"Hey, short screamer! Missed me?" He said so calmly like he hadn't gone MIA for months, calling me the one name I had missed hearing. Then he placed his hands on my waist, pulling me close to him as he captured my lips in a kiss I had missed so damn much. A kiss that made me forget where I was.

His lips against mine were just like I remembered, warm, soothing, and demanding. My whole body shot into high alert as they reminisced and welcomed the one person whose touch they had missed. His body against mine was still everything to me, I realized. It felt just right like it usually does. My eyes started to falter close as I fell deeper into the kiss. The fact that he had been gone for so long made me open up my mouth to him, accepting his kiss. Then I also remembered the fact that he had also ghosted me for several months. This propelled me awake as I placed my palms against his chest, pushing him away.

I rubbed my hand against my lips, trying to rid it of the kiss, although it was pretty useless because my lips were still tingling from that kiss.

"What's going on? You've never reacted to my touch this way before," I heard Ademide say. This had me looking up at him to meet his face that looked utterly clueless like he didn't know what he did. Yeah, right! He has always been pretty clueless, hasn't he? "What changed?"

"What changed?" I asked in awe, unable to comprehend what he was saying. "Well, what changed is the fact that you've been gone for over seven months..."

"Not seven months," he intercepted. "Six months, two weeks, five days, and seven hours." He smiled as though it made all the difference just because he knew the exact number of times we had been apart, although it did surprise me. "I remember every time I've spent away from you."

"Oh, then you must also remember the fact that you've ghosted me for five months," I yelled, not minding the fact that I wasn't alone, and that my friends were obviously wondering what was going on. "You think you can just waltz back into my life with your sleek car, looking all handsome and devilishly sexy and I would just open my arms and welcome you back!"

Ademide looked attacked, and I could see it on his face that he also didn't have a way out of this. "Things came up, things I had no control over."

"Things came up!" I scoffed, feeling totally exasperated. "Things you couldn't control that wouldn't let you pick up your phone and call me, things you couldn't control that wouldn't let you go find a payphone and call me even if you lost your phone." My anger was at this point getting out of hand, and so was the tears that began to pull up at the corner of my eyes. I blinked back the tears, making a promise that I wasn't going to cry in front of this guy, not again, and definitely not today. "Things you couldn't control that wouldn't even let you send me a letter even if it was hell that was about to let loose!"

"Calm down, short screamer."

"Don't you dare call me short screamer, Ademide!" I yelled into his face, which made him wince. I was angry at him for doing this to me and angry at myself for still wanting to hear him call me that so much.

"Well, you're short, and you're screaming," Ademide said in a gentle and careful voice, shifting from one foot to the other as though he was scared of how I would react.

The laughter I heard in the background made me remember the fact that we were not alone and, in fact, in public. I felt embarrassed wash through me. I wasn't surprised they were laughing, it was mostly the guys though, and that was because I was indeed the shortest girl in the department and I always found a way to claim that I wasn't. So it would be comical to them if a person made a joke on it, it was almost always comical. And I was damn sure it was all the more fun now with the spectacle I was making of myself.

"There's really no getting to you, is there?" I said in frustration and angrily turned to pick up my tote bag. I looked at my friends who had a very shocked look on their faces. "I'm going home."

I turned on my heels without waiting to hear what they said and started to make my way around Ademide before he pulled me right back by the arm.

"Let me go!"

"Well, no can do," he said in the most nonchalant way ever. I turned back and looked at his face that was annoying contorted in a look of determination. " You're my girlfriend, and I'm not going to let you go. I'm pretty sure you'd ghost me out and wouldn't make it easy for me to find you."

"Ohh, you mean like you did to me!" I threw back at him. He recoiled back a bit like he had been burned. "Don't like being paid back in your own coin, is it?"

"Mary, look. If we're going to work this out, we need to talk about it," he explained like some wise old man from the East.

"Well, I don't want to work it out!" I yelled, trying to squirm out of his grasp, but he held on tight. I really couldn't tell if I didn't want to work it out, I'm just too pissed right now for how he has treated me to think about anything else.

"We agreed that we'd work things out together if anything..."

"And I was ready to do that! I was ready to, but then..." I couldn't go on as I felt the tears that had been threatening to fall before began to fall.

Ademide pulled me closer and cleaned the tears, staring at my face with some emotion I couldn't decipher and wasn't in the mood to. I swatted his hand away and finished the job myself, hating the fact that I had cried right in front of him. Way to go, Mary! I tried getting my hand out of his once again, but he held on to it tighter.

"I'll drop you off," he offered.

"No can do," I said.

"Come on, I'll just drop you home, that's all," he pleaded, sounding too desperate for my ears.

"No! You're trying to find out where I live, so no!" I stamped my feet, trying to make my decision get through his thick skull faster.

"You're really not going to make this easy for me, are you?" He said in the calmest way possible. Why was I even surprised? He was always calm, never angry. I didn't bother to answer him as my mind was already made up. He wasn't dropping me home. "What if I told you I already know where you live? Would you allow me to drop you home then?

"What?" I turned over to look at him then. "What do you mean? How?"

"Do you really think I wouldn't know where you stay?" He smirked.

"How..."

"Your mum, she told me."

"My mum, like really, my mum!" I let out a frustrated laughter as I looked at him with disbelief. That woman. "Look here, Mr Man, you might have won your way into my mum's heart once again, but you're not going to succeed with me."

"I know, I know. Just let me drop you home, and I'll be off, I promise, no games here."

"I can do without your promises, I learned that the bitter way," I spat out.

"You know I can just carry you into my car against your will, don't you?" He asked, a coy smile playing on his lips.

"And you think my friends would just sit back and let you kidnap me," I retorted.

"I'm pretty sure they wouldn't mind." He smiled, then looked straight ahead behind me. I followed his line of vision to stare at my friends, who were still pretty much surprised. Luckily, not everyone was focused on us anymore, only a few and my friends. "Would you?"

"Sorry oo, who are you again?" Martha asked, pretending not to understand everything that just happened.

"I'm Ademide Adeshina, her boyfriend," he answered.

"Estranged boyfriend would be better," I snapped.

"Although I don't like it, it's better than being your ex." He smiled at me as though everything was fine.

"Ohh, don't you worry, I'm pretty sure we're becoming exes, just give it time," I deadpanned.

"The fact that you're telling me to give it time pretty much tells me that you're not so keen on breaking up with me either," he said.

"Ohh, in your dreams."

"You know what, you should prolly drop her off. It seems like you both have a lot to talk about," Ejiro suggested, sounding frustrated. This brought me back to what we were actually arguing about in the first place.

"Swears, you both sound like an old married couple," Martha added.

"Wait," Stella said, looking at both Ejiro and Martha. "Am I the only one that doesn't know that Mary has a boyfriend, or is something going on?"

"That's true, oo, so you mean you're not single," Martha said in a very funny way.

"He is not my boyfriend, not anymore!" I explained.

"I'm not surprised though, Mary has always been secretive," Ejiro said, nodding her head. "You owe us every single bits of this gist once we meet."

"Do you mean to tell me your friends don't know about us?" Ademide asked. I looked at him immediately, trying to confirm if the hurt I heard in his voice was actually true. And it was, but it was gone from his face the next second almost seeming like I had imagined. If not because I heard it in his voice, I wouldn't be so sure.

I wanted to yell at him and tell him there's no us anymore, but I just couldn't. So I changed the subject. "Drop me off, and you go your way."

He looked taken aback at first but later shrugged it off. "Okay.

I turned to the girls who were still waiting to get their toast, which meant we couldn't go together, and I needed to get Ademide out of my hair fast. "I'll see you guys later then."

"Definitely!" The three of them said.

I immediately turned on my heels and headed towards Ademide's car, I opened the car once I got there and got in. Once I was seated, I turned my face towards the window, not wanting to look at him. I didn't even turn when he got in or when he started the car. I just sat there, hating myself, hating him, and everything. It still surprises me how you could like someone so much and still get so angry at them to the point of hating them.

It was exhausting, and it hurt.

It hurt so much that he'd ignore me all these months and just come back like nothing had happened without offering an explanation.

This was what filled my mind until I got home. I got out of his car without a glance at him and walked into my house.

So, the ship is kinda messy now.

What do you all think?

See ya later.

MARY ADEN