(Come We Stay: Part II)

I’m up on my phone, pressing the keyboard, sending texts to my girl, because no one ain’t the best like the one I’ve got. I’m all in my phone getting mushy mellowed up, calling my girl senorita, mamacita, she makes my heart grow wild with manhood ecstasies, she my jaber, atoti, osiep chunya, Omukhana omumiliu, the breather of my breath, the science to my fiction, Mūtumia ūrīa ngwenda kūhikia. I’m under the bedsheets, it’s cold yet alone, I’m missing her presence. Every texts are laced with I love yous emojis and silly smiles, yellow cheeks, winks and light heart that makes me feel that she’s right here with me, that she never really left. In the middle of our sweet convo, I get an incoming call from Julie.

“Hello Jules….”

“Hello Phill,…. kindly check your email, I’ve mailed you the document you requested for.”

“On it ASAP, thank you Jules..”

“You are welcome Phill, enjoy your night.”

“You too.”

There was something about Julie’s phone call that made my veins grow cold, almost caused a panic attack, body shuddered. On my phone, notifications from Becca’s chats kept on reverberating in the eerie house with a tingling sound that I grew accustomed to, yet it scared me the same at that moment. She’s texting one too many texts at once.

“Baibe. ..baibe. ..you there?”

“Yes love, I’m here, was making myself a cup of coffee, it’s rather cold here.” I replied.
.
“I love you so much, I wish I was there my honey bunch.” She texted back.

“I love you more, honeysuckle..”

As I took deep breaths, I opened my Gmail account, and I really hoped the document could be something worth the while. As the mail downloaded, I sipped coffee, then opened it, and the first phrases that hit my eyes were, *REF: RESIGNATION LETTER*. I didn’t bother to read the details, I simply scrolled down to the bottom, to see it neatly signed with, *Yours faithfully, Rebekah Amstrong*. I switched off the data, and I gave out a sighed chuckle, “huh, really?” Instantaneously, I knew that there was a war coming, it was raging, somehow I felt that it would strike with a thunderbolt lightening, I didn’t want to be on its way. I didn’t want it to find me unawares under the bedsheets, getting mushy mellow, saying couples of I love you and I miss you to the girl I so dearly loved. A war was coming, I needed to be ready and steady. So I kept my coo, and sat down on the couch, sipping my tamarind flavoured coffee bit by bit as I went over the details of the alleged resignation letter.

As I read every sentence of the letter, I digested each word with a sip of coffee. I made sighs, I chuckled, ’cause everything in that Damn piece of document was literally amusing. I took my phone and sent a text to Becca.

“Hey, baibe, when are you coming back.?”

In the letter, Rebekah only wrote one reason for her resignation. She stated something along the lines of finding greener pastures. She even had the audacity of thanking the organisation for accepting her and making her a part of the family’s organisation. She said, “it’s rather unfortunate, but it’s time for me to explore myself and move on to a new venture”. Deep inside I only asked of one silly degenerate question, “why didn’t she thank me in her resignation letter, after all, it’s me who got her the job in the first place.” So greener pastures, huh!? Exploring herself?? These were the boldly highlighted words in my mind.

“Baibe, I already told you. Why do you keep asking about it?” Came her reply.

“Been wondering, maybe if you’ve found some greener pastures, I’ll understand, if you want to explore yourself…”

“Baibe, where’s this coming from…?”

“Nowhere, that’s me trying to keep an open mind…”

“Baibe you sound so weird and high… you sure you’re okay? Or is this a way of telling me you don’t want me back..?”

“As matter of fact, if I don’t want you back I’d let you know….”

“Huh….?”

“Unlike you, if you were planning on leaving a company, you could’ve been generous to tell the guy who got you in the company…”

“So is that what’s all these is about? Where did you find out about my resignation?”

“Does it matter? Why the hell did you resign? Why did you not tell me? What the fuck are you doing at home in the first place?”

Twenty minutes elapsed before her replying. My veins were really getting worked up. I imagined her typing and deleting texts for she couldn’t find a good reason to tell me. I imagined her fingers shaking as she typed, her eyes getting watery contemplative, tears at the brim of them, she always does that whenever we argued. It always made me tell her, “baibe it’s okay, I’m sorry, forget about all of that, I love you.” But not today, I wanted answers. So I sent another text.

“Baibe…”

“You know what Phill, I’m not in the moods for your idiocy of arguments..”

Did she just call me by name?? Forget it, maybe she was just pissed off.

“Baibe, Come on, we always talk about everything, we agreed no secrets.”

I sent her the text, but wasn’t delivered. Waited for an hour, it wasn’t delivered. Decided go give her a call, but the crazy woman at the other end of the line told me to leave a message after the tone. She had switched off her phone. I tried calling after every 30 minutes, the phone was still off.

As eager as I was, I reached out to her colleagues at work, trying to ask them if my Becca said anything about leaving the company and what reasons did she have. No one came through. They had this weird piece of crap about no snitching. All 5 of her close friends said nothing, until when I gave up, and decided to sleep it off, when one of her workmates, called, and warned me not to say anything, that she just wanted to help me. I said I promise, I was desperate for information, if she wanted my heart in return I would offer her.

“I heard She’s attending her own wedding back at home..”

“With who?” Came my response.

“I don’t know, she didn’t mention.”

The call ended. As heavy as my burdens became I decided to sleep everything off, concluding that it’s just one of those nights.

In the morning, I decided to go through her stuffs, to check if she left any reason behind. Searched over the closet, clothe by clothe. She might have dropped some sort of a goodbye letter. I went through her documents and books, and work stuffs, but I found none. So I sat on bed, thinking. Opposite me, stood a blue wooden shoe rack. Her shoes neatly arranged. She always arrange them according to type and colour. But something was different. One of her blue doll shoe was missing. The first place I looked was under the bed, there was nothing. Maybe the absence of just a shoe meant nothing.

I laid on the bed, thinking about her. Turned around and took her pillow, and rested my head on it. It wasn’t as soft as usual. It had a hard protuberance formed on its epicentre. It was infuriatingly disrupting, made me livid. So I took off the pillow case in an attempt to get the protuberance all leveled. To my surprise, Inside, laid a black polythene paper, that had wrapped something. Carefully I unwrapped it, only to find the missing dollshoe. Beside the shoe, there was a pregnancy test kit that stared blankly at me, as if I perturbed it’s resting place.