled.

He stayed silent for a while. His hand was busy at my waist, tinkling the waist beads, like for real, this guy and waist beads. "If your talk went good, why the hell did you hit me?" He asked in a bewildered tone, making me roll my eyes.

"Well, because of you, I had to listen while she teased me about getting pregnant." I stated, trying not to remember how mortified I felt about the whole issue. "She's taking me to the hospital tomorrow, getting me on birth controls."

"Don't worry, you don't have to go om birth controls. I don't mind having babies now." He said in a very serious tone. I couldn't tell if he was joking or not. I raised my head up and looked down at his damn serious face.

"Babies!" I yelled in bewilderment. "Definitely not."

"Hey, calm your claws." He laughed, pulling me down to his chest again. "I don't want babies anymore than you do."

"What!" I yelled again, raising my head up to look at his damn serious face again. This was super scary. He sounded as though babies were a disease he never hoped to have, and I love babies. "You don't want babies?"

He had a shocked look on his face at my outburst. He tried to pull me down again, but I didn't budge. "I mean not yet." He said, and I calmed down. I rested my head back on his chest. "Why do you sound so bewildered if I could remember you reacted the same way to having babies."

"Well, not yet." I stated. I trailed my hand over his chest, drawing patterns. "Why don't you want to have babies yet?" I know I sounded like I was hungry for babies, but I just felt like asking.

"Well, there are three reasons, number one being that you're not ready." He said, so sure of the fact that I wasn't ready. "Your body isn't ready, I'd like to believe."

"Oh please, I've heard about people younger than me giving birth." I scoffed.

"And I hope you also heard about the complications that come after." He deadpanned. "I'm not taking that risk. And moreover your academics, I won't have you going to class with a round tummy or baby either."

"Awwn, so cute." I smiled. I raised my head up to look at his face, which was filled with smiles. "Second reason?"

"I'm not ready, financially."

"Woah, my boyfriend is broke." I laughed to his face. The way he said financially was so damn funny.

"Not really broke, but not rich enough to cater for kids." He explained.

"Third reason?"

His face grew tense. I sat up immediately, my heart pounding in my chest. I knew that whatever this reason was, it was definitely a hard one to say. "Well, this third reason I'm scared that even if the first two are eliminated, it will still be there. It's constant."

"What is it?" I asked gently.

"I'm scared." He said.

"Of being a father?" I asked.

"No. Of not recognizing my kids' faces," he said, ending it with a sad smile. My heart tightened in my chest, I looked at his sad face, I didn't know what to say or do.

"Hey, don't worry." I smiled at him, touching his face. "We'll go through this together, okay."

"Together." He smiled and pulled me down, kissing me. He raised me up, having me straddling him. I pressed my body into his, savoring the taste of his lips as he savored mine. We pulled apart, needing to fill our lungs with air. We stayed that way, staring into each others eyes like fools.

"I need to shower." I said, getting off him. He pouted his lips in distaste, which only had me laughing. "Guy, I can't sleep well if I don't shower."

I discarded my shirt, leaving me in my bra, and started pulling at my jeans as I walked towards the closet. This was an obvious striptease that I didn't mind. I remembered something and turned towards my dressing table. I picked out a pad and got new panties from my closet.

"Fix this for me while I bath, will you?" I threw the pad and panties on the bed before his shocked eyes.

"Okay," he said, sounding quite unsure. I wondered if he had never done that before, but who cares? He gotta learn. He has one hell of a lazy girl for a girlfriend.

I got my towel and walked into the bathroom. By the time I finally put on the shower, there was this beautiful smile on my face. This was like the best part of my day, the time I was finally able to get under the cold water, "ahhh." I yelped out. When I said cold water, I didn't mean chilling cold. I wasn't able to shiver to my satisfaction because the bathroom door got yanked open. I opened my eyes to see a scared Ademide looking at me with questions. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"You screamed! I came to check if you were okay." He said, looking more relaxed now.

"I'm fine." I said, between shivering. But instead of him leaving like he was supposed to, he stood where he was blatantly staring at my body. I felt a whole new series of shivering feel my body. His look was so intense, and toe curling. "Now that we've registered the fact that I'm fine, shouldn't you like leave."

"Why? I've seen you naked before." He said dumbly.

"Okay, young man, that has seen me naked before. You have two options. Join me in the shower or close my bathroom door." I said with the sweetest smile ever. I saw his face light up, and he was already on the verge of discarding his shorts when I said with a devilish smirk. "Who's going to fix the pad of you're here."

He gave me a glare and turned back, but I didn't miss the cute pout that formed on his lips. I laughed at his retreating back, and I was rewarded with the bathroom door banging in my face. That wasn't the end of it, I heard my room door being yanked open and then closed. I ignored his little tantrum and continued with my amazing bath, but minutes later, I heard the door opening and closing again, forming a smile on my lips. This guy.

Getting out of my bathroom after my bath, I never expected what I met. I stood at the front of my bathroom, my hands on my towel, mouth wide agape. Ademide was seated on my bed, staring attentively at his laptop, through his glasses if you must know. Now, that wasn't surprising, so what was? My panties were on the keyboard of the laptop, and the pad was in his hand. He was in the fact holding it up. I don't know if I'm the only one that this situation was baffling. I could hear instructions being passed out from his laptop, so he was either watching a video or listening to an audio. I walked over to him and peered over his shoulders to see that my boyfriend, Ademide, was watching a YouTube tutorial video on how to fix pads and tampons.

"What the hell are you doing?" I asked, sounding as bewildered as I felt.

"Learning...what does it look like?" He said with a casual shrug of his shoulders. He didn't even spare me a glance. He was so concentrated on what he was doing. He pulled open the pad when the lady said so and picked up my panties. I don't know if I'm the only one, but everything he was doing was getting me highly frustrated.

"It's easy dude, its not rocket science." I said.

"Well, it looks like rocket science to me." He said, puckering up his lips. The creasing lines on his forehead made it known that he was highly frustrated. Thank goodness he wasn't a girl. I snatched the pad and panties off his hand in frustration and got busy fixing it myself. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Fixing...what does it look like?" I deadpanned. He scrunched up his face in annoyance, but I only ignored him. I got into the silly material and peeled the towel off my body. I was about going to place the towel at the right position and get dressed when you know who dragged me down on the bed with him. "Guy, I need to get dressed."

"It's not a big deal, I'm also shirtless," he said, sniffing me in. I pulled closer to him, wrapping my arms around him. The feeling I got from my breasts against his naked chest was brain snatching, I couldn't think straight for a while.

"Don't you think it's about time you left for your room?" I asked.

"Don't feel like," he said, squeezing his arms around me. I was damn sure that if he went any further, I would break.

"Just because my mum gave us permission to date, doesn't mean she gave us permission to turn one of her rooms into our matrimonial bedroom." I stated, and it got him laughing.

"Why are you so hellbent in having me out of your room?"

"I love sleeping alone." I deadpanned. I thought of the feeling that came with being alone on a big bed, like that free will. I couldn't say if it was better than the feeling I was getting right now from being on the same bed with Ademide.

"Well, get used to my presence on your bed." He said. And that was the problem.

"If I get too used to your presence, it will be hard going back to sleeping without you when I go back to school, or you go to Cotonou." I said in a quiet voice. That was what I was more scared of, I didn't want to think about his departure, but it would surely happen.

"That's quite true, but not to worry, I only have my project left to defend at school. Once I'm done with that, I'll be fully back in Nigeria." He said, and a smile spread across my features. "And about you going to school, I kinda bought a house very close to your school at Ibadan."

"What!" I yelled into his chest, "I thought you were broke."

"Nah. I'm just too broke to cater for kids." He said between laughter. "And I heard from your mum about your intention to stay put at Ibadan after your schooling, so I kinda accepted the job offer I got from one of the companies there."

"Really? So you mean that you already have everything figured out." I found it quite hard to understand the guy, it as if he was thinking twenty steps ahead of me.

"Yeah. Not everything, though, but I know we'll work it out together."

"Yes, together." I breathed out with a smile.

I know I can't say what the future holds, but I sure know that whatever it is, we will work it out. Together.

The end.

I know, I know, I understand it's the end.

Its a short story like I said, I hope we all enjoyed the short ride.

Thanks.

© Mary Aden.