He was my brother’s friend. Jim. He came home often with my brother and said hello to me. I served them food or drinks or both. He was a shy guy. He couldn’t look at my face when talking to me. He didn’t say much even when I had a lot to say. He came to see my brother once and he wasn’t there. I gave him a place to sit and decided to keep him company. His eyes were happy that I was around but his mouth couldn’t say a lot.

I left him until my brother came back home to meet him. From that day, he came home often when my brother wasn’t home. The consistency with which he met my brother’s absence gave me a clue. “Why doesn’t he call my brother before coming? Or he comes because of me and not my brother?”

I asked if he had called my brother and he started fumbling. I told him, “Give me your number. I will call you when he comes since you don’t want to call him.” He smiled while mentioning his numbers to me. He knew that was what he wanted but couldn’t ask.

He viewed my status that day and commented. The comment generated a very long conversation. When I didn’t want to talk, he kept messaging me until I responded. I was right. He came in the absence of my brother because it was me he wanted to see. He asked when I was going to visit him and I told him he should tell me when he was ready for me. He said, “I hope you won’t tell your brother.” I answered, “No I won’t. I will only show him a screenshot of this message.”

He never asked me to visit him again. I don’t know what happened but my brother got a gist of what was going on and he asked me about it. I told him the truth. That we’ve been talking but nothing is going on. Not knowing he had already asked Jim about it and he had denied knowledge. My brother warned, “Whatever is going on has to cease. He’s my friend doesn’t mean he should be your friend too. Go and look for your own friends if you need one.”

Jim stopped coming around. He stopped talking to me on WhatsApp, not completely but it wasn’t like how it used to be. My brother told my parents about it. That I’m pushing myself on his friend. I was twenty-seven, my own girl, and could defend myself. I didn’t deny anything but I told them I was friends with Jim and nothing more. They supported me. They asked my brother what was wrong if I even wanted to date his friend. My dad asked him, “Is your friend a bad person? If he is, then why did you choose a bad person as a friend? Is it the case of birds of the same feathers?”

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Their relationship wasn’t the same again, Jim and my brother but I wasn’t going to let Jim go because I knew he liked me and I knew he was a gentleman, from the many interactions I had with him. Our relationship was on and off for many months until Valentine’s Day in 2019. I cooked and bought some drinks. I bought cupcakes and added two singlets and a bowtie. Late afternoon, I called his phone and asked if he was home. Around 5 p.m. I was at his door shouting his name because my hands were too full to knock.

You should have seen the shock on his face. “What’s happening?” He asked. “I came so we celebrate Valentine’s Day,” I responded. He looked around to check if I came with somebody, if it was a prank or if my brother was testing him. We spent hours together and before I left, I told him, “If you want me to be your girlfriend, you don’t have to think about my brother first. Think about your feelings first. If it’s true, go ahead and tell me about it. I’m not a child. I can decide who I want to be with.”

On the 2nd of March 2019, I woke up to a long message on my phone from him. I read smiling. I told myself, “At long last, he’s ready to be a man.” My response to that long test was, “OK, I’ve heard you. Let’s see how things go.”

My brother was his best man when we got married in January 2022. If you can’t beat them, join them. When he couldn’t clean what was written in our stars, he joined us.

He proposed the toast on our wedding day. He elected himself to share the story of how we met. He said, “Jim is a very bad friend but I believe he would be a great brother-in-law. I took him home as a good friend but he ran away with my sister. He chose love over friendship, that’s why we are here today. He’s no longer a friend. He didn’t pass the friendship test but he’s been a good boyfriend to my sister and hopefully a better husband.”

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We’ve done two years together. We have two anniversaries on our calendar. We call them big and small anniversaries. The big anniversary is Valentine’s Day because it’s the day everything changed.

#MyValsDayStory

—Laura

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