Meghan takes me to a bar where she plies me with drink after drink, and I down them without complaints. Usually, I hardly ever take any alcohol and I can’t remember the last time I was drunk, but today, I have no inhibitions, and I let myself go, becoming stupidly drunk. I notice that she isn’t imbibing as much as I am, but I think nothing of it. I also notice that she’s watching me intensely, in a weird way, but I chalk it down to the alcohol making me see things that are not true. Finally, we head home in my car, with Bianca driving. “You’re so wasted. You’re cute when you’re drunk.” She tells me, chuckling a little.“I don’t think the word ‘cute’ should be used for me,” I reply, slurring my words a little.She says a bunch of other things that I tune out. Instead, I’m thinking of the blissful moment when I’ll be able to get into bed and pass out. I fall asleep in the car and only wake up when Bianca nudges me and tells me that we’re home.She helps me get out of the car, and I m
"What are you talking about?” I dumbly ask again, when it’s very clear exactly what she’s talking about.“Come on, Charles. Don’t pretend not to know what I’m talking about. We’re both adults here. Anyway, looks like someone is very happy to see me.” She tells me, smiling mischievously and glancing pointedly at a point below my waist. It is then I glance down at myself and register the fact that I’m not wearing a stitch and my morning wood is on full display. I snatch up a nearby boxer and hurriedly put it on, ignoring Bianca’s amused laughter.“You’re such a prude. I’ve never seen a man as self-conscious about his body as you are. There’s no need for self-consciousness, actually. You’ve got an amazing body, exactly how I like it. Come here. I need to be someplace soon.” She tells me.“Do you make it a habit of getting into bed with people who are like brothers to you, according to your own words, especially when they are inebriated?”“If they’re as good-looking and well-built as you
JESSICAIf I had thought that pregnancy would be an easy journey, I was sorely mistaken. I’m just at the beginning of my second trimester, but already, I can’t wait for it to be over. I’m almost always nauseous, no matter what I do to quell it.On the plus side, it is also a fulfilling journey, although I’m not even halfway through it yet. I have this deep, tender love for this child that I haven’t even met yet, and I want nothing more than for it to arrive so I can hold it, gaze at it and finally have someone to call my own.My nightmares have all but vanished, probably because I do everything I’m told religiously. I’ve stopped trying to get out of meetings with my therapist and I tell her everything she needs to know. I haven’t set my eyes on Samantha since the day that she left after we left the doctor’s office, and neither have I heard anything at all from her. At first, I was worried sick, and called her nonstop, trying to find out if anything is wrong with her, but after I look
CHARLES “I’m pregnant.” I hear the words as though they had been spoken from one end of a ridiculously long tunnel, while I’m standing on the other end and listening to them. “Huh?” I ask stupidly, staring at the angry woman in front of me in disbelief and more than a little dismay. Only a few minutes ago, Bianca had banged loudly on my front door, and when I finally let her in, she proceeded to accuse me of ignoring and shutting her out for the past two weeks since she last saw me. The truth is that I’ve been spending a lot of time working, and I’ve hardly been at home, which suits my purpose because I don’t really want her around me for now. When I tried to explain how busy I’d been, she stared at me frostily and uttered the words that had shocked the living daylights out of me. “I said I’m pregnant. Why did you change your locks if you weren’t avoiding me and trying to get rid of me?” “Because it’s my house, and I’m not comfortable with you taking my keys without my knowledge.
JESSICAThe night of the small dinner party that Veronica organized for her husband is the first time I step foot in her house. It is a nice house, fairly large and tastefully decorated, and is a home that is clearly filled with love. Her two boys run the house, as they are chased by their cousins, dodging the adults and ignoring admonitions for them to be still.Veronica's husband, Leonard, greets me warmly and affectionately, as though I’ve been his wife’s friend for years, or as though I’m his favorite younger sister. Veronica and Leo are both in their early thirties, and their boys are four and two years old.“I’ve heard so much about you, Jessica. It’s nice that Veronica finally found a good friend in her antenatal class. I try to go as much as possible, but most times, work doesn’t allow me, so it’s good that she has someone to talk to there. My wife loves to talk a lot, you know. Sometimes, I can’t decide if that is a good thing or a bad one.” Leo says, laughing gently as his w
CHARLES If I had thought that booking a hotel for a month and giving Bianca some money was going to be the end of the interaction between she and I, or that at least, doing those things for her is going to limit our interaction, I’m sorely mistaken. I paid for her to stay in a hotel for a month after she told me that she was pregnant, and during that time, I didn’t see much of her, which was just as well, but after the month was over, she presented herself at my doorstep again. I was sleeping after being in surgery the entire night when I heard the pounding on my door, and on opening it, I’m face to face with a tired-looking Bianca. She takes one look at my sleepy face, glares at me as though I’m the cause of all her problems, and storms past me into my living room, leaving me no choice but to follow her. “What are you doing here?” I ask her, unable to hide the annoyance in my voice. What on earth was I thinking when I had sex with this woman, at least the second time? “The hotel
“Yeah, it’s Jessica. Is Samantha there? That is the owner of the phone. I’ve been trying to reach her to no avail, yet her line has been going through all this while.” The woman on the line says. There’s no doubt about it now. It is indeed Jessica, and I’m willing to stake my last money on it.My tongue feels stuck to the roof of my mouth, and even though I open my mouth, no words come out. There are several things that I want to say to her, but mostly, I just want her to appear in front of me so I can shake her until her teeth rattle and tell her how callous she is for taking up residence in my heart and then disappearing without so much as a goodbye, as though I’m just a casual fling.I ignore the voice that tells me that I’m most likely just that … a casual fling. Mostly though, I just want to look into her face and see if I would see any remnant of the closeness that we had shared for several days on that deserted island. The silence on both ends of the line is deafening, but still
Bianca shakes free of me and continues on her way, but pauses to throw two words at me over her shoulder.“Who’s Jessica?”“The woman whom you just spoke to over the phone and who coincidentally, is the same woman whom you knew I was in love with.”“Oh? You were in love with her? But that did not stop you from shoving your wandering cock inside someone else?” Samantha sneers. I pause in my tracks for a moment. Had I really told her that I was in love with Jessica? Had I been in love with Jessica? Is it possible to fall in love in such a short span of time? I don’t know the answer to this question, but now is not the time to ponder on it either.“Who are you? What do you have against Jessica and me to do this to us?” I ask her instead, wondering how I could have been such a terrible judge of character, yet how on earth could I have known? Having sex with this woman is easily one of the worst things that I have ever done in my life.“Oh, please! Don’t be so dramatic. We’re both adults.