Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 15
The girl who ran
His back was to me, sitting there, talking to those two girls, feeling smug with himself, feeling like a G. God help me, I could kill him!
I was still thinking of walking up to him when I felt myself already walking. My heart was pounding up into my ears but it was no longer fear, it was pure hatred.
I remembered the way he made me run for my life. I remembered how he slept with me. I remembered how my head swelled up with fear and how I was sure I was going to die. I hated him. I’d never hated someone so much.
What would I do to him? What would I say?
I was trying to think but my mind was no longer mine. I was walking towards him but it wasn’t me – something else was controlling me. Oh God help me! I was going to kill a man.
I was going to pick up a bottle on his table and smash it on his head. I was going to do serious damage to him. I was going to get into trouble but I couldn’t stop myself. I kept walking towards him and towards doing something really stupid, but I couldn’t stop. God help me! God please stop me!
I don’t know how long I’d been standing beside their table like a waitress waiting to take orders. All I remember is one of the girls looking up at me with eyes that said ‘And who are you?’
She looked me up and down and said something but I didn’t hear her. My eyes were fixed on a half empty bottle of Maltina on the table.
She spoke again, but only her lips moved, I didn’t hear anything. They were all staring at me now. Then he spoke.
“May we help you?” he said.
I took my eyes of the bottle and looked at him. There was something wrong with his voice.
“Are you ok?” he asked.
He looked different – he sounded different and he looked different.
One of the girls was less patient, “Any problem?” she asked.
I noticed she had an engagement ring on her finger. I also noticed she was the older of the two girls and they looked alike. They were sisters.
He got up and gently placed his palm on the side of my arm.
“Are you ok?” he asked. He looked and sounded genuinely concerned. Standing next to me, it looked as if he had grown taller. He sounded different, he looked different, and he didn’t recognise me.
“Emeka, I beg, leave her. Let her go,” the girl said.
Emeka? Emeka? Oh shit! Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit! Shit, shit, shit!
Emeka didn’t leave me. “I think there’s something wrong with her, darling,” he said.
“What’s your name?” he asked me.
The girl was getting irritated. “Let her go jor!” She shouted at him. And to me: “We owe you?”
I felt something vibrate against my chest and I realised it was my phone. I have this habit of tucking it half way into my left bra. Phone thieves, you see.
I fetched the phone and only saw that it was Johnny calling before I lost grip of it while trying to answer his call.
The phone fell apart on the hard concrete floor, but something else dropped with it. Broken glass and Maltina spread out before my feet.
Emeka moved to help and his darling got up, her sister as well.
Where did the bottle come from? Had I been holding it? Is that why I dropped my phone?
I stooped to gather the pieces of my phone, and of my pride. Emeka was also stooped next to me, helping me find the bits of my phone, telling me to mind the broken glass and asking me what was wrong.
Indeed, what was wrong with me? What the hell was wrong with me? What was I doing with a bottle, meant for the head of a boy who duped me? How had I so mistakenly thought this Emeka was the boy?
What if it had been him? Is that how I would have smashed his head with a bottle of Maltina? Who does that?
What would I have even said to him? ‘Do you remember me? I’m the girl who got into your car in front of Palms and followed you to your hotel and slept with you expecting money in return’? ‘I’m the prostitute you picked up and didn’t pay’?
What was I thinking?
Emeka, his darling, her sister, and two waiters – one male one female, were all standing around me as I refused to finish collecting my phone and stand up. His darling had already pulled him away from helping me.
“Any problem, madam?” a man in a security guard’s uniform said. I hadn’t even noticed him before then.
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