Youthfulness dimmed upon Kiki and she felt its vitality flicker. 

She wasn't old, just a few years away from thirty but being a single woman at the age of twenty-five meant otherwise. She remembered how guka would always tell her, "Ujana ni moshi. Get yourself a husband and raise your children in a beautiful environment. Do this when you still possess life's oppletion."

Those days, she didn't quite regard his words with the importance they deserved. She was still a young girl, barely in her blossom. The words of a wizened man could only be of a nought value to such a young mind.

Slivers of light seeped through the window and warmed Kiki's skin, cutting onto her musings. She roamed the screen of her laptop with her gaze, her thumb finger grazing the rim of a coffee mug. Kiki never thought that one day, she would seek the help of a dating site. She always thought of it as a myopic approach to finding love.

The door to the apartment suddenly flung open and Kiki almost jerked in her seat. She threw a glance at Nicole, her roommate and best friend. Pinched brows, miffed countenance. An everyday look that Nicole had come to perfect, at times gracing it up with a veneer smile. But today her eyes, dipped in an excess of brown, didn't quite shimmer like they normally did even when in a sunny disposition.

Kiki swallowed, finally asking, "Did you get the job?"

"Did my face get plastered in the daily gossip journal, arm in arm with Idris Elba, married and a protruding bump ripping through my designer dress?" Nicole quipped.

Kiki always revered delight at Nicole's choice of words. Never failed to needle a mirthy expression out of her. Except this time round delight was far from it. Disappointment rather. "So you didn't get the job?"

"Yeah," Nicole answered, scurrying to the kitchen area of their single-room, rented apartment. "I draw too much attention, the wrong kind of attention. Bad for the role."

"Damn them, you are a gem and it's their loss, not yours," said Kiki. She caught a glimpse of Nicole's outfit and suppressed her risibles. "Pretty brazen pair of clothing you have there. They probably meant your choice of wear." Tawdry teal lace top, a red pencil skirt with a tall slit that peered some of her butt cheeks. A colourful combination, a bit itchy on the eyes too. Not to mention the cringy display of skin.

"What's wrong with my outfit?" Nicole asked defensively. She didn't quite eye its obscenity. After all, it was the twenty-first century not some ancient times where people would be snugged in nose-twisting tiers of clothes.

"Don't you think it's inappropriate for an interview?"

"You are starting to sound just like those two-faced haggard women that couldn't stop pokng holes at my outfit. How old are you again? Right, I forgot. A couple of years away from reality," Nicole grunted and slid the fridge open. That outfit was her armour, her direct ticket to getting the editorial job at Nation Media, at least she thought so. She intentionally draped it on her body but the panel to her shock were all women, wrinkled stark faces. Talk about being disarmed. A fight between females. Not a great match especially when one has to don her frustrations in a fitful spectacle of smiles amid preconceived judgement.

She grasped a cold soft drink from the fridge and turned about, only to find a laughing Kiki. "Oh shut up," she groaned.

"How I wish I was there to witness your disappointment when you realized there was no man to cajole with your flirtation." Kiki snorted through laughs. "Did you still do that thing with your hands, where you pretend to slap off a fly from your chest and end up showing your cleavage?"

Nicole pulled out a stool across from Kiki, from underneath the table and lowered herself onto it, "Of course, I had to, it was my last gasp to getting that job, but I had it all miscalculated, my pinky fingernail got stuck between the fabrics of my top, and trust you me, it wasn't just a cleavage that I ended up showing," Nicole guffawed taking a large swig of the drink. If it were a game of chess, she probably wouldn't make it past fool's mate. Such a shame. But Nicole wasn't a dud, just warped in her web of wrong decisions or so her father said in the safety of his room, heedless to the ears mounted on the wall. She heard it all, always did. At least she knew well of his hate.

Kiki burst out laughing. "Why would you do that? They were women Nicole not men! " she exclaimed.

"I was desperate." Hopeless would be the word, but she failed to mention it.

"So what happened after all that?" Kiki asked, her face wrinkled as she pointed at Nicole's chest. Typical Nicole, stringing action everywhere she graced with her presence.

"They gaped at me. I could have sworn I had over fifty different words that meant slut, next thing I knew, I was being careened out of the building by two guards," Nicole responded, taking another swig. "So anyways, why are you hunched over the laptop? "

Kiki sighed, running her hand over her face. "You ain't the only desperate one here. Finally made peace with the online dating world and here I am looking for a perfect match like they exist. Female spiders have it easy."

"Well I think, you've made a big step and who knows, you might actually meet someone special not necessarily perfect, because let's face it there is nothing like perfect." Nicole tipped her chin, drawing a quirked brow. "What's up with the spiders though?"

"They have it figured out. The usual play-hard-to-get, a couple of flirtation thrown here and there, then boom hit the jackpot with the male served on the plate as a bonus. Pretty easy," said Kiki.

Nicole's features softened and she broke into a laugh. "I'd serve mine with chill sauce on the side. Men nowadays get dried up with all the lies they wick around."

They both danced in an episode of mirth, before Nicole finally asked, "What's the catch?"

"Struggling with bio description. Do men love women with a thing for trees and cleaning up areas teemed with dirt?" Nicole thought she heard it wrong but the grave expression on Kiki's face told it all.

"You are not serious right?"

Kiki barely responded with a shrug. She unlike Nicole was a reserved person, choosing to spend her spare time haunched on the ground, plucking what could be best described as refuse. That was who she was, giving it a hide would be equal to unthawing her heart. Impossible.

Nicole watched the brew of defeat on Kiki's face and finally said, "Let me work my magic." She edged the laptop to her side, her nimble fingers working the keypads. She typed, "This is new to me, scary even but nothing that can't be fixed with a cup of coffee. I like mine black, raw with its pristine taste. Yeah, not a sweet tooth but I wouldn't mind a bar of chocolate. My days are most spent doing a clean up. Boring but I like the thrill of it, makes everything else bearable. Obviously not a cinderella type of a girl but am pretty sure I could make your heart start. Wouldn't mind knowing you. What do you say?"

Kiki hummed, "Didn't know you are such a romantic."
"I am not, just trying to fit into your character," Nicole argued sliding the laptop back to Kiki.

A knock at the door cut through the air and for a moment Kiki and Nicole stared at each other. They rarely received any visitors. Who could it be? Not unless, bulbous eyed Martha decided upon a visit. Not a good a sign. The more reason as to why Nicole needed a job.

"I think it's the landlady. Shit, we are late on rent." Nicole muttered under her breath. Rent had always been an issue. Kiki's freelancing job as a web designer didn't entirely meet the rent half way and she on the other hand was unemployed. Her tainted relationship with her father meant having to solve her financial troubles on her own. The perquisites of being a rebel especially when the father is a multi-millionaire having a breeze at the shores of Diani. How delightful.

"Let me check." Kiki walked to the door, her eyes steadied on the peephole. Her eyebrows rimpled in confusion as she looked through the peephole.

Nicole's eyes was on Kiki's back, studying her stance. "What's wrong?" 

Kiki quickly turned around. "Remember that guy from yesterday's party?"

"The one we devoured all his expensive drinks and gave him a wrong phone number?"

"Yes that one, well he is standing outside our door," Kiki answered.

"What is he doing here?" Nicole felt a throb to her cheeks. How did he even get to know where they stay?

"I don't know, you open the door for him," Kiki stated as she moved away from the threshold.

"Why me? " Nicole complained, staring wildly at Kiki.

"The guy was into you, and you are the one who gave him the wrong phone number."

Nicole grumbled something incoherently mundane, but still walked to the door and wrung the door knob. An awkward 'Hey' fell from her lips as she stared at the man standing at the other side of the door. She stoored in discomfort, suddenly hyper aware about her sweat stained face and her dust consumed braids.

Damn, he still looked the same, too handsome, she thought, swallowing a chunk of saliva that stung the insides of her cheeks. She squinted her eyes to get a better view of his tall masculine figure. He had a long dark face, prominent cheekbones that pronounced his sand rough stubble. He could pass for a male model and she could tell that women danced beneath his feet.

"Hey Nicole," he responded in a deep rough voice that tickled her nerves. His eyes, a perfect orb, pierced her frame and she shifted a little under his gaze. He still remembered her name. She wondered why?

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"I came to give you this." His hand drowned into his pocket, extracting an ID. "You left your ID behind at the table after you scurried away drunkenly with your friend."

She reached out for the ID from his hand. "Thank you," said Nicole, raising the card to her eyes, to check if it was hers, but as soon as her eyes stopped short at the familiar mug shot, she winced. "I don't usually look like this. The lighting in this photo is awfully wrong. I had a something in my mouth, that's why my cheeks look so huge. Oh my, you didn't look at it, right?" she blathered, her gaze on him.

"Go out with me," he said and caught her off guard.

"What? " she gasped, forehead wrinkled into thin lines.

"Go out with me."