We need to talk. Lunch tomorrow at Aku’s Cafe. 1pm. Please don’t be late.
She was twenty minutes late. Armed with with her silence and a wry smile successfully masking the guffaws she was holding inside of her, she took her seat and eagerly anticipated this episode. She said “Hi” and was acknowledged with a nod and an immediate return to texting on the phone. She took a cue and started randomly texting on her phone too.
They soon checked the menus and she confirmed his mood via the shrugs and monosyllabic answers he gave to her questions about sides and desserts. Something was definitely up, and he was about to deliver one of his silly argumentative essays to her. She wondered why he always did this. The sequence was always the same. First spend a fortune on an impromptu date, eat and then follow it up with venting—a spoken word session to an audience of one.
She watched him slowly chew on the fries with his pouted lips. She stifled a giggle: Oh how mature he thought himself to be, spending his cedis on their meal so she would be obliged to listen to him speak his mind. He sat there feeling exceptionally masculine, and she sat opposite him, sparing no propriety for the lunch she was glad to be having with this man-child. She munched away and slurped her milkshake.
She’d taught herself to not pay attention to his inexplicable inability to keep his voice down whenever his emotions overtook him and gave his voice that tiny tremble she found funny and adorable. She traced the lines in her palms with her thumb while he talked. She noted other patterns, tracing their flow halfway round her thin fingers. Years ago, in her primary school, there were some pupils going about playfully posing as palm readers. She remembered this with nostalgia and his voice trailed into the background of her thoughts. She numbered each line and thought of them as representing the possible ways she could respond to him.
When she returned her attention to him and heard a few lines blurted with familiar audacity, it made her want to chuckle. His complaints, as always, implied that she was reneging her duties in the collective action of mutual love. It made her want to let out a loud laugh before telling him matter-of-factly, “Ei Massa, do you think I’m your wife or something? Mtww. Please. Relax wai.” But she had already selected a line and bundled her fingers into a fist. So she stood up instantly, walked away from him without a word, and hailed a taxi. She was sure to dump her phone in her bag, with mock resolve to not answer his calls.
She knew he’d call or text within the hour, begging and pleading, apologising for being a jerk. Yet again making promises he had no willpower to uphold. No matter. These episodes were always a small trade-off for the many joys and benefits of their friendship. And after all, life was too short to be spent breeding and raising grudges.
***
Six months had passed without a single beep from him. She lay on the couch on a Saturday morning, fiddling with her phone. She smirked, and almost playfully, playfully almost, scrolled through her contacts and deleted his number. She lifted her left thumb to her right eye, wiping off an escaping tear before it reached her cheek. A thought immediately came to her after a fleeting look at her thumbnail, that she was due for a manicure. She sprung to her feet and grabbed her purse. Encouraging distractions were her heart’s specialty.
Flash Fiction Ghana 
This is so sad, but I kind of think they both deserve each other AND should be alone. They seem too alike and too juvenile!
Well written!
I always make this point, at any given opportunity: you cannot be a cat and want to lord over a lion. When you try to do so, you’re either going to wish you hadn’t tried it at all, or your story is going to be completed by others. How does it cost one to be humble? The tone of the piece seeks to justify the unruly behaviour of the lady, manufacturing, for her, reasons why she acts the way she acts. But note that the true sense of being in a relationship( marital or just friendly one) is to complement each other, not just compliment each other. By complementing each other, I mean bringing on board that which the other partner doesn’t have but need. So that if your partner is so volatily explosive, you complement him by bringing a cool heart into the relationship. In that way, you have a well-complemented and long-lasting relationship. But if you all want to be led by pride, then you’d get to learn why the relationship between a cat and a mouse is always a distant one. You’re comfortable referring to him as a “man-child” but when he treats you as a”woman child” you feel offended. Meanwhile, you(lady) rather perfectly fit into that description, because only a child is fed. Haha