It was a Sunday. When my brother wanted to use my car, I protested; “No, don’t move the car. The fuel in it is too small. I’ll be using it tomorrow for work. You’ll use it and bring it back empty. I beg, put the keys down.” He didn’t listen to me. Elvis has a special way of making me say yes even when I want to say no. Maybe it’s because he’s the only man among three women or it’s because he’s the last child. He promised he was going to fill it before bringing it back. I knew he was lying but I watched as he reversed the car out of the house and drove away.

He came to visit me a few days before leaving Ghana. He had been in the country for over a month and only came around when he was about to leave. I knew where he was driving to. He was going to see a girl he had met not long ago. It was also one of the reasons I didn’t want him to go in my car. An hour or so later, I was sleeping when my phone rang. It was him. When I picked up the call, I heard him shouting at someone in the background. The person was shouting back. I could hear a lot of voices in the background trying to separate a fight. My heart skipped a beat. I screamed on the phone, “Elvis, what’s happening? What’s the problem?”

He didn’t talk back. He was busy fighting whoever he was fighting with. I stayed calm and listened. I heard, “It’s your fault. You can call the police for all I care.” My brother responded, “Stop being stupid. You hit my back and you’re telling me it’s my fault? Were you wearing metal spectacles when driving?” I knew it was an accident. I started screaming, “Eish my car. This guy won’t kill me ooo. He has destroyed my car.” He was on the phone but wasn’t talking to me. I cut the call and called back again. When he picked up the call, I asked what the problem was and he answered, “Is it not this stupid guy who has hit the back of your car? Instead of him accepting his mistake, he’s here talking rubbish. Someone is bringing the police.” I asked if the damage was huge and he answered, “You can’t open your booth. It’s totally damaged.”

“Ah, Elvis. You see why I didn’t want you to go with the car? See trouble.” I asked if I should come around and he said there was no need. Once the police are around, they’ll resolve it and they’ll know how the car would be fixed. He came home in the evening without the car. He told me they finally agreed not to make it a police case but instead, the guy would take the car to the mechanic to get it fixed. He showed me the pictures of the car and I screamed, “Oh my God, my car is dead. What really happened? What were you doing on the road that he hit you this way?”

According to him, the two cars in front of him stopped abruptly because an old man was trying to cross the road when the traffic light was on the green. He saw them in time and also pulled the brakes only for the car behind him to run into him. It looked like everything happened too fast so the driver behind him failed to notice the cars ahead of him had stopped. You know men, instead of talking about it and resolving it peacefully, they tried to fight it out to prove who was the real man. He told me the guy was rude. He told me he would deal with him for disrupting his plans and destroying the car. I said, “All I want is for my car to get fixed. You guys can go to Bukom Arena and fight it there, I don’t care.”

The next day, I followed him to the workshop where my car was and saw the guy who caused the accident. He was calm when he met us. My brother introduced me to him and the mechanic that I was the owner of the car. The guy apologized to me and said sorry for the inconvenience. From the way he spoke to me, he didn’t fit any of the descriptions my brother gave him. He didn’t look rebellious and he didn’t look silly. His own car was extensively damaged too and when you look at him, he was a lot concerned about the whole situation. I asked the mechanic how long it was going to take and he said a week or more. I screamed, “How am I going to survive a week without this car?” 

The guy looked at me and apologized. He said, “I’ll try and push them to fix it before a week is over. I’m really sorry. You know how accident happens.” When we were leaving, Elvis told them he wouldn’t be coming again because he was travelling and warned the guy not to do anything silly. “If my sister calls to complain, we’ll make it a police case. You can’t waste our time.” I was looking at the guy. He didn’t say a word. He looked like he was tired of my brother and his incessant attacks. When I was leaving, I gave him my number and also took his. The following day, Elvis left town. 

The guy kept calling me every day to give me a progress report. At a point, he told me, “I don’t think your car would be ready in a week as expected. Those working on it are finding it hard to get some of the parts and after everything, the portion has to be sprayed and that will take a day or two. Forgive me. I’m trying my best.” I sighed. I couldn’t say much. He kept telling me he was sorry. There was nothing I could do. 

Before they would send the car to the sprayer, he called to ask me to meet him at the shop and I went. He asked, “Is there anything they haven’t done?” I answered, “It looks good. I think all is well.” We were both sitting next to each other on a bench when he asked my name. It occurred to me that we’d been communicating all this while but I didn’t know his name. I said, “Ann” and he also said his name was Bright. I turned to my phone and was unconsciously scrolling through when he asked me, “Am I the Car Crasher?” I looked at him wondering what he was talking about. “Car Crasher? How?” He answered, “I see Car Crasher in your call list. Is that me?” I burst out laughing. “I didn’t have a name so…” He responded, “That’s alright. I couldn’t save your number because I didn’t have a name. You did your best.”

He asked about my brother and I told him he had been calling every day. I said, “He’s waiting for you to make a wrong move so he’ll come down to arrest you.” He laughed. He said my brother had quite a temper and I told him he was trying not to be bullied so he became the bully. The conversation went up and down and sideways while waiting for the final work to be done. I sat next to him in his car while mine was being driven to the sprayer. The conversation continued from there. He told me about cars and how he came to love cars. I wasn’t listening. I had my own questions and was waiting for the right moment to ask those questions. I asked about his work and he told me. I asked if he was the first child and he said third. I asked about his family and his relationship with them and he had beautiful stories to tell. 

Finally, my car was done and he was there when I went for it. I thanked him and he again apologized for all the inconvenience. I told him, “It doesn’t matter any more. The good thing is everything is done now and my car is looking like new.” He smiled and said, “I hope it doesn’t end here. I would like to be a friend. Please pick up when I call. Or you prefer a text?” I answered, “Whichever way you want it, I’ll talk to you.”

Our first date was on my birthday. I had no intention of celebrating it but he saw it on my status and asked for permission to take me out. I obliged. He came with a wrapped box. He said, “It was on short notice so I couldn’t think through the gift properly. Forgive me if you open it and you hate everything inside.” I said, “It’s a gift. I can’t hate a gift. I have no reason to.” His first question was, “How’s your brother doing? Does he know we are friends now?” My answer was, “It looks like Elvis put the fear of God in you that day. You love asking about him. Don’t worry, he’s no longer here to breathe on your neck. He’s there. Enjoying his life. He hardly checks on me. You’re doing better in that regard than him. Let him go.”

I didn’t want the night to be about my brother and what has happened in the past. I wanted us to move away from the car issues and talk about us and why we were there at that moment. Yes, I was seeing him in a different way. His effort and his interest in me weren’t for nothing and I was interested to know what he thought about us. The night was good. I got to know him better and he called me beautiful. He told me he regretted fighting my brother the very first day he saw me. He felt I would hate him too because of probably what my brother had told me. He said he made it a point to make me see his good side because he wanted to be more than the guy who crashed my car. I asked, “What else do you want to be?” He answered, “A friend.” 

His mouth said a friend but his eyes said something different. I saw where it was going but I respected the fact that he wanted to take his time. I got home and opened the gift and it was everything I liked. I don’t know what informed his choices but the perfume was on point, the watch was beautiful and the bag was in my favourite colour. I sent him a message, “It’s like you knew what I wanted and you gave me just that.” 

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My brother called one day and I told him, “I’m dating Bright.” He asked, “Why are you talking as if I know who Bright is? And why are you telling me about this one? What’s happening? Are you getting married tomorrow?” At that time Bright hadn’t even proposed to me but I was testing his temperature to see how he would handle it. I said, “I’m telling because it was through you I came to know Bright. The guy you fought with. The guy who  crashed my car.” 

He screamed, “You don’t mean it. What do you see in that guy? He’s very disrespectful and doesn’t know how to talk. I hope you’re not just allowing him into your life because he drives a nice car, you women.” I told him, “He’s a nice human being. You need to know him outside the event that brought you two together. He’s a good person just like you but if he has to judge you solely on what happened that day, I don’t think he’ll say you’re a good person.”

He screamed, “Yooo! Follow him. He’ll crash your heart just like he crashed your car. That guy is careless but you won’t listen until he drives you to condemn. I’m here.” The next time Bright asked about my brother I told him, “He thinks you’ll crash my heart if I give you a dating chance. He doesn’t trust you.” He said, “Awww, I won’t do that. How can I hurt you because I hurt a car? Trust me I won’t do that.” 

We had been going up and down for over three months and he hadn’t proposed though it was written all over him that he liked me. A couple of days after I told him what my brother said, he proposed. I asked, “And you’re sure you won’t be careless with me?” He answered, “You know me now. You think I can do that?” 

March 2021 was exactly two years since I accepted his proposal. In November 2021, my brother was his best man and his sister was my maid of honour when we got married in my church. To date, Elvis doesn’t believe he walked out that day and came home with a crashed car and a husband. He tells me, “Now I’m scared of life. Just imagine I listened to you that day and didn’t go out with your car. What would have happened? What if that old man didn’t cross the road while the light was green? What if Bright wasn’t careless? Should all these events happen just because you have to meet your f**king mate? No, life is crazy. It should be simpler than this.”

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He has a point though but nothing happens out of nothing. It takes something for something to happen. It could be something bad out of something good or something good out of something bad. We can’t explain life because we didn’t design it. He crashed my car but when I gave him my heart, he held it with care and rubbed it with pampering palms. A miscarriage and a child later, we are still here loving each other and the little blessing God has given us. There’s no slowing down between us. We still talk fondly about our beginning and talk about our future as if we know what will happen tomorrow. Maybe that’s how love is. When you’re with the right one, you can see how tomorrow would be because tomorrow can’t be any different from how today is. Whether today or tomorrow, it’s still love that would keep the two of us going.

—Ann

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