One more Night by Adenike Oyewole amarettoF77@yahoo.com
The year was 1994. I was sixteen and he was twenty. The story started and ended in a small town in Nigeria. I was leaving my home of the past sixteen years, a home surrounded by orange, lemon, guava, and mango trees, to move to a place I thought was paradise. You see, back then, America in my mind, was this glorious place that shone bright and clean with such newness, a place where people spoke in curlicues and everyone smelled like Ivory. In comparison to the harsh sun, the red, red dust that settled on everything and everyone and an unstable government, AMERICA was paradise in my mind…then.
And so there I was, excited and restless. I had packed, said good-bye to all my friends, except him. He was now my friend. We hadn’t worked out as being more than friends, but yet, he was convinced he loved me and we could make it work. I was nonchalant. How could he possibly think it would work which me thousands of miles across the Atlantic? Did he not know that I was about to start a new life? A fresh new life in the peoples’ U.S of A!!! I didn’t need his baggage, and I especially didn’t need his love. "I wasn’t going to miss him" I said. He was only my first love, there would be a second and possibly a third and I was ready to find me a new honey-tongued man.
The few days before I was to leave, he made my life sweetly miserable. He begged and pleaded that I love him and give him a chance. I was beginning to waver. After all, I had loved him (the way teenagers love) at some point. I finally appeased him by saying I would think on it, knowing I couldn’t, wouldn’t give it much thought. That was before the note.
The next morning, I woke up to find a note on the gates leading to the only house I would ever know as home. It was tightly folded and I knew in it was a promise of sweet things. It said in animated words, simply: "I love you." I knew for the first time, what it was to have a melted heart. He continued to break my heart with his words by saying that that night, he’d stayed awake listening to Phil Collin’s "One more night," and he wished I would not only give him one more night, but a lifetime. It was then that I found my tears. I realized that I would be leaving all I knew, everything I had come to know to be the truth, and most of all, I was leaving a chance to love, and to be loved in return, because frankly, what use is unrequited love after all?
I left that day, but not without seeing him for one last moment, not without finally promising my devotion. I did not let him see me cry, or perhaps I had no more tears to cry, they’d all been spent on that one note that I still cherish eight years later. It is amazing how a song can haunt a person’s life forever. Every time I hear that song, my whole body tingles and I’m filled with longing for a time when love was so innocent and pure, when the only expectation is to love without condition. Sometimes, I almost cry because I’ve never since felt what I felt that day, and I wonder if I’ll ever feel it again. I didn’t keep my promise to be devoted, and neither did he. Distance and time separated us, and we both became pre-occupied with the responsibilities become adults presented. In writing this, I’m visited by those memories, and channeled to another less hopeful Phil Collin’s song: "Separate lives". I hope one day I get to see him again. I would like to know what he would have done with just one more night.
My name is Adenike Oyewole. I was born on June 4th, 1977, in a town called
Ile-Ife, in Nigeria, West Africa. I moved to the United States eight years
ago. I enrolled at North Carolina State University where I studied to be a
computer engineer. Currently, I work as a Systems Test Engineer with Lucent
Technologies. As extra-curricular activities, I enjoy listening to music,
writing, reading and watching other people cook. amarettoF77@yahoo.com