Journey to marriage 6 - The Pivot point

A felt I shouldn’t have deleted him, but leave him alone cos it’s wrong for him not to have kept to his words. K, whom I narrated the whole story to, cos she wasn’t in on it from the beginning, felt I shouldn’t have deleted him, and I should have sent a message to tease him, about not keeping to his words, cos he should even feel privileged that a girl like me is interested in talking to him. She said it’s how you see yourself that matters. D wasn’t in the picture at this point.

So that weekend, K composed a very light friendly message, sent it to me to send to him, about just checking up on his Sunday in the spirit of being a good Christian, and not hearing from him for a long time. I didn’t want to play the Christian card, so I changed it the word “Christian” to affability, and sent to him, with the greatest reluctance ever, after sacrificing my pride.

He read the message about 3 hours later, chatted me up with one or two lines… and then…

He called me! He really called me.

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We talked and talked and talked.

Okay, not exactly. We only talked for like 25 minutes… mostly about work, ministry, purpose, etc. No, I didn’t ask him about why he didn’t keep to his word. nWhen the call ended, I kept thinking about how sound and intelligent he was. I had now gone from the level of curiosity to “Hmm, this guy doesn’t seem bad o.”

Now, I am going to speed up this story, and ditch the melodrama.

From that day onward, we chatted regularly, like every one or two days. His responses were delayed a lot, even though he was checking his whatsapp. It was like he was blowing hot and cold at the same time. I get that he was very busy, but I was also busy too. And I feel if you are interested in knowing someone, then you are interested, busy or not.

THE TRUTH: He was just holding back, and didn’t really know what to do with me.

For the next three weeks, we went back and forth. I would pull back for days when I sensed any indifference from his side, while screaming in silence, with the intention of blanking “this guy” for real this time around. He would then be forced to seek me out after not hearing from me for a while.
And no, I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the fact that he wasn’t all ants on sugar on me. I wanted the overwhelming wooing, but all I got was someone trying to taste alomo bitters and squeezing his face. A said the overwhelming love will come late, but it was hard to believe.

So back and forth we went, me trying to be friendly without appearing desperate, one or two calls here and there.

On the Monday of week of my birthday, he had just come back from a burial in his hometown, and I had tried to reach him at the airport. Bad network wouldn’t let us be great. He called me as soon as he got back to Lagos that night, and we talked for over 3 hours. I felt that because of how close and open to each other we were getting, he would sustain the communication by more calls.

No way. I didn’t hear from him for the next three days, not even by chat. But I knew that if he found it my birthday was that week, and I didn’t tell him, he wouldn’t be happy. So I told Berry all that had been happening, how we had gotten a bit close, and had been chatting. She was very surprised cos none of us had told her we were still in touch, especially after the deleting episode. She was also surprised that even though we had been talking, we hadn’t gone for an official date.

Anyway, on the evening my birthday, I got a call from him. I thought it was just an ordinaty call, because Berry said she wouldn’t tell him, and the number of people who know my birthday can be counted on two hands. It is nowhere on social media.

So he calls and says “Happy birthday. I heard im the sixth person in the world who knows your birthday.” Aww, my hear melted. So he kept talking randomly, asking why I wasn’t celebrating, why I didn’t tell him before, etc.

And then I said “Now that you know, what are you going to do about it?”

I confess, this ingenuity was not mine. K was the one who told me to tell him about my birthday, and use this statement on him, so we could prompt it for a date if he had been thinking about it. But I said I couldn’t do it, cos I had become lily livered over the years. My scheming and manipulative life was basically dead. I didn’t call him, but I still got to use the statement.

So when I said “Now that you know, what are you going to do about it?” He paused a bit, and said let’s go out together on Sunday.

Wait, what??? Just like that. I am going on a date. I am going on a date. Woo hoooooo.

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And that... was how I landed the first date, exactly a month (28 days) after our first encounter.