Chapter Eleven

NELLY

I dialed Chike's number for the fourth time, and for that same number of times, he had my call screened. What was he thinking, bouncing my calls?  I tried again for the fifth time and got the same negative response. Why would he break up with me the way he did. It didn't seem like a break up at the time, it was more like a warning, but for about three days now he had been bouncing my calls, giving me all the reasons to believe that it was over between us.

It was high time I paid a visit to his house, I wasn't going to stand for a disrespectful break up. At least if he was going to break up with me he should be man enough to say it to my face, not this baby game he was playing. I didn't have anything to get done as Iris was on a weekend trip with her business partner, so I just dressed up and let myself out of my house. I helped myself into my car, it was a red Camry, the last gift I had gotten from Alexander few weeks before our break up. Alexander was the name of my ex boyfriend, the one whose only display of affection and love towards me came from purchasing classy and expensive items and gifting them to me. However it wasn't until years into our relationship that I realized he wasn't good at showing me he loved me because he never did. He was actually a gay and had been in a serious relationship with another guy who worked in his company.

******

It was around seven fourty five P.M, when I got to his house. I knocked on the huge gate and his gate man named Ejiofor opened the gate to receive me.

"Your oga dey house?" I asked in Nigerian pidgin, the minute I let myself into the magnificent building. 

"No, e nor dey now."  Ejiofor replied, though I was already loosing patience with the delay in his response as he was a chronic stammerer. I just did not understand why Chike still had him despite his many flaws, aside his speech defects off course.

"Where e tell you say e dey go?" I asked again.

"E nor gree tell me ooo. In fact self, oga nor dey tell me where e dey go again." He answered, but I wasn't satisfied with his reply, I felt he was lying to me. I had taken a look at the car park the moment I got in and observed that none of Chike's car was missing, and chike wasn't the kind to go out without his car, so I figured he was inside and had instructed his gate man to lie to me on his behalf just so he can avoid me. What Chike didn't know was that even in a short period of time I had gotten to know almost every detail I needed to know about him. 

"Since you say e nor dey, I go wait for am for inside house." I finished and started heading towards the door of the sitting room but Ejiofor ran towards me and held my hands.

"I nor go fit let you go inside oo." He said, insisting on not letting me go into the house.

 Why would my boyfriend's gate man try to hold me back from entering my boyfriend's house. Something was wrong. Was Chike with another woman? It had to be the reason and if indeed it was, I was prepared to pounce on the stupid side bitch. I angrily tried to pull off Ejoifors hand that was on mine, but it proved futile. At that point, I became too angry and lost every reason why I had to be the cool calculated Nelly.

"Otoro gbabuoge" I cursed out in Igbo language. "Chike Eze! Chike! Come out here and stop acting like a coward." I yelled out at the top of my voice. "Chike, show that insecure and pompous face of yours, I want to see it. Chike Eze, are you enjoying watching your gate man harass me? Tell me are you? Chikeeeee ! I know you are in that house, you better come out if you don't want the whole estate to gather here now!"

"Ejiofor, let her be." Chike said from his bedroom window. Apparently, he had been staring at the whole drama unfolding, while hidden behind the curtain of his bedroom window.

"I nor understand you ooo oga." Ejiofor replied, his intension obvious; he didn't want me around his boss.

"I said you should let her come and see me. Leave her alone." Chike reiterated with a commanding tone and Ejiofor had no choice but to let me go. I walked myself quickly into Chike's sitting room and he was already there, sitted on our favourite sofa.

"What is the meaning of that stunt you pulled out there?" Chike asked me immediately I stepped in.

"I don't think you are in the right position to ask me that now. As a matter of fact, I should be asking you why you had to push me to act like a mad person. Chike tell me why!"

"I don't know why you want to pin the cause of your mad display on me. I will be going to bed early tonight, so I suggest you say whatever it is you have come here to say and leave when you are done."

"Really, Chike is this what you have to tell me after bouncing my calls, refusing to respond to my text messages and totally ignoring me in person, is this what you have to say?" I questioned, so close to tears, but I wasn't going to give him the pleasure of watching me cry. I wasn't going to let him know that he could affect me that way.

"Nelly will you stop all this pity party. I told you that you will have to choose someday and I was kind enough to help you make that choice, so why are you making things difficult for us?."

"Who said I needed to choose between you and my job? I love my job and I .... ." I left the statement, incomplete and proceeded to start another, but chike was swift to pick up my unsaid words and use them against me.

"What? Is it that difficult to say that you love me. Is it really that difficult for you to tell me how you feel about me? You claim to want me, yet, everything you do says the opposite. How do you expect me to keep holding on to an empty shell? Especially if that shell has refused to let me even own it."

"What is the meaning of this? Now you liken me to an empty shell? Chike, we both know this isn't about me, this is about you chike. It's about your sick jealousy and insecurity. Don't you dare pin this one on me." How could he even suggest I was the reason for his childish behavior.

"Oh! But it is about you my darling. It's about your insecurity not mine. It's about you still being unnecessarily extra careful around me because of your ex, so much so that, you would rather stuff yourself with work and your boss than be around your man. That is what this is about, that and more."

"Chike please." I said in a whisper and wondered if he heard me. He did as he focused more on me than he had been doing since I entered the living room, so I continued. " You knew about Alexander before you went into this relationship with me. You said you would wait till I could learn to trust and love you. So, what is this about? Why are you throwing my past in my face.?" The tears that threatened to fall before freely let themselves out of the confines of my eyes. 

"Nelly, stop the waterworks. That wouldn't solve anything right now, so, just stop it." Chike urged me. "Nelly, I wanted to wait, I really did want to be by your side until you healed from the hurt Alexander caused you. But now, I'm not sure I can, I don't think I want to be around you when you can't even see me. You don't want me around you and that much is obvious."

"That's not true chike, you know that is a lie.  You claim to not be Alexander,but you are no different from him. At least he left me because of his sexuality, something he didn't have a control over, but you, you want to break up with me because of your insecurity over something not worth mentioning."

"You're still pinning this on me!" 

"Yes!" I exclaimed. Hurt was slowly birthing anger and Chike was about to earn the result of my fury. "If you are going to break up with me, shouldn't you be man enough to tell me to my face? Why did you choose the cowards way out? Oh I forgot, you are a coward whose low self esteem makes him feel he might loose his woman to a job. How ironic!"

"Low self esteem, a coward, don't you think you are taking this too far, Nelly?" Chike queried in a surprisingly calm tone.

"I don't think so. Why not tell me to my face that you don't want me anymore. Just say so and I will walk out from your life and never return. Chike Eze tell me it's over!!" I urged, shaking him furiously by his shoulders.

"Stop it Nelly!" He yelled and I froze at once. Pushing my hands off his shoulders, he continued in a less harsh tone. "You want me to say it to your face right? I will. So listen carefully to me, Nelly Adaeze Okafor it's over between us." Chike said and everything around me suddenly became blur. I didn't realize it until then that I had fallen in love with Chike somewhere along the short relationship we had. I did not expect his words to affect me this way, but they did.

Happy now?" He asked after shattering my world with his words. How could he not know how I felt about him?I couldn't blame him though, even I wasn't so sure about my feelings before now, so how could I expect him to know.

"Yes I am, I am beyond happy." That was an obvious lie and the sympathy written all over Chike's face told me he knew.  "Good bye Chike Eze." I said and was about leaving when I remembered a line from one of the statement he made before.

"When you said that this situation was as a result of my job, you mentioned that it was beyond just my job. To be exact, you said 'that and more' what does the 'more' in your statement mean?"

"Nothing, I just said so because I was upset. It means absolutely nothing." Chike answered, but I didn't believe him. He was lieing and I knew it, but I just decided to play along and act like I did. 

I was already at the gate when Chike ran out of the sitting room, for brief moment I thought he wanted to take back his words, but then he added salt to my wounds.

"How long have you been fucking Iris, your so called boss?"