Chapter 1- Recall

Deila's POV

Beep. Beep.

The shrill sound of my alarm jolted me awake, I grumbled in my sleepy state.

Who in the hell would send a message at this time of the day darn it!?

I sighed, arching my brows with my eyes still closed when I realized I didn't have the slightest idea of what time of the day it was.

How would I? When I was just awoken from the sweetest and most beautiful sleep I've had in a very long time. Okay...so much for personalizing asleep.

Yawning as I stretched to reach the side of my not so big bed for my phone, my grip tightened on it harder than I'd intended. But I couldn't blame myself, I was still vexed that my sweet sleep had been interrupted with.

Double tapping on the screen of my phone, I winced from the light it sourced as it came on. Damn eye burns.

My eyes roamed on the screen, inquiring from it what time of the day it was. And then I stopped...

I be doomed! 10 fucking am!

How could I've slept for so long as a dog? That was so unlike me as I was an early riser and although it was Sunday, the nature of my job required me up and jumping from bed before dawn and this, fortunately, has had me addicted to it. So much so that anytime I slept past 6 am, I'd wake up with a headache, banging the hell out of me. Which made me continue to wonder why I slept till 10 am!

Blast! Blast!

And a blur of last night's events hit me like a sting as it replayed in my head.

"Hello?" I inquired once I answered the phone and that without bothering to look at the screen to see who the caller was.

"Hey, girl!" The caller chirped.

I smiled immediately recognizing the voice of one of my best friends, Lari.

"Yo! What's up B?' I answered cheerfully.

"Yeah. So I'm getting dressed for the club right now. Need you to help me pick a dress."

"Not now, I'm busy." I honestly told her as I was busy trying to meet the deadline for the writing challenge the company I worked for was organizing.

"Please," she whined. I could imagine her pouting as she did this.

"Okay, okay," I agreed, but She was already requesting a video call, so I received it m.

She was standing away from the camera, her white skin tanned and perfectly suiting with her strawberry blond hair. She picked up two dresses, holding them in front of her.

"This?" She held out a red-colored dress with a v-neck cut, dangly shiny ropes at the side —that I'd no doubts will jiggle when she walked and had a long-sleeved hand that would obviously fall off the shoulders. It was beautiful.

"Or this?" She held out the other dress. It was black and had sprinkles of silver on it, like stardust. It had tiny straps as the hand and was cut open to the belly. Looking at the dress, I could tell it would stop just almost halfway up her thighs. The dress was exquisite and was simply so Lari– crazy.

I pointed to the black one.

"Oh, this? Yes!" She squealed. "Phew, thank God you went with that, I woulda worn it anyways, forget that Eva picked it also."

I giggled at that. I was going to hang up when she faced me.

"Wanna come along?" She asked grinning sheepishly.

"Errrr" I made a sound like I was thinking but I already knew what my answer would be no, then continued. "You know I'm not really the party type, so no girl. I'll pass on that."

"And you know I wasn't really asking, right? Get your butt off that bed and get that sexy body of yours ready for clubbing."

"Lari? I'm not the clubbing type right, you know this. And be-"

"Yen yen yen," she sang, cutting me off in an obviously sarcastic tone. "I'm coming to get you anyways!" she yelled from the other side of the line then she hung up before I could continue my protest.

I decided I could use a break since I'd been buried in my writing for two straight days, not that I'd win against an impulsive Lari.

By 10 pm we were already pulling out of the cab and into the club. Lari had her not less than four inches heels on and was hovering over me.

I didn't even remember if Lari paid the cab, 'cause I wasn't able to. I remembered coming out of the cab and immediately indulged in warding off an admirer.

The last I remembered was taking a mini- glass of tequila.

Blast me!

I knew very well that even if it was a little quantity it still hits me. I wasn't the alcohol type and I still went for it.

Although most thought it weird anytime I voiced it. Like Lari would say 'what girl doesn't get drunk right in this century we are in?'

And Eva would always say in my defense, 'That's her, Delia Barbson, not that typical girl you come across every day.' Then all three of us would laugh heartily when I'd Tommy my eyes at how they spoke about me like I wasn't there.

The girls made LA bearable for me the first two months after I met them, and in the fifth month, they made it fun as hell. My nostalgia vanished although not completely, but I sure did surprise myself. I always feared I wouldn't be able to breathe away from home, but I did. I was.

Lari did score one on me today, got me to the club, got me drunk and I was bearing the consequences which I knew I was fully responsible for. I wondered how I'd even gotten home.

I proceeded to call her out of curiosity, but her phone went straight to voicemail. She's probably still snoring, I thought to myself.

I winced, making a sound at the back of my throat in annoyance of the intrusion of light that came with opening the curtains.

I tried to recall yesterday, calmly this time. I tried really hard that it caused a throb in my head, I decided it was impossible to recall vividly all that happened the night before. Even Lari which was no doubt still wasted, wouldn't.

Dropping the act of recalling, I picked up my phone again from the center of the bed—I'd tossed it there— and went through my calls. I frowned when I saw ten missed calls from my sister, Mari, and six more from other acquaintances. On a normal day, if I'd been holding that phone in my hands every hour that passed, I bet I wouldn't have gotten that number of calls. The irony was I never cared, but this was alarming.

I decided to go through my unread messages, not taking to heart any of the calls I missed, except for my sister's.

I stopped frozen, staring at my mum's message:

Hurry up, get the next plane ticket to Atlanta.

"Atlanta!?" I exclaimed to myself angrily.

Atlanta was bad news for me even though it was my home. What's happening at home that requires my presence?

Atlanta wasn't a place I'd love to go. No. Not when I was finally comfortable here in Los Angeles. Although I was born and brought up in Atlanta, it was practically my home as I'd never been to Africa where my blood runs through. My dad was a Nigerian and my mum an American, which automatically made me an African-American.

I called Mari to inquire from her what was going on, and also to know if the course of her call had to do with mum's message too.

"Hello, Dei." Her voice was groggy through the receiver.

"Sorry if I woke you up but I saw your calls and thought you were already awake."

"Yeah, I was." She yawned. "I went back to sleep, it's so cold here, and yes I called you a hundred times."

"Oh please, don't even do that," I told her with a smile as I rolled my eyes.

"You got mum's message, right?"

I puffed. "Yes, I did." It was a tired cry and that was how I was feeling, tired. "I want to know if you called for the same reason."

"Yeah. You need to come home, your sis is getting married!" She squealed and I didn't have to ask which of my sisters she was referring to.

But why so soon? All of a sudden she was getting married? I knew she'd been dating this guy, Jacob for some months now, I just didn't think she'd tie the knot so soon, but I wasn't really shocked. Maybe she's been put in a family way, I half concluded with a sigh.

I sighed, tapping my feet to the floor begrudgingly. "And I was just told, have you been put in a family way?"

"You couldn't just stop yourself from asking, I know," She said chortling. "No. Just come back here, it's in three weeks."

Of course, I'd have to go. I couldn't miss something as big as my sister's wedding, the thought didn't even settle when in my mind. What I really didn't get was the rush.

Why so sudden? Three weeks' time?

"Okay, but why do I've to come right away when it's still weeks away?"

"So many reasons. All relating to the wedding."

I rolled my eyes, I didn't believe the reasons had to do with the wedding. My mum had been looking for ways to get me back home and this was the perfect opportunity for her.

Whatever it was, I wasn't going to miss Mari's wedding.

An hour after I ended the call with Mari, I'd taken it all in. The next thing I needed to do was to call my boss, and I did. I asked for three weeks' permission, which he gave wholeheartedly. Mr.Kelvin was a kind man, but no one dared to let his kindness deceived them to think they could step on him.

He was kind, granted, but he was also strict when it called for been— a junior employee asking for a three weeks permission for a relative's wedding was one situation that called for his strict side. But I didn't get it, much to my delightful surprise, the reason why I was overwhelmed by his quick and positive response.

I picked up my laptop to book a flight, thinking:

I might as well go today and make my break start counting.

But deep down I still missed home.

I successfully booked my flight ticket to Atlanta, then went ahead to inform my only and best friends about my departure. I rang Lari first, she answered this time. She didn't want to miss the wedding for anything in the world neither did Eva. Lari had voiced how she'd love to go with me today, but her boss was as strict as they come, so she would be coming some days to the D-day.

And Eva was going to come some days to the wedding as well, due to the nature of her job and her sick grandma placed under her care.

I suggested that they might as well come together and they chimed in agreement.

My friends were really the best, they jumped at the opportunity to attend my sister's wedding and even asked if they could go when I didn't hint that because I didn't want to bother them. And they'd been ecstatic with the news like they were long lost friends with Mari when they'd only ever seen her via Instagram video call.

To me, this was what friendship was all about... friends taking your family to be theirs. Friendship was a lot of things to me, but the most needed ingredient was trust, as my mum would always say. That was the reason I've had very few friends al my life, I had trust issues. It was really hard for me to give the title 'friend' my to just anybody. With me, you'd have to earn it and Eva and Lari had earned it on countless occasions as I believed I'd with them too.

Massaging my forehead with my thumb and index finger, I silently screamed, my head was pounding really hard.

What in the world happened last night?

It felt like my head was going to explode.

The ache was worse than a headache, and of course, I had asked Lari about it when we spoke on the phone and all she said was 'you just had fun'.

I followed my pessimistic mind, going into my medium-sized bathroom to check myself.

Relive washed through me that I still had my virginity. I'd thought the worse filling my head what happened in movies and books:

A virgin girl gets drunk, the next morning her body's weakly sore and a man's snoring beside her. Then she starts weeping as she realizes she'd just lost her virginity in a one night stand she didn't even consent to.

I sighed heavily at my thoughts.

Being my own savior, I grabbed a bottle of aspirin, propping out two pills, then I gulped them down with a glass of sprinkled water.

When my head still throbbed minutes later, I decided last night was the last my taste bud was ever going to encounter any form of alcohol.