One day, Brenda was broke. She told me on the phone. It was a weekend.

“Where are all her callers?” I asked myself. Her phone never stopped ringing. New numbers. New male voices. One of her callers’ name was saved “Love”. If her phone rang late night, you could guess it was ” Love” and wouldn’t be wrong.

She claimed it was her ex. And I wondered what happened to the contact editing keys on her phone.

“I am dying to hug you.” Those words of hers still ring in my heart. It was the first time we were messaging on phone after she started working with us. She told me how she admired how hard I worked and how everyone respected me at the workplace.

The following day, I found a secret place at the workplace where we could meet and hug before she left for home.

Thinking back, I realized what a mistake that was. I should have deprived her those hugs, increasing her dose of addiction to me. It would have deafened her to her numerous callers and secret boyfriends and given me leverage in the competition.

By immediately letting her know how I ached to hold her tight and fondle her, I exposed myself to exploitation. I was so lonely and had no time for games. To me, to be in love was to be honest and say and do all I felt was right in the moment. Little did I know that part of being in love involved playing games to test where you are investing your love, to see if it would be worth the time.

I was so eager to prove to her that I loved her and was better than any other guy vying for her heart. I was broke too, but I sent her money. Money that wasn’t mine. She can live now. I can die later, if that is what the owner of the money shall require of me when I cannot payback and if that’s what it would take to make her happy.

To my utter surprise, she not only thanked me but told me she was on her way to my place!

Up until this moment, I had been trying to convince her to pay me a visit but she kept hurling one excuse upon another at me. I was at a coffee shop gently sipping my cup of Lipton with condensed milk, starring at the bread and egg finely toasted by the able Diallo when I received her message.

I finished up my breakfast and hurried home to put the mess in my room in order. As I trotted home, I suddenly realized how good it sometimes feels to lazy about on Sundays and not go to church. It was a weird feeling. Today is Sunday.

When Brenda arrived, I noticed her enthusiasm on the phone to come to my place had waned. Looking through her eyes for a possible reason, I realized it was my neighborhood and my room. The neighborhood was a slum and my room nearly qualified for being called empty if not for the tireless efforts of a small, old mattress and my rusty gas stove. She had judged from the money I sent her that I must have lived in a decent apartment and she assumed hitching her life to mine would be her permanent goodbye to poverty.

At first, she was quiet and spoke less. It is now I understand why she was quiet at first. She sought a plausible excuse to sell to me. Because not long after those minutes of silence when I lay beside her on the bed starring and trying to kiss her, she told me, “I don’t love you.” She told me how she cannot love a person and that all the people she’s been in a relationship with, it was just to help them, citing a couple of nobodies she’s counselled to look for a job, save money, and are now successful financially, something she looks back on with pride.

She told how she used to smoke and had a boyfriend who joined a cult and later died in a tribal war. She saw me as a brother and not a boyfriend. She could not be in love with me.

I couldn’t reconcile the enthusiastic girl who was madly in love with me and couldn’t wait to see me and the voice that lay before me. But I said to myself, this girl is just a teenager. She is still young and could afford to be foolish, and experiment with sex and men if she so pleases. Somewhere in her late twenties, she could straighten up her ways and end up with a man that can forgive her mess.

Me, I had just clocked thirty and couldn’t afford to gamble my tomorrow on the unstable emotions of a young girl. I needed a mature lady with whom I could plan a future, someone I love and who loved me back.

From where I stood with my paltry salary from a vengeful boss and in a city where women eat money for a living, it was a long, long road to the promised land, my condition rendered even more precarious by the fact that the steering wheels of my sex-drive were completely out of my hands. The craving for sex was driving me insane.

Brenda’s visit ended coldly and abruptly. I later understood why she never wanted me to visit her. She had an authoritarian and jealous boyfriend and everyone in their hood knew they were dating. She had no male friends because of his jealousy.

At the workplace, she was far from the prying eyes of her boyfriend. She could relax and be herself and taste friendships with other males. I was the listening type. I listened to her and counselled her. Her boyfriend hardly gave her such attention and respect. She could send me to buy her something, act bossy, tease and play with me and talk and talk and talk about even her dirtiest secrets without feeling guilty or ashamed. I wasn’t judgmental and accepted her as she was. Now I understand how a bond developed between us.

Mrs. Stella too, despite her mean attitude, her old flames of love burning for me hadn’t died out completely. I saw through her cold looks and anger. On one hand I wanted to strike back at both Brenda and Stella for their attitude towards me. But the urge to strike was weak. Perhaps they had become a piece of me I could not wound.

It is complicated. This dilemma. If I quit my job, I am not ready financially for such divorce. I haven’t found a new job yet. For now, I must sit in that crucifixion box office everyday and watch myself invent one fake smile upon another until I figure out what to do.

And I am so bad at pretending…