Carol glared at her phone messages, frustration clear on her face. Dave was not reading her messages and he wasn\u2019t taking her calls. The last time she spoke to him, about a month before, he had said he would be travelling and busy for a bit and therefore out of reach for the most part.<\/p>\n
She wasn\u2019t the clingy type, but she didn\u2019t realize that his definition of busy would literally mean \u2018fall off the face of the earth\u2019! Irritation, anger and a few other feelings gripped her chest making her breathing feel shallow. A nameless anxiety started swirling at the back of her head.<\/p>\n
Did he die? What was going on with him? At this point, she pulled out all the stops. She never liked his friends, but seeing as she had been in a five year relationship with this guy, she had made it a point to have some of their numbers.<\/p>\n
This turned out to be another dead end. They were clearly ignoring her calls. At this realization, her mounting worry coagulated into ugly suspicion; the kind that morphed your face subconsciously. Carol had inkling, but she refused to even consider it as it was waaaay out there. Like, an occurrence of that sort happened to other people<\/strong>, on the TV<\/strong>, NOT to her. She calmed herself down with this rationalization as she forced herself to do something else to preoccupy her mind. She resolved to call him again later.<\/p>\n I mean, so what if his friends ignored her calls? She and they had always hated each other anyway. And Dave had kinda always had a douchey quality to him that made him hard to reach sometimes. She had seen this behavior plenty of times over the past five years they had been together. She was used to it, and to be honest, she would never admit it to anybody but it was part of the reason she fell for him. He had this bad boy quality to him.<\/p>\n Knowing this, she had toughened her hide from the beginning for when the people in her life that cared about her would ask her why she would be with such a guy. She wasn\u2019t unreasonable by any stretch; in fact she was your typical straight laced good girl. She believed in her own logic and ability to judge her own situation and act accordingly and right at that moment, this guy had caught her fancy. And while she was aware that he was iffy somehow, character wise, she liked him enough at that moment to be determined to date him. She had had no intention at the time to be with him very long, but somehow, the 6 months she had estimated it to last had turned into 5 years.<\/p>\n It was like, every time the end of their relationship would roll around, as it did many times, and she would be resolved to end it, he would do or say something that would remind her of the good times. And then she would think to herself, how much she would miss him and she would put it off, or at times, when they had broken up, take him back.<\/p>\n And with every forgiveness, her hide would grow thicker to the criticisms and complaints of her loved ones of her and her head would grow denser. It was her pride as an independent woman of the 21st<\/sup> century, which she would date whoever she wanted, however she wanted no questions asked. She was adamant about this. She vaguely realized that her stubbornness may have been ill advised in this case but she shook her head and bit down harder. Maybe it was because she knew how old her fashioned her father was and how he would have preferred for her to do things the \u2018right\u2019 way. And in knowing this, she also knew that Dave was the kind of guy her father would never approve. Or even if he did grudgingly compromise for her sake, that he would probably hate to the very end.<\/p>\n She being something of a daddy\u2019s girl, was a little ashamed of Dave, but also determined to do this one independent thing and risk it, even if he didn\u2019t approve. This resolve made her impossible to reason with over time. Initially, what boyfriends she had were a tight lipped secret between her, her siblings and her mother. African fathers just weren\u2019t told about their daughters\u2019 boyfriends; At least not her father\u2019s type of African dads. But by the time she had been with him 3 years, it became impossible to hide it any longer.<\/p>\n And on her part, by the time 3 years had rolled by, she was past the point of caring so much about approval. This was a long term relationship that was due for an upgrade. I.e., at the very least, meet each other\u2019s people. She had met his siblings and his mother, very briefly at a party once. She had shown very little interest, and while Carol found this lack of interest on her potential mother-in-law\u2019s part curious, she had brushed it off with an \u2018at least she wasn\u2019t hostile to me\u2019. Dave on the other had had almost completely refused to meet her people.\u00a0 In the end, he only agreed to meet her sister and her mother. All the occasions that came up, like weddings and parties where she could have introduced him to family, he had always made up an excuse not to attend.<\/p>\n His blatant avoidance of her family was like a red smear on a whitewashed wall. Even if this was the 21st<\/sup> century, certain behavior was inexcusable, especially when you had the monopoly on a man\u2019s daughter. Her father, who had stayed tight lipped about his opinions, regardless of knowing about it from fairly early on, began to give her meaningful looks. What kind of disrespect towards him and her family was she going to tolerate from this man? And what did it mean to him as her father?<\/p>\n \u2026 She could never meet his gaze.<\/p>\n Majority of the fights\u2026 Big fights, she would have with Dave would be about this issue. He would get so touchy about it; he would literally leave and be unreachable for weeks. And when she was thoroughly beaten and missing him, she would seek him out and coax him back. It never occurred to her, how foolish, how manipulated she was. I mean, other than play mind games with her (he treated her very poorly) he wasn\u2019t physically or overtly verbally abusive, so often, when she would feel bad about the things he did, she would chastise herself for being overly sensitive. And she would try to prop herself up resolutely and refuse to think of anything else when the shame of her situation would begin pooling at the back of her psyche.<\/p>\n So here she was, virtually alone in this relationship at this point and she couldn\u2019t cry to anybody because they had all warned her or said something somehow and she didn\u2019t want to hear \u2018I told you so\u2019. But she had already buried 5 years with this guy. Feeling humiliated at his treatment of her she made her mind up to either break up with him when he got back, or at the very least threaten him with it. So that Friday night, she went to bed furious and determined.<\/p>\n What woke her up on Saturday morning was not her 12:30 alarm customary for Sato. It was her loud, rather obnoxious, now that she heard it as she was trying to sleep, ringtone. She picked up the phone with undisguised irritation and saw that it was Mercy, her nosy best friend calling. Surely this girl knew better than to ruin her Sato dreams like this!<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2026\u201d She answered, short temperedly.<\/p>\n \u201cHeeeee, aki Caro, Mlibreak Up lini na hukuniambia? I\u2019ll divorce you as my best friend!\u201d Mercy said sounding pouty. Carols face crinkled up in impatient conclusion. Squinting at her messy reflection in the full length mirror across the bed from her room, she replied with a dumb<\/p>\n \u201cHuh?\u201d Her sleep cleared a bit as her mind struggled to compute what her friend was saying. \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAiiii! The wedding photos!!! The wedding photos on Facebook and insta\u2026\u201d Mercy said clueless as if she was educating a child. Now awake, Carol sat ramrod straight in her bed, every cell in her body screaming \u2018NOOOOOO\u2019 even as she asked in complete in denial<\/p>\n \u201cWhat wedding photos?!? Whose wedding!??\u201d Now it was Mercy\u2019s turn to sound confused.<\/p>\n \u201cAiii, si Dave! Kwani who else\u2026?\u201d She said. And the moment she said those words it was like the realization of what it meant hit Mercy.\u00a0 Carol heard the sharp gasp on the other end of the line as her phone fell out of her hand and into her lap. She hurriedly rushed to open her Facebook, furiously shaking her head as if to reject this reality.<\/p>\n When the beautiful pictures of a foreign smiling face of a girl and the grinning face of Dave loaded, she couldn\u2019t even see them through her tears.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Carol glared at her phone messages, frustration clear on her face. Dave was not reading her messages and he wasn\u2019t taking her calls. The last time she spoke to him,…<\/p>\n