He came to buy fuel. I was the lady at the pump. He called me beautiful while I served him. He came again another day with the same vibe. He asked for my number. I told him we were not allowed to give our numbers to customers. He asked for a receipt and asked me to write my number on the receipt. I did. But he never called. Instead, he came around every morning, bought fuel, called me beautiful, and drove away.

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One day he asked what time I closed and I told him. He came to wait for me. When I closed, he told me he would like to drive me home. I sat next to him while he told me stories of his life and what he had faced as an Uber driver. I came to love him. He made tragedy sound like comedy and he laughed at his own life.

He came to the station one afternoon with a new car. He asked me to give him fuel on credit and I did. Hours later, he sent the amount through Momo. He told me life wasn’t good, that was why he couldn’t tell me he loved me. I asked him, “Do you have to be rich to be my boyfriend?” He answered, “When you finally become mine, I have to take care of you. I don’t have the money now.”

We became lovers from that day on. Even when he doubted himself, I believed in him. I told him I would always be by his side through thick and thin. “I’m not that kind of woman you need money to impress. We can make it work,” I encouraged him.

He lost his car again and later got another one and then lost it again. He was a good person, so I wondered why bad things kept happening to him. I was at the pump when he told me he was traveling for a week. He told me he would return with a different destiny because his friend had promised to teach him how to make his own money.

When he came back, he came to the station and waited until I closed. That evening, he picked up a taxi for us. While in the taxi, he threw the money on me and excitedly exclaimed, “What did I tell you? You didn’t believe me, but just look at this with your own eyes.”

The money was in bundles. I didn’t count them, but it looked like a lot. He asked me to stop the work and look for another business. I was eager to know how he made that much money in a week, but he was stingy with the information. I wanted a store where I could sell, save money, and go back to school, but he told me to start a mobile money vending instead because he had heard the money was good.

I obliged, and he helped set it up for me with GHC3,000 working capital. I had a good place, so the business was good. He would bring me his phone and tell me, “Talk to him. He’s my client. Pretend you love him too.”

The first time I did it without asking questions. The person on the other line insisted on a video call. He was coaching me on what to say and what not to say. Later that day, when he received the money, he told me, “So this is what brings the money. Don’t judge me yet. I will stop when I get some money.”

When he told me that, he indirectly inducted me to become his accomplice. I made some of the calls. When the money came, he threw it on me and asked me to take any amount I wanted. I saved the money for him. Soon he rented a place for us.

When we were in the house, he buried me in his embrace the way two peas in a pod embrace each other. I came to know the scent of his breath at every given time of the day—how it switched from fresh to stale and then to bubble gum when he chewed scented candies.

The Momo business was doing well, but one day he shut it down because a man talked to me the way he didn’t like. He carried my table on his shoulders and broke it into pieces along the way. “Don’t worry. I’m making enough money for us.”

For weeks later, he didn’t make anything. Even the calls I reluctantly got involved in brought nothing. One dawn, he kissed me on the lips, picked up his shirt, and stepped into the darkness. I called his name. I followed him through the door until I saw him getting into a car whose light lit up the whole neighborhood. Seconds later, they disappeared.

He didn’t pick up my calls. He came back two days later and threw a bag of money on me. Ten-cedis notes packed in bundles. “Did you rob a bank?” I queried. I threw it back at him while shouting, “Take it to where you got it. What are you turning into? Do you want to die and leave me lonely?”

He coiled into my lap and whispered, “Die? Who said I’m going to die? I will make a lot of money soon. I will stop so we can enjoy the fruit of my labor.”

I begged him to stop. I cried until my tears fell on his face. All he said was, “I will stop. It’s just temporary.”

I asked to meet his parents. He told me he had none. “How about siblings?” He said he had none. “All I have is you.”

I didn’t believe him. I started digging to find any relative of his. I couldn’t ask his friends because they were all like him. When he talked with someone on the phone and he laughed, I marked the hour and later checked his phone and picked the number to call. I called three people. They were all people he met on the street. They told him I had called.

He was a monster on the outside, but he never raised his voice at me. He listened to me. He coiled into my embrace like a lost child who had just found his mother. I prayed for him. He responded amen to my prayers and yet stepped outside to do what he had to do.

He asked me to go to school. He walked me to the campus to get the forms. When I started, he would drive me in a friend’s car to school and come to pick me up after school. I would wake up at dawn to learn, and he would be gone. He would return with money, injuries, and bruises to his face or legs. I had stopped talking because he wouldn’t listen to me. Instead, I stopped touching the money he brought home.

When he left money on the table, he came back days later to find it there. He was angry. He screamed at me, “Whose money are you using to go to school? If I catch another man in your life, I swear he won’t see the morning sun again.”

He would place it in my purse. I wouldn’t touch it. He would come back to stuff my purse again, only to realize the one he put there hadn’t been spent. He stuffed a lot of money in the sofa, under the carpet, and even in the fridge. He said he was saving so he could retire before we had our first child.

When we were sleeping that night, I folded my arms around him. It was a language. I was telling him to stay in bed and not go anywhere. I felt it when he was wiggling his way out of my embrace. I saw his silhouette when he tiptoed to pick up his shirt. I saw the beam of light coming through the window from the waiting car outside. While he was tiptoeing out of the door, I called out his name, “Tony, I had a dream about you. It wasn’t a good dream. Can you stay in tonight? Only for tonight?”

He stopped for a while. Just when I thought I’d won, he stepped out gingerly without looking back. He was gone with the night. That was the last time I saw him as a free man. For three days, he didn’t come home. He didn’t pick up my calls, and he didn’t call me either. On the dawn of 16th August 2020, it was Sunday. I heard my phone ringing. He was the one calling. He said, almost in whispers, “Run. Take whatever you can and….”

I heard a slap, and then a scream, and then a bang that felt like the phone had hit the floor. The phone went dead. His words kept echoing in my head, “Run away!” I packed a few things and stuffed my side bag with the money he kept in the fridge. I didn’t know how much time I had. I didn’t run. I walked slowly to the roadside and waited until I got a taxi.

I came back to my hometown to hide, but I walked while looking over my shoulder. I wondered what had happened to him. Was he dead? Did he survive? Is he on the run? For a week I didn’t hear anything, so I went back to check.

They were four that night. He was the only one who survived. They brought him home to ransack the place. They took everything and carried him away. It was the landlord who told me the story. And then he asked, “Didn’t you know that was what he was into?”

By that time I was crying. I didn’t have the voice to answer his question. He told me to inform his family. I nodded my head and walked away. I don’t know where they took him. I was too scared to search or ask questions. I looked for a new place to begin again. I invested the money I ran away with. When I needed money and I withdrew from it, I took it as a loan and paid it back later. I believe one day he will come back. I want him to have something to fall on—a safe place he can begin again.

My Wife Has The Spiritual Powers To Detect Cheating

I’m done with school, but you know what? While going through the stress of his absence, I found out I was pregnant. It’s a girl. She’s four years now. She has her father’s eyes, and at her age, she’s showing the grit of her father. I’m not waiting for him. Life goes by too fast, but when one day he appears from the dark just as he entered it, I will show him a daughter and the money he left behind. I hope they’ll be enough to keep him grounded and give him hope to begin again.

—Ajoba

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