Kindled Hearts

1 // Photo day

Youthfulness dimmed upon Kiki and she felt its vitality flicker. 

She wasn't old, just a few years away from thirty but being a single woman at the age of twenty-five meant otherwise. She remembered how guka would always tell her, "Ujana ni moshi. Get yourself a husband and raise your children in a beautiful environment. Do this when you still possess life's oppletion."

Those days, she didn't quite regard his words with the importance they deserved. She was still a young girl, barely in her blossom. The words of a wizened man could only be of a nought value to such a young mind.

Slivers of light seeped through the window and warmed Kiki's skin, cutting onto her musings. She roamed the screen of her laptop with her gaze, her thumb finger grazing the rim of a coffee mug. Kiki never thought that one day, she would seek the help of a dating site. She always thought of it as a myopic approach to finding love.

The door to the apartment suddenly flung open and Kiki almost jerked in her seat. She threw a glance at Nicole, her roommate and best friend. Pinched brows, miffed countenance. An everyday look that Nicole had come to perfect, at times gracing it up with a veneer smile. But today her eyes, dipped in an excess of brown, didn't quite shimmer like they normally did even when in a sunny disposition.

Kiki swallowed, finally asking, "Did you get the job?"

"Did my face get plastered in the daily gossip journal, arm in arm with Idris Elba, married and a protruding bump ripping through my designer dress?" Nicole quipped.

Kiki always revered delight at Nicole's choice of words. Never failed to needle a mirthy expression out of her. Except this time round delight was far from it. Disappointment rather. "So you didn't get the job?"

"Yeah," Nicole answered, scurrying to the kitchen area of their single-room, rented apartment. "I draw too much attention, the wrong kind of attention. Bad for the role."

"Damn them, you are a gem and it's their loss, not yours," said Kiki. She caught a glimpse of Nicole's outfit and suppressed her risibles. "Pretty brazen pair of clothing you have there. They probably meant your choice of wear." Tawdry teal lace top, a red pencil skirt with a tall slit that peered some of her butt cheeks. A colourful combination, a bit itchy on the eyes too. Not to mention the cringy display of skin.

"What's wrong with my outfit?" Nicole asked defensively. She didn't quite eye its obscenity. After all, it was the twenty-first century not some ancient times where people would be snugged in nose-twisting tiers of clothes.

"Don't you think it's inappropriate for an interview?"

"You are starting to sound just like those two-faced haggard women that couldn't stop pokng holes at my outfit. How old are you again? Right, I forgot. A couple of years away from reality," Nicole grunted and slid the fridge open. That outfit was her armour, her direct ticket to getting the editorial job at Nation Media, at least she thought so. She intentionally draped it on her body but the panel to her shock were all women, wrinkled stark faces. Talk about being disarmed. A fight between females. Not a great match especially when one has to don her frustrations in a fitful spectacle of smiles amid preconceived judgement.

She grasped a cold soft drink from the fridge and turned about, only to find a laughing Kiki. "Oh shut up," she groaned.

"How I wish I was there to witness your disappointment when you realized there was no man to cajole with your flirtation." Kiki snorted through laughs. "Did you still do that thing with your hands, where you pretend to slap off a fly from your chest and end up showing your cleavage?"

Nicole pulled out a stool across from Kiki, from underneath the table and lowered herself onto it, "Of course, I had to, it was my last gasp to getting that job, but I had it all miscalculated, my pinky fingernail got stuck between the fabrics of my top, and trust you me, it wasn't just a cleavage that I ended up showing," Nicole guffawed taking a large swig of the drink. If it were a game of chess, she probably wouldn't make it past fool's mate. Such a shame. But Nicole wasn't a dud, just warped in her web of wrong decisions or so her father said in the safety of his room, heedless to the ears mounted on the wall. She heard it all, always did. At least she knew well of his hate.