By Calvary · Flash Fiction · Feb 17, 2026
My eyes met hers before I had the chance to think about it.
I was seated in the rear of father's car, coming from a visit at Nkpor, Anambra State, held by the familiar traffic of Ekwulobia — mother in the passenger seat beside father, who was at the wheel. My window was wound up until I caught sight of her: a girl in a sweet white mini-gown punctuated with spots of black, moving through the slow-baked afternoon with an unhurried kind of certainty.
She had a fine mien — the kind that was difficult to escape. The haircut alone could trap a man. I wound down the glass and stared.
She noticed. And the moment she did, she stared back. I liked that — her awareness of my attention only deepened my admiration. She was going somewhere, her fast legs carrying her forward, but they didn't stop her from glancing over her shoulder at the gentleman watching from the back seat of a red Honda.
I fixed my gaze on her. So did she. And then I laughed — not from nervousness, but from the pure satisfaction of the moment. She couldn't help but join in.
Her laugh was something else entirely. The way she flexed her jaw, the way her glowing lips parted — lips I suspected were very soft, if only I could get a feel, perhaps with my own — to reveal well-arranged teeth with a beautiful gap between them. In that instant, I knew she was honest with her excitement. Unguarded. Real. And I wished, in a way that surprised me, that father would stop the car. Just for this.
Then the traffic broke.
I was still lost in her when father's car lurched forward, and by the time I surfaced from my own thoughts, she was gone. The rest of the journey through Oko and Umunze passed in a haze — Ekwulobia behind us, and somewhere in it, the fair-skinned girl whose name I never learned.
So for that single reason alone, I won't tell you mine.