CHINA TORI

Nenye threw the rod in her hand away and rolled away from the bodies. Then she dragged herself across the room to the light switch on the wall. When the light came on, and her eyes fell on the mess they had created, Nenye cried out in agony.

In what seemed like forever, she tried to make sense of what had happened. The only thing that kept sounding in her head was that she had killed her best friend and her lover.

The men at the door soon broke the door and forced themselves in. They found Nenye huddled in a corner close to the bodies. Richard was lying on his side with his hand to his neck. His eyes were bloodshot and his tongue was sticking out of his mouth. The amount of blood around where he lay suggested that he was completely drained. He looked pale.

Edem, on the other hand, was almost unrecognisable. In the heat of the moment, Nenye had hit him so hard that his skull broke open and his brain was splattered on the floor. The men were chilled to their bones. One by one, they started filing out of the room.

Nenye took in the sight one more time and screamed out. From where she sat, she could hear someone speak into the phone; he was asking for an ambulance and the knot in her heart tightened.

She looked around and found a knife lying by the table and dashed for it. One man turned around in time to see her dash for the knife. He kicked the knife away and called out to the rest. Two other men rushed to her and held her. When they let her go, she rushed to Edem and turned him over, and amid tears and violent shaking, she begged him to wake up.

Nenye was beside herself with rage. She just couldn’t come to terms with the fact that she had just killed a man.

Fifteen minutes later, an ambulance and a police truck arrived. The police men jumped out, secured the area and began to ask questions. When they were done, Nenye was handcuffed and led to the truck.

As they walked her to the truck, Edem’s face flashed through her mind, and she flinched. She couldn’t help but remember how delightful the last few years had been for them.

She remembered how he would visit her at her house and how she would visit him at his office and they would sit and talk about everything under the sun. She was his confidante and personal assistant and she was the first person he spoke to about his plans to get married when the time came.

She remembered him mentioning that he wished that she would throw away the “friendship code” between them and be his bride. Truth be told, after that kiss that night, the best they’ve had is hold hands and hug tightly and the hugs were tight only because he made them so.

Somehow, Edem had come to accept that what they shared was special and had gone on to find himself a nice woman that she approved of.

So, it came to her as a surprise, that night, that when the door closed on his wife-to-be and her entourage who were heading somewhere else for her bridal shower, he had turned to her and proposed a night with her.

She had laughed and made to walk away when their eyes met. She knew, in that moment, that he was serious. “For my sanity and for Grace’s sake, I have to make love to you, Nenye”, he said.

Does that even make sense? To him it did. He had held her and promised to stay faithful to his wife if Nenye let him have her. Even though she was taken aback by his proposal, she didn’t show it. And that was because she knew he meant it. She politely refused him, made a silly joke out of the whole situation and walked away laughing loudly.

Edem found her, minutes later, in the restroom. Without saying a word, he walked to her, took her face in his hands and returned her kiss; that one that had haunted him for six years. He half expected her to fight him, but when she didn’t; he closed the gap between them and kissed her deeply.

Eyes shut tight; she held him and kissed him back. She wanted him, the universe knows she wanted him, but she knew that being with him would mean giving up so much. Not that he would ask her to, but because she reckoned that commitment was about sacrifice and compromise.

Richard was the opposite of everything she is: while he wanted to paint the world with his achievements in politics and business, she wanted to lead a quiet life; away from social media and the noise in the world.

Nenye just didn’t want to be the woman who lost herself trying to make her man happy. If she tried, it would make her miserable and that will translate to him being miserable too. She didn’t want that for him.

As they loaded the bodies into the ambulance, a phone rang out. Grace.