The day I proposed to her, she made one thing clear, “We can’t get intimate until we marry.” I asked her, “Not even a touch? A kiss or even a hug?” She answered, “We can try those things if it wouldn’t push you to be naughty with me.” I said, “That’s fine with me.” Half a loaf has the glory. The cup looking half full is better than looking half empty. Half isn’t a bad thing so I settled for that and signed up for our relationship to begin. 

One month later, we got a chance. I was in her room, just the two of us. I got closer and tried to kiss her but she avoided me. I tried again and she avoided it. I asked, “What’s the matter?” She answered, “I’m scared.” I was like scared? What are you scared of? You know kissing me won’t get you pregnant, right? She laughed. “Why would you think that is the case? Am I a kid?” I said, “Then why are you avoiding me?” She kept laughing and giggling when there was nothing funny. In the end, she said, “Hmmm, I don’t think I will allow you to kiss me, considering what I saw the other day.” 

I was confused. I asked all the questions. She didn’t answer. I went to the washroom and smelled my own breath. I concluded that it might have been because of my breath. I couldn’t smell any foul scent from my breath but you and I know that when it comes to odor, we can’t smell it on ourselves unless it’s on someone else. I went home that day and decided to work on my breath. I brushed my teeth twice a day and even complemented it with mouth wash. The day she said she was coming to visit me, I spent all day monitoring my breath. I didn’t want to waste the opportunity again.

She came. We settled down and had a beautiful conversation. I got closer to her and asked respectfully, “Can I kiss you?” She answered, “No, you can’t.”  “But you said I can so why are you pulling away now?” I asked. She repeated the same statement again, “Considering what I saw the other time, eish, I won’t even try it.” I went over the same questions with her and all she did was smile and giggle as If I was funny. I concluded that she didn’t love me. “No, she doesn’t like me. She’s only pretending to love me. If she really does love me, she’ll kiss me.” 

But the question then was, “Why would she pretend?” 

Some women would pretend to love you when there’s a reason to pretend. Maybe you have money. They love the money more than they love you so they’ll pretend and stay just to enjoy your money. If you have fame, some women would stay with you and enjoy your light as long as it’s beneficial even when they don’t love you. I didn’t have fame and I didn’t have money. I wasn’t giving her gold or silver. Why would she pretend?

I decided to take my time and learn the reason why she won’t kiss me. She would come to my place and feel so comfortable walking around semi-naked but she won’t allow just a kiss. I asked her, “So does it mean that you saw someone get pregnant because she kissed someone?” She didn’t answer me. I pressed for answers only for her to tell me, “I’m not a kid. I’m only staying away because I want to safeguard what we have.” I retorted, “But right from the beginning you said we can kiss, so what changed?” 

She started laughing again. She said, “You have to ask yourself that question. I changed my mind. Can’t a woman change her mind again?” I realized the determination in her answers and decided that I won’t even try again. I told her, “I don’t want you to feel that I’m pressuring you. It’s something we agreed on from the beginning. If you don’t want to do it again, that’s fine. I won’t ask for it again.” She screamed, “Hallelujah.”

After that conversation, I started avoiding her. I thought if I gave her a cold shoulder, she would open up. She would call me and I won’t pick up. She will send a message and I’ll leave her on read. The surprising thing was that she was never angry. She didn’t even ask me why I was doing that. I would avoid her call all day and later pick up in the evening thinking she would ask why I’ve not been answering her calls. But she would pick up the conversation right from where we left off the other day and act as if she didn’t care about my refusal to pick up her calls. 

She wasn’t asking the questions I wanted her to ask so I gave the answers even when she hasn’t asked for them; “You see I’m trying to pull away from you these days? I don’t want temptations. I don’t want to be in the same room with you, approach you and you avoid me. If that’s what you want then we should give each other some space.” She answered calmly, “Oh, so that’s the reason you’re behaving this way? That’s fine. Take all the space you want.” 

She stopped calling and I vowed not to call her again. We went for four days without talking to each other. Not a single day passed by without me thinking about her; ”Where is this girl? What is she doing? Is she talking to another man?” I wanted to go a week without talking to her but I got scared she might move on. On the fourth day when I called, she handled the conversation as if nothing has happened. As if we hadn’t gone for days without talking to each other. She was cool and talked normally. I asked myself, “What sort of girl is that? Kyerɛsɛ, nothing affects her. She doesn’t love me, I know. She’s only pretending.”

I stopped going after the kiss and instead tried to be a better man. I became involved in whatever she was doing. Instead of staying away, I decided to be so involved that she would feel the loss when I’m out. When I started doing that, we were happy. I was happier because I saw in her something I never knew. She opened up to me more often. She did a lot of favor for me without asking when I was going to pay back. She became everything I wanted in a woman. The only thing that was missing was the kiss. I’ve vowed not to chase it again so I didn’t.

We dated for a year and started talking about marriage. Both of us were ready so we put in our best to get it done. I went home for the knocking with my mom and uncles. I got the list and started getting everything on the list. She was supportive through it all. Finally, we fixed a date for the marriage. I remember the night before our wedding I called her on the phone; “So when the pastor tells me to kiss the bride, what are we supposed to do? Or I should call him now and ask him to take it out of the ceremony?”  

She retorted, “Don’t be petty. What is that? It’s our wedding day. We are no longer in those days when we had to do things illegally.” I said, “I’m only concerned for you. I don’t want you to get there and tell the pastor that you won’t kiss me because of what you saw the other time.” She burst out laughing.  I screamed, “No, don’t laugh I’m serious. Let’s settle it before tomorrow morning. Are we going to kiss or not?” She answered, “I’ll take the risk. It’s our wedding day.” 

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We got to the altar and the pastor made the pronouncement, “You may now kiss the bride.” We were both standing still. The pastor said, “You didn’t hear what I said? You may now kiss the bride.” I leaned forward and she leaned in. Just before our lips could touch, we burst out laughing. The whole church joined in the laughter. We finally did it and it lasted for a few seconds. When we went to our seats, I asked her, “Did you die?” She responded, “God won’t watch me die on my wedding day, tofiakwa.”

On our honeymoon, everything went smoothly. It felt new. It felt surreal. Like both of us haven’t done it before. We were in bed one night when she suddenly burst out laughing. I asked her, “What? What’s wrong with you?” She said, “Let me tell you why I didn’t kiss you…”

I don’t remember when that incident occurred but according to her, we went out one afternoon and after eating, I requested water. They served sachet water and I savagely bit the tip and started drinking. She said, “The aggressiveness with which you bit the tip got me scared. It was like you haven’t drunk water all your life. Then you started squeezing the water from the sachet with the same aggressiveness. I could imagine you doing that to my lips. I could imagine you squeezing my breast and I got scared. I said in my head, “This guy, never! Eiii, it was serious ooo. I started feeling pity for the water koraa.”

I laughed like I was being tickled. I kept repeating, “You’re mad! So you have to punish me just because of the way I drank water from a sachet? Who does that?” She responded, “Anytime you drew closer to me that image appeared in my mind and I got scared but you were a good person so I decided to take the risk with you.”

She punished me unnecessarily for something so small but it was worth the wait. She is worth all the time I invested in waiting for her. If I had to go through it all over again, I won’t blink. Knowing what lies ahead of us would be the motivation for me to endure to the end. The only thing I may change is how I treated that sachet water. From the way she narrated it, it looks like I committed a murder. No matter what is involved, murder is the greatest sin any man can commit. 

–Julius

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