One cancelled flight later, Nosè found herself unpacking and folding her clothes into a neat pile. Her phone lit up with a notification from Google Calendar. It read ‘Shalom’s Christmas Party’ with a jingle bell and Christmas tree emoji decorating the corners of the text. She bit her lip and pondered whether to go.
She wasn’t a party person, but realising that her flight back home had been cancelled saddened her. It had been six months of living away from family, and she was sick of being alone. She felt if she went to this party and drank her weight in alcohol, she would feel a little less lonely.
The party was set to start at 7:30 pm and by 8:00 pm she was dressed in a short, sequined red dress with her favourite green kitten heels to match. She let her braids fall down the sides of her face. When she arrived at the venue and opened the door, Shalom jumped on her excitedly.
“Oh my God, you look beautiful!” The tall, leggy woman slurred, her eyes half-lidded and her breath tainted with the scent of sweet wine. Nosè blushed and tried to return the compliment, but Shalom’s
hand was already dragging her inside, eager to introduce her amazing friends to Nosè.
Rema’s ‘Calm Down’ was playing when Nosè saw him for the first time, which was apt because she had to tell her heart to calm down. He was laughing loudly at a joke someone had told. The sound from his lips was a rich melody that flowed with the music like it belonged there. Her hands were sweaty when Shalom introduced them, but he took them and kissed them with a sparkle in his coffee-brown eyes. He offered her a drink and mixed a cocktail for her. When he handed it over, he took a sip from it whilst maintaining eye contact. He wanted her to know he didn’t spike it.
She would be lying if she said she remembered his name by the end of the night, or if he told her at all. All she knew by the third cocktail was that she wanted to kiss his full, wide lips and have his long fingers around her neck. When he told her she looked like a dream in her dress, she knew for certain that she wanted to get him naked.
They left the party by 2:07 am, drunkenly debating whose house to go to for 20 minutes inside their Uber. They decided to go to hers. He said it was closer to the venue and he couldn’t wait any longer, his hands were itching to tear her clothes off. They entered the front door, stumbling around in the darkness, mouths fused and fingers attempting to find zippers. It reminded Nosè of the scene at the
beginning of The Other Woman where Cameron Diaz and her lover breathlessly talked about how they shouldn’t be doing this after the first date but still rushed into each other’s arms. She was finally living out her fantasy.
He was skilled with it; his awkward fumbling and smooth apologies almost made her forget that he had just zipped her skin with the dress or bit on her shoulder a little too hard. His lips would find hers softly again, before dragging her through a make-out session so passionate it left her heaving.
“What’s your name?” She breathlessly asked before he buried his face between her naked thighs. It felt imperative that she knew what to scream if she had to. Quiet sex usually meant she was not enjoying things. His lips stretched into a small smile, and his button nose twitched. “Alistair, but I like it when people call me Ali.”
They had not spent longer than an hour apart since the party and though it weirded Nosè out, Ali felt like a drug, and she could not understand how she became hooked so fast. He had made only one trip to his place in Aguda to get a few supplies and a plate of special fried rice for her from The Place. On his way back, she got a text from him. Butterflies carved from her brain cells fluttered around in the pit of her stomach as she hurried to open the message, dying almost immediately when she saw the contents.
He needed her to pay for the supplies and food because ‘GTBank was messing up.’ When he got back, he promised to pay her back when his bank cleared up and then pulled her into his arms for a hug. All of her annoyance melted away the moment their lips touched. She shed her robe in front of the door, her eyes saying exactly what she wanted.
On Christmas Eve, Nosè video called her mother and introduced him to her, calling him her new friend. Mama Nosè had one eyebrow in the air and a shocked smirk on her face the whole time, winking mischievously at her daughter when the call ended.
Alistair was perfect and so Nosè was dumbfounded by Shalom’s hesitation about him when they spoke on the phone later that day. “I’ll just say, enjoy it while it lasts. Ali is a fun guy, but I don’t know much about his dating life.” Nosè did not understand why Shalom couldn’t just be happy for her. She had finally found someone who cared about her, and the sex was great.
Alistair came in right after she dropped the call with a bowl of buttery popcorn for their Netflix and chill date but decided that placing himself between her legs was a better idea. They had sex until she had an asthma attack, and he knocked the bowl over, cursing as he tried to find her inhaler.
On Christmas Day, Ali and Nosè had their first fight. He was on the phone with a girl and insisted she give him privacy, chasing her from the bedroom. As she paced the living room in a rage, she wondered who he thought he was to ask her to leave her room in the house she was paying for. She marched angrily back into the room to give him a piece of her mind, and he stood there unshaken. Before she knew it, he kissed her deeply, and her knees turned to jelly. They had sex against the wall with her exposed chest pressed into it and his hand manhandling her bottom like it was bread.
As they sat beside each other, breathing heavily in a pile of their clothes, Ali fished out a box and ordered her to turn around. He placed a beautiful silver necklace around her neck. It had a gorgeous rose quartz pebble sitting right between her collarbones. She cried because she hadn’t gotten him anything. On Boxing Day, Ali pushed her across the room because she read his texts and found out he had stolen the necklace from his sister. He ripped it from her neck and asked her where she had the mind to ask him that kind of question.
Nosè saw red, picked up her phone, and walked outside the house, wearing only her nightgown and bathroom slippers. She walked to Shalom’s house and stared at the ground while her friend raised hell and rallied area boys to go and beat him.
She followed behind her friend as the boys rowdily walked with sticks and empty beer bottles in their hands. When they got there, Nosè’s place had been robbed clean of every valuable she had. She stood, numb as people shook their heads with pity with one man muttering to himself, “Na why them no dey love for Lagos be this.”