The Quest (3)

Hello guys! Thanks for coming on with me on this journey!

I plan to post new episodes of this story 5 days a week. Since we started on April 1,which is a Sunday, it means it would be a Sunday-Thursday weekly schedule. What do you think about that?

Or should I make next week schedule Monday to Friday, instead? Tell me what you think in the comment box!

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Dare was the guy I dated as an SS3 student. No one should be amazed, he wasn’t even my first. I like to call him my fourth, although the third relationship I had is best referred to as a “half” relationship, because it happened on the phone, from start to finish. Well, I also teased a number of boys. By teasing I mean, giving them attention for a while, until they think they have gotten me at their finger tips, and then turning my back on them, as if we had never had contact. It was my own way of conquering their ego. I started that in JSS2.

My relationship with Dare was different. The others were usually my classmates, but Dare was a friend to Segun, my cousin, who is six years older than me. I met him at Rhoda, Segun sister’s fifteenth birthday. He sat in the company of his other friends, who were lousy at the party. There was something about his dark eyes and full brows that appealed to everyone who saw them. His calm demeanour, unlike the others, endeared him to me the most. The attention he was receiving from the other girls, including the older ones made the hot Dare, even hotter.

I never knew he noticed me, until he came up to my seat, later in the party. He asked for my name, and I felt his eyes saying something that I had become familiar with—he liked me too—while he engaged me in a conversation. I found out he lived in the second street of my house. Two weeks later, I was going to be in his bed, with him trying to caress me, while I run away, unsure of what I was doing. And I was going to cry my eyes out after that experience. But that day, I feigned disinterest while he told me he was a 300-level student of Charity University, and was only home for the break. I have had enough experience to know his type. He was one of those boys who think themselves demigods. They are easily attracted to girls who they think do not notice them. He told me a lot about university life that day.

What if the situation you are calling terrible is your Bethel? Click on the image to read a retelling of Jacob’s story at Bethel.

After a couple of times of running through the cycle of our smooches and my guilt, we eventually had sex. I cried through the act, while he whispering sweet nonsense into my ears. He later told me he was amazed to discover I was a virgin. He said he loved me and I was safe with him, and promised to take good care of me.

I had always tried things out with my former boyfriends, but I had never gone all the way until that day. I felt like a part of me was tore out, but I was also comforted by his words—at least I now have someone who certainly loves me—unlike every other person in my life.

After that day, it happened many other times that I lost count. We basically became sex partners. When his school resumed, he came around every other weekend for our escapade.

Although I wished I didn’t have to, I still went to church with my parents all those times. Every Sunday, and every opportunity I got to be told of the second coming of Jesus Christ, kept me in dread. Sometimes, the dread gave way to stolidity; I was too neck-deep to care. Let Jesus throw me into hell. Wasn’t that the worst he could do? At other times, I just lived, trying to manage the devastation of knowing how wrong what I was doing was. Few times, I dared to hope that I would change my ways and become what my father usually called a serious Christian.

It was not that I had been a serious Christian before then, or that I really understood what Christianity was all about. The best Christian I had ever been was the one who joined the choir in my secondary school fellowship. I went for the services for about a month; I even attended one retreat for workers, where we fasted till evening. Just at the time I was beginning to think I may have started taking the Christianity thing really seriously, I got tired of it all, and stopped going to the fellowship services altogether. Yes, I was also once the preacher on the children Sunday of my church. That was when I was seven. I still think I got the slot because my dad was the pastor of the church.

I had not been with Dare for two months before my admission into the university; he claimed final year was really stressful. I was in fact grateful he wasn’t coming. So why today, of all times? Why would he, out the blues, call to say he was coming to visit me in school

?

I tossed to the other side of my bed to meet Sandra’s eyes. She seemed to be trying her chance at reading what was going on in my mind

.

I picked my phone and typed a text message. I read through the message and dropped the phone. My palms felt sweaty, and there was a tingling sensation in my chest. I sat up, held my face in my palms for some minutes, picked my phone again, searched for Dare’s contact, and clicked ‘send’.