If you haven’t read the first part of this story, here’s the link. Kindly read it before starting this one.

One night in his car, he told me, “What if I tell my wife about you? Would you agree to be a second wife?”

He held my hand while he looked into my eyes and asked this question. I laughed. I laughed too loud, and he felt disrespected. “I’m telling you something this serious, and all you can do is laugh? You don’t have any respect for me, I know.”

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I apologized. I told him to go ahead and talk to his wife about me.

I knew he couldn’t do it. It was one of his tricks to buy time and keep what we had going. He said he would get back to me with good news soon. I didn’t hold my breath. I knew he wasn’t going to come anytime soon.

A week later, he hadn’t said anything about it. He told me his wife had traveled out of the country and he was waiting for her return. I asked when she was coming back. He said in two weeks. Because I didn’t want any reason to disbelieve what he would tell me later, I told him to record the conversation and send it to me when they finally had it.

One night, he sent me a message asking how to record a conversation on the phone. I sent him a voice note, teaching him how to locate the voice recorder, how to start and stop it. At that moment, I was scared. “Is he really going to do that? What has come over this man that he won’t let me go?”

I waited. I checked my WhatsApp every now and then, hoping he had sent the audio. The night passed silently, like a baby’s fart. The audio didn’t come. The next morning, he said, “Bad news.”

I thought he had told his wife and she had fought with him. That wasn’t the issue. He told me, “I planned everything to a T, just for her to return and tell me about the death of her cousin. How do I break such news to her when she is mourning?”

I gave him the benefit of the doubt, though I didn’t believe him. Akwesi had found me and was trying hard to get me to say yes. I liked him too, but as I said, I wasn’t going to date him knowing very well that I had baggage behind my back. I needed a relationship with him but wanted to start on a clean slate. When he proposed, I asked for time. He asked how long. I couldn’t answer.

I stopped seeing the married man. When he asked why, I told him, “Until you tell your wife about me, things are going to be like this.” He huffed and puffed. I had a straw to hold on to, and I wasn’t going to let it go and drown. I would return home at night and see him sitting at my door. I would turn back and spend the night with a friend. I spoke to him on the phone often, but I wouldn’t see him.

When I didn’t see him for weeks, he texted, “I can see you’re determined to leave. That’s alright, but can I ask for one favor? Let’s spend one night together. Just one night, and after that, I will leave and not bother you again.”

“We are making progress,” I told myself.

I asked him, “Does it mean you’re no longer going to tell your wife about us?” He responded, “That will take a lot of time, but it looks like you don’t have time, so let’s do this and let things go.”

We didn’t do it in my house. I wanted to wake up in the morning and leave without looking back. When we met, I told him, “If you don’t leave after this, you’ll force me to act in a way you wouldn’t be happy with. Let’s stick to the agreement. You’ve been good to me. I don’t want to appear ungrateful.”

He came with gifts. He called them parting gifts. In the morning, when I woke up and was leaving, I didn’t take any of those gifts. I blocked him right in front of him and pleaded with him to make things easy. He nodded, and I left.

When I didn’t hear anything from him for a week, I went to church and prayed for forgiveness. I sowed a seed and asked God to pave a beautiful way for me.

I went to Akwesi’s place and said yes to him. I’d never seen a man this happy after a woman said yes to his proposal. He was jumpy. His eyes glowed for no reason. He walked with air in his stride. He told me he would do everything not to disappoint me.

A week later, I went home to see Mr. Married Man parked in front of the gate. I walked past him, entered my door, and locked it. He knocked like he was being pursued. I had no option but to let him in. He said, “Okay, what if I leave my marriage?”

I folded my arms and watched him without saying a word.

“Or let’s just say, we keep this going until you marry?”

I looked straight into his eyes. No words.

“It looks like you don’t understand what I’m going through. I will lay low. I won’t come between whoever you date, I swear.”

I asked him to leave if he had finished talking. He wouldn’t leave, so I left him in the room, stepped out, and spent the night with a friend. All night, I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking hard about everything and how to get rid of him for good. I was ready to play it rough since he didn’t respect our agreement. I texted him, “The next time you pull such a move on me again, I will meet your wife and tell her everything. If that’s what you want, go ahead.”

“No problem, you can do it,” he responded.

I shook my head. “Don’t worry, I will leave this place for you.”

I had no option but to tell Akwesi everything. Well, not everything. I told him my ex was still pursuing me. I told him it was because of that pursuit that I delayed responding to his proposal. I was too ashamed to add that my ex was a married man. I made it look like my ex was a threat in my life. He said, “Then don’t go back to your house again. Let’s look for a new place. It’s a big city; once you leave, he can’t track you again.”

I spent most of my nights at his place. I packed bit by bit until we got a new place. He wanted to help me pay for it, but I declined. It was too soon to make him invest that much in me. I was still scared he might find out the truth and leave. I wanted to make it easy for him to leave if it came to that.

I moved in here in April. Since then, I’d only bumped into Mr. Married Man once. He came to my workplace to apologize and promised he would be there if I needed a friend. He begged me to unblock him, but I didn’t. He hadn’t come around again, so it’s safe to say he’s out of my life for good.

Akwesi and I have grown toward the sun in these few months. Some days, he looks too good to be true, or I look too fake to be taken seriously. Today, he would do something, and I would tell myself, “He’s the one,” but tomorrow, dark doubts would creep in to tell me that I don’t deserve happiness, so this will soon end. Maybe I believed it when a lot of people commented on my first story that someone would do to me what I did to Mr. Married Man’s wife. That I can’t have someone I will call my own because I didn’t allow another woman to enjoy hers.

Call a Friend and Ask For Thousand Cedis (A Prank)

Life is not linear, I believe. Good things happen to people we think don’t deserve them. It’s called grace. It’s called favor. I’m not saying this to call myself favored. I’m only saying what will be will be. Life will happen to us all in ways different from what we imagined. If Akwesi works for me, fine. If not, the doorway to love never closes. I will try again. I will be happy. I owe that much to myself.

—Eno

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