LOGINSeline! Seline!! Seline!!!
She jerked up from the bed at the sound of her morning alarm (her mother’s voice) frowning at the reality of her life, it was just 5 am for heaven’s sake, but She has got to get her younger siblings ready for school and prepare to face what the day has for her.
“Kachi come wear your socks” She called out to the youngest of her siblings; Kachi is a 10 years old fun-to-be-with yet very inquisitive child, he was very outspoken and observant unlike his older sister Amanda. Amanda is her 16-year-old sister who just wrote her WAEC (West African Examination Council) and thinks that the world is an open sky for all birds to fly, so she also thought too but not anymore since life served her a portion of its delicacy.
She had just two siblings and I wanted them to have the best of everything She didn’t, but isn’t that one of her many wishes?
Whew!! Finally done with her morning routine and time to start her job hunt, she thought to herself but today she’s gonna do it online. Going through job sites like a hunter ready to shoot her shot at any opportunity, but the buzzing of her phone distracted her. It was Lya my childhood friend calling.
Hi Lya, “ babe you dey free to get urgent 2k,” Lya said in pidgin English
“Yes oo your babe pocket dry like harmattan breeze dey blow” she replied quickly
“Okay, I dey come,” she quickly ended the call and started getting ready for the emergency job of replacing an event usher who wasn’t available.
**********
“Guy nah you dey hot oh,” his manager said still in the euphoria of happiness of the fact that his song was the no 1 top trending music on various streaming platforms.
“You know how we do it, right?” he bragged, however, he needed to take a nap, he wasn’t just tired but exhausted from all the shows he had to perform in and yesterday’s concert was not an exception as he pulled the crowd with him with this energetic performance, the show of love was massive and it was his booster. However, there was more on my list and he needed rest before I go for today’s performance.
As he laid down and allowed himself to drift into a deep sleep, it wasn’t too long after he had just closed his eyes that he heard someone call his mane,
Sweet baby! Sweet love!
He heard someone call out again, but it sounded distant and got louder as his sleepy eyes opened and he became wide awake.
“please tell me I am dreaming, not again!” he wanted to shout in frustration, he have had enough stress for the week and doesn’t have the stamina to stand another, not from his girlfriend Mandy or should I say friends with benefits.
Ooh, my baby! She cooed at him like she was talking to an actual baby, but he was already used to her tricks. She wanted something and he knew it, “she was just like everyone of them”
“Mandy can you stop I need to sleep”, he said calmly
But he was talking to himself as she was still busy touching his dreadlocks and taking out invisible dirt.
“Okay, Mandy please just go home I’ll send you some money for your shopping”, he said in a calmer tone as he was already irritated by her presence.
She squealed in excitement
“You’re the best!,” she said excitedly as she gave him a peck and made her way to the door.
He couldn’t go back to sleep, as it was already time for me to start getting all dressed up for the show he was to perform in this weekend, but he was not mentally prepared and there would be lots of personalities to impress, which means he needs to give my best regardless.
He picked up his sleep-deprived self and moved to the bathroom to freshen up, though infuriated by Mandy’s disturbance he has got to do what he has to do,
He needs a bottle of Tio Tequila to get rid of his nerves and he’ll get it.
*******
Wasn’t easy locating the venue on the Island, Lagos was a big city that accommodated different classes of people; from influential personalities to celebrities, rich, comfortable, and poor. At least she was still holding on to the poor class with a thread because she knew that at the rate at which my job search is going she and her family soon would move to the lowest class; which are the people that are on the streets.
Finally at the venue but she can’t seem to get across to Lya, and her phone wasn’t connecting and she was getting worried.
While still waiting a huge crowd of journalists from different media house can came rushing towards a black Toyota Land Cruiser as it approached the entrance of the hall.
Since she was still outside waiting for Lya, she decided to keep busy figuring out what the rowdiness happening around her was all about.
The sound of cameras clicks could be heard the moment the door of the car opened revealing a tall dark young man with black shades on, she couldn’t make out who the person was but she knew from all indications that he is definitely a celebrity and she is already excited that she came for this event.
S e e l l l l y y y!!
Lya screamed and hugged her.
Lya is a hyperactive social bird. She is her childhood friend and the complete opposite of her which makes people wonder how she copes with being her friend, but she loved Lya because she always had her back.
She smiled back at Lya as they moved to the back of the event hall where she got all dressed up.
It was her first ushering job and from her sweaty palms and shaking breaths you can tell that she was nervous.
She wanted to give this event ushering her best shot since she couldn’t secure a more decent job.
“My cheeks already hurts from smiling,” she thought to herself, but she was just getting started with her newfound job.
𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐒𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐦𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐮𝐩 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲?
Sweet had been unusually quiet for the better part of a week, a fact Seline noticed but chose, mostly, not to comment on, recognizing the particular quality of his silence as something deliberate rather than distant. She'd learned, over the past year, to tell the difference between him retreating from her and him building toward something he wasn't ready to share yet, and this, she was fairly certain, was the second kind."You've been planning something," she said finally, on a quiet Thursday evening, watching him fail to properly focus on whatever he was pretending to read."Maybe," he admitted, setting the book aside entirely. "Can you keep Saturday free? No lab commitments, no Reach planning, nothing.""That's ominous, given our history with surprise plans.""Good ominous, I promise. Trust me?""Always," she said, and meant it completely, the word arriving as easily now as it had the night she'd said the same thing in the car after the first mob
The morning of Reach's first mobile clinic arrived with the particular chaos of a plan meeting reality for the first time, equipment that needed last-minute checking, volunteers arriving in staggered waves, a community leader in the small town outside Lagos who'd agreed to host them greeting Seline at the gate with more nervous energy than she'd expected from a man who'd clearly seen decades of outside organizations promise things they never delivered."You're really coming yourselves," he said, watching the small convoy of vehicles unload equipment into the community hall his church had offered for the day. "Not just sending equipment and leaving us to figure it out.""We're here for the whole day," Seline confirmed. "Every test, every result, explained properly, by people who'll actually be here to answer questions. That was the whole point.""Forgive my skepticism," he said. "We've had promises like this before. People come once, take photographs, and disappe
The idea started as a joke, the way most of the best ones did between them, tossed out over breakfast on an ordinary Saturday morning."You should start your own thing," Sweet said, watching her scroll through job listings on her phone out of habit rather than actual need, a leftover reflex from years of needing to always be looking for the next opportunity. "Not another position somewhere. Your own lab, eventually. Or your own initiative, at least. You clearly have opinions about how affordable diagnostics should actually work. You've had them since your interview with Dr. Nwosu.""That's a bigger leap than 'start your own thing' makes it sound," Seline said, though the idea landed somewhere it hadn't quite landed before, settling in rather than bouncing off the way most casual suggestions did."Every big thing starts as a smaller one," Sweet said. "You didn't start as Dr. Nwosu's research assistant. You started as a girl serving wine at a party, wondering how
It was Kachi, unexpectedly, who first noticed the shift."You're basically married already," he announced one Sunday afternoon, sprawled across the couch at their mother's house while Seline packed a small bag of things to take back to Sweet's, a routine that had become so ordinary over the past few weeks that she'd stopped consciously registering how much of her life had quietly migrated across town. "You have a key. You have a toothbrush there. You do that thing where you finish his sentences about work stuff. When's the wedding?""Nobody said anything about a wedding, Kachi.""You didn't say anything about it," he corrected, with the particular smugness of a teenager who'd recently discovered he could win arguments through observation alone. "I'm just saying what everyone's obviously thinking.""Out of the mouths of babes," her mother said from the kitchen doorway, not even trying to hide her amusement."I'm fifteen, not a baby.""You'll always be a baby to me," their mother said,
Sweet brought it up over breakfast, of all places, sliding a small velvet pouch across the counter with the same nonchalance he might have used to pass her the salt."What's this?" Seline asked, eyeing it with immediate suspicion, memories of every previous "small gesture" that had turned out to be anything but small still fresh enough to make her wary."Open it and find out."Inside was a single key, plain and unremarkable, nothing like the dramatic reveal her imagination had briefly, wildly conjured in the half-second before she'd actually looked."A key," she said slowly."To here. This house." He watched her carefully, some of his usual ease dimming into something more uncertain. "I'm not saying it to be dramatic, or to rush anything. I just ...... you're here most nights anyway, Seline. You keep half your things in my closet already. I thought it might be nice i
They stayed like that a long while, the tension of the week slowly dissolving into something softer, the two of them tangled together on the couch with the lights dimmed low and the television playing to no one in particular, some old film neither of them was actually watching. Seline felt the last of Aunty Folake's voice finally quiet in her chest, replaced by something warmer, steadier — the simple, uncomplicated comfort of being exactly where she wanted to be, with someone who had spent the entire evening simply listening rather than trying to fix her."Thank you," she said softly, tracing idle patterns against his chest through the thin fabric of his shirt. "For actually listening instead of just trying to solve it, or telling me I was overreacting.""I'm learning," Sweet said, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "Slowly, but I'm learning. You've had a lot of patience with me these past months, teaching me how to a
He looked at himself once again at the rearview mirror once again; his eyes were bloodshot red, he was literally high and he knew it, but it was his only solution to giving a good performance.The paparazzi has already crowded his car so he needed to put on sunshades and pull up his hoodie and wit
“We’ll get back to you”This is the fifth time she has heard this statement in the past three weeks of job hunting. ….“What is the essence of going to the university when all you get as a reward was unemployment and frustrating application processes,” she thought while walking on the street with a
He paced from one end of his room to the other, why couldn’t he find his wristwatch? He has checked everywhere and can’t seem to find it. He decided to go with the Rolex watch he got two months ago that has been lying in the watch storage because it wasn’t his style, but he had no option but to go
It has been two weeks since her first event ushering experience and she was already getting used to the job. Now preparing for her third event which is her last ushering job with Mr Charles as her supervisor, she couldn’t contain her excitement because she was tired of watching him treated her and







