I Left: Girl Set Free

I lay sprawled on my bed, staring at my phone screen. Few minutes ago, I received a text message from Tony. I didn’t have to check the sender’s name to know that he was the one. Idiolect, my lecturer had called it.

It was written in the regular fashion – commanding and terse. Hey babe. Meet me at Blue Meadows by 7pm today. Wanna make up for yesterday. It’ll be a one of a kind experience, I promise. Love you baby. It’s so amazing how one’s personality can be perfectly portrayed in a five-sentence write up.

For the umpteenth time, I read the text, searching intently for any underlying message, any subtly expressed feelings of contriteness. When I didn’t find any yet again, I dropped the phone on my bed angrily and buried my head in my pillow. It was only Tony being himself. Some people just never change, I thought.

When I first met Tony, I fell head over heels in love with him. I barely knew him then but there were things about him – the way he carried himself in that graceful self-assured manner, the way he asserted himself with so much certitude whenever he talked – that attracted me to him. It wasn’t up to a month after we got talking that he asked me out and I didn’t have any reason to say no. But now, I would say a thousand nos to him.

It wasn’t as though I had not seen the signs. It wasn’t as though I entered into this mess called a relationship plain dumb. I knew full well who Tony was. My friends had told me about the rumours they have heard about him, about how he was a Gee boy (Internet Fraudster) and nothing but bad news. But I hadn’t listened to them. I allowed my sentiments get the better part of me.

Even if the rumours were right, my presence in his life would change him, I thought. Little did I remember the aphorism about one’s ability to lead a horse to the river not translating to their ability to make it drink water.

I remember the first day we met. It was on a cool Sunday evening. The rain had just stopped pouring and a light breeze had begun to blow. I had come out of my hostel to give my younger brother the food I prepared for him. As I made to turn and walk back to my hostel, I felt a touch on my left shoulder.

Slightly agitated by this, I turned around to see a guy smiling at me. Where is my own food, he asked. Did I mention that his smile was out of this world? My legs failed me and if not for the streetlight pole which was there to lean on, I might have fallen flat on the ground, exactly the way I fell in love with him that moment.

When he finally spoke, his voice was as gentle as the rustling of leaves on a cold morning. He told me how sorry he was to barge into me like that, but that he could not help it. According to him, he had watched me keenly throughout the period in which I had been with my brother. He said he had not met a more caring sister. I blushed.

That night, I broke up with my boyfriend, Dan. I had by then been looking for the easiest way out of the aimless relationship, anyway.

From then, Tony and I became almost inseparable. We would spend time together every other day talking at length about anything and everything at the front of my hostel. Sometimes, he would take us to eat out at Forks and Fingers. In fact, the initial part of our relationship was like taking a stroll in heaven. He isn’t that bad after all, I concluded. It was possible that my friends were just being plain jealous.

Then, just when I thought we were at the peak of our rollercoaster-like relationship, Tony became a huge source of worry. I discovered he does not attend classes.

Initially, I thought it was only a temporary thing and would always scold him playfully about it until I discovered from a course mate of his that he had barely attended any class since the inception of the semester.

What then was he spending his time doing? What was preventing him from performing his primary duty as a student?

In addition, I was more worried because the rumour about him being a Gee boy was getting to me more often now that I was with him. It made me worried a lot. I knew I wasn’t a saint but I didn’t want to be the girlfriend of a criminal, not after the calamity my father caused my mum years back when it was discovered that he was indeed an armed robber and not a businessman as he had claimed.

I thought about confronting him but then thought against it. What if the rumours were wrong and I only end up vexing him? And who knows, probably worse could happen, I thought. Experiences from my previous relationships and their attendant wreckage were enough to learn from.

It was not that easy. You see, I am not the luckiest person in terms of relationships. Tony was my eighth boyfriend and none of my seven previous boyfriends ever showered me with affection as he did. I couldn’t afford to lose him.

The day I confirmed the rumours about Tony being an internet fraudster, it was a Friday night. We had just had a bout of acrobatic sex after hours of partying at Club Jokers. We were both snuggled up in his bed, my head resting on his broad chest, listening to his heart beat and he tracing the strands of my Brazilian hair.

I think he assumed I was asleep because he slyly dropped my head on the pillow and got up from the bed as stealthily as he could and reached for his phone. He moved his palm slightly over my face to make sure that I was still asleep. I played along.

Then, with the corner of my left eye, I watched as he went on to pick his iPhone, moved to the balcony and dialed a number. What came after was a series of snide statements uttered in an artificial American accent.

I had never heard Tony speak like that. That was not all. He was posing as a young Nigerian businessman in love with the person on the other end, who was in dire need of some dough to travel abroad. Initially, I thought he was cheating on me and was about to dump me for a white girl but on a second thought, I realised immediately what the call was about.

I had friends who dated Gee boys and the stories they told were similar to what I was experiencing right under my nose.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I stood up from the bed, put on Tony’s shirt and walked to the balcony. This madness has to stop right now, I thought. However, to my utter surprise, when he saw me, he only regarded me for a moment, stealthily placed his right index finger vertically on his lips and continued his call. Shock would be a trite word to describe what I had felt there and then.

When he was done living in the fictional world he had created for his white lover and himself, I confronted him.

“So you’re a Yahoo boy!” It came out more like a declarative statement than a question.

“Well, that’s what people like me are called.” I didn’t miss the nonchalance in his utterance.

“So the rumours are true, after all. So this is why you have not been going for classes? How long has this been going on?”

By now, Tony came to his senses and moved closer to me. He reached for my hand but I recoiled.

“I get it.” He finally said. “You don’t like what I do and that’s why I didn’t want you to know about it in the first place. But you need to understand that this is the latest thing, the surest and fastest way of getting rich…”

“But it is criminal!” I blurted.

Immediately I said this, Tony’s facial expression changed and he got up from the bed. Anger mixed with disgust was etched on his unsmiling face. He put on a fresh T-shirt and stormed out of the room.

***

Barely a month into our relationship, Tony started changing. He no longer called as often as he used to. Even when he did, he only made monosyllabic statements. Whenever I asked him what the problem was, he simply said it was stress. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and stayed with him, trying to see how I could help relieve his stress. Little did I know that I was the stress.

Yesterday was my birthday and he totally forgot. Who on earth forgets their girlfriend’s birthday? When I confronted him on the phone later in the day, he said he had been busy and forgot to keep in touch. He didn’t even as much as say sorry. I was so angry that I might have slapped him, had he said those words in my face.

Finally, I raise my head from my pillow and pick up my phone. I text Joseph. Hi Joe. Hope you slept well? Can we see at Amphitheatre by 10? Two minutes later, Joseph replies. Yes, I did. No problem. See you there.

Typical of Joseph to reply right on time.

Joseph has always been there, even before Tony came into the picture. He is one of the few people who understand me, who take me as I am. Now that I think of it, the only reason we are not dating is because he has not made the move.

Few minutes later, I’m seated on one of the numerous chairs in Amphitheatre with Joseph. Even before I began to talk, Joseph already understood. He held my petite hands in his and said it is well. For stretches of minutes, we sat together, speechless but with enough chemistry between us that words became superfluous to express the innermost contents of our hearts.

Sitting there with Joseph, I felt peace like never before. The feeling was so intense yet so natural that I wondered what the heck I had been doing with Tony all these while. With Tony, there was only fun – loads of it – but seated here with Joseph, all those became refuse and I discovered that I had never really known what I wanted until then.

Right there, I made my decision. There would be no going to Blue Meadows that night, or ever again, for that matter. There would be no enduring a relationship with a criminal. Enough was enough.

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