Chapter 1 The Past Isn't Mine
Back in secondary school, he wasn't mine. He was hers.
And honestly, I didn't even know him then. Not really. He was just another name in the long list of people my friend dated. She had a way of moving on quickly, and I had a way of staying out of it. When she was done with someone, she'd rant to me, maybe laugh it off, maybe curse him out. Then she'd ask for my opinion. And I, with my sharp mouth, would say something like, "Abeg, when you were busy, did you ask me?"
That was me. I wasn't the girl chasing after her boyfriends, and I wasn't the girl trying to replace them when she was finished. I just minded my own business — movies, games, naps. If a storm was brewing, I usually slept right through it.
So back then, he was only a story. A name she threw around. Someone she dated, someone she loved, someone who apparently always came back no matter what she did to him. That was their history, not mine.
What I didn't know — what I couldn't have known — was that even then, somewhere in that mix, he noticed me. Not enough to leave her, not enough to chase me. But enough that later, when our paths finally crossed for real, he would admit it. "I liked you back then," he told me once. "Not enough to stop loving her. But you stood out."
At the time, I brushed it off. It didn't matter. Because in my mind, I had one rule: don't go near your friend's past.
And I lived by it. Until the day she took me straight to his house.
