Finding Grace - Part 1

London, England

Grace pushed her shopping cart towards the checkout lane at the Gap store. She was leaving for Lagos in two days and she was doing her last round of shopping. She enjoyed shopping in London whenever she came to visit. It was better than paying highly inflated prices for lower quality clothes in Lagos boutiques.

She checked her watch as she walked – almost 4 p.m. She looked around for the shortest checkout line. Luckily it was a weekday, so there weren’t a lot of people in the store. She knew the work crowd would close at 5 so she had made sure to finish her shopping before then. Luckily, she saw a clerk opening a checkout station and quickly made her way towards the front of the store.

Her phone beeped and she pulled it out of her purse and unlocked the screen. New message from Azuka. Unbidden, a smile came to her face and a little frisson of warmth ran through her. Don’t get too excited girl. You just met the guy. “Hi Grace…just thinking about you. Hope your day is going well. We still on for 7?”She quickly tapped out a reply “Hey Azuka, thx! Just finished shopping and yep, we’re still on. See you later.” She touched the Send button and smiled again. She had only met him two weeks ago, but there was something about this guy that just made her smile. She enjoyed being around him and she had been around him quite a bit on her brief vacation. After he saved her from what would have been a very embarrassing face plant at the train station, they had struck up a conversation while she waited for her sister to come and pick her up. She was usually pretty reserved around people until she got to know them, but for some reason she just felt comfortable around him. Somehow he had drawn her out without seeming to. In the fifteen minutes they had waited together, they had swapped stories about each other’s’ families and he told her he was on his way to Manchester for a couple of days. It didn’t hurt that he was so good looking. Better yet, he didn’t seem to know it. Several women cast admiring glances at him while they chatted and he hardly seemed to notice. Grace liked that about him. She disliked men who were arrogant about their looks.

The cashier’s perky voice interrupted her reverie. “That’ll be 500.89.” Grace resisted the temptation to convert it into Naira. If she did that, she would never buy anything. She paid cash and picked up the two heavy shopping bags. As she lugged them to the bus stop, she heartily wished she could just flag down a taxi to take her home, but she didn’t have the number for the cab company and she didn’t want to just wait and hope for an empty black cab. She hoped the bus wouldn’t run late. She only had a couple of hours before Azuka came over and she had to get ready.

Thirty minutes later, she hurriedly unlocked the door to her sister’s flat and rushed inside.

“Hey sis! Hmm, I see you’ve been shopping up a storm” Sonia observed.

Grace smiled “Far from it. Just replenishing my wardrobe. How did your own day go?”

“It was kind of hectic. Sometimes I wonder why I’m doing this to myself. What do I even need an MBA for?”

Grace chuckled. In spite of her excellent grades, Sonia complained endlessly about how hectic her MBA program was. She took her shopping bags to the room and rushed to the kitchen. I’ll unpack them later. I still have one full day here before I leave. She opened the freezer and took out the ingredients she needed for dinner. She took out a saucepan from the cabinet in the tiny kitchen, put some olive oil on it and put it on the stove. After heating it up for a couple of minutes, she added chopped onions and a medium sized bag of mixed vegetables and put water to boil in a separate pot.

“Gracie, you don’t need to make a lot of fried rice. You’re leaving in a couple of days and I don’t want to be stuck with lots of leftovers. You know rice is not my thing.”

“Umm, Azuka is coming tonight. We were supposed to go out for dinner, but I think it’ll be nice if we all just eat and hang out. Besides, I have to finish my packing and I don’t want to leave it till the last minute.”

“Oh, because your boyfriend is coming you finally decided to cook, eh?” Sonia asked teasingly.

“He’s not my boyfriend” Grace countered.

“Cece”, Sonia reverted to her childhood nickname. “You met this guy what? Two weeks ago? Since then, you’ve spoken to him nearly every day, gone out with him more than four times and now you’re cooking for him? Please! I bet you didn’t cook for Alex less than two weeks after you met him.”

Gracie knew Sonia was teasing, but the mention of Alex’s name made her flinch. She was glad Sonia didn’t know how often she spoke to Azuka, otherwise she’d never hear the end of it. She tried to see things from Sonia’s perspective. Even though she found Azuka very attractive, she was still bruised from the whole Alex thing and Azuka himself hadn’t made any sort of overtures, so she just assumed that they both just needed a friend. We do talk and text every day and I really like being around him. Maybe someone looking in from the outside would think something was going on, but they would be wrong. Dead wrong. After what Alex had put her through, she wasn’t sure she could trust another man. At least not yet. Maybe not ever.

Her good humor gone, she seasoned the boiling water with chicken stock, curry, salt and pepper and added dry long-grained rice to the mixture. Sonia saw the impact her words had on Gracie’s mood. Me and my big mouth. She made her way to the bar stool at the counter and they both sat, each lost in her own thoughts.

***

Azuka removed the sport jacket he had on, and tried a denim one. He was getting ready to pick Grace up for their dinner date. Of course, he never referred to any of their outings as ‘dates’. He didn’t want to put pressure on Grace and push her away in the process. She hadn’t told him a lot about her past relationships but he knew she had been deeply hurt by someone. He remembered the first day he saw her and the way she had gazed adoringly into that guy’s eyes. Obviously that was her boyfriend at the time, but something had happened that night. The way she crumbled and ran out told him that relationship was over, but he didn’t want to jump the gun. He could see that she was still getting over whatever had happened. They had struck up a quick friendship, but sometimes it seemed like she stopped herself from really letting him in. He knew it had only been a couple of weeks since they officially met, but he felt like he had known her forever and he wanted her to feel the same way.

Unrealistic, I know. She still needs time. Maybe the best he could hope for was that those walls behind her beautiful brown eyes would finally disappear for good. I can only hope. Azuka finally settled on a brown corduroy jacket and he put the others away. As he picked up his wallet and car keys, nerves suddenly gripped him. Tonight was a big night for him. He wanted to take his relationship with Grace to the next level and he hoped she would feel the same way.

He silently congratulated himself for being so patient for two whole weeks! The minute he had finally seen her at Kings Cross, he had wanted to blurt out his feelings. He wanted to tell her that he had been looking for her for months…that he had thought about her in the most devastating period of his life after his father died. Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you…he had wanted to hold her in his arms and kiss her sweet lips until she melted against him. He knew he couldn’t do any of that. Don’t want the girl thinking I’m crazy! The thought of kissing Grace sent heat through his veins and he quickly ran downstairs and out through his front door. As he stepped towards his car, his neighbor called out his name.

“Hi Azuka. Haven’t seen you in a while” she said in her clipped accent.

He didn’t miss her coy smile or the way she quickly perked up when she saw him. “Hi Tamara. Yeah, I’ve been pretty busy trying to catch up with work.”

She patted her long wavy hair. “Well, don’t be a stranger, okay? I’ve missed our little chats.”

Little chats? He pretty much just said hello to her and that hardly qualified as ‘little chats’.

“Yeah, sure Tamara. Take it easy, yeah? I’ll see you later".

She waved at him and turned to walk into her house with an exaggerated sway of her hips, but Azuka didn’t notice. His thoughts were squarely centered on the soft brown eyes of the woman who held his heart.

Onyih Odunze.

Thanks for reading! Please come back on Sunday June 3^rd for Part 2.

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