ᵗʰⁱˢ ᶜʰᵃᵖᵗᵉʳ ⁱˢ ᵈᵉᵈⁱᶜᵃᵗᵉᵈ ᵗᵒ dammmmmmmy ʰᵉʳᵉ'ˢ ᶜʰⁱⁿⁿʸ ˢʷᵉᵉᵗⁱᵉ.
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KNUTZ AND KREAM, a typical happy place, complete with happy smells, happy sounds and happy people. Like me two days ago. Even that day, I was extremely happy until I eavesdropped and heard it. Afterwards, I took a cab home. 

I was broken, utterly broken, so completely shattered that Obinna's taunts were useless. Obinna my older brother seems to always picture me as a horse at an amusement park, and so nothing is more Obinna than neighing whenever I walk pass him and nothing is more me than snorting in response to him being a pig. 

But that evening, in my silver dress, suddenly back home after the week spent at Boma's house, crying as I walked through the sitting room, and the stairs, it was obvious that I wasn't okay so my mom came up to my room for a talk. 

She was silent for more than fifteen minutes after I told her what I heard, after which she pulled me into a hug and I heard her voice break. To clear things up, my mom is traditionally staunch, things don't break her heart. But this one did.

I wasn't so much as angry at Boma as I was panicked and heartbroken. The anger was only a vehicle, a trojan horse to mask my fear and propel my denial. I mean it isn't everyday you hear that your best friend will be kissing the world, and you, goodbye forever. So I can't say I was prepared. I wasn't. 

When Ivan called yesterday, to plan today's meeting, I stayed up all night thinking of what I could possibly say to piece her heart together, because I know Boma, maybe even more than she knows herself and I know that she genuinely couldn't stand to see me hurt through the process of losing her before she left, and that was why she decided not to tell me, and that stuff I said about protecting herself, it's true but not in a malicious way. I mean try living all your life as a series of tragic events, at some point, you're bound to develop coping strategies. 

I stop thinking and look around the restaurant, then at my wristwatch, 1:55pm. He said they'd get here by 2pm. I look up from my wristwatch and at the pink pastel counter. A man, possibly the manager is watching me. He probably thinks I'm here to use their free wifi without buying anything. I smile faintly at him, I'm sure he can't decode, my smile means, I'm a little cheap but not that cheap.

I get up with my bag and walk to the counter. They have a rainbow of bold and soft colours of ice-cream flavours in their showcase. Some of the tags sound mysterious but that's part of why their ice-cream is so good. They almost always have new flavours. I look away so I can curtail my salivating. 

"Hi," says the counter girl wearing a soft pastel blue button up shirt and a shower cap. "What will you like?" she asks.

"A medium sized. . . sorry, make that the small size of caramel popcorn and the small bottle of coke." Sugar on sugar. I shake my head invisibly. 

"Okay." She says, moving briskly to the popcorn machine. I watch her scoop the popcorn. She's a bit too meticulous, like she wants to make sure that I don't have a seed of popcorn more than the small size permits. Then she walks to the freezer to grab the coke.

"That's my bill isn't it?" Ivan says from behind me. I turn around. He smiles and I give him a soft hug. 

Where is she? I wonder, looking around.

"Don't think too much," Ivan says, points at the unoccupied area close to the huge window overlooking the parking lot. I see her, she's relaxed and fiddling with her phone.

What if she doesn't want to see me?

"She doesn't know you're here," Ivan says, smiling. I smile a faint one back. 

"Is she mad at me?" I ask.

He hands his debit card over to the counter girl, then joins me. Both of us watching Boma.

"She's not herself, and as I said yesterday, she's more hurt that you found out in that way, than angry about how you reacted."

"Is that all?" The counter girl asks with a different voice, more pitchy than when she talked to me. I turn around to look at her. She has her breasts stuck out so high that they border on her chin while her eyes survey Ivan who's still busy looking at Boma. 

"Excuse you?" I pull her face back to mine. "I'm the one you're attending to, put your puppies in their cage and your eyes on my face." 

Ivan turns around. She scoffs, ignoring me. "I thought since you were the one paying that—"

The manager walks over, monitoring the situation. "Brenda, is there a problem here?"

"No, sir," she says.

"Sorry about the hassle," The manager says before walking away.

"Your order?" Counter girl asks Ivan.

"Anything she says, goes." Ivan stares the girl in her face before smiling at me.

"Ice-cream," I say. "Boma and I would eat from the same cup." I tell Ivan.

"I'd get one for myself too. Place your order then."

I turn back to the girl. "Your largest cup. A scoop of Peanut Butter Mystery," I look through the labels pinned on the ice-cream panels. "Coconut Aloha. . . Uhmm. . .Chocolate Gaiety and Vanity Vanilla." I walk to the end of the showcase "Toppings, biscotti, cashew nuts, white chocolate chips then you can do the chocolate syrup drizzle. "

"Banana Mama for me." Ivan says to the girl.

"That's a weird name." I say. He laughs, nodding.

Counter girl hands the cups over and I walk with Ivan, holding my breath. 

Please don't cry, please don't cry.
Don't you dare cry. Just breathe.
One, two, three. 

"Buns?" I call. She looks up. Her eyes fly to me, then to Ivan, and back to me. I see them become glossy with tears. "Hug?" I ask, fighting back at mine.

Just breathe Chinny. 

She stands and pulls me into a hug, Boma's kind of hug, it melts away everything and I fail myself.

"Shh. Shh. Shh. Chinny," she says, rubbing my head on her shoulder. "Come on, don't cry, you know that whenever you do, it becomes more of a drama than you planned."

"I'm sorry." I sob, "so sorry. Forgive how I reacted. I understand better now."

She cuts the hug to wipe my face. My nose is leaking too. She laughs. "I'm sorry but I can't wipe your snort. Tears are where it ends." I laugh too, unable not to. Ivan hands me a paper towel from the table.

We sit together, with my head on her shoulder. "What did you order?" She asks, holding the cup, "it's huge."

"Peanut Butter Mystery, Coconut Aloha, Chocolate Gaiety and Vanity Vanilla. " I say, unable to stop crying.

Boma sighs. "Chinny, stop," she says. "You cannot be crying when ice-cream is in front of you. You cannot. That's rudeness at it's best so stop with the tears." She dabs the tears off my face with another paper towel. 

"Are you okay?" I ask her.

"You have no idea how okay I am seeing you. Plus, my limes seem to have grown a bit." She smiles. But I know she said that so I can laugh.

I look at the limes through her sweater, she sees me looking and she laughs, I laugh too. We turn to Ivan. Banana Mama seems to be really good. We laugh again when he doesn't understand why we're watching him.

"I love you so much Buns, I am sorry I got angry, I should have understood better."

"It was my fault, I should have told you anyway, I was just scared, let's put that behind us," she says. "Errm, guess what?" she asks, smiling sunnily.

"Give me a hint."

"You won't believe it. Like I promise, you didn't see this one coming." She looks at Ivan, he contorts his brows and shrugs.

I look back and forth between them. "Ivan proposed?"

Ivan laughs. "In-law like me."

Boma shows me her hand. "Do you see any ring there?" The plaster mark of freshly removed cannula reminds me that she doesn't have forever to be here, not like I pray for at every cross-over night service. Not like I wrote it in my prayer point last December, that she'll conquer her disease and live a long life with me. I wonder what happened to that prayer.

I shrug scooping the Coconut Aloha into my mouth. It's divine. I take another.

"Ivan, tell her," she says.

"I think you should tell her yourself, " he says.

"What's going on guys?" I ask. They start laughing. "Am I expecting a God-daughter?" They laugh harder.

"We're travelling." Boma says.

"Travelling? Both of you? Alone?"

She nods, scooping some ice-cream into her mouth. "Where to?" I ask.

"Kenya first, then Tanzania, Italy, Greece and India."

"You're sunset chasing?" 

She nods. "Ivan planned it all."

"Of course he did, that's so Ivan. Husband material." I say. Boma laughs, he smiles, shaking his head.

"Have you packed?" I ask. 

"No, it was from the wedding to the hospital, I just got discharged. " she says.

"I could go home with you then, we'll pack together. When will you be leaving?"

"Tomorrow morning. We'll get to Nairobi first before flying to The Mara Safari for three days then we'll be off to Zanzibar." Ivan says.

Boma's eyes light up, the blue almost luminescent. She flicks her spoon at Ivan. Some chocolate land on his yellow polo. "You didn't tell me we were visiting the Safari, and three days?"

"There's still a lot about the trip that you don't know. We'll take it one city at a time." His eyes smile while her cheeks flush. They're adorable but Ivan's are hard to find.

"When will you be back?" I ask.

"After India." Boma says.

"Buns," I say. "Promise me you'll do wild things in my honour."

"I promise." She chuckles with her hand across her heart. "When are you packing up for school?" 

"Next month."

"We might be back before then. If not, video call me all the way." Boma says.

She hugs me tight, while I breathe in her perfume, hopefully to last me forever.