FINISH

in #hive-1707982 years ago

Hey there reader!

Let's finish what we started a couple days ago. If this is your first read, you better read this first.

...he called her the next day, but it went straight to voicemail. He tried once every 5hours and the result was the same. He never left any messages. He actually began to ask himself after the 3rd unanswered call if he was worried or if he was just smitten by her and really wanted to be in her life. He told himself it was the former and so he called 5 times everyday for 3days. On the 3rd day, at about 9p.m. she finally took the call, then he froze and ended it.
Exactly 1 minute later, he called again and she took the call again.

Amanda: "Hello"
Jide: "Hello Miss, my name is Jide. We met at the gift store 4days ago.
Amanda: "okay"
Jide: "okay? Is this a bad time? Is something wrong?"
Amanda: "if something was wrong, you really think I'd take your call?"
Jide: "well, what's your name?"
Amanda: "it doesn't matter" and then she dropped the call.

Jide was taken aback, bewildered, perplexed. He wondered what the heck just happened and then began to hate himself for it. I mean this had never happened in the history of Babajide. Tall, dark and handsome guy, great hair, cool guy, hazel eyes, dapper, nice ride; who on earth would seem so disinterested in him? Then he realised. Of course, a young and rich looking lady, stunning face and very attractive figure with all the curves in the right places.

pexels-kristina-polianskaia-4241706.jpgSource

But still... his ego was hurt and he vowed never to call her again.

Yeah right, what vow? Jide was a desirable young man whose ego was hurt, there's no way he was going to keep his vow. Men like the challenge of pursuing a woman who's hard to get. He of course called her again and tried to be patient this time, understanding her and why she was being reclusive. On one occasion he asked her why she agreed to share her digits with him and she said, "to return the favour". He thought it was typical and funny.

After a few conversations and asks, she agreed to go on a date with him. It was on a Sunday. She had come to like him and so she wore red. A colour she had been told plenty of times made her blue eyes pop. She let her hair down, wore light makeup, had shiny diamond jewelry and silver strappy sandals. Her dress was short. Not too short though, just a decent amount of short to reveal a decent amount of skin. She was so beautiful and she knew it too. Hence, her refusal to do any work; e.g. drive herself. Her uber arrived at exactly 7:57p.m. 3 minutes early. She was usually fashionably late but this time, she didn't mind. She walked in, asked for their reserved table and was delighted to find him already seated, sipping wine and waiting. Now she wondered how early he had been since he already got started.

Amanda: "Hello Baba".
Jide: "Hello Amy".

She had gotten accustomed to calling him Baba simply because everyone else called him Jide. She liked to be different.
And he preferred to call her Amy because it sounded sweet. They said their hellos with wide grins. It was the first time they were meeting after the 1second favour exchanges at the store.

"You look great, going to see the Opera after our date?" Amanda said with a chuckle.
(laughing) no ma'am. I see you can't give a compliment plain and simple huh! You look ravishing Amy. Now that's how it's done".
Amanda chuckled and said, "Thank you Baba".

pexels-cottonbro-studio-4255489.jpg Wellspring

The waiter arrived and they ordered, talked about everything and nothing, laughing out loud and looking around to see just how much they were disturbing the peace. His weird matched her weird and her crazy matched his. They were a "perfect" match. At about 10p.m., they had completed the last meal course and were ready to leave. Jide insisted on taking her home and when they arrived at the gate, he couldn't help but stare at such big home she lived in. He asked if she stayed alone and she answered in the affirmative.

"I better get in and get some rest, early day tomorrow." Amy said.
"Of course beautiful, we wouldn't want you getting eyebags and ruining the beautiful artwork that you are".
Amy giggled, alighted and let herself into her home.

pexels-expect-best-323780.jpg From

Jide sped off into the night wearing very wide grins. Intermittently, he'd laugh when he remembered something she said or they did during their date. He was falling for her. As cliché as it may sound, he couldn't wait to see her again. Being the egoistic man he is, he decided there and then that he needed to tame the euphoria, "be a man", and not show his hand. At least not so early on. By tame, he meant to make contact only about 2 days later.


Amanda was smitten by him too. She thought about him more often than not and was also looking forward to hanging out with him again. She was a busy woman though, so often for Amanda wasn't quite often and the thoughts never lasted as long as she wanted. During the day, people wouldn't stop snatching them away from her and at night, sleep was the culprit. She told him combining being a voice over artist with being a TV host and the most time consuming job, being the CEO of her father's empire drained her. She beleived this herself and always went with it. On Tuesday though, she found time alone in the office bathroom and decided to give Jide a call.

"Hey handsome"
"Hey beautiful"
And they laughed at what they both thought was silly and too mushy.

valentines-day-3148683_1280.pngRight here

I just saw someone go by my office with a frantic toddler and it reminded me of how much you said you love kids. I said to myself, I bet Baba wouldn't like this one..."
Jide laughed and said, "you'd have lost your bet if you made a real one, I love them all"
And then they just kept talking and laughing, until she got fed up by the messages her Assistant kept dropping and decided to excuse herself. They fixed a date for Thursday evening and said their goodbyes.

This went on for about three weeks. In those weeks, Amanda had gotten invited into Jide's place but she declined. She kept saying she wasn't ready and didn't want them to get into anything they'd regret later. On the 5th week of their dating and enjoying each other's company, Jide got invited in. He agreed and was careful not to make or entertain any sexual conversations. He wanted her to know he was serious about her longterm and wanted her to be as comfy as possible.

They were on the patio at the back of the house, sipping wine and flipping through the same business magazine on that Saturday afternoon when they heard a loud bang. Startled, Jide spilled his wine on his shirt and was almost embarrassed when he realised they had bigger problems. Amanda hurriedly got up, ran to her bedroom and grabbed the pistol in a drawer. She checked how loaded it was, satisfied and then grabbed the baseball bat by her door and handed it to Jide who had followed her and was staring in disbelief.

"Babajide hold this, trust me you'll need it", she whispered.
Silence.

She walked past him and was quietly going down the stairs when the loud bang came again. She hurried her steps and realised they were trying to knock down her front door. She was a bit shook but brave. She hadn't expected them in broad daylight. On the 3rd bang, the door came down and the shooting started. Mostly from her anyway because she had a better view and a silencer to her gun. She had gotten about 3 men before one who seemed like the leader held up a detonator and shouted,

"another person goes down and I press this button! Toss your weapon towards me, show yourself and put your hands behind your head."

She realised she was outnumbered, obeyed and then she was handcuffed. They searched the house, found Jide and told him to disappear. He was as confused as he was scared. He tried to talk to Amanda who was already being hauled to the back of a van and was barely visible when they kicked him away and drove off, almost hitting his car. Before he could get to his feet, one half of the house blew up.
explosion-147909_1280.pngSource

They had planted a small bomb on the side where her bedroom was with the intention of destroying all the millions of cash she always kept at home. Jide sped off, looking at half of the mansion burn. He kept trying to rationalise the past 30minutes, looking for answers in his oblivious head. The men were not the police. He had actually planned to ask her later in the day, details about her work and why she lived all alone in such a huge house. She was always avoiding the conversation and never talked about family even when it came up.
In trying to make sense of everything, Jide realised that the only truth she told him about her work was most likely being an anonymous voiceover artist.

End.


PS I did start only a couple of days after I dropped the first half of the story but y'all writers know how it is, plus life kept happening 😩.

Many thanks for reading lovelies. Xoxo


Yeeeaah there aren't many synonyms for "source", are there? Just like Amanda, I like to be different too. Got pretty tired of always referecing with the word #source. Oouu reference, there's a synonym. Well, next time. Hehe.

More xoxo.

Sort:  

@jayna Hola! 😊
What do you think ma'am? Better?

Hi @uchelee. You're learning! You've come a long way with this new story. Note that we do not accept chapter stories, or continuation stories. So, in the future please do not write stories in multiple parts. Our suggestion on the previous story was to finish it, not to continue it in another story. 😄

Be sure to read our community rules at the top of our home page. You'll find the do's and don'ts there.

This story is almost complete. It is unfortunately lacking a proper ending, however. Every good story has a conflict that is resolved in the end. What you have done here is leave the conflict to the very end (Amy has some private and dangerous life that results in thugs shooting their way into her house), and then left it unresolved.

We encourage you to make use of our catalog of fiction writing tips. You will find guidance on how to add conflict, write story plots and add a story arc, which results from resolving the conflict. Without a story arc, stories do not seem complete. So that is one of the most important skills to learn. Good luck and keep writing.

😅 I did read the rules. Always do. I guess I didn't fully grasp it. I mean I thought I was "finishing" the story 🤦🏾‍♀️😄.

Many thanks for taking out the time to criticise. I promise to do better.

Learning the craft of writing is a long process, @uchelee. But you are doing many things really well. You can build on that. You have nice character descriptions and you also have a nice sense of how to write dialogue.

Since you are keen to learn and improve, I'll provide a few tips for you.

  1. It's important to decide who's story you're telling. Is this Jide's story? Or is it Amanda's story? The story should then be told in that person's point of view ("POV"). In this story, sometimes the POV is Jide and sometimes it is Amanda. This is known as "head hopping" in fiction. The reader wants to know who to care about. That's the person whose view we should experience throughout the story. (Obviously, in longer stories and novels, that can change, but there would be an entire scene or chapter in one POV, then a clear shift to another POV.)
  2. Avoid telling any part of the story from an outside (e.g. the author's) POV. When the story shifts to an opinion about the characters, we call that "author intrusion." You can read about it in our author intrusion article in our catalog of fiction writing tips.

Here's one example of where that appears in your story:

Being the egoistic man he is, he decided there and then that he needed to tame the euphoria, "be a man", and not show his hand.

Since it's likely not Jide referring to himself as egoistic, then we can only assume it is the author.

I hope these tips are helpful! Keep writing!

Indeed they are very helpful. I learnt much earlier on about how there could be an all-knowing narrator in prose. That was in high-school though. I obviously need to unlearn that. Or maybe I don't quite remember how it's supposed to play out.
Anyhoo, thanks a whole lot. I'll keep practising. I promise not to call your attention to every practice story though 😅.

Thanks again.