They say love is a crazy feeling and you would feel even crazier when it is your first time.

When Emilola fell in love, not only did she become crazy, she went bonkers!

Emilola never fully understood what love is but she knew what love isn't. She knew Tito always going back to her toxic boyfriend after swearing it was her last time was not love. She knew Lolu double dating and claiming to love his two girlfriends was not love. Lastly, she knew her father having children out of wedlock was not love, if it was just one, she would have called it a mistake. But it was four. One, two, three, four. Four. Yet, her mother still stuck with him and saved his number as my other half.

All this did not alter the idea of love in her head, the one she watched in movies and the ones she read inside books. She knows there is love somewhere but maybe not just for her.

And so when Ryan came her way, Emilola felt the butterflies rising in her stomach and just like she had learned to do, how she had learned to suppress them, to kill them when they became uncontrollable, she sought to do the same. It had always been easy for her. She would keep her distance, consume herself in her own thoughts and refuse to believe their words. She would worry about the end even before starting. She worried more about the future than the present and with Ryan, she also did all these.

hen Emi and Ryan started working at the same company three months ago, she had felt pure admiration for him, his aura, smile, one deep dimple that flashed whenever he spoke, the flow of his words and the confidence in which he spoke that night at the company's party when he told her he liked her. He had shown it in every way, the way his eyes often rested on her when ever she was in his sight, the way he helped her with little things and the long paragraphs he sent. Others also sent long paragraphs but Ryan's own made her heart leap, made her stomach twitch in excitement.

When they danced together at their co-worker's birthday party, the anxiety which she felt disappeared. She felt safe and free with him, as if she had known him for a long time, as if she had known him all her life. The way he held her waist as they sang along to "Bad dancer" by Johnny Drille, and the way he whispered that part of "and you are beautiful, and heavenly, baby you are my song," made her feel like it wasn't just for a moment.

The way he brought his face close to hers like she was all that mattered to him. She stopped being in denial, she knew this wasn't what she felt for others, it felt different, it felt like love. And just like that, she knew Ryan wasn't for a moment, he came for a lifetime and she finally admitted it, after 25 years of her existence, love had finally found a place to reside in her heart.