HURDLES OF LIFE chapter 3

Celina knocked on Emeka's door and entered afterwards, she met Emeka on his laptop viewing pictures of half naked girls and naked girls, alarmed "Emeka!"

Emeka jolted up from his seat, "Celina! For fuck sake what are you doing in my room?! Couldn't you knock?" He said trying to hide his phone from her, thinking she had not seen it. "What if I was naked?"

"I knocked before entering"

"Did you wait for my response before you entered?" Emeka asked trying to have an edge.

"You obviously couldn't have heard me knock, cause you were buried in your phone" Celina protested.

"W-what are you talking about?" He asked blinking repeatedly.

"I knocked and entered, you didn't know, I walked up to you, you still didn't know until I shouted your name" Celina said folding her hands in defense.

"Yeah, well, I was busy with something important" He said.

"Can you share?"

"That's my business, mind yours. Why are you here?".

"Sister Ngozi and I are going to dominos with Uncle AJ, are you coming?" Celina asked.

Emeka was excited at the news and imagined the yummy pizza he would have to himself and then be able to spend time with AJ, but then he thought he wouldn't get another opportunity to be alone and explore his porn fantasies in a long time, so he declined saying, "I told you earlier, I'm doing something important, so tell sis to buy me pizza, chicken flavor with coldstone chocolate then...yeah, a packet of juice for Chuks with biscuits and pringles".

"Okayyy" Celina said rolling her eyes.

"Yeah, you'll miss me" Emeka hissed at her, "tell AJ and sis that I love them" he said.

"Alright, bye bye" she said making her way out of his room.

"Bye, by the way, you look nice" he called after her.

"Thank you" she called back with a smile as she was already outside his room.

"What did he say?" Celina asked Ngozi as she met her on her way to her room.

"He's coming" she replied and walked hurriedly to her room.

Celina raised an eyebrow, "that was strange?" Then she shrugged.

Ngozi in her room, paused for a second to reminisce on how things went between her and AJ, she whimpered, "we almost kissed, OMG!" She said with excitement whirling around, then she remembered she was keeping Celina waiting, so she dressed up as soon as possible.

Celina was about to knock on Ngozi's door when the door opened, "let's go" Ngozi said seeing Celina at her door and walked passed her, Celina watched her walk up to the living room.

"You seem strange, what's wrong?" Celina asked.

"What? No, no, I'm fine, I just have a slight headache" she said feigning her voice to make Celina believe her and to get her off her back if not, she wouldn't stop asking until she found out the truth.

"Ah, we can't go again then, you have a headache".

"Don't worry, I promised you this outing, besides AJ is waiting for us".

"Okay, if you say so".

"Yeah, so is Emeka coming?".

"Well..." Celina searched her head for what to say, remembering what she saw on Emeka's phone, even though he said he wasn't going.

"What?" Ngozi interrupted her thought.

"He isn't coming" she said and swallowed hard, cause she hadn't found the right question to ask Ngozi about what she saw.

"Alright".

They were outside their apartment waiting for AJ's car when he honked at them and got out of his car to wait for them to get to him.

"Here we come" Ngozi said as she held Celina's hand to walk down to AJ's car.

"I'm not a child, leave me alone" Celina tried to break free from Ngozi's grip but it only became tighter.

"You are dear" she said with a smile.

"Hey!" AJ said happy to see Celina again "my cute little baby, how are you doing?".

"Hey! My cute big uncle, how are you doing?" She said sarcastically.

AJ raised his eyebrows and Ngozi shook her head.

"Now who got my little princess angry" he said looking at Celina and then glancing at Ngozi when Celina looked at her direction.

"You too" Celina said and Ngozi glanced back at him with a face "I'm not a child! I'm not a child!" She said angrily and entered into the back seat of the car.

"Okayyyy" Ngozi said and got into the the front seat of the car, AJ raised an eyebrow and entered to drive.

                                ***

Chuks was with his Aunt and Uncle, they were discussing life, his Uncle and his wife were sitting close to each other, holding hands like new love birds, then Mr Mbeke decided to tell Chuks the story of how he met his wife while he was sitting across them in the living room

"You see my dear, let me tell you a story about how I met my wife" Mr Mbeke said and Chuks was eager to hear as he focused on him and adjusted his sitting position. Mrs Mbeke smiled and nodded her head, Mr Mbeke wore a huge smile as he was always happy when ever he wanted to share the story "I was on my way to my friend's house on that certain day. I often went to his house on Saturdays, and we did a lot of stuff together, just like the way you and Ebuka do. It's just that people called us brothers cause we looked a bit alike. There was a particular turn on his street just before his house, I turned, then I saw a beautiful lady all by herself, crying, I was scared at first because I thought she was a marmaid, you know? They can be that beautiful" Mrs Mbeke tapped him a little bit hard for comparing her to a marmaid, she was flattered, he laughed at that cause he understood what the tap was for.

"I decided to hasten my steps" he continued "cause I was really scared and my friends house wasn't far anymore from that point, so when I got to his house, I told him about what I saw, he was scared too" everyone began to laugh.

"Really?" Mrs Mbeke wondered.

"Yes o, both of us were scared nah, especially because the night before we had watched an horror movie where that scenerio happened, so tell me why we won't be scared" he said.

"How old were you then?" Chuks asked.

"I was either eighteen or nineteen" he replied.

Chuks smiled "what about your friend?".

"He was my age mate" he replied.

"Was?" Chuks asked surprised.

"Yes, he's late now" he said and his face fell, Mrs Mbeke squeezed his hand "let's continue" he said to forget the memory of his friend's death that had begun reoccurring and took a deep breath.

"We decided to forget about her and talk about something else, we played and talked about school, I stayed with him till night, believing that she would have gone back to where ever she came from" Mr Mbeke yawned then looked at his wrist watch it was time to go for his evening church meeting "I will tell you the rest some other time, I don't want to be late for the meeting" he said and stood up.

"Okay sir".

"Yeah, take care of my wife while I'm away, alright?".

Chuks laughed and Mrs Mbeke blushed.