Until that day, I hadn’t seen her around. I remember asking my friend who that girl was. When he turned and saw her, he said something that pushed me to rush to her. He said, “I’ll get her number by the time we leave here.”

I wanted to be the first to talk to her, so while my friend watched on, I walked to her and asked for her name. She said, “Nora.” I got her number before turning away to look at my friend. He was looking at me, maybe hoping Nora said no to me so he would also try his luck.

I called Nora that very evening, telling her I wanted to be a friend. She asked me, “Just a friend?” I nodded my head while saying no in my heart. “Yeah, just a friend for now but you and I can’t predict the future. Anything at all can happen,”  I said. She responded, “Yeah you’re right. No one predicted we would meet at the time we met. You’re right.”

Calls turned to “Can-we-meet-for-a-drink?”

“Can-we-meet-for-a-drink?” turned to “Would-you-be-my-girlfriend?”

“Would-you-be-my-girlfriend?” turned to sex and later turned to love we both desired to explore to the end.

I looked at her get dressed in front of me and asked myself, “Is this reality or it’s just a dream? Is she indeed my girlfriend?” I would then pinch myself in the cheek to see if indeed it’s real. I loved her so much that if she asked me to swim across the ocean, I would have done it without asking why, even though I don’t know how to swim.

Later in the relationship, I started noticing a trend. Some days it became very hard to reach her especially when she told me she was traveling for work. She’s a makeup artist and could travel all over Ghana to beat the faces of people for different reasons and for different occasions. Sometimes she would be gone all weekend if she gets a wedding gig.

I would call her in the morning and she wouldn’t pick up. In the afternoon, she would text to tell me she was busy. Most often in the night, her phone would be off.

We talked about it. She complained her phone was faulty. I got her a new phone. The excuse changed. Whenever you solve for one excuse, it metamorphoses into another new excuse. At some point, I asked if indeed she loved me the way she wanted me to believe.

Honestly, apart from that, we never had any troubles in our relationship. Well, sometimes when she returned from her travels, she wouldn’t allow sex though I’d been missing her. She would complain about tiredness and body weakness for days before finally, she would give me a bite of the cherry days later.

One weekend, I offered to travel with her. My intention was genuine, without malice or mischief. I wanted to witness what made her that tired. What made her so busy that she missed my calls often when she travelled. Beyond these reasons, I wanted to go and help with her work. She asked, “What for? Why do you want to travel with me for a job only females can do? I don’t need help. I’ve been doing it all by myself all this while so I’m used to it.”

I insisted. It turned into a plea or a supplication of some sort; “Dear, let me go with you. I can help. I may not be able to hold the brushes and create contours on the face but I can be your errand boy. I will help with your tools. I can answer calls for you when you’re busy. Call me your personal assistant and you wouldn’t be wrong. Please let me do this for you.”

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She went without me. All weekend I didn’t hear from her. When she returned, she didn’t come to see me until I went to her place. She was angry with me. She said I didn’t believe her and it hurt her so much. “You’ve known me for over nine months. If we got pregnant the first day, we would have been able to cook a child together by now but you still have doubts about me and my job, why?”

She got it wrong. I didn’t have doubts about her job. I only doubted her excuses and her penchant for not picking up my calls.

One night I went through her phone. When I couldn’t find anything suspicious, I felt ashamed of myself. I said sorry to her while she was sleeping. Another evening, she had a Telegram notification while showing me something on her phone. She quickly pulled back her phone and gave me a suspicious look. So that night when she slept, I went through her telegram. I nearly collapsed. Herrrh!

All of a sudden, it felt like I didn’t know her. I’d been living with a stranger for nine months and she was still a stranger. A mystery I must say.

She was in three hookup groups on Telegram. She was an admin for one of the group. That aside, she had a group of girls she distributed to men who called her phone. She took ten per cent after the link-up. It turned out that all the weekend travels for makeup gigs were for escort gigs. She was discussing business with a new client. She was screaming at a client who broke a condom while doing it. She was asking for more money. She was talking to a client who paid extra. She wanted another trip with him. It was messy. The first question I asked myself was, “Am I safe? How did I end up here?”

When she woke up she was like, “Well, that was who I used to be but I stopped when I met you and realized you wanted something serious.”

She was lying. I read a month-old messages. I read messages that were as old as hours. When I put that to her, she changed her defence; “I didn’t say I stopped entirely but I was in the process of quitting. That’s why I have girls who do it and I get my percentage.”

I looked at her and all I felt was rage. Rage not for her but for myself for not knowing until that moment. I told her it was over. She told me I was being harsh. She pleaded for more time to turn over a new leaf. She almost got me when she said, “You’re the only one I’ve loved so deeply I nearly quit this job. I will stop for you. I’m sorry I lied but I was folding up. I’m almost there. It’s not that bad.”

The first thing I did that morning was to check for HIV. I was clean. I did the sign of the cross and thanked God for keeping me safe. She didn’t stop coming. She was desperate to keep us together. I would have forgiven her for everything but hookup and escort.

Did Marriages Last Longer In The Past Than Today?

I couldn’t shake off the thought of sharing my woman with men who only had money. It’s different if they loved her the way I did. They saw her as a commodity. A play thing. That was hard for me to take so I cut her off even when she kept trying to prove she could stop the job for me.

Recently, my friend asked about us. He wanted to know how it was going between us. I told him, “I should have allowed you to talk to her first that day. You swerved a bullet.” He didn’t get it the way I meant it but that was OK.

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—Jim

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