I Hope He Buys You Flowers

I arrived at work as normal the next day with a decidedly lighter step, sleep deprived but it felt as though a huge barrier had been removed from my path. I’m sure ladies will know what I’m talking about you know that feeling of solid security in knowing that you can tell your partner your worries and he will do everything in his power to show you that your fears are unfounded. That he will go the extra mile to communicate with you and actively invest in your peace of mind when he cannot physically be with you.

That as you hurt he hurts too and will work double-time to ensure that if he can’t fix your problems himself he will at least be there as a rock and comfort for you ways that allow you to be best equipped to handle your own battles. That as soon as it blows over we will make a toast with sugar free cups of coffee that we’ll pretend are the sweetest champagne. That he will celebrate my victories louder than I will.

During the time that I had him on sabbatical after my outburst I had been making some advancements at work and was due to receive feedback on a project I had been working on for several weeks. I was anxious and on edge as this also meant that if all went well I’d increase my income by over 30% and effectively secured my position as indispensable and versatile within the company I was working. During our late night talk I’d hinted at this development and one would have sworn he was getting promoted.

I got the confirmation email at around 10am and the deal was solidly in the bag, 30% had been reviewed upwards to 50% and life looked like it wanted me to live it properly. Everything was on the up. I hadn’t had a chance to give Mr I’m-Checking-On-You-via-Skype-and-Whatsapp-every-chance-I-get an update of developments when my phone suddenly rang.

“Gate, NOW!”

So I cautiously stood up from my desk and headed out the door to the gate. I opened it after I’d seen a hand frantically waving out of the window of a car that resembled Nemesis’ car...but wait! Isn’t this guy supposed to be at work? So I crossed the road and as I approached a huge bouquet of the loveliest yellow, orange and red ombre roses filled the space his face should have been in. I was in tears by the time that I finally got to his side, my heels suddenly couldn’t carry me to him fast enough. He sat there laughing at me and delighted that he had been able to pull off something I never expected so seamlessly. He revved his engine and made to leave after mumbling something about making sure I mix the water with the contents of sachet on the side to keep them fresh

Oh what the hell, before he left the man could at least get a kiss for this right?

I set about placing the flowers in the vase punctuated by the mocking wolf whistles of the boys in the office. I didn’t care! By this point in my day I was walking on clouds. I waited impatiently for Nemesis to indicate that he was back at his desk and as soon as his notification pinged I just typed- PROMOTION SIGNED & SEALED. I swear I heard his scream of glee from his office 10kms away, there’s no way my spinning head could have made that up.

He called me immediately demanding that a celebratory dinner was in order. Who am I to refuse such an obvious course of action? I made sure I ended off the dragging hours of the day making arrangements for my baby’s sitter as well as deciding what I was going to wear right down to the dizzying fragrance that I knew drove my passion to heights that his could only surrender helplessly to. This was just part of the sweet torture I had planned for him later.

He picked me up promptly at 7pm after asking me where I wanted to go so that he could make our booking. Since I knew exactly what my agenda was I went for an intimate, dimly lit romantic venue that served a menu that read like a sensuous tongue trailing over nubile limbs. An intense, erotic tease.

In my red satin dress with my breast sumptuously displayed and framed by the simplest of accessories, I paused to gloss up my plump red lips and secure a pin in my up do. I looked a vision as I glanced at myself in the mirror as I headed down the stairs with my impossibly high heels in my hands. As I got out the door I hurriedly put them on, balanced the hips and seductively sauntered towards the gate. Nemesis stood before me holding an even bigger bouquet of roses as red as my theme of the day and a huge grin on his face.

This guy!

I graciously accepted the gift, leant into him and hugged him tightly to make sure he got to breathe in a fair amount of my fragrance while I pressed myself into him with a leg bent into the air as I giggled that he is just too much some times. He opened the door for me and I got in and sat with my bundle of crimson bliss. The drive down to the restaurant was peppered with light banter and a lot of good laughs. It felt almost like we’d never been apart for a second. Leaving my prize in the car I was ushered into the entrance and seated by a haughty looking waitress that didn’t seem too pleased to be serving a person of colour. As Nemesis sat down he planted a huge kiss on my lips and slightly raised his eyes at Missy. In one fell swoop acknowledging and dismissing her pettiness.

We sat facing each other with our legs alternating between knees touching to easy resting between each other to full on plastered on each other. Judging by the way he pointedly slurped on his oysters I knew he had received the subliminal messages I had been sending loud and clear. The soft drum of a hedonistic rendition of Ipanema did nothing to quell how sultry the setting already was. Main courses came, bubbly flowed and we toasted everything from my success to how cute his little left toe was.

Time seemed to stand still and run away from us all at once. Before we knew it, we were one of only 2 couples remaining, Missy had kind of warmed up to me and was at great pains to collect as many shells as she could for me to go take home to my crustacean obsessed child. Maybe she wasn’t so bad after all. Or the wine was working and I didn’t care anymore...

We headed in the direction of home, there a junction where he would grant me the small courtesy of asking if we were headed to his place or mine and as expected he uttered the words. I summarily said mine

I saw his entire frame shrink and shrivel, as he steered the car my home’s direction. Mine meant we were still at war. Mine meant that he was starting to rebuild trust that he had lost and convince me to open up to him again, from scratch. Mine meant that he could only keep dreaming of plunging his flesh into mine. Mine meant that as pretty as the roses at the office and the ones I was now going to have in my bedroom had been, as delicious as the food was, as much as I appreciated the gestures he extended to me. His smokescreens of blinding charm were not going to absolve him of his responsibility to allay my concerns and to prove to me that I’m in competition with no one.

It was still there

Damn it. Damn him.

Damn the visions of sweat trickling down my back as I imagined pinning him down, ripping his clothes off and riding him violently right there on that solid, cold table. In the middle of that over sanitized eating house I glanced over the heads of people politely nodding approval of their thick pieces of steak and tinkling wine glasses against each other. Acting normal...

Nothing about this was normal!

My thudding temples were not normal, the way my breath was caught and tightening my chest; my nipples standing at attention rubbing roughly against the fabric of my top. Was. Not. Normal. He caught my fingers as I tried to pull them away from his grip, all the while staring me dead in the eyes. He knew he HAD me. His challenging gaze was testament to the fact that this...whatever it was we were trying to deny was so far from over there was only hell to pay by fighting it.

That same breath I had still caught in my lungs was starting to burn and in spite of myself erupted into a dramatic bout of hiccups- my most refined romantic moment of recent memory.

He almost threw my beer in my face as he tried to still hold my hand, pat my back and signal to the waiter for a glass of water. It was comedic gold! I burst into laughter as he burst into laughter that only subsided after we started getting curious glances from those steak engorged heads around us. After a couple of seconds more of glee we settled back into propriety.

“I’m sorry”, he whimpered. “Love, look at me, I’m sorry”

Now it was his turn to deal with his own tear-filled eyes. YEAAAAAAAH! You must suffer too I whispered as my ego did a full Twerk session in time with the beat of the eatery’s piped music. So look at him I did, deeply. His anguish excited me. Made me throb ,wet.

I loved knowing that as much as he affected me the denial of my affections left him in a place of desolation. For him it was ungovernable that he be the cause of another’s consternation. The man just feels too much, probably his deepest curse and most attractive feature in one go.

We moved to less intense talk and tried to claw our way out of what was very obviously a transformative moment in our dalliance. It was hopeless and futile. He asked if I was ready to leave, my deep eye-roll must have signified that I was ready to leave long before my sexy hiccup session. He settled the bill and we made our exit. We made a quick stop by the group of his friends that we had left outside each of whom made a great show of standing and kissing the hand of Nemesis’ queen in all her gym finery and we were on our way.

As he pulled out of the parking, I shot straight from the hip and displayed the tact that I have honed over the years and become quite famed for...

“Is there someone else? Are you cheating on me or using me to cheat on someone?”

He stopped the car and turned the light on.  Releasing a sigh as long as it was unnecessary.

“No, there is no one else. It is only you,” he said: way too calmly for my liking. It felt rehearsed

“Prove it to me” I shot back hotly

“I will, if you’ll just give me the chance to. I miss you”

(at this point that stupid little body part he had triggered with his touch earlier started its deception of all the sensible resolve my body was projecting)

Come on! I missed him too. Badly. Not just his presence, his soothing voice and corny ass jokes. I miss his....uhmmmm cooking. Yes I missed his cooking.

The rest of the trip home was in silence. Not a peep from him, the radio or me. As we got to my place I responded “OK, prove it”. Now this is not a small man. I almost burst out laughing again as he full on dived on me while sitting beside me thanking me for the chance as well as promising to never give me reason to doubt him again. He called me after he got home and showered and was in bed. Like teenagers we were on the phone till the late hours of the early morning. 

Would I regret this?

We’ll see

I don't look for Drama- Drama finds me

I tried, oh I swear I tried...

I tried to keep away and ignore him and to wish his existence away into the nothingness it was in the months before I met him. It didn’t work.

Two days after the phone-call with that drooly sounding chick from the pub I got word that a very juvenile member of my family had been impregnated by a young MC (read: fly by night –oh I think I’m the shit but no one knows my music- grown up with a kid’s mentality-been the next big thing for the past ten years trifling-good for nothing low life) who now no longer wanted anything to do with her or the child she was carrying.

What was worse is that this academically gifted girl had been in my house the weekend before and apart from a very pimply pubescent face and a voracious appetite, nothing was amiss. Nothing told of the already six month old life wriggling within her. Her belly was flatter than mine has ever been and her disposition was generally cheerful with her head stuck in a book, as usual. I just thought she enjoyed my cooking...a lot.

I was crushed. Nowhere near as gutted as her mother who had , as per our custom contacted me as the closest older sister to track this turd down and make him accountable if not for his actions, at least for the upkeep and maintenance of the child. I did as I was asked by my mother and tracked him down (My investigative capabilities are on levels) only to be verbally abused, threatened and to have every female in my ascendancy literally called a whore by someone I to this day do not know. Any man who has ever tried to absolve himself of paternity was in one fell swoop put to shame by my new “in law” he proposed amniocentesis to establish if the DNA my cousin carried was indeed his.

 After I told him that it is an invasive, unnecessary and highly dangerous procedure which can even lead to the loss of both lives at this stage in gestation it occurred to me that maybe that was the outcome he actually wanted. The only thing he would accept thereafter was a conclusive paternity test as soon as the child was born. I am sure his aggression after that was brought on by his having investigated the costs that would entail because the next time I looked him up I was told that my cousin wasn’t a virgin when he laid her and it only happened once and he used a condom and she told him she was being sexually assaulted by a close relative and candy floss is sold at fairs and lava erupts from volcanoes and he will sue my entire breed until we sell off our last shoelace to pay him off.

None the less, I put the phone down and with calm I didn’t necessarily feel I called my aunt to tell her I would no longer be doing this. It brought back ugly feelings of resentment and anger at my own situation with the father of my child. Mine was wanted and planned but listening to this sonnofa... spewing such vitriol made me remember all the things I have come to know for a fact about my ex-husband that I wouldn’t ever have known or heard if I hadn’t gotten divorced. It stung me in places that had long since forgotten the feeling of having to beg for acknowledgement, for validation from someone whose ego is a deep, gaping eternally hungry abyss that gives nothing and takes until it sucks the soul from the very thing it needs to keep it fed.

I felt personally affronted. Weak. Helpless. And to think that this wasn’t even my own battle, for it to have left me feeling so cheap stripped my sensibilities to their naked, shrivelled core.

I hurt for her. I hurt for myself. I hurt for OUR fatherless children.

I needed to talk. But I couldn’t find anyone. All the people I called either went straight to voicemail of just rang continuously. I found myself already having dialled his number in resignation and didn’t even feel a fool for needing him to just say “Ok, I’ll meet with you”.

I was dressed for a workout and bugger me if I was going to change just to do my make-up and mess it all up when the inevitable tear fall came to the party.

Nemesis was at my gate in fifteen minutes. As I slid into the passenger’s seat I vividly remembered the last time I had sat in it and made my theatrical declarations before slamming the door in the face of the same person who was the only person who actually picked up the phone. The last resort became the only resort.

Wordlessly he drove. I mumbled that he find somewhere we could sit and have a discussion in private where I could also just cry and not be judged for it. He nodded, handed me some Kleenex and drove.

Cue waterworks/ smile/ shrug/waterworks.

As we got to this little restaurant I had managed to pull myself together enough to be able to make a half decent entry with my head bowed. I pushed past him as he paused to greet a few friends that he had recognised on the patio and left them wondering why I was so uncharacteristically unfriendly and so inappropriately dressed. By the time he came in I had picked a table and pushed myself tightly into the furthest corner the seat in the booth would allow. With that taken care of I proceeded to stretch my leg out in front of me so that he clearly got the message that he would not be sitting next to me and that there would be no canoodling of any form.

Nemesis asked what I would like to drink and I managed to mumble beer. He ordered for both of us and asked how my day was...

?

Is that really the best he could do? Through swollen eyes I managed to throw a massive scowl his way and threw my chin on my palm in a massive exhale of defeat. I proceeded to regale him with the gory details of the horrendous two days I had just endured and three drinks, a cold steak and a great many tissues later I reached over the table, lightly touched his fingers before sense took over and yanked my hand away as fast as it had casually placed itself in this odd position.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

The spark was still there :(