"I don't man know, man, isn't it too early."
"We've been together for a year now, and I'm very sure she's the one," Gerald said to his very unconvinced friend.
"You do realize you're proposing in a very public restaurant, what if she says no."
"Then I'll marry you instead," a smiling Gerald said, then started laughing when he saw the look of disgust on his friend's face
"Relax, chuks, all I'm saying is she'll never say no. we have great chemistry it's like we're soul mates."
"It's the booze talking Gerald, not you. What happened to no strings attached, or have you forgotten the reason you met her in the first place."
"Look, chuks, apart from the fact that I haven't had any booze today. Life is short, and I'm not getting any younger. I need a life before I leave this world, " a serious face and very sober Gerald turned to his friend. "And if I leave, I want it to be with Dami by my side holding my hands."
Chuks looked at his friend as he would look at a half sane person. "So you have to marry her without waiting for green light."
Gerald grinned. "Well, my green light is that so far, so good we haven't broken up."
"You know what? It's your life, not mine, but if she says no, wait two days before you call me because my laughter will leave you depressed."
Gerald paid no mind to what his friend said and focused instead on how excited he was for the evening. He was going to propose to Dami, his girlfriend of a year, and spend the rest of his semi-miserable life with her. The love of his life. He smiled. Nothing was stopping their union, his parents loved her, and her parents loved him their genotypes matched although following the circumstances of their first meeting they weren't even supposed to go this far in their "relationship" and they loved each other which was all that mattered.
The day she said she loved him was the happiest day of his thirty-two years of existence. They were at a party when she just turned to him and looked him straight in the eye, which was another thing he liked about her. She wasn't shy or afraid of anything. He was confused and wondered what he did or said to earn such action. It probably showed on his face cause the next thing he knew she was laughing at him.
"Do that face again? I need to take a picture," she said. He watched as well manicured nails. He reached for the phone in her purse, and he smiled.
"Not until you tell me why you were looking at me like that." he grabbed her waist and brought her so close that every part of her body was touching his.
"Are you sure you want to know?" She giggled as he gently tickled her. "ok, ok, I'll tell you."
"I'm listening," he said when she didn't stop giggling. "Dami na"
"ok, I was just wondering how you got so lucky and what I saw in you. Then I realized that I'm in love with you. " she looked him in the eye as she did the last time when she said the last part. It made him believe her and love her a million times more if he wasn't already at that stage. "Plus, you finally shaved those bushes you called beards." He was on cloud nine at the moment, and nothing could bring him down.
"I love you too, Damilola."
He remembered it like it was yesterday, mostly because it was the day after he heard the horrible news that changed his entire life. Not to the outside world, not even to Dami but in his head. He became depressed, Dami was his only life support, and she didn't even know.