It was just a hello-how-are-you kind of friendship at first. Both of us didn’t go to Facebook just to look for each other but if somehow he found me online, he would say hello and I’ll respond. We’ll chat a little and later say goodbye. I looked through his profile one day. He had a clean profile. He worked in a bank in Ghana. He attended the right kind of school and attended the university I also attended. I went through his pictures. He had photos of a politician, cool and collected. I didn’t even know why I was going through his profile. It could have been curiosity or I just wanted to know more about the guy I had been chatting with.

One day I asked him a question about the bank he was working for and he laughed. He said, “I stopped working there long ago. I”m not even in Ghana. I left before the Covid. When I got here, I realized there were a lot of opportunities here so I decided to stay here for good.” “If you say ‘here’ where exactly do you mean?” I asked. He answered, “I mean I live in the US now. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you right from the start.” I told him it was fine and he didn’t need to apologize but he came the following morning to apologize again. He said, “If I had your number, I would have apologized to you the best way I know.” 

I chuckled. I told him it wasn’t anything he had to worry about. “I mean we met on Facebook. There was no way I was going to know everything about you all at once.” He insisted and I gave him my number. The next thing I knew, I had received money from him. The reference was “I’m sorry.” He followed it up with a message that said, “I’m not trying to buy your forgiveness but use this to get yourself something.” 

I was surprised at how far he could go just to make a molehill out of something that small. I showed appreciation. A day later, I went into his Dm and thanked him again. The conversation became every day and night. If he didn’t say hi to me in a day, I questioned what was wrong with him. In the evening he would appear out of nowhere and tell me why I hadn’t heard from him all this while. I would forgive him and we would go on as if nothing happened.

One day, he did the inevitable. I saw it coming. Everything about our conversations that week told me that was where we were getting to. I told him, “I don’t know you that much. Yeah, we talk every day. I’ve seen photos of you and you’ve seen mine too but that is not enough to know someone. I wish there was a way I could know you better than this.” He answered, “You don’t have to worry because I would come to Ghana very soon. You can say yes today. If you see me and you don’t like me, you can take your yes back. I’m a returnable good so my return policy is flexible.” 

We both burst out laughing. When we regained our calm, I told him that I would be his girlfriend but nothing serious until I see him. He agreed and things started right from that day. My name changed. He didn’t address me by my name again. He called me sweetheart. He called me, “My love.” He called me “The love of my life.” Every day came with a different name. When he repeated a name twice on different days, I told him, “Hey, it’s a new day. I don’t accept a day-old name so change it.”

I would say that was one of the happiest moments of our love, the beginning where my name changed every day. I told him nothing serious but I was the one who made things look serious. I had told my parents about him, even my friends knew his name and the story of how we met. Everyone was expecting his coming because he had said he was going to come in five months’ time. I started counting the days and he started asking questions such as, “What would you do the first time you see me?” I responded, “If I see you and it’s still a yes, I will blow you kisses. The kind you deserve.”

The conversation got intense. We started talking about sex and how we intended to have a lot of it when he comes. But I kept telling him, “I don’t give shuperu until something in me is sure of what I’m getting. I still insist that I have to know you. The foundation of my knowledge of you had to be stronger than what is it now for me to be convinced beyond measure.” He asked, “So in that way, what else do you want to see?” I answered, “I have to see your home. I have to meet your parents, siblings or people you call family. Yes, friends are good but it should go beyond that. You’re not in Ghana so I should know your background before I would be convinced.”

He didn’t have a problem with my demands but that day he told me about the death of his father. “He’s the only one you will not meet. He died when I competed SHS. My mom had done the job since. I’ll take you to her and she’ll love you instantly.” I said a family but a mother is more than a family. I apologized for the death of his father and told him I couldn’t wait to say hi to the woman who raised a kind soul like him.

He came to Ghana. I travelled from where I was to Accra that day to meet him at the airport. He came with a flower in his hands for me. He hugged me. He handed me the flower and said, “I worked hard to protect it so it doesn’t wilt. It’s as fresh as my love for you.” “Pressure. You’ll kill me one day with all these poetic ways you do ooo,” I said. I remembered how it is done in the movies. Women get the flower and the first thing they do is smell it. I smelled the flower. I said it was nice and we hugged again. We got an Uber and went straight to a hotel. He told me he would spend a day or two there before going home. I spent the night with him that day. He didn’t even try to make a move on me. I said in my head, “What a gentleman!” The love I had for him went up 100%

I left Accra the next day but we talked every day. The next weekend, he came to where I lived and I introduced him to friends. I took him home to see my parents. They were all happy to meet him and he even gave them a gift. He spent the night in a hotel and left on Sunday. My heart was racing for him. I couldn’t wait to have him but I was also very careful. I wanted all the conditions I laid down fulfilled before I did anything intimate with him. He told me he was going to spend three weeks. Two weeks later, he asked me to come to Accra to meet his people. 

I travelled to Accra on a weekend. We went to Adabraka, into an old house situated not far from the main road. When we entered, this woman in his late fifties welcomed us and took us in. When we sat down she asked him, “So this is the woman?” He answered, “Yeah, she’s the flower I told you about. Isn’t she beautiful? Say the truth.” The woman gave me her hand and said, “My daughter, you’re welcome home. You look like a woman who was raised well. This my son here is very stubborn but I don’t blame him. Men who grow up without a father are usually like that.” I smiled and said, “He has been very kind to me since we met. He doesn’t look like a stubborn child.”

The woman gave a wry smile and said, ‘I’m happy you like him like that.” She was very calm and acted calculatingly. At some point, I felt she didn’t like me enough because there was no assurance in her demeanour. She got up and asked if we would eat something. He responded, “Oh no. We ate before coming.” She asked again, “So you’ll take her to see your elder sister?” He answered, “If only I get enough time.” 

She went into the bedroom and left both of us there. 

We went back to his hotel and that was where we both spent the rest of the weekend. It was a marathon of pleasure on those two nights. It was like he wanted to consume me in one whole. He was a man starved and I could understand him. All night we didn’t sleep. Round after round we finally got tired just when the morning was about to be birthed. The next night too the same thing. I was honestly happy because he had given me his all tight from the start. I left him at the hotel early Monday morning and he travelled back to the US three days later.

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When he got back, he didn’t call me. My text went unanswered for days. I felt he needed time to settle down so I didn’t bother him. I called him on Whatsapp one day because I saw him online. He didn’t answer. He later texted me that he would call me later. Five days later, that call didn’t come. I sent a message to all the places I used to contact him but this guy read the messages and left me hanging. It had been two weeks and still no word from him. I started getting worried. I asked all the questions in this world and this guy didn’t answer me. I told him, “Maybe you didn’t like me after seeing me. That’s alright but please say something. Was it about me? Was it about the sex? You didn’t like something about me? Please say something. I’m dying for an explanation.”

He came to answer, “You don’t have to worry. Everything is fine.”

I thought he needed space so I gave it to him. I was waiting to see if he would call or text one day. A month later, nothing came from him. I went to Whatsapp to check only to see that he had blocked me. “Ah, what did I do wrong?” I went to Facebook and I had been blocked. I called his line and it went straight to the answering machine. I cut the line whenever the machine picked up but one day I couldn’t hold it again. Immediately the machine picked up, I burst out crying while talking to the machine, “I don’t know what I did wrong and I don’t believe I said something wrong too. Whatever the problem is, kindly let’s talk about it. I’ve been crying. I’m hurting. Can’t you see?”

It became something I do every morning. Immediately I wake up, I will call his line and talk to the machine. I would plead. I would use God’s name to ask for forgiveness for a sin I didn’t commit. I never had an answer from him. Two months later, something took me to Accra so I decided to go and see his mother and explain to her and see if she could call him for us to talk. I went there in the afternoon and they told me she had gone to the market. Later in the evening, I went back to see her cooking. She didn’t even recognize me until I explain things further to her. 

She said, “Please don’t let me waste your time. I’m not the mother of that boy. A friend of his brought him to me that he needed someone to play his mother before he loses the woman he loves.” I opened my mouth wide but no word came out. I was shivering and the woman saw it. I asked her, “And you agreed to do it? Don’t you have a daughter like me? Why would you help a man to do this to me?” 

So apparently he and his friend told the woman that his real mother didn’t like my tribe and he needed time to convince his mother but I was the one pressuring him to send me to meet his mother or else I would leave the relationship. The woman said they even promised her some money and paid half before we went to meet her that day. After that day, she didn’t hear from them again. She called the friend who brought him to her and he snubbed her. She wanted to make me believe she was innocent. She said, “I thought I was helping him to save his relationship but that day when you came, I felt something was wrong. He wasn’t telling the truth because you didn’t look like a girl from the tribe he mentioned.”

I couldn’t blame her a lot. Both of us got played. I’m a clever girl but I allowed myself to be played because of love. Something didn’t look right that day. The connection between him and the woman didn’t look like that of a mother and son but I overlooked it because hey, not all mothers treat their sons that way. 

Why Do Men Leave After Sex? –Beads Media

I accepted my defeat and walked out of the woman’s house. I was in a car going back home when I called his line the last time. This time, I didn’t cry. I said, “It was all a game and you played it very well. Well played champ but remember there’s a God who watches over the affairs of men. One day, your reward would be delivered to your doorstep. What you did to me was my reward for believing in your lies but don’t worry. Yours is on the way coming. It may tarry but trust that one day, it will reach you.”

–Martina

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