Un-Entangled
The first time we met, I didn’t think we were ever going to speak, not to talk of being friends. I was just resuming my internship position at First City Bank and I was scared to my bones. It was my first time ever doing anything…so important with myself. I walked into the banking hall and was greeted by friendly smiling faces dressed in crisp office clothes. They probably thought I was a customer and I shivered at the thought that I would soon be one of them, even though it was just for a short while.
I was moving towards The Human Resources Manager’s office when I saw him. It was lunchtime and he was devouring a plate of jollof rice and fried plantains like his life depended on it. The smoke emanating from the plate was proof that the food was still very hot but the speed with which he rushed the food made me doubt that. He was seated behind a desk, with his back turned from the entrance. I bet he noticed someone looking at him and he turned to see who it was. I turned away, embarrassed as his eyes met mine, and quickly moved in the direction of the HR’s office.
The HR is a nice, good-natured middle-aged man with more teeth than the sand in the desert. Good thing he smiled often. He welcomed me and told me I could start immediately. It was lunchtime and so he took me to the office where the other interns were placed and I was introduced. There were just two girls and one guy there and two tables. No laptops were in sight either. I guess they’ll bring it in later. We got talking and I found out that all of us were actually from the same school, just different departments. Fantastic.
It was at the end of the day, after the orientation and micro training I received from my colleagues that I saw him again. He looked better when he wasn’t shoving food into his face. I was still embarrassed about catching him in that awkward position in the morning and so, I didn’t think he would want to talk to me, so I looked away.
“You are the new intern, right?” He said to me.
“Yes, I am.”
“What department were you placed?”
“Uhh…I’m just working with the mobile banking team for now. I don’t know if HR would give me something else along the line but…”
“Mobile banking? Not bad. What’s your name?” I liked how he was taking charge of the conversation because if it had been left to me, we would have just waved goodbye.
“Ivy.” Courtesy demands I ask him what his name is too, right? “And what’s yours? Your name.”
“I’m Demola.”
“Nice to meet you, Demola,” I said with a tight-lipped smile.
“The pleasure is all mine, Ivy. The pleasure is all mine.”
***
It’s been just one month into my internship and I feel like the major reason why fate brought me here was to meet Demola. I rarely look forward to working. In fact, the thought of showing up to work every single day made my bones ache and tear glands full. Working in a bank is the perfect definition of suffering and smiling.
We worked like horses and the only difference between us and the beasts of burden was a whip. Well, if you really think about it, you’ll discover that the management did have a whip. Threats. We were threatened with deadlines, with targets, reports, queries, and whatnots and the one month I had spent with them was easily becoming one of my worst months yet. How do people even live through this for years and years?
The only silver lining in this dark cloud was Demola. He knew how difficult settling in would be for me and he tried to make the transition as easy as possible. He called me in the mornings and made sure I took the quicker and cheaper routes to work. He ordered us both lunch every day and even paid my transport fare back home. Even with his busy schedule, he made it his duty to check up on my work and how close I was to reaching my targets from time to time. He literally became my Knight in shining armor, or at least, in office clothes. Sometimes, he would go the extra mile to send me videos and memes he knew would make me smile or laugh out loud if I could during office hours. I began to look forward to those texts until they began to feel like stolen kisses.
***
“I have a boyfriend.”
“And I have a girlfriend.”
“So, why are we having this conversation?”
“Because I want you and I know you want me too.”
“That doesn’t change anything. I am in a relationship and I am not going to cheat on him.” I said with all the resolve I could muster from my insides.
“That’s really noble. I like how loyal you are.” He replied with a sly smile on his face.
“Thank you.”
“Let’s get back to work then.”
It was during one of those lunch hours we had begun to spend with each other that Demola confessed he had feelings for me. He made me understand that we did not have to do anything about it and the only reason he was telling me was because he needed to get it off his chest and move on with his life. There was a slight irritation in the way he said it like those feelings he had were unwelcome and would only serve as distractions. After we had that talk, he didn’t mention it for another month until today when he tried to kiss me.
To be honest, I would have loved to kiss him too. I love the way he dotes on me and I have come to depend on that attention to be able to get through the hell I had to go through at work. I didn’t want to let him go and I didn’t want to let him in either. The attention he paid me made me realize how much I had been lacking for a long time.
I have been dating my boyfriend for five years already and I think we are at that point in a relationship when everything just becomes boring, forced, and downright unnecessary. We tried to talk every day on the phone but by the time I got back home from work, I was usually too tired to take off my clothes and shower. Not to talk of forcing a two minutes conversation and mumbling a mandatory ‘I love you’ after. I guess this is the point where partners start to consider the real consequences of cheating and I was almost done justifying it in my head.
***
Demola came to my house today. Well, ‘house’ is a far stretch. Let me rephrase that. Demola came to my ‘spot’ today. Yes, that’s more like it. It’s a Sunday and he said he was bored staying home alone and wanted to see me. I had just canceled a meeting with my boyfriend out of anger because he said he would be two hours late and I was looking for a distraction.
To cut the long story short, we kissed. And by Jove, it was the best kiss I’ve had in a long, long, long time. We just couldn’t stop and so we kept going and going and going until we both had to come up for air before one of us died. We went in and out like that for about one hour before we spoke another word to each other.
“That was…”
“As in…it was…” He tried to complete my sentence and when we both discovered that there were simply no words, we both started laughing.
“I don’t want it to stop. Can we…” He said after a few minutes of laughing.
“Demola, I have a boyfriend. I…”
“Shhh…” and he closed the distance between our lips and silenced me with another kiss.
***
My one-year internship ends in one month and so will my entanglement with Demola. After that Sunday afternoon, we had other Sunday afternoons where we met in my room to gist and do other…things.
“Demola, what are we doing? We are not dating, are we?” I asked after one of our Sunday afternoons escapades.
“I don’t think we are. What do you say?” He asked as he propped his elbow on the bed.
“I think what we have is what Jada called an entanglement.” I joked.
“What is an entanglement though?”
“It’s more like a relationship with all of the physical benefits and none of the romantic commitments.”
“Like a fuck buddy?”
“Eww. Don’t say it like that, local boy. Entanglement sounds way better.”
“Whatever you say, missus. As long as I get to kiss you, it’s a fair deal for me.” He said as he puckered his lips for yet another kiss.
***
At some point, we had both come to a mutual understanding that whatever it is we had was always going to end at some point. We just didn’t know when, but I had an idea. As I walked to the HR’s office exactly one year after I walked there the first time, I realized that a lot of things could change when you least expect it. I told Demola we had to talk before I left the bank, and I think he understood what we had to talk about.
As I waited for him to join me, I looked around at the four walls that had been the bane of my entire existence for the past one year and I realized that save for Demola, it was an experience I would never want to repeat. Let’s just say, the only reasons why I would be stepping into a bank in the nearest future would be to deposit cash.
“Hey, you,” Demola said behind me.
“Hi,” I said as I smiled up at him.
“You said you wanted to talk to me.”
I paused for a second to properly gather my thoughts.
“I know you’ve probably seen this coming but I have to go.”
“Now?”
“Yes, but I’m not just talking about the office.”
“Oh.” He said as he came to a slow realization of what I meant. “Is this like a break-up?”
“Break up? Did we date?”
“Oh, an entanglement. So, how do you call off an entanglement?” He said with a sad smile on his face.
“Maybe we…become un…entangled?”
“Unentangled? It has a nice ring to it.”
“Yeah, it does. Kind of.”
“So, is this the part where we get unentangled?”
“Yes, Demola. I think this is the part where we get unentangled.”
He took his sweet time to look at my face, probably checking if I wanted to change my mind, but I couldn’t. He cupped my face in his hands and for a minute, I thought he was going to kiss me in the middle of the banking hall. Instead, he tucked my hair behind my ear and gave me a long, hard hug.
“It was a pleasure entangling with you, Ivy.” He said into my hair.
“The pleasure was all mine.”
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