At The End

Lanre held her phone in her hand. She was tempted! She was tempted to call K and tell him to cancel his engagement with Ify. She was as well tempted to call Ify to ask her if it was true. She wanted so much to believe that this was not happening. But it was not a dream. If it was a dream, she would be fully aware it was. And if it actually was a dream, she would have feared more because it would have come to pass and there’s nothing she would have been able to do about it. But even now, it doesn’t seem like there was anything she could do about it.

At the end, she dialed Kehinde’s number and forgone Ify’s. K did not answer on the first ring. She waited but got no answer. She threw her phone on the bed. If she had thrown it any more carelessly, it would have bounced off the bed and ended up on the floor. She stared at her phone for a while, she fought the urge to call Kehinde again. That urge must have some kind of leverage over her because she picked up the phone and dialed his number again. This time he picked. She never thought he would because he did so late. The phone would have stopped ringing if he was a bit later than he was.

“Hello, who is on the line?” K had said immediately he answered the phone. Lanre kept mum. She was afraid to speak. Even more so, it seems he had gotten rid of her number because he asked who it was. Tears streamed off her eyes. If it were possible, those tears would flood her face away.

“Who is it over the phone? Can’t you talk? Or you love to waste airtime?” K asked. He sounded arrogant. Lanre ended the call immediately after he said that. She figured she has not been able to garner the courage to talk to him. She just couldn’t say anything. She could not find the words to say. And even the silence, felt heavy on her lips. She went back into crying again.

She turned off her phone and lied down on the bed. She covered herself with a wrapper. She preferred it to using the thick duvet that will cause her to sweat at night. She was not sleeping with the air conditioner on, she was as well not going to sleep under a duvet. Besides, the wrapper felt more comforting. It belonged to her mother before she took it, so it felt like she was hugging her mom. This was the best for her, it won’t raise questions for her from her mother. She can’t imagine letting the woman know what was going on.

Lanre cried till she ran out of energy. All her years of crying, she has never cried this much. It was at this point that she realised that it really took a lot of energy to cry. She felt hungry afterwards. But she lacked the appetite to eat anything.