" When she told Obinze this some weeks later—she said, "So where did you learn to kiss? Because it's nothing like my ex-boyfriend's salivary fumbling"—he laughed and repeated "salivary fumbling!" and then told her that it was not technique, but emotion. He had done what her ex-boyfriend had done but the difference, in this case, was love.
"You know it was love at first sight for both of us," he said.
"For both of us? Is it by force? Why are you speaking for me?"
"I'm just stating a fact. Stop struggling."
They were sitting side by side on a desk in the back of his almost empty classroom. The end-of-break bell began to ring, jangling and discordant.
"Yes, it's a fact," she said.
"What?"
"I love you." How easily the words came out, how loudly. She wanted him to hear and she wanted the boy sitting in front, bespectacled and studious, to hear and she wanted the girls gathered in the corridor outside to hear.
"Fact," Obinze said, with a grin. "

― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie