Recap:

He smiles at me and walks away.

He smiles at me and walks away.

He smiles at me and walks away.

If this were a movie this part would be in slow motion and I'd replay it forever. His smile is awfully breathtaking and his perfect white teeth almost blinding me.

Gosh, I don't know if I should classify this as a crush.

A huge crush.

A big huge crush.

A giant big—

Okay, okay. I've heard. I have a giant big huge crush (if it even makes any sense) on —oops I don't even know his name.

OPERATION 101

Find out the name of my… well you know what he is.

• • •

Finding out the name of my crush did not even take up to a millisecond as the children were eager to tell me when I asked.

His name is River. Oh what a Beeeeautiful name!

I hang around the children a little bit before going in. My mom is already making dinner and all the while talking with her mom. Seeing the way they're laughing and talking, I know they are reminiscing in their memories.

I sit on the plastic chair in the corner of the room and scroll through Instagram. I laugh at some funny posts, tagging people in some posts and liking posts too. I am basically addicted to Instagram, trust me. There's no day I can survive not going through Instagram, and Wattpad. Those apps are, let me say my lifeline.

What do you say when you are asked your hobbies?

I have this huge addiction to Instagram and Wattpad, I'm always on my phone 70% of the day—the remaining 30%, I'm in school.

Things I love, music, sleeping, eating, writing, reading etc, but one thing, you'd think that as much as I like going online I'd like chatting too but no, I don't like chatting.

Seriously I'm this kind of person that doesn't know what to say most of the time. I barely socialize, except I've known you for long or you are a friend of my friend and I like you.

There are times that I just laugh a question off because I don't know the reply to give. Yeah I'm pathetic like that. Hence why I don't like chatting.

Sometimes after greeting my friends on Whatsapp and gisting and stuff, I don't know what to say to continue the conversation so I just don't say anything at all. Most of my conversations end with, okay, see you later.

The thought of Joseph comes up again. I really should stop thinking about this guy. Seriously. It's just like opening up a closing wound.

If my memory is still intact, I remember Shay telling me that he's going to talk to me but I think he's waiting for me to grow old before doing so.

I can't seem to clear the sinful memory of our passionate kiss off my innocent head.

Passionate?

Yeah, but innocent? You wish.

Whatever.

I click on the search icon on my Instagram screen and I click on the first name on it—earnest_josh—don't ask me if I'm stalking him. The page loads and the first thing my eyes glues on is the follow button, it's still blue.

Why am I looking at it? Because I hope that the follow, written on the blue ink changes to follow back because I don't even trust my Instagram notification to notify me on such important information. But it seems I'm only hoping because it's still 'follow' written there and I certainly can't make the first move.

Lexi would have my head.

I look at his posts, he hasn't posted a new picture. His last picture is one he took on the school party day, looking dope AF. I exit his profile and decide to continue the interesting story I'm reading on Wattpad.

Sometimes I wish what I read on Wattpad just happens to me really. Where someone you've been secretly crushing on suddenly declares his undying love for you and then you become the happiest girl in the world. It would really save me a lot of stress and blood. Lol.

• • •

Sometimes I wonder if I drink in my sleep because by the time I wake up, I get really hung over like I drank a gallon of alcohol. My head is pounding and I squint my eyes, trying to adjust to the light. I feel the urge to urinate and I jump to my feet but that shows to be a very bad idea as I sway and little black dots appear over my eyes.

Shortage of blood.

If my dad sees me like this, the next minute, I'd be taking a very sweet homemade blood tonic. My paternal grandmother always made the tonic when she was alive, but I don't like calling it tonic because I feel that it's too sweet to be classified as that.

It's a mixture of malt, bournvita, milk and raw eggs but mine is with the exception of raw eggs.

I sweep the floor and I wash my face that's when I start hearing his voice. OMG!

He's coming!

I know!

Do something!

I don't know!

Anything!

I'm trying!

I gather my jumbled thoughts and I quickly stand up and discard the wrapper I'm tying leaving me in my camisole and bumber shorts. I started tying wrapper over my bumber shorts because I was getting disapproving looks and head shakes from the adults and old people, so I had to stick to the saying, "if you are in Rome, behave like a Roman".

I take out my phone and start taking selfies, I need to be occupied right? I hear him mumble a good morning as he walked passed and my heart flutters.

Oh so pathetic, Jules.

You've never been in love so you don't understand.

*wretches* love? You're preposterous.

Whatever.

I've never had more than a boyfriend or okay two if we count Michael, but I've had thousands of crushes and the funniest thing is that they are always crushes. They fade as fast as they began.

And most of them disgust me now, like how did I ever like them? Or why. And I'm thankful that I'm this kind of unlucky person that when I have a crush on someone, the person won't like me back. I don't know if they really do not like me or maybe they're always shy to ask me out, because I know I'm beautiful—not being egotistic here—and it has saved me from a lot of bad relationships because I would have accepted had they asked me out and I'd fall really quickly out of love and start hating them and breaking up with them and so on.

The only person that worked is Joseph. Obviously. Okay I guess I haven't told you how we started dating and if I'd done, I'm sorry you'd have to listen again.

So my first day of school, I was staring at him. Like really staring because there was something different about him but I couldn't lay my finger on it. I brought him up when I was going home that day but Lexi shunned me, "Did you see that dark guy at the corner?"

"Is it boys that you came to look for?" as soon as she said it, I kept shut because that was the day we started talking and I didn't want to offend her because I've liked her so far.

Then as from that day, I didn't talk to him. I ignored him and it's not like we had anything to discuss because I was a new student. If any teacher ask me to distribute notes to my classmates, I'd give to everyone but him. I always got another person to do that job.

Seriously I don't know why I was doing so but I guess I had a crush on him but at that age, I didn't know what 'crush' meant.

Then in Jss3 I was assigned to sit at his front but still didn't talk to him. Then one day our English teacher who was too lazy to remember my name and always called me Mary asked the whole class a question which I was the only one who answered. He asked only me to sit and then Joseph spoke up, "Sir you asked Mary to sit, what about Joseph?"

The class burst into laughter but Mr Agidi couldn't relate so no one got into trouble. But I was blushing like a crazy goat and that was one of the times I'm grateful for being an African.

After the teacher left, Joseph started poking me from the back and we started talking. So that was how we started dating, he never really asked me out. But I loved him.

Love.

Loved!

Happy new year guys. Sorry for the EXTREMELY late update. I was SUPER BUSY with school. That's why I made this chapter very loong.

The BOURNVITA in the story is a chocolate powder. It's used for making tea here in Nigeria so you might or might not have heard of it. So here 😁😁

And also don't be confused by the English teachers' names. The English teacher in Junior secondary school is different from the one that teaches Senior secondary school.