Chapter 20
712 Words
My Brain Says No; but My Heart Says Yes
Chandeline blocked David on September 20th, six days after her birthday.
She didn’t make a speech about it. She didn’t post a cryptic w******p status about “knowing your worth.” She just opened the chat, tapped the three dots, hit block, then delete. His number went with it.
She’d spent two weeks replaying September 14th in her head. The unanswered calls. The “busy with work” text that came three hours late. The way her birthday passed like any other Thursday, except she’d expected a voice note, a bad joke, something that said I remembered.
She didn’t get it.
What she got was silence, and a gut feeling that she’d been an option, not a choice.
So she deleted him.
It felt clean. Like pulling off a plaster fast. It hurt for ten seconds, then the sting faded into relief.
She told herself she was done. No more drama. She had Joshua in Abuja, steady and poor and honest, and that was enough for now. Enough to start rebuilding the part of herself that had started to feel cheap.
For a week, she felt lighter. She cooked without checking her phone every five minutes. She slept through the night. She even laughed at Joeshephad’s jokes again.
Then the doubt crept in.
What if he didn’t notice?
What if he noticed and didn’t care?
What if he noticed, cared for a day, and moved on?
She told herself it didn’t matter. She’d made her decision.
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David didn’t notice.
Not because he was callous. He just had a lot going on.
Chidimma came to Kano the week after Chandeline’s birthday, stayed three days, left with a cold “we’ll talk.” Simi was still around, drifting between his flat and her hostel, asking questions he didn’t have answers to. Janet kept smiling at him in the office, and he kept smiling back, because it was easier than explaining that he was a mess.
Daniel was on his case about forex. Work was piling up.
In all of that, Chandeline’s name didn’t come up.
He told himself he’d call her soon. Soon turned into October. October turned into November. November turned into December, and December was chaotic with end-of-year work and Daniel dragging him to Lagos for a “quick forex seminar” that turned into two weeks.
His phone didn’t show her messages. It showed nothing.
When you block someone on w******p, their messages don’t deliver. No double ticks. No “last seen.” It’s like they’ve dropped off the face of the earth. David, who barely checked his chats unless someone called him three times, didn’t notice.
He assumed she was busy. She was in university, after all. He assumed she’d call when she had time.
He didn’t try to call her back.
Not in October. Not in November. Not on Christmas Day, when he sent a bulk “Merry Christmas” message to 47 contacts and didn’t notice Chandeline wasn’t on the list.
He thought about her sometimes. Usually at 2 AM, when the flat was quiet and Simi was asleep. He’d remember her laugh, the way she rolled her eyes when he said something stupid, the way she’d said “David, are you lying to me?” and he’d had no good answer.
Then he’d roll over and sleep.
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Chandeline moved on in the way people move on when they’re forced to.
She focused on school. She and Joshua had a fight in November and broke up for three weeks. She cried, ate too much puff-puff, and went back to him because breaking up was easier to say than to do.
She didn’t unblock David.
She told herself she didn’t need to. If he wanted her, he’d find a way. If he didn’t, then she had her answer.
She deleted his number from her head too. Mostly.
She told Joeshephad about it once, drunk on malt and bad decisions at a friend’s wedding.
“I blocked him,” she said, swirling her drink.
“Good,” Joeshephad said.
“But what if he didn’t even notice?” she asked.
“Then he wasn’t worth noticing,” Joeshephad said, and she laughed, because it was true and it hurt.
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