My Valentine Story: The Runaway Babe by Ayobami Amoo

I gazed at my friend Harry so hard he would have died from it if looks could kill.

There we were on what was supposed to be a blissful Valentine morning, wandering through the melee of people at the ground floor of Murtala Muhammad Domestic Airport looking for my girlfriend Annie.

Yes, it was a Hollywood rom-com nightmare come alive. I had planned a perfect Valentine for Annie and me, so perfect that it was going to be the day I proposed. But that was all before good old Harry used my phone to chat with some girl he met on Tinder, simply because he ran out of data. The chat with the mystery girl was so explicit that even I had to look away.

Naturally, Annie thought I was cheating on her and didn’t even give me a chance to explain. She said some very nasty words and ran off, no doubt intending to hop on the next available flight to Abuja.

So now I was left with this moron friend of mine in search of my runaway bride-to-be.

“Ayo, no vex na. I’m sorry.”

The look I gave him was withering.

“See ehn, e sure me say she no dey vex. Maybe she go chill with her babes dem.”

That was it, I have had enough! I am a talented and a fast-rising actor and a student of a film academy. If I couldn’t get my babe back, which it was starting to look like, by God I would make him pay. I whirled around suddenly and punched him. Harry reared back, aghast.

“How dare you?!” I yelled, lathering on the best angry voice I could muster. “You b-----d!”

We have attracted a decent crowd to us now. Good.

“I invite you into my home, I take you as my best friend and treat you like my brother and you do this to me!”

Harry, stunned at my reaction looks at me pleadingly. “Ayo, I know I f----d up but you’re overreacting.”

“Overreacting! Overreacting! You had an affair with my wife!” A collective gasp of shock came from the crowd. I smiled inwardly. “You impregnated my sister and now, now, I find out that you’ve been sleeping with my mother and blackmailing her too and you say I’m overreacting?!”

A chubby lady in the crowd gasped loudly and walked up to Harry. She slapped him hard across the face -three times – and spits on his shoe.

“You are a very bad man,” she accused him pointing at him.

The look on Harry’s face was priceless. Not nearly as priceless as the angry red welts on his face that weren’t there a couple of seconds ago. I grinned and walked away.

There is a God after all and he loves me. Just then I get a text from Annie. She was heading home so we could talk. Did Harry just get slapped for nothing? Lol!!!