"Hey, why the long face?" Kelechi asked as Ronke came into the room, looking gloomy. Jazz continued typing away on her phone.

Ronke sighed and fell face first on her bed. "It's Divine," came her muffled reply.

Kelechi instantly went over to Ronke's bed and scrutinized her. "What did he do?" she asked suspiciously.

"Nothing, it's just that, he's been acting strangely lately. I don't understand."

"Why don't you talk to him, maybe he's upset about something and doesn't know how to say it. You can't keep overthinking if you don't understand what is wrong with him so it's best you just talked to him," Jazz suggested.

"You're right, something must be bothering him. I'll talk to him tomorrow," Ronke said, her mood brightening.

"That's it," Jazz encouraged.

Kelechi smirked at Jazz. "You've gotten quite sensible over the years, young Jazz. For a moment, I thought you were going to tell her to break his head and then break up with him."

"I know right, it's like she's now a relationship expert, she knows how these things work more than we do." Ronke's tone was mischievously teasing.

Jazz scoffed amusedly. "What are you talking about? All I did was tell you to talk to the guy."

"Well, if you weren't here, Kel would've definitely told me to dump him because he isn't right for me bla bla bla, but you, my dear Jazz, advised me otherwise."

"Okay? You're welcome, I guess."

"So, how did you get so experienced with relationships? Mmm, I'm guessing it's because you've spent so much time with a particular male friend of yours." Ronke raised her brows continuously at Jazz.

Jazz groaned. "I knew it was gonna come to this," she said.

"How could it not? Now, when are the two of you going to make your relationship official?" Ronke asked.

"What?"

"Oh please, are you going to keep denying the feelings you have for the boy?"

Jazz found it difficult to say yes.

"Can you just admit that you really like him and stop hiding behind the fact that you're doing this to spite Ella, you're not fooling anybody," Kelechi finally spoke.

"I never wanted to," Jazz replied stiffly.

"Then admit it, admit that you have feelings for him."

Jazz shook her head in protest.

"Admit. It. Admit. It," Kelechi and Ronke began to chant and Jazz rolled her eyes at their silly antics.

Jazz hesitated for a while before saying, "Fine! I like him."

"What?" Kelechi and Ronke chorused, wanting to be sure they heard right.

"I like him. There, I said it," Jazz confessed and looked away from them, not wanting them to see her blush miserably.

'Ugh, why am I blushing? I'm not usually so mushy,' she thought and groaned mentally.

Next thing she knew, Kelechi and Ronke held on to both of her hands, their heads resting on either of her shoulders. The scent of their hair filled her nose and the familiarity of it made her furrow her brows. Had they been using her shampoo? Before she could ask them anything, they chorused a low pitched "awww" and carried their heads up to face her.

"So you do like him! I knew it!" Kelechi exclaimed.

"That means you've been putting up an act of pretending to like him when you actually did like him," Ronke pointed out, raising a teasing brow at Jazz.

"At first, I didn't like him. He was cute and all but he was always trying to get close to me and I found it rather annoying. But after actually getting close to him, I realized he was not that bad after all. I tried not to fall for him, I really did, but he has a lot of good qualities which are pretty hard to ignore and he cares so much for me it's so sweet. I guess I couldn't stop myself," Jazz explained bashfully.

"Mmm, of course you couldn't."

"So, when did you realize that you had developed feelings for him?" Kelechi asked.

"I don't know?" Jazz shrugged.

"Well at least you finally admitted to your feelings for the boy. You always denied it whenever we asked if you liked him but we knew better," Kelechi said with a smirk.

"How long did you plan on hiding this from us? If we hadn't insisted, you wouldn't have told us that you like Mitchel, you would've kept on saying that you're only pretending to make Ella jealous and angry. You're always very vocal about how you feel, so why did you keep this from us? Were you feeling shy?" Ronke asked but before Jazz could answer, the sound of a pen dropping on the tiled floor interjected and they turned swiftly to the direction of the noise only to be faced with a bewildered Ella standing by the ajar door.

They scowled at her and she scowled back at them.

"What on earth are you doing here?" Ronke snapped.

"Don't think I came here to play with you people. Matron sent me here to call Jazz because her parents wanted to speak with her," Ella replied, fixing her angry gaze on Jazz.

"Now that you have dutifully relayed your message, you may exit our room, thank you," Ronke said and gestured her hand towards the door for Ella to leave.

"Hold on, how long have you been standing there?" Jazz asked, eyeing Ella suspiciously.

"Long enough to find out that you've been playing Mitchel all this time and taking his love for granted," Ella replied, teeth gritting in anger.

"You were eavesdropping on us!"

"You should've closed your door if you didn't want anyone to listen in on your conversation! How could you do this to poor Mitchel, how could you deceive him like this all because you wanted to prove a point to me? I honestly thought you liked him, guess I was wrong. You don't even deserve his love."

"You don't decide what I deserve and what I don't. Just get out," Jazz said. She was surprisingly calm.

"I will! But I will also make sure that Mitchel finds out about your little game and trust me when I say that he wouldn't even want to breathe in the same space as you because you reek of lies and deceit," Ella spat and left the room, banging the door after her.

"The bitch! Having the audacity to come to our room and say rubbish!" Ronke fumed. "Jazz, don't listen to what she said, she's just being her usual annoying and meddling self."

"But she was right. Mitchel really liked me and all I did was play with his emotions for some silly feud I had with her. I didn't even once consider how he would feel in the end, I was only concerned about myself. I'm such a selfish, horrible person!" Jazz cried out.

"No you're not Jazz. Sure, what you did was very wrong but it doesn't make you a horrible person. If you were horrible then you wouldn't be regretting what you did." Kelechi tried to comfort her.

"No, you don't get it! When he finds out, he's gonna hate me and I won't be able to bear it." Jazz didn't understand why it hurt her so much that Mitchel was going to hate her and probably not want to have anything to do with her anymore.

"Mitchel will never be able to hate you, trust me. I've known him longer than you have and I can tell you that Mitchel can never hate anybody for such a mere reason. The least he can do is stop talking to you, well, until he gets tired of being away from you," Kelechi told her.

"Thanks for getting my hopes up but I think it's better I just face reality. I don't think I have the heart to tell him this so I'll let Ella tell him and when he confronts me about it, I'll just come clean and tell him everything, including how I feel about him, there's no point hiding it anymore. And if he still wants to be with me, then I'd be really happy, but if he doesn't, then it's fine, I guess."

"I'm sure he'll still want to be with you, he really likes you a lot," Ronke chimed in.

"I hope so," Jazz sighed and smiled faintly at Kelechi and Ronke who were smiling comfortingly at her. "I think I need to go speak to my parents now, don't want them worrying for no reason." Jazz slowly left the room as her roommates stared after her.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Yass! Another chapter down! Phew!

I wanna thank you all for reading, voting and commenting. Your efforts towards my book doesn't go unappreciated. Love y'alls 😘

Anyway, how do you think Mitchel is going to react when Ella tells him the truth about Jazz? It may not be what you think 😉

Do stay tuned my lovelies and have a great week 🥰

Lots of love,
Kemas ❤️