She stared at me with those big brown eyes, in a seductive manner that could only mean one thing, and my brain registered her yearning. She was clad in a skimpy, flimsy lingerie and even if I wasn’t in the mood, I was in no position to ward off her advances.
I was powerless as she taunted me with her body movements, I couldn’t move an inch as she gingerly swayed forward and took my left hand and guided it all over her body.
I was aroused. There was no going back. I pulled her into my embrace and caressed her sensitive spots as she moaned and squealed with delight. She said, ‘take me, make me climax’. I replied, ‘I will do better than that, I’ll give you the best sex you’ve ever had’. To which she responded, ‘I’m all yours, I’m wet already’.
‘Wake up, wake up’, I felt the nudge on my shoulder the first time. I looked up and there she was staring down at me, seated in bed, her arms clasped over her knees as she wore a somber look.
Feeling irritated and pissed to have been abruptly taken away from my subconscious sex session with the work colleague I was crushing on, I reluctantly sat up and asked her, ‘why are you awake? What’s the problem?’
Since that cold morning in June 2012 at the parade ground of NYSC orientation camp in Ekiti, when I heard her talk and spoke back to her, we had been going steady for 7 months.
She was posted to some remote isolated town were you had to walk for miles to buy airtime. The town, ‘Okemesi’ was a sleepy town sandwiched by mountains that exhaled cold vapor, which cast a thick chilliness all around the town.
But I redeployed back to Lagos, for work-related reasons, yet, she remained at the center of my thoughts and unwittingly affected my actions, decisions and relationship with the female gender. Basically, I was thoroughly smitten, and willing to work hard to make it last.
Against the odds of distance and the encumbrance of communication barriers, we had managed to keep our relationship alive. We had an unspoken agreement that I’d travel down to Okemesi at least one weekend in a month, and it seemed to work for some time until complications started to creep in.
For a number of reasons, I stopped looking forward to the trips, largely because, as she acclimatized with the town, she became immersed in quite a number of activities, some of which were church-related. Her church activities began to clash with my visits.
Because of work, I could only come down at weekends, but then, she would have church meetings, choir practice, church service, and still have to prepare lesson notes and cook for her flat mates after church on Sunday. My trips were becoming a wasted effort, for I was barely having her to myself for a stretch of time.
Travelling down suddenly became a chore and the sustainability of our relationship was now in doubt, in my head at least. Even the usually interesting telephone conversations had now turned mundane and laborious. We found ourselves at crossroads, at least I did.
So I was so hopeful of making things work, when she called and announced that she’d be coming to Lagos for the weekend. She had quipped excitedly, ‘we will be together indoors for the entire time, we’d make love till I can’t get you up anymore’.
I laughed and said, ‘get me up? What are u getting up?’ She said, ‘you know, mini-you. Well, not-so-mini, but you know what I mean’. I laughed hysterically and teased gently, ‘you have a dirty mind, lady’.
As I sat up in bed next to her, it dawned on me that the weekend which initially bore so much promise of reigniting the spark in our relationship, had instead turned out to be fraught with arguments, accusations and counter-accusations. It had been drama-filled and I was secretly yearning for Monday.
The only thing that hardly changed was the sex; which was fantastic as always, albeit, bereft of emotion. To say the spark and enthusiasm was gradually waning from the romance is at best an understatement.
Despite noticing that I was ready to talk, she was still silently brooding, her arms now akimbo, she stared straight ahead at nothing in particular. I gave her a playful nudge and asked, ‘what’s wrong? Talk to me babe’.
She loosened up her frame and turned to gaze at me, and for a few seconds, she simply gazed, then she blurted, ‘how would you feel if someone came to ask for my hand in marriage’
Shocked and taken aback, I immediately felt extremely pressed. Feeling lightheaded, I got up from the bed, and walked to the toilet. After pissing off the tension, I stood over the water closet and gathered my thoughts.
For what seemed like an eternity, I stood motionless with my penis hanging out, as I tried to make sense of my train of thoughts. I tried to find the right response for the unexpected query I’d just gotten.
I knew we had some problems, and I had sensed a little change here and there, but I never expected this. I’d always understood that as a beautiful Ibo girl, who was at the fertile age of marriage, that it would in a matter of years become an issue with her family, but little did I know that it was already a topic of discussion in her family. I embraced the reality of the situation, cleaned up, came up with the best possible response, and left the toilet.
She remained exactly the way I left her. I tried to muster a smile as I walked up to the bed. Sighing dejectedly, i took her arms and said, ‘If it happens; the person has to be worth it and you have to want it’. She looked at me expressionless for what seemed like an eternity, after which, she nodded her head and snuggled back into the duvet.
In the morning, we barely said a word to each other. While she was bathing, I called a cab to take her to the bus park. As if sensing it would be the last time we’d be together, she insisted that I go with her to the park.
The silence continued during the ride to the park. There was simply nothing to say, no explanations asked, none expected. There was a hovering feeling of finality as she slipped her fingers into mine and tightly squeezed.
At the park, there was no goodbye kiss nor hug. We shared a collective understanding that doing so would only stretch the hurt. I waited till her bus drove away. She never turned around for a final gaze or a goodbye wave.
Even that was too hurtful to bear. She knew she had lost me and I accepted that our romance had reached an end. As the dust from the departing bus settled, the pain seared and an ocean of hot tears flowed down my cheeks, even as I stood in the middle of the park, watching the one I love get away.
Kolapo I felt it,like I was in the room with them. LDR is almost not easy,the story seemed so real. There has to be another episode unspoken words lingers