Smarted!
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Smarted!
So, we’re at the dining table. Talking. Gossiping.
About university. About dating. About drama.
Who played what.
Who preyed where.
Who won. Who lost.
You know how it goes.
Stories like that. Always the same. Always different.
They always start simple. Boy meets girl. Girl likes boy. Boy says all the right things. And really, boy is acting. Sometimes girl too. Setting course for drama!
And I tell them—this one’s no different.
I tell them they are about to see why. You’ll see why too.
The thing about law school?
Everyone’s smart.
Or at least, everyone thinks they are.
So, early enough, some set on a course.
To use their smarts—whether real or imagined.
To charm.
To deceive.
To hide.
To cheat.
You see it?
The drama is already brewing.
Our guy today? Oh, he was all that.
Smooth. Slick. Calculated. A classmate. A friend. An intending Casanova.
So, I tell them right there at the dining table. I know the story. It’s true—I shared a sit with our guy.
Laughed with him. Learnt this and that about him.
He was the kind of guy who made girls blush just by asking for a pen.
The type who’d nail a distinction in tort law and a date the same evening.
And for long, he dated this girl—beautiful, bright, loyal.
Their thing was public and open.
At law school we knew.
The rest of Campus knew.
Everyone knew.
They were always together.
Somewhere holding hands. Somewhere discussing a coursework or a reading materials. You’d think they had made a pact—to study law, and then do life, together.
But our smart guy! Well--he got bored.
One day—he met another girl.
Smart guy was enraptured by her beauty. Right away.
She was a new girl around. He thought her beauty was one to behold. An hourglass figure to worship. A Kenyan smile that made the heart rock. A girl that said and did those things boys love.
She was different—he could risk it, he thought!
Chance waits for no one. Caution is for fools.
He had to have her.
He said all the right things. Told her she was the most beautiful he'd ever met. He did all the right things. Spoiled her with big dates and bigger gifts.
What do university girls want? Tell me, I know—good words and good gifts and good outings—then, they're in and you're winning.
He did all that.
He got that girl with an hourglass figure and a Kenyan smile on her teeth.
The game was on.
He rolled his dice.
And started to play.
The girl with the hourglass figure and the Kenyan smile?
He signed her up as the main girl.
That’s what he told her.
That’s what she believed.
You see the drama brewing?
Smart guy told her he was a single king looking for a queen. She was the queen and his search had come to an end—there was no one else. She’d believed all that.
Because why wouldn’t she?
Smart guys say things so well and with a charm you want to believe them.
And the game, smart guy played.
Was—Smooth. Calculated. Flawless. Masterful.
When he brought her to his hostel room—and he did many times. He made sure the main girl never caught wind of it. And she didn’t.
How could she?
She thought they had love and all that.
The inner circle? We knew. Of course we did.
We knew the main girl. Our friend. We knew the side girl too. The sweet, sweet stranger.
We cheered the game. We covered the tracks. We made sure the main girl never saw the footprints.
We were in on the game. His boys. His gang. The inner courtroom. No one approached the bench without going through us first—the line of defense.
When he first met her, he told us everything.
The first sly-ish hello—how she blushed.
Their first date—how she was swept off.
Her first visit. How she laughed. How she looked.
We knew little of remorse. It was all game. We loved games. We were in.
Smart guy kept a roster. Played her, them like a side hustle. Weekdays for the side girl. Weekends for the main girl.
Always calculated. Always clockwork.
He had them wrapped. Tight.
And every time we met, he gave us the updates. The stories. The jokes. The risks. The almosts!
Until the joke turned on him.
Until he no longer laughed.
Until the fun got removed.
That morning...
But wait—let’s save that.
You need to hear how it broke.
Because when it broke, it wasn’t piece by piece.
It shattered.
The Morning After.
A friend’s phone. It rang. It was early morning. Too damn early.
I answered. But it wasn’t him. The owner of the phone.
It was the smart guy. Our pro player.
That’s how I knew. That’s how you always know when something is broken—broken bad.
EzroniX Short Stories - How We Talk About Love.
