I went to the counter with all the humility I could muster because the lady who would process the forms for me was getting ready to go for a break. I greeted her and smiled courteously. Before she would receive my form, she told me she was going on a break and would return an hour later. I begged her to at least work on mine since I was the only one there. She shook her head. She said she was on medication and had to eat for her afternoon batch of drugs.

I stood there watching her, hoping she would change her mind. Another lady entered the office from behind. She asked what was going on and the first lady explained the situation. The new lady asked me to wait patiently since an hour wasn’t such a long time. I had a place to go. That aside, my office could call at any time and ask me to return to the office. This new lady asked what I was there for and I submitted my forms to her. She went through them and asked me to sit down. I checked her name tag. She was Goldie.

As I sat behind the counter and watched her work on my forms, her beauty struck me. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Everything she did looked beautiful in my eyes. The way she typed, the way she turned the sheets,  the way she mentioned my name. Anytime she looked up, she caught me looking at her. I didn’t flinch. I was determined for her to know I was watching. When she handed my forms back to me, something struck me that I shouldn’t let go but tell her that I loved her. I fought the urge and instead asked for her contact.

“What do you need my contact for?” She asked while smiling.

“I want us to be friends. You are way too kind.”

She took a sheet of paper and wrote her two contacts on it. She added her name as if I didn’t see her name tag. I told her I was going to call soon and she smiled.

Getting a lady’s number is one thing. Knowing when to call is another thing. I was thinking about it; “Should I call tonight? A day later? Or wait until the weekend when she’s relaxed?”

I couldn’t wait a day later. That same evening I called her. She mentioned my name when she picked up the call. “How did you know it was me?” She didn’t answer but days later she explained how she knew it was me. She took my number from my account so she would know it was me and pick it up. She didn’t like to answer calls from strange numbers

On my second call, she asked me to be honest with her. “What do you want with me? I don’t want us to be in a hopeless situation.”

“I want friendship. No hidden agenda. I’m a man, yes, but it’s possible, right?” I answered.

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I didn’t believe myself when I said that but she believed me and opened up for friendship. We met and had our first date in town. Again, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She chewed gracefully, she sipped from the glass as if she was afraid to use her lips. I was watching her every move. She caught me watching but I wasn’t embarrassed. “So you and your boyfriend, how long have you dated?” I asked.

She didn’t have a boyfriend, she told me. I did the sign of the cross. She added, “I don’t think I’ll ever have one. Boyfriends and my system don’t work together. Even a fiancé didn’t work, how much more a boyfriend?”

She spoke like a woman who had been hurt deeply. I asked her to tell me the story but she declined. While our friendship was growing, she became more mysterious. I told her everything about me but when I asked her to tell me about her, she shrugged and told me, “Another time.”

One fine morning, I got a notification on WhatsApp. When I checked, it was a photo from Goldie. The first thing I saw was “Save the date.” It was a wedding invitation with Goldie’s name and another guy. My heart started beating faster. I couldn’t sit and I couldn’t stand. “Is that the reason she tells me very little about herself? Why didn’t she tell me earlier?”

I called her and gave her a feeble “Congratulations.” She asked. “For what?” I answered, “For your nuptial. You sent me an invitation, didn’t you?” She burst out laughing while I wondered what was funny. She exclaimed, “Did you even check the date? That was last year.” I asked, “You mean you got married last year?”

She was ready to open up and I was ready to listen. We met in the evening at her place. My first time being allowed to visit her place. It was a sign of growth for our friendship but it meant more to me because she was ready to tell me what she had kept from me for months.

The invitation was an old one and according to her, it represented the lowest point in her life where she felt like dying. Her boyfriend travelled abroad for three years. She waited until he came back to perform the knocking rite. He went back and came back a year later for the wedding. The very day they sent out invitations, Goldie received a revelation that brought her to her knees.

Her boyfriend was already married. He had two kids with the woman he was married to. He was in Ghana to get married to Goldie too so he would have two wives; an International wife and a local wife. According to Goldie, when she confronted him, he admitted the truth and told her, “We are divorcing very soon because it’s not working. Trust me on this and everything will be alright.”

Goldie called off the wedding three days later and told him she wasn’t ready to go through a scam just to be called a wife. Goldie said, “That’s not even what hurt the most. A month later, I got to know everything was staged to prevent the wedding from happening.”

Goldie got to know her fiancé was already married through her fiancé’s best friend, Alex. Alex said he was telling her because he felt his friend was being evil. Not knowing Goldie’s fiancé and Alex planned it this way just to end the wedding.

Any woman who had gone through what Goldie had been through would definitely turn inward. I got to understand her and decided to let her be until she was ready to love again.

To move a woman from a place of hurt to a place of love takes friendship and understanding. It takes a little bit more—like being there for her and talking her out of her darkness. I was ready to be that friend.

Surprisingly, after she told me that story, she opened up like a petal before a butterfly. She became lively around me and talked freely about everything. I asked her, “So if you meet someone again, won’t you give him a chance because of what you’ve been through?”

She took her time before answering, “It depends but I think I will. There’s time to move on and I think I have.”

“What if that person is me?”

“You said you were a friend so how could that person be you?”

“Marry your friend they say or you don’t believe in that?”

“That devil was also a friend.”

“I’m different.”

“He said the same thing.”

We both went silent for a while. “You think I didn’t know?” She mentioned while reading from her phone. “I knew it from hello. I allowed you into my life because I felt you would be different. Let’s see how it goes.”

“How it goes” took us to the altar to exchange our vows. I’ve always known she was going to be a beautiful bride but she was different. It felt so right I thought I was dreaming.

Five and a half years later, we are still seeing how it goes. There’s a child. There’s a peaceful home to come to. There’s a family that looks out for the interest of each other. There’s love. There’s a beautiful future we look forward to. Maybe that’s how it goes but until it ends, we will never know how far and deep it goes.

—Arthur

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