MADE FOR YOU.

A LOVE STORY(2).

A green light means absolutely nothing if the driver is looking at the dashboard.

Chinasa, had handed Victory the keys to her heart, and he had looked at them, chuckled, and asked if it was a bottle opener. There is only so much terrible driving a genius can witness before she decides to step out of the vehicle.

So, she quietly drew back from Victory.

She stopped responding to his texts. The library dates ceased.

Her: "I'm busy with departmental association stuff" excuses became a regular chant, and her presence in his life began to evaporate, leaving behind a quiet ache that Victory didn't know how to fill.

And for the first two weeks, Victory really thought she was just really busy with schoolwork.

Fate, I know you’re a dramatist, but you really picked a slow learner for your lead role.

By week three, however, the denial began to wear off. He began to miss her. He began to miss the way she traced his jawline when she thought he wasn't looking. He missed the teasing register in her voice that always made him smile. He missed the way she twirled her black pilot pen between her fingers with casual ease.

Every time the heavy glass door of the library swung open, his head snapped up automatically, his heart doing a stupid, hopeful flip, only to sink when it was just another freshman looking for a past question. He began to loathe the plastic chair next to him for how stubbornly empty it remained.

He tried to bridge the gap, but the tables had turned.

One Tuesday evening, after staring at a blank page in the library for thirty minutes, he finally typed out a text:

“Hey Chinasa. I was solving a matrix question. Thought of you. You free for the library tomorrow?”

He stared at his phone for a long while. The double blue ticks appeared, but the typing bubble never did. She had read it. She just didn't care to reply.

The next evening, unable to take the quiet anymore, he dialed her number. The phone rang twice before it was picked up.

"Hello? Chinasa?" he said quickly, the words rushing out, carrying a rare, raw edge of anxiety he couldn't hide.

"Hey, Victory," her voice came through, but it was different. It lacked that warm, slow cadence. It was polite, clipped, and distant.

"Look, I'm actually right in the middle of something, and I can't speak now. I'll... talk to you later, okay?"

Before he could even say "goodnight," the line went dead.

The next afternoon, the knife twisted.

He was walking past the university cafeteria when he saw her leaning against a concrete pillar, laughing.

And she was directing that laughter at a tall, light-skinned guy from Economics who was leaning a bit too close, his hand resting casually on the wall just above her shoulder.

A sudden, sharp heat flared up from Victory’s chest; a visceral, suffocating wave of jealousy.

He genuinely wanted to walk over, tap the guy on the shoulder, and knock him in the head.

What joke was he even cracking? I'm sure what he's saying is not even funny, he mumured angrily to himself.

But he couldn't move. He just watched, and in that agonizing moment, it finally clicked. He liked Chinasa. And she had meant every single word she said in the library that day.

Oh, so now you see the green light, Victory? Took you so long, silly boy.

Victory spent the next two days drafting a meticulous plan: "operation win her back. He drew out a plan on how he was going to slide back into her life and win her over.

But Fate, as established, is a dramatist. She doesn't like a boring, predictable love script, and she certainly wasn't going to let him off that easily.

Just as Victory gathered the courage to intercept her after a Friday lecture, practicing his mini-apology and lines in his head—Chinasa’s father was sealing a deal across the Atlantic.

He had never truly accepted her low JAMB score. To him, his prodigy daughter deserved to study the course of her dreams, not a compromised choice.

For months, he had been quietly sending out her applications to universities abroad.

The acceptance letter from Johns Hopkins University had finally arrived, and it demanded her immediate presence. It was a fully funded transfer into their pre-med track, but she had to resume immediately, mid-semester.

Fate aren’t you cruel? Just when the boy finally figures out how to read the green light, you changed the script.

The goodbye happened so fast it felt like a dream.

There were no long, romantic walks by the Bowen Senate building, no dramatic rainfall, and no grand confessions.

There was only a rushed, five-minute meeting behind the chapel while her heavy bags were already being packed into the trunk of her father’s idling Honda.

"I have to go, Victory," she told him. Her eyes carried a strange, heavy weight, searching his face one last time to see if anything—absolutely anything—had changed.

"I know," he said. His throat was incredibly tight, his grand speech dying on his tongue. He looked at the car, then back at her. The reality of it was hitting him like a physical blow to the chest. He was losing her before he even had her. "Go conquer the world, Doc.”

She gave him a look that lingered a second too long.

Victory didn't think; he just reached out. He pulled her into a hug that lasted a beat too long, then two beats, then three. He buried his face in her hair, smelling the faint scent of her coconut oil, feeling the small, steady rise and fall of her chest against his.

In that quiet corner behind the chapel, the weight of everything unsaid pressed down on them.

A single, hot tear broke free from Chinasa’s eye, dampening his shirt, matching the silent ache breaking inside his own heart. It was the feeling of a lifetime ending before it could even begin.

"Alright, that's enough hugging. We have a flight to catch," her father’s booming voice cut through the air from behind them.

The tension snapped. Chinasa let out a wet, watery chuckle against Victory's shoulder, and Victory laughed too, wiping his eyes quickly before she could see.

"Go Nasa, call me when you’re settled in Baltimore"

Victory whispered, his voice cracking just a little.

She turned, stepped into the car, and the door clicked shut. As the car pulled away toward the university gate, Victory stood alone behind the chapel, a profound sense of saudade settling deep into his bones.

But Fate was not done with them yet. She was still writing their love story. She had just decided to change the scenery.

If you enjoyed reading, like, re-stack and leave a comment. Gracias 🫶.

Read the first part here