You step into the familiar warmth of the bookstore, the woodsy aroma of old and new paper surrounding you. There is something different in the air. You scan the room, your eyes darting over the other patrons who seem oblivious. Maybe it is just me, you think. You don’t know what you’re looking for yet. You will know when you see it.
This is your routine. Every Christmas Eve, you find yourself in the bookstore three streets from your house. The long walk never bothers you. Rather, you look forward to it. It is the only time you can truly breathe.
Your house is hardly a refuge from the world outside. Being the youngest in a family of five is anything but rosy. Your house isn’t home. Friends talk about longing for their families. Longing. A territory unfamiliar to you. It is at this moment that you realize you’ve stopped searching for what you don’t know yet. Someone has just bumped into you.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t looking,” she says.
“It’s fine,” you say, because it really is.
You wish she had bumped into you sooner. It would have saved you from travelling down memory lane. It would have caused you to fixate on something else—the thought of her.
“It’s okay really, I wasn’t here either,” she responds.
Her smile speaks to you. It tells you what you’ve been searching for. It tells you what she represents. You don’t want to admit it just yet. You think it’s ridiculous that you already feel this way. Suddenly, she’s all you can see and all the noise around you fades.
“Are you still here?” she asks.
You try to read her countenance. This time it gives nothing away.
“Yes. Yes, I’m still here.”
You utter those words and notice how freely they come out. You are aware of the warmth in your chest. You don’t find it uncomfortable. You want the feeling to never leave. You scour your brain for the next words to say but come up short. You’re not embarrassed or anxious. You are okay because you know she’s not bothered by your silence.
“I’m Idara,” she offers.
You see the barely noticeable smile on her face. Her face. In a split second, you sweep your gaze over it and rest your eyes on the birthmark above her eyebrow. You wonder if this is what love feels like. You hear Adekunle Gold’s “Orente” playing somewhere in the background, and you marvel at the perfection of the moment. Longing. An idea once strange and unknown is now banal.
“I’m Enitan… Thank you for bumping into me,” you say.
She laughs loudly and then, with a huge grin, says, “I’m glad I did.”
Popoola Ololade Aderemi is a final-year student of Theatre at the University of Lagos. She is passionate about storytelling and finds her expression mainly through short stories and poems. Most of her writings focus on love, loss, and grief, mostly inspired by her personal experiences. When she’s not writing or thinking of a potential story, she daydreams with her favourite songs playing in the background, just until her heart is content.
