Priyanka
I wake up to the taste of vanilla ice cream.
Rubbing my forehead, I vaguely remember eating ice cream at 4am in the morning. Why did I do that? My brain feels like water is being pumped into it at an alarming rate. Yep, I had one too many vodka martinis last night.
Slowly, I open my eyes to see a blue ceiling. A wave of nausea and a sense of danger jolts me upright from the king-sized bed I am lying on. Oh my god, where am I?
Wherever I am, it’s an expensive studio flat as in 'I-am-an investment-banker' expensive. On the walls, I see monochrome paintings of 2Pac, Michael Jordan and a much older black man wearing what looks like traditional African clothing. I have no clue who he is. The walls of the flat are painted light blue, and the floor has a black marble finish.
With my feet wobbling as they rebel against me for having the audacity to stand up when I am this hungover, I carefully get out of bed. I lumber past the white marble kitchen, and towards the only window in the open plan flat. It's a wide window stretching across the entire width of the living room.
I take in the view. Wow. I can see the spirals of St Pancreas Hotel, an enchanted castle which gives some wonder to London's grey and rigid buildings. Below me are the city’s famous red buses. People, looking like toy figures, are walking across the concrete pedestrian or running across the road with their hands held towards incoming traffic, risking life just to catch a bus. Manchester is not as chaotic as London. It’s tiring watching the madness of life unfold in this city.
Then I start panicking.
Oh my god, my train to Manchester! Samantha, Hazel, Charlotte, the other girl I don’t know but has that annoying high-pitched voice, Jennie, and Abigail. Had they already taken the train back to Manchester or were they still at the hotel? Fuck.
I turn away from the window and immediately notice my hazel-coloured COACH handbag against the black leather couch in the living room. Just as I am about dart over to it, retrieve my iPhone and find out where the hell my friends are, I hear someone unlocking the door.
As soon as I turn around, he’s already standing there. Last night's and this morning's events quickly flash before my eyes as if someone had pressed the rewind button on the part of my brain which stores memories. I had sex with this guy standing by the door. But I can't remember his name.
Taking him in as closes the door behind him, he's a little shorter from what I remember when I met him in Shoreditch. He's still wearing his baseball cap from last night. I think he said he was Nigerian. He looks at me and grins. In his right hand he is holding two brown McDonalds paper bags and in the other, a paper tray with two, white plastic cups.
With a light but noticeable Nigerian accent, he asks me if I am hungry. He’s brought breakfast.
Bola
She looks younger than what I remember from last night at that club in Shoreditch where we met. Early twenties, I think. Maybe around 22 so only three years younger than me. Still, she's attractive, no doubt. She smiles at me, and I am reminded why I immediately noticed her.
As I am no longer drunk, I can really see the brown highlights in her shoulder-length, hazel-coloured hair, messy from last night's shenanigans and the vividness of her light-brown skin. She is still wearing her tight, grey maxi dress she wore at the club which show off her long and smooth legs.
I can tell she is feeling nervous. She reluctantly takes one of the McDonalds bags and one of the cups of coffee and shyly thanks me for buying breakfast. I tell her it’s not a problem and that she is a guest in my flat. This relaxes her a little. She follows me to the leather couch.
We sit on the couch together, but not close enough for any part of our bodies to touch. Without saying a word to each other, we sip our coffee and take a bite from our bagels.
After taking one bite, she looks at me and grins. She tells me she is surprised I remembered that she was Muslim, noticing I had made sure the bagel came with no bacon. I chuckle and tell her that we were talking about religion for some reason last night. She had told me she was a Muslim but not really a practising one anymore. She then asks me if I remember her name. Oh shit, this is embarrassing. How do I remember her religion but not her name?
Priyanka
He looks cute when he looks confused. He tries to guess my name. On all four attempts, he's completely wrong. But he gets brownie points for trying. Besides I can’t be too harsh on him, I can’t remember his name either. I remind him that my name is Priyanka and tell him I'll let him off because we were both off our faces last night. He laughs, it's a deep laugh which carries his Nigerian accent. He tells me his name is Bola.
On paper, he’s not my type. At all. To be honest, I don’t often go for black guys. It’s not that I don’t find them attractive, I just never really considered sleeping with one. But there was something about this Bola guy. The way he had smiled at me when our eyes had accidentally locked onto each other across the dancefloor. His aura, calm yet with a quiet energy, had drawn me to him. I swear, sometimes it’s like you get a natural connection with certain people as if you're both living in the same fixed vibration of the universe in that moment. As soon as we began dancing together, my back against his chest, his hands around my waist, his cologne tickling my nostrils, I knew I would go home with him.
Memories from earlier this morning started to appear in my mind as if I were watching a PowerPoint presentation summarising it. The sex had been messy but not bad. We were both drunk by the time we got back to his place.
After eating a tub of ice cream, still can’t believe I did that, we spent a few minutes fumbling on his bed, taking each other’s clothes off. Hilariously, he had needed three attempts to put on a condom as the first two had ripped. But overall, he had been gentle with me. He had made a great effort to please me, making me want to please him even more. It's a nice change to have a man who has the patience and skill to give you an orgasm. Even more impressive when he's clearly out of it.
After finishing my bagel and coffee, I tell him I need to call my friends, but my iPhone has low battery. I explain that I am staying in a rented apartment in Hackney but must catch a train back to Manchester from King's Cross station at 1pm. He tells me it’s not a problem and I can use his charger.
As I dial Abigail, the most responsible one in our university group of friends, which is not saying much, I watch Bola. He takes the McDonald's brown bag and our empty coffee cups from the marble table and walks over to the kitchen to throw them in the bin. He has a very athletic build with broad shoulders and a V-shaped back torso, visible in his white t-shirt which highlights his dark complexion. I can tell he works out unlike Ravi, who I had never even seen do a single push up throughout the entire time I was dating him.
Thank god. I manage to get through to Abigail. In a raspy voice, she's clearly hungover too, she tells me that all the girls are back at the apartment. As soon as I tell her that I am at a studio flat with the guy I was dancing with all night, I hear the other girls giggle in the background. Great, she's put me on loudspeaker. There's going to be a lot of interrogation from them on the journey back to Manchester.
I tell Abigail that I am close to King's Cross station and ask her to bring my stuff when I meet them at the station later. Abigail agrees but not without teasing me that I have become an untameable party girl since breaking up with Ravi. I roll my eyes; tell her I'll see her soon and end the phone call.
Bola comes back from the kitchen and takes a seat next to me but not too close. I tell him that I will be meeting my friends at King’s Cross Station in two hours. Suddenly conscious that I haven’t had a shower and stink of alcohol and sweat, I ask Bola if I could use his bathroom. God, this is so weird.
Bola
I tell Priyinka she can use my shower and I have a spare towel. She thanks me. As she gets up from the couch, I tell her where she can find the bathroom. I explain that the shower gel I use will make her smell like Lynx Africa if she doesn’t mind that. She laughs, it is a light and bouncy laugh, which surprisingly makes me smile, and tells me she’ll manage.
As she disappears into the adjacent room where the shower is, I take out my Samsung Galaxy S20 from my jeans pocket and scroll through my WhatsApp. I have two unread messages. One from Tom and one from my ex, Ayomide. The one from Tom reads:
U MUST BE FEELING CHUFFED MATE. SHE WAS GOOD LOOKING. A SOLID NINE. SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN U COME OUT WITH YOUR FAVOURITE WORK BUDDY LOL. GIVE YOU A CALL LATER, MATE
The text from my ex is thankfully much shorter:
I MISS YOU
I immediately delete Ayomide's text. Really cannot be bothered to entertain her and her mind games today. It occurs to me that I really should just block her number. I spend the next twenty minutes trying to beat my score on Candy Crush before I feel Priyanka's presence in the room.
I look up from my screen. Priyanka is walking towards the couch where I am sitting. Her light-brown hair is now wet and wavy, but it suits her. She really is beautiful, and I am surprised how easy we had just started chatting like we’d be lovers from a past life.
When we had sex, we immediately knew what each other wanted. She was not shy, and neither was I. Probably the alcohol had just made us more brazen though. Still, I had never slept with an Indian girl before, not that I ever really had the opportunity to. There’s not exactly a significant Indian population in Nigeria.
This is why I love coming to London. If you haven’t tried it before then somehow you will end up trying it in this sprawling city.
Priyanka sits down on the couch next to me. She keeps her distance.
Priyanka
I return to the couch and sit next to Bola but not too close. He puts his phone back in his jeans pocket gives me a smile, and I smile back. It's been a while since a guy has made me feel this relaxed around him so quickly.
The shower had been heaven. Now that I had eaten and washed my body, I felt I could function a bit better as a human being. My brain was still banging against my skull though.
I look around the state-of-the-art studio flat and ask Bola what he does for a living to afford a place like this in London. He leans back against the couch and tells me the studio-flat belongs to his father, a Nigerian politician. Oh wow, I've slept with a wealthy Nigerian guy, but he doesn't strike me as a playboy or one those rich kids on Instagram.
I ask him what he's doing in London. He tells me he is interning at Ernst & Young before he goes back to Nigeria to work in the Nigerian office in a place called Abuja. I can tell from the disinterested tone in his voice that he is not exactly thrilled about this. I ask him if he enjoys it. Unsurprisingly, he tells me not really, but his Dad is adamant that he works in the investment banking sector. I let out a short sigh, and I tell him I know how that feels like.
Bola
She tells me she understands how it feels like to have pushy parents, and so I ask her to elaborate. Suddenly, she becomes very animated as she explains that she is currently studying a five-year medicine degree at the University of Manchester. But her real passion is to be an actress, but her parents would never support that career path. Most of her siblings are in the medical profession. Still, she does act in her spare time, and she is currently president of the drama society at her Uni. I tell her she’s very rebellious and she winks at me with a smile. We really do smile at each other a lot.
She asks me what I would do instead of investment banking. I tell her I would be a music producer. When I mention this, she looks impressed, and I am surprised by how much that means to me. I am usually quite a reserved guy, but with her, I find myself chattering on and on. For a good fifteen minutes, I tell her about my love for hip hop, R'n'B and how I taught myself to play the piano. She then asks me if I am a fan of Frank Ocean. Now she's really opened my mouth's floodgates.
Priyanka
Wow, he really loves Frank Ocean. But how could you not love him? I tell him that I listened to Frank Ocean’s first album when I had broken up with my ex-boyfriend. Sitting in my room in my flatshare, I had eaten a whole tub of Ben & Jerry's chocolate fudge which was probably mixed with my tears and mucus from my nose.
Bola chuckles, closing his eyes as he does so, and then knowingly nods his head. He tells me that he had listened to Frank Ocean when he had broken up with his girlfriend, but he had not cried or eaten ice cream. But he had smoked a lot of weed.
He asks me why I broke up with my ex-boyfriend. I tell him that my ex-boyfriend just stopped putting in the effort after three years of dating. At the start, Ravi really was like my knight in shining armour. He would do anything and everything for me.
But once he knew he had my heart firmly in his grasp, he began to squeeze it. He became a different boy, treating me like I was a grievance in his life rather than a blessing. Then I discovered he had been sleeping with my cousin. That had really knocked my confidence.
Bola listened with his full attention to my all-too-familiar story of young love for the millennial generation. He then began to share his own story of betrayal in the name of love.
Bola
Somehow, I was now telling Priyanka about my last relationship with Ayomide. She had been the first love of my life, not like one of those childish crushes. I had loved Ayomide. We had met at a gala in Lagos. Being the daughter of a Nigerian civil servant who worked alongside my father, Ayomide shared the same social circle as me and had a similar experience growing up. Maybe I had fallen in love with her too quickly, which blinded me to her toxic nature.
I tell Priyanka how Ayomide would always seek drama and turmoil in our relationship. Or how she would need to feel like a victim all the time even though she lived a privileged life. Aymodie had called it passion, but I saw it as childish. Then, like Priyanka, I had discovered that the person who was supposed to love me had betrayed me by sleeping with a stranger while on holiday. The whole episode almost broke me.
Priyanka was a stranger to me. And yet, in just a few hours of knowing her, I had shared not only my body with her but some of my soul. In a gesture I did not expect, Priyanka raised her right arm towards me. Her fingers were curved, so it looked she was holding an invisible glass.
Priyanka
I tell Bola that we should make an imaginary toast. To good music, to dreams, to the death of toxic relationships and to the love of Ben & Jerry ice cream. He looks at me with a raised eyebrow as if I must be the looniest woman he's ever encountered. But his lips form into that handsome smile of his, and he shakes his head as chuckles. He then raises his hand towards mine, and we have our imaginary toast.
At that moment, I feel like I wanted to have sex with Bola again. Since breaking up with Ravi, who I had lost my virginity to, I had been living my best sex life. I was enjoying this period of just having casual and consensual encounters with men. I looked at Bola and felt a desire to have him on top of me and going inside of me as I lay on that king-sized bed.
something about him was different this morning. All those cocktails we had drunk together and the nightclub setting where we had found each other had allowed us to be driven purely by fun and lust. But now, I felt like we had bonded in a way I did not expect and did not want. Sex should just be sex. No feelings need to entangle into it. That's how you end up falling in love. And that’s the last thing I wanted. But I was overthinking this?
Before I could make up my mind, my iPhone beeped from where it was charging on top of the couch's armrest. Someone had messaged me on WhatsApp. I reached for the iPhone, stretching over Bola who leaned back, and unplugged it. I opened WhatsApp and read the message from Abigail on the group chat:
HEY, U PARTY ANIMAL SLUT. WE ARE GONNA BE IN KING’S CROSS IN TEN MINUTES. IF U ARE HAVING HANGOVER SEX OR THINKING ABOUT IT, I SUGGEST YOU DON’T. SEE YOU SOON. X
Bola
Before I could ask Priyanka if she wanted to lie down in bed with me, she stood up from the couch with her iPhone in her right hand. She looked at me, and I could detect disappointment in her face as she told me she needed to leave now. Her friends were going to be arriving at King's Cross Station soon.
Looks like I can forget about any second session of lovemaking. It was a shame because I surprisingly really liked her a lot more than the few girls I had slept with since coming to London.
I offer to walk her to the station and tell her it's the least I can do since I still believe in chivalry. Priyanka smiles at me and says she doesn't mind. At least I get to spend a little more time with her, but I wonder if she would want to stay in touch? I watch her walk over to my bed and pick up her black overcoat on the floor. She then turns to face me and says she's ready to leave.
Priyanka
By the time we've arrived at King's Cross Station, it's already noisy with human life. It's a Sunday as well. Does London ever rest? Bola is standing beside me as I survey the vast space of King's Cross station’s Western Ticket Hall, looking for my friends. I spot the girls standing outside Boots, all of them looking like they've been spun around in a human-sized dryer.
I turn to face Bola and tell him my friends are over there and point in their direction. He looks at my friends and then looks at me with a faint smile. An awkwardness creeps into our space. Suddenly, I feel like I am about to bungee jump from a mountain, but I don't trust the wire. Bola then says something.
Bola
So I decided to ask her for her number. It was a risky move but, as they say, sometimes you just gotta shoot your shot. Priyanka does not immediately answer. Her hesitation tells me everything. She says I can have her Instagram, but I tell her I don't have one. She then asks for my number, and I give it to her. But I doubt she will call. It was it is, I guess. But we had a great time.
Sometimes that’s all it needs to be.
Priyanka
I save his number on my phone. Would I call him? I don’t really know. I had never done this whole 'friends-with-benefits' thing before, and I do not think I would like it. I fall in love easily. And right now, I don’t do love.
Before making my way to my friends, I give Bola a hug. It is a tight embrace. Surprisingly, I find the feeling of his arms around me really comforting.
I pull away from him and thank him for his hospitality. Just as I turn to start walking towards my friends, he asks me if I remember the name of the ice cream we had eaten in the early hours of the morning before we had thrown ourselves onto his bed. I tell him that I know it was vanilla flavour, but I couldn't say what brand of ice cream it was.
Bola gives me that signature smile of his and tells me it was Ben & Jerry's Cookie Dough vanilla ice cream and it makes for a great dessert. I laugh and say to him if I ever buy it, I'll think of him. He smiles at me.
With those final words, I turn away from Bola and walk towards my friends.
Hopefully, we don’t miss our train back to Manchester. As the girls greet me with overblown excitement and cheeky smirks, I turn back to see if Bola is still standing where I left him.
But he's already left the station.
I look away from where he stood and smile at my girls. Time to go home.
I wake up to the taste of vanilla ice cream.
Rubbing my forehead, I vaguely remember eating ice cream at 4am in the morning. Why did I do that? My brain feels like water is being pumped into it at an alarming rate. Yep, I had one too many vodka martinis last night.
Slowly, I open my eyes to see a blue ceiling. A wave of nausea and a sense of danger jolts me upright from the king-sized bed I am lying on. Oh my god, where am I?
Wherever I am, it’s an expensive studio flat as in 'I-am-an investment-banker' expensive. On the walls, I see monochrome paintings of 2Pac, Michael Jordan and a much older black man wearing what looks like traditional African clothing. I have no clue who he is. The walls of the flat are painted light blue, and the floor has a black marble finish.
With my feet wobbling as they rebel against me for having the audacity to stand up when I am this hungover, I carefully get out of bed. I lumber past the white marble kitchen, and towards the only window in the open plan flat. It's a wide window stretching across the entire width of the living room.
I take in the view. Wow. I can see the spirals of St Pancreas Hotel, an enchanted castle which gives some wonder to London's grey and rigid buildings. Below me are the city’s famous red buses. People, looking like toy figures, are walking across the concrete pedestrian or running across the road with their hands held towards incoming traffic, risking life just to catch a bus. Manchester is not as chaotic as London. It’s tiring watching the madness of life unfold in this city.
Then I start panicking.
Oh my god, my train to Manchester! Samantha, Hazel, Charlotte, the other girl I don’t know but has that annoying high-pitched voice, Jennie, and Abigail. Had they already taken the train back to Manchester or were they still at the hotel? Fuck.
I turn away from the window and immediately notice my hazel-coloured COACH handbag against the black leather couch in the living room. Just as I am about dart over to it, retrieve my iPhone and find out where the hell my friends are, I hear someone unlocking the door.
As soon as I turn around, he’s already standing there. Last night's and this morning's events quickly flash before my eyes as if someone had pressed the rewind button on the part of my brain which stores memories. I had sex with this guy standing by the door. But I can't remember his name.
Taking him in as closes the door behind him, he's a little shorter from what I remember when I met him in Shoreditch. He's still wearing his baseball cap from last night. I think he said he was Nigerian. He looks at me and grins. In his right hand he is holding two brown McDonalds paper bags and in the other, a paper tray with two, white plastic cups.
With a light but noticeable Nigerian accent, he asks me if I am hungry. He’s brought breakfast.
Bola
She looks younger than what I remember from last night at that club in Shoreditch where we met. Early twenties, I think. Maybe around 22 so only three years younger than me. Still, she's attractive, no doubt. She smiles at me, and I am reminded why I immediately noticed her.
As I am no longer drunk, I can really see the brown highlights in her shoulder-length, hazel-coloured hair, messy from last night's shenanigans and the vividness of her light-brown skin. She is still wearing her tight, grey maxi dress she wore at the club which show off her long and smooth legs.
I can tell she is feeling nervous. She reluctantly takes one of the McDonalds bags and one of the cups of coffee and shyly thanks me for buying breakfast. I tell her it’s not a problem and that she is a guest in my flat. This relaxes her a little. She follows me to the leather couch.
We sit on the couch together, but not close enough for any part of our bodies to touch. Without saying a word to each other, we sip our coffee and take a bite from our bagels.
After taking one bite, she looks at me and grins. She tells me she is surprised I remembered that she was Muslim, noticing I had made sure the bagel came with no bacon. I chuckle and tell her that we were talking about religion for some reason last night. She had told me she was a Muslim but not really a practising one anymore. She then asks me if I remember her name. Oh shit, this is embarrassing. How do I remember her religion but not her name?
Priyanka
He looks cute when he looks confused. He tries to guess my name. On all four attempts, he's completely wrong. But he gets brownie points for trying. Besides I can’t be too harsh on him, I can’t remember his name either. I remind him that my name is Priyanka and tell him I'll let him off because we were both off our faces last night. He laughs, it's a deep laugh which carries his Nigerian accent. He tells me his name is Bola.
On paper, he’s not my type. At all. To be honest, I don’t often go for black guys. It’s not that I don’t find them attractive, I just never really considered sleeping with one. But there was something about this Bola guy. The way he had smiled at me when our eyes had accidentally locked onto each other across the dancefloor. His aura, calm yet with a quiet energy, had drawn me to him. I swear, sometimes it’s like you get a natural connection with certain people as if you're both living in the same fixed vibration of the universe in that moment. As soon as we began dancing together, my back against his chest, his hands around my waist, his cologne tickling my nostrils, I knew I would go home with him.
Memories from earlier this morning started to appear in my mind as if I were watching a PowerPoint presentation summarising it. The sex had been messy but not bad. We were both drunk by the time we got back to his place.
After eating a tub of ice cream, still can’t believe I did that, we spent a few minutes fumbling on his bed, taking each other’s clothes off. Hilariously, he had needed three attempts to put on a condom as the first two had ripped. But overall, he had been gentle with me. He had made a great effort to please me, making me want to please him even more. It's a nice change to have a man who has the patience and skill to give you an orgasm. Even more impressive when he's clearly out of it.
After finishing my bagel and coffee, I tell him I need to call my friends, but my iPhone has low battery. I explain that I am staying in a rented apartment in Hackney but must catch a train back to Manchester from King's Cross station at 1pm. He tells me it’s not a problem and I can use his charger.
As I dial Abigail, the most responsible one in our university group of friends, which is not saying much, I watch Bola. He takes the McDonald's brown bag and our empty coffee cups from the marble table and walks over to the kitchen to throw them in the bin. He has a very athletic build with broad shoulders and a V-shaped back torso, visible in his white t-shirt which highlights his dark complexion. I can tell he works out unlike Ravi, who I had never even seen do a single push up throughout the entire time I was dating him.
Thank god. I manage to get through to Abigail. In a raspy voice, she's clearly hungover too, she tells me that all the girls are back at the apartment. As soon as I tell her that I am at a studio flat with the guy I was dancing with all night, I hear the other girls giggle in the background. Great, she's put me on loudspeaker. There's going to be a lot of interrogation from them on the journey back to Manchester.
I tell Abigail that I am close to King's Cross station and ask her to bring my stuff when I meet them at the station later. Abigail agrees but not without teasing me that I have become an untameable party girl since breaking up with Ravi. I roll my eyes; tell her I'll see her soon and end the phone call.
Bola comes back from the kitchen and takes a seat next to me but not too close. I tell him that I will be meeting my friends at King’s Cross Station in two hours. Suddenly conscious that I haven’t had a shower and stink of alcohol and sweat, I ask Bola if I could use his bathroom. God, this is so weird.
Bola
I tell Priyinka she can use my shower and I have a spare towel. She thanks me. As she gets up from the couch, I tell her where she can find the bathroom. I explain that the shower gel I use will make her smell like Lynx Africa if she doesn’t mind that. She laughs, it is a light and bouncy laugh, which surprisingly makes me smile, and tells me she’ll manage.
As she disappears into the adjacent room where the shower is, I take out my Samsung Galaxy S20 from my jeans pocket and scroll through my WhatsApp. I have two unread messages. One from Tom and one from my ex, Ayomide. The one from Tom reads:
U MUST BE FEELING CHUFFED MATE. SHE WAS GOOD LOOKING. A SOLID NINE. SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN U COME OUT WITH YOUR FAVOURITE WORK BUDDY LOL. GIVE YOU A CALL LATER, MATE
The text from my ex is thankfully much shorter:
I MISS YOU
I immediately delete Ayomide's text. Really cannot be bothered to entertain her and her mind games today. It occurs to me that I really should just block her number. I spend the next twenty minutes trying to beat my score on Candy Crush before I feel Priyanka's presence in the room.
I look up from my screen. Priyanka is walking towards the couch where I am sitting. Her light-brown hair is now wet and wavy, but it suits her. She really is beautiful, and I am surprised how easy we had just started chatting like we’d be lovers from a past life.
When we had sex, we immediately knew what each other wanted. She was not shy, and neither was I. Probably the alcohol had just made us more brazen though. Still, I had never slept with an Indian girl before, not that I ever really had the opportunity to. There’s not exactly a significant Indian population in Nigeria.
This is why I love coming to London. If you haven’t tried it before then somehow you will end up trying it in this sprawling city.
Priyanka sits down on the couch next to me. She keeps her distance.
Priyanka
I return to the couch and sit next to Bola but not too close. He puts his phone back in his jeans pocket gives me a smile, and I smile back. It's been a while since a guy has made me feel this relaxed around him so quickly.
The shower had been heaven. Now that I had eaten and washed my body, I felt I could function a bit better as a human being. My brain was still banging against my skull though.
I look around the state-of-the-art studio flat and ask Bola what he does for a living to afford a place like this in London. He leans back against the couch and tells me the studio-flat belongs to his father, a Nigerian politician. Oh wow, I've slept with a wealthy Nigerian guy, but he doesn't strike me as a playboy or one those rich kids on Instagram.
I ask him what he's doing in London. He tells me he is interning at Ernst & Young before he goes back to Nigeria to work in the Nigerian office in a place called Abuja. I can tell from the disinterested tone in his voice that he is not exactly thrilled about this. I ask him if he enjoys it. Unsurprisingly, he tells me not really, but his Dad is adamant that he works in the investment banking sector. I let out a short sigh, and I tell him I know how that feels like.
Bola
She tells me she understands how it feels like to have pushy parents, and so I ask her to elaborate. Suddenly, she becomes very animated as she explains that she is currently studying a five-year medicine degree at the University of Manchester. But her real passion is to be an actress, but her parents would never support that career path. Most of her siblings are in the medical profession. Still, she does act in her spare time, and she is currently president of the drama society at her Uni. I tell her she’s very rebellious and she winks at me with a smile. We really do smile at each other a lot.
She asks me what I would do instead of investment banking. I tell her I would be a music producer. When I mention this, she looks impressed, and I am surprised by how much that means to me. I am usually quite a reserved guy, but with her, I find myself chattering on and on. For a good fifteen minutes, I tell her about my love for hip hop, R'n'B and how I taught myself to play the piano. She then asks me if I am a fan of Frank Ocean. Now she's really opened my mouth's floodgates.
Priyanka
Wow, he really loves Frank Ocean. But how could you not love him? I tell him that I listened to Frank Ocean’s first album when I had broken up with my ex-boyfriend. Sitting in my room in my flatshare, I had eaten a whole tub of Ben & Jerry's chocolate fudge which was probably mixed with my tears and mucus from my nose.
Bola chuckles, closing his eyes as he does so, and then knowingly nods his head. He tells me that he had listened to Frank Ocean when he had broken up with his girlfriend, but he had not cried or eaten ice cream. But he had smoked a lot of weed.
He asks me why I broke up with my ex-boyfriend. I tell him that my ex-boyfriend just stopped putting in the effort after three years of dating. At the start, Ravi really was like my knight in shining armour. He would do anything and everything for me.
But once he knew he had my heart firmly in his grasp, he began to squeeze it. He became a different boy, treating me like I was a grievance in his life rather than a blessing. Then I discovered he had been sleeping with my cousin. That had really knocked my confidence.
Bola listened with his full attention to my all-too-familiar story of young love for the millennial generation. He then began to share his own story of betrayal in the name of love.
Bola
Somehow, I was now telling Priyanka about my last relationship with Ayomide. She had been the first love of my life, not like one of those childish crushes. I had loved Ayomide. We had met at a gala in Lagos. Being the daughter of a Nigerian civil servant who worked alongside my father, Ayomide shared the same social circle as me and had a similar experience growing up. Maybe I had fallen in love with her too quickly, which blinded me to her toxic nature.
I tell Priyanka how Ayomide would always seek drama and turmoil in our relationship. Or how she would need to feel like a victim all the time even though she lived a privileged life. Aymodie had called it passion, but I saw it as childish. Then, like Priyanka, I had discovered that the person who was supposed to love me had betrayed me by sleeping with a stranger while on holiday. The whole episode almost broke me.
Priyanka was a stranger to me. And yet, in just a few hours of knowing her, I had shared not only my body with her but some of my soul. In a gesture I did not expect, Priyanka raised her right arm towards me. Her fingers were curved, so it looked she was holding an invisible glass.
Priyanka
I tell Bola that we should make an imaginary toast. To good music, to dreams, to the death of toxic relationships and to the love of Ben & Jerry ice cream. He looks at me with a raised eyebrow as if I must be the looniest woman he's ever encountered. But his lips form into that handsome smile of his, and he shakes his head as chuckles. He then raises his hand towards mine, and we have our imaginary toast.
At that moment, I feel like I wanted to have sex with Bola again. Since breaking up with Ravi, who I had lost my virginity to, I had been living my best sex life. I was enjoying this period of just having casual and consensual encounters with men. I looked at Bola and felt a desire to have him on top of me and going inside of me as I lay on that king-sized bed.
something about him was different this morning. All those cocktails we had drunk together and the nightclub setting where we had found each other had allowed us to be driven purely by fun and lust. But now, I felt like we had bonded in a way I did not expect and did not want. Sex should just be sex. No feelings need to entangle into it. That's how you end up falling in love. And that’s the last thing I wanted. But I was overthinking this?
Before I could make up my mind, my iPhone beeped from where it was charging on top of the couch's armrest. Someone had messaged me on WhatsApp. I reached for the iPhone, stretching over Bola who leaned back, and unplugged it. I opened WhatsApp and read the message from Abigail on the group chat:
HEY, U PARTY ANIMAL SLUT. WE ARE GONNA BE IN KING’S CROSS IN TEN MINUTES. IF U ARE HAVING HANGOVER SEX OR THINKING ABOUT IT, I SUGGEST YOU DON’T. SEE YOU SOON. X
Bola
Before I could ask Priyanka if she wanted to lie down in bed with me, she stood up from the couch with her iPhone in her right hand. She looked at me, and I could detect disappointment in her face as she told me she needed to leave now. Her friends were going to be arriving at King's Cross Station soon.
Looks like I can forget about any second session of lovemaking. It was a shame because I surprisingly really liked her a lot more than the few girls I had slept with since coming to London.
I offer to walk her to the station and tell her it's the least I can do since I still believe in chivalry. Priyanka smiles at me and says she doesn't mind. At least I get to spend a little more time with her, but I wonder if she would want to stay in touch? I watch her walk over to my bed and pick up her black overcoat on the floor. She then turns to face me and says she's ready to leave.
Priyanka
By the time we've arrived at King's Cross Station, it's already noisy with human life. It's a Sunday as well. Does London ever rest? Bola is standing beside me as I survey the vast space of King's Cross station’s Western Ticket Hall, looking for my friends. I spot the girls standing outside Boots, all of them looking like they've been spun around in a human-sized dryer.
I turn to face Bola and tell him my friends are over there and point in their direction. He looks at my friends and then looks at me with a faint smile. An awkwardness creeps into our space. Suddenly, I feel like I am about to bungee jump from a mountain, but I don't trust the wire. Bola then says something.
Bola
So I decided to ask her for her number. It was a risky move but, as they say, sometimes you just gotta shoot your shot. Priyanka does not immediately answer. Her hesitation tells me everything. She says I can have her Instagram, but I tell her I don't have one. She then asks for my number, and I give it to her. But I doubt she will call. It was it is, I guess. But we had a great time.
Sometimes that’s all it needs to be.
Priyanka
I save his number on my phone. Would I call him? I don’t really know. I had never done this whole 'friends-with-benefits' thing before, and I do not think I would like it. I fall in love easily. And right now, I don’t do love.
Before making my way to my friends, I give Bola a hug. It is a tight embrace. Surprisingly, I find the feeling of his arms around me really comforting.
I pull away from him and thank him for his hospitality. Just as I turn to start walking towards my friends, he asks me if I remember the name of the ice cream we had eaten in the early hours of the morning before we had thrown ourselves onto his bed. I tell him that I know it was vanilla flavour, but I couldn't say what brand of ice cream it was.
Bola gives me that signature smile of his and tells me it was Ben & Jerry's Cookie Dough vanilla ice cream and it makes for a great dessert. I laugh and say to him if I ever buy it, I'll think of him. He smiles at me.
With those final words, I turn away from Bola and walk towards my friends.
Hopefully, we don’t miss our train back to Manchester. As the girls greet me with overblown excitement and cheeky smirks, I turn back to see if Bola is still standing where I left him.
But he's already left the station.
I look away from where he stood and smile at my girls. Time to go home.