CHOCOLATE CAKE

“Trust me, Kate”
He said as he held out his hands pulling me closer to him. My past experiences with men had made me lose all faith in those two words. I had decided 6 months ago that I was not going to date for some time. That I was going to immerse myself in my Job and give relationship a little space. Give men a little space. I recited that decision every day and even left post it notes on my wall with ‘no more dating!!!!’, ‘men are wolves!!!!’, ‘they are going to break your heart again!!!!’, ‘no more men!!!!!’ written on them with exclamation marks screaming the words into my head to remind me every morning, in case I somehow forgot.
“Michael, what is this place?”
He looked at me and smiled. He had such a beautiful smile. The way his cheeks moves up on both sides of his face giving way to his clean dentition, the way his eyes lights up when he is excited like a little boy that had just been given a candy, the firmness of his hands in mine as though he had no plans of ever letting me go. The way we moved, hand in hand, you could tell he was sure. He was sure of me. And I was just a hot mess of doubt. I smiled back at him, totally unaware of the reason I had just smiled. I remembered how we met on that beautiful Tuesday morning on my way to work, 6 months ago. I had to stop at Genesis eatery at Rumokwuta, Portharcourt to buy a chocolate cake which I had been craving for so long. He looked so clean and perfectly sculpted in his well-tailored black suit and dark blue colored tie as I walked into Genesis. He had the best physique and his side burns was neatly carved. He had a nice skin tone, the kind my cousin often described as ‘bank freshness’ which stems from her theory that most Nigerian Men who worked in banks had wonderful skin tones as a result of the constant AC they were subjected to and very little contact with ‘Nigerian Sun’ which only made our skin rougher. I was grateful that he was busy with his phone and had not looked up to see just how serious my stare game was.
“I need one of these”
I said as I looked at one of the workers while pointing at the cake I wanted. At that point I wasn’t sure if what I actually needed was the cake or him. I pinched myself as the words on my post it echoed inside my head. “Men are wolves”
“You are having cake for breakfast?”
I smiled and turned to look at him. He had stopped pressing his phone and was looking at me with his beautiful, brown and soulful eyes and somehow I knew that he was about to send my ‘no dating’ policy to hell. I wasn’t wrong because I was standing with him now totally unsure of where he was taking me but totally safe with him.
“Stop here” He said, as we got to an open space of land. The whole environment was quiet and we could only hear the sound of birds. It reminded me of those Nigerian movies where the poor farmer or hunter would take the princess of his land to the forest and sing all day as they ran round the trees professing their love to each other and promising to be together against all odds.
“Michael, you are not about to sing, right?”
He laughed
“Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know, we are in the middle of nowhere and you have this look. I wonder if you’ve been watching a lot of epic Nigerian movies”.
He laughed again and I knew for sure that he wasn’t going to go all Nollywood on me.
“This is the reason”
“What do you mean?” I said, looking at him. He looked like he was about to have a heart attack. But a good kind of heart attack. Like he was about to die of something really good.
“You make me laugh. You are beautiful, funny, wise, crazy, understanding and selfish”
I was all smiles until he added ‘selfish’ and I made a face.
“You always want to have mine and yours”
“It because I love yours more than mine”
“Kate, it was a compliment” he said, cutting me short. “It is one of the reasons I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you”
My heart started racing.
“This is my land and I want to build a home with you. Marry me?”
My heart stopped.