Paper Hearts | ✓

✍ Chapter Eighteen✍

✏Make sure you've read chapter seventeen cupcakes 👣
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Eighteen | The message

I am dying of thirst by the side of the fountain- Charles D'orleans

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"Sorry I'm not interested, don't get me wrong you're a great guy but I'm not really up for anything right now." Kemi smiled and placed her hands gently on Malik's. He smiled at her and held her hand tightly. She quickly scanned the crowded hall to see whether anyone was watching them.

Kemi smiled at the handsome man in front of her, he had really great features but she wasn't interested. Malik had been watching her since she had started working in the company-so he had said-but Kemi thought him as one of those people she had never really seen in the office before. He had summoned up courage to talk to her at the end of the year party and was dejected when she turned him down.

Malik smiled and looked at her in admiration. "Thank you for not leading me on or playing with my feelings." Ignoring Kemi's surprised look, he continued, "You're a great lady and I think any man would be lucky to have you."

"What?!" Kemi asked surprised but then she composed herself and smiled. "Thank you for the compliment." She had not really expected him to take it well but then, he might be an honourable man.

She watched as he left and turned back to her friend that had been talking selfies and scrolling through her Instagram account for some minutes now.

"I wonder where Nifemi is?" Kemi thought aloud shouting over the loud music in the hall. They were sitting on a table as far as possible from the half drunk people swaying their bodies to the beat of the music blasting from the speakers.

"Uh?"

Kemi frowned and repeated herself. Ada shrugged and kept playing with her phone and looking at a particular spot in the hall. Kemi followed her gaze and smiled when she saw Luke standing at a corner in a heated discussion with someone. She nudged Ada playfully and wiggled her eyebrows mischievously.

"I always knew you had something for the guy. Tell me did you invite him um?"

"No you ninny," Ada snapped. "Daddy did, apparently he seems to think that we are an 'item'. He kept on gushing about him during his birthday party and he even made me follow Luke to his car." Ada paused and looked at her sadly, "that's when we found you."

Kemi pushed away the memory to the back of her mind. "So do you like him?" she probed.

"No! I don't."

"You do. Why are you sitting down here anyways?" Kemi asked Ada before taking a sip out of the glass she was holding. The Ada she knew would have been gallivanting round the hall talking to random rich men and making friends, but here she was sitting and sulking while staring at the handsome doctor. And she says she doesn't like him, Kemi thought to herself.

Ada, obviously grateful for the change in topic didn't bother to hide the relief on her face. "I'm not in the mood."

Kemi scoffed and turned away when Mike a guy from Ada's department came to talk to her friend. Ada made a derisive comment about the man's tux and Kemi chuckled when he turned bright red. She looked away just in time to see Nnamdi staring at her from across the hall. Kemi wondered what he thought about her, he had called her naive and she wondered if he really meant it -if he had really meant any of those hurtful things he had spat at her face that day. Nnamdi looked away from her and smiled stiffly at Linda who was sitting by his side obviously boring him to death. Kemi turned away and tightened her lips into a grim line, she would hate him eventually if he continued behaving like a child.