There was one thing that I thought was wrong in the relationship, and that was the fact that Richard had no time for me. It was always work and nothing but work. He goes to work very early and comes home late in the night, sometimes I had to spend the nights alone When he must have travelled out of town for one office assignment or the other. In fact, the relationship was characterized with lack of seriousness and total dedication.
I did everything I could to make Richard see things my way and change for the better but all of my efforts yielded no results. It soon became a matter of time that I would lose interest in the relationship. I easily got irritated by most of Richard’s attitude. We were often picking quarrels at each other. In the heat of my frictions with Richard, I ran into Emeka. He lived in the next street and owned a big supermarket somewhere around Oshodi. We agreed that I would be the one to visit him occasionally in his house and that would be when my husband must have gone for work .
“You are such a beautiful lady. I wish you were not engaged, I would have married you.” He told me during one of my visits to his house.
“Are you sure?” I had asked.
“If I am sure? If anything is far better than sure, then that is what I am.”
I felt a sudden tingle of excitement in me. Emeka is also tall and handsome, he had some advantages over Richard. He is more caring. loving and romantic than Richard and he had time for me, we often played together when I visited him in his house.
Emeka and I became even closer and we began to see more of each other. Soon, I, became fond of him and lost total interest in Richard. One particular day, Emeka and I were together in his house, sitting in a lounging chair in his sitting-room when I decided to have serious discussions with him
“Honey …. • I started. He turned sharply to look at me.
“What’s the matter?” he asked me, I studied him for a while and then I continued.
“Are you aware that I love you so much?”
“Of course, I do”. He smiled lightly. A moment of silence passed.
“If I quit my relationship with Richard, are you going to marry me?”.
His face grimaced. He seemed shocked and puzzled at the same time. I knew he never expected this from me.
“Why would you want to quit your relationship with him?” his face-hardened as I watched him. I hesitated.
“Because I don’t love him any more, you have stolen all the love I had for him, and I can’t find anything interesting in him any
more”.
He was quiet for a while, his gaze steadily on me.
‘Are you sure you are ready to quit him to marry me?”
“Of course, with all sincerity” I responded sharply.
We talked for long and examined the prospects of our intentions critically before we parted again and 1 returned to our desolate apartment waiting for Richard to return. While I waited, I had tried to form up a reasonable excuse to leave him but I couldn’t find a good reason. I gave up on that thought that moment. Our relationship went on without any change but my love for him had depreciated beyond resurrection.
And each time I visited Erneka, he would always ask me when I would finally pack into his house, I would tell him to be patient with me. This continued until one Saturday evening. Richard and I had had one of our usual rows and we had started barking at each other as expected.
“I can’t continue like this with you! I am quitting this relationship!” I screamed at him at the top of my voice. I removed my engagement ring from my finger and dropped it on the centre table. Richard stared at me for long. he seemed perplexed at my decision.
“You are quitting?” he’d asked quietly; his voice trembling slightly.
“Yes, I am quitting!”
He nodded his head, and shrugged his shoulders heavily. ,
“Then suit yourself!”
That day, I packed my load into my suitcase and left at dawn. He did not even try to persuade me to stay or to change my mind.
“You are about to make the biggest mistake in your life.” He said to me as I opened the exit door.
I turned to look at him, I didn’t say anything, and I left.
That marked the end of our relationship.
Richard did not call me, neither did I call him. Gradually, I had lost all memories of him. I began living with Emeka and I thoroughly enjoyed his companionship.
He engaged me barely two months of our living together and this was around March.
“Our wedding will be coming up in June. We should start working hard towards making it a success:’ he told me. I nodded happily.
“I will always give my unreserved best:’
I told him, with an infectious smile. He drew me closer to himself and started kissing me.
We played a lot as we laid on the bed, with everything culminating in one of the most explosive love making sessions I have ever had. From then onwards, our love for each other grew boundlessly. There was no quarrelling or barking at each other, like it was while I was with Richard. We easily sorted out our differences.
The date for our wedding began drawing closer, somewhere around June; in fact, the wedding had been fixed for 14′” June, and all arrangements were at the verge of completion.
During the first week of June, precisely on 6′” of June. Emeka had travelled to Onistha to buy some goods for his super-market.
And that was how I never saw him again, he had died in an auto cash. I had cried inconsolably. Immediately after his funeral ceremony, his family threw me out of his house in Lagos. That was when my real suffering began in life; I had to rent a shabby house and started my job hunting again. I tried to get close to Richard again, only to find out that he was now married, and he warned me that he doesn’t want to see me near his house again.
I managed to find a job with a salary of just N17,OOO. For two years now, no man had talked to me about marriage. Quitting my relationship with Richard was the most stupid thing I have ever done in my life, I am still regretting it.
…To Be Continued
