by Vina Fenty
"You have to wait here for me while I go change into something decent. I won't take long."
I immediately felt panic, and I quickly said, "I will come with you, please! Don't leave me here alone."
She rolled her eyes dramatically, and it was very unusual and totally out of place that my panic turned into amusement.
"You are no longer a teenager, Amara, wanting to follow me around like a lost puppy. Some things never change."
I chuckled as I thought about it, I never did like to be away from Tejiri, and I wasn't planning to start now.
"Please! I know the rules, and I promise to follow them," I said, wiggling my eyebrows in a way that made her laugh.
"It's a bad idea, but well, come on."
She held my hand in hers, and I almost melted into a puddle of hearts and emotions. My breathing became irregular as we waited for the elevator, we got in, and she pushed the buttons as we rode up in silence.
Our eyes would meet and lock, and one of us would quickly break the eye contact. The sexual energy in the air was scorching, I was almost losing my breath when the elevators stopped, and we stepped out.
I heard Tejiri take in a deep breath as well and finally let my hand go. I missed the contact immediately. She went to a door on the aisle and used her card to open it as she held her hand towards the room and waited for me to enter. The first thing that came to my head was 'Wow.' Good taste coupled with modern and a splash of Victorian, summed up to produce an effect so profound that it was stunning. I looked around, and her eyes followed mine.
"You like it?"
"It's so beautiful. As though it was made for lovers, it would be perfect for a honeymoon."
"Yeah, I guess, I designed this one myself and was in charge of the decors. It's the main suite, and I named it after you."
Tears pooled in my eyes, but it didn't fall, it just made my eyes sheen.
"And you named the hotel after me too."
She laughed lowly and came to stand in front of me.
"This is the only one you know about. Your name is splashed over establishments round the world. It's an obsession. I never was able to forget you, and it's only your name that comes to mind whenever I acquire new businesses."
I stood stock-still and tried to fight the urge to hug her, but it was too huge to resist, so I rushed into her fiercely, almost knocking the air out of her lungs. Her hands stayed by her sides as she clenched and unclenched her fists, not knowing what to do with her hands. Finally, she lifted them and stroked my hair with one while pulling me closer with the other. We stayed like that for minutes or hours or seconds, I really couldn't tell, and finally, I calmed and let her go.
"Why didn't you ever come back for me?" I asked tearfully.
She looked me so deep in the eye, opened her mouth to speak and then closed it, and then she said, "let's eat first Amara, I cannot process anything on an empty stomach, and you know this."
I chuckled as the tears finally rolled down my face, but she quickly thumbed them away and then kissed my lips quickly. The chuckle died on my lips, and I caught her head in between my hands as she made to pull away from what she thought was going to be a peck. I assaulted her lips, showing her how much I loved her, how hard I have missed her, and how bad I hated her. It was a kiss with multiple emotions, all rolled in one, and she could hardly breathe when it ended.
"God! you are going to be the death of me. You should sit here while I change inside. The guest bathroom is over there, there are drinks in the fridge, and you can call for anything you want. The directory is right over there," she said, pointing at everything before disappearing quickly into another room.
I sat there and rubbed my lips, thinking about it all. Tejiri was mine, the only thing, the only person I ever did own, and I wanted her, always have, always will. That left Sam as a piece of the puzzle that didn't fit anywhere. There was simply no place to fix him.
I checked in the fridge and grabbed a bottle of beer and a chocolate bar. I cast the thoughts of Sam away and instead imagined what Tejiri was doing right then. Was she naked or just in her underwear?
I was almost tempted to go peek, but the stupid door didn't even have a keyhole, and I really wouldn't have been so perverse, or would I?
I took off my coat and hung it while I sat and crossed my legs as I waited some more. Minutes later, Tejiri came out wearing a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved Polo shirt, and for the first time, it occurred to me that she was always in long sleeves for a reason.
"What are you hiding with your long-sleeved clothes, Tejiri?"
"It's nothing. Let's go," she said, grabbing her keys and coming to pull me up.
"Please," I said.
"It's the scars I got from that day."
"Can I see it? How bad is it?"
She guided me towards the door, and once I was out, she locked it.
"I will show you some other time, right now I need to eat, and I need to feed you," she said as we started walking.
I thought back to the events that led to the scars of that day.
CHAPTER TEN
"Tejiri, I don't like the way Blaise looks at you. Can't you see that he likes you?" I said as I watched her register us for JAMB.
I was at her workplace, and Blaise, her employer, was working with other customers outside. He was a student at one of the universities in the state. He had bought the business off another person who wanted to travel out of Nigeria in search of greener pastures.
He often shuffled between the cyber cafe and school, so that mostly left Tejiri in charge when she wasn't at school too.
Most of their customers knew the time to come around, and it worked perfectly for them. I first noticed a particular weirdness about how Blaise would light up whenever he saw Tejiri. He was awed by her brilliance.
She was young, smart, beautiful, and wise beyond her age, so it was logical for him to like her, but that like quickly escalated into something more. He increased her pay beyond what it should be, he bought her gifts whenever he came back from school, and indiscriminately always found ways to touch her. It annoyed me much, and I always found myself boiling with anger. To make matters worse, Tejiri didn't see anything wrong, didn't even notice that Blaise liked her in any way other than as an older brother.
"You have started. Blaise is not like that, he just protects me. Wait! Are you jealous?"
She stopped typing on the desktop computer and looked at me while trying to hold a laugh.
I looked at her and shook my head as I said, "jealous about what, no, it's just that there was no reason for him to hold your hand just now while trying to get you to move so he could get past you."
"My God! You are jealous. You think I would start dating him?"
"No! It's just..." I said, stuttering.
"I came back for you. I left my home, my parents, what makes you think I would leave you now and run off with some boy?" she asked.
"Well, you always said it was a sin, and we were not supposed to."
"Well yeah, but just because I showed you the passage doesn't mean I believe it," she replied before turning back to the computer, and I sighed.
"Now, what do you mean by you don't believe it?"
"Never mind Amara, I'm not running off with Blaise, it's you that I want, no one else."
My heart melted at those words. The thing was, Tejiri and I have never spoken of a relationship. We hadn't sat to talk about it in clear terms. We had just grown into it, and we never really put a name on what we had.
It didn't detract from the relationship we had; however, it felt real and secure. I didn't bother about Blaise taking Tejiri away from me again until he invited us for a night party.
It was going to be our first party, and Tejiri urged us to attend. It was so unlike her because she had never attended all of the illegal night parties the seniors at our school had always thrown. She called it a waste of precious time that she could have used to read a book or two.
She wanted us to relax and be teenag
ers, and she trusted Blaise.
We did attend, and it was a cute university student party with lots of grown-ups. We stayed near Blaise all through, and he protected us from the wolves that seemed not to realize that we were still teenagers. Tejiri, in her beautiful strap dress and I in a tight-fitting gown that clung to all my curves like a second skin, looked nothing like teenagers anyways. Tejiri had bought the dresses, and her ability to get a perfect fit was something short of magical.
"God! Amara, you are so beautiful," she said, kissing me before we left the house. I had melted and then reassembled myself.
Tejiri gave me my first bottle of beer in life, and while it had tasted horrible, I had managed to down a bottle. We ate and socialized, and we even danced a little. It was all going fine until our eyes fell on a set of newcomers, and we both stood there breathless as their eyes fell on us. It was Luke and his cohorts.
The sweet palm wine I had been savoring suddenly tasted like vinegar in my mouth as I mulled over the implications of this in my head. Nobody from school knew that Tejiri was back. Luke had consistently tried to get back with me once his rival had been taken away, and his persistence had never stopped. According to him, he had sworn to have me one way or another.
Also, I had denied continuously knowing about Tejiri's whereabouts over and over again to classmates, juniors, and teachers. I had lied about my whereabouts and said that I had a friend of campus whom I was staying with.
All through the period of our exams, Tejiri and I had studied together. I had given the reasons for my absence from night prep to be that I was studying with my friend off-campus. Everyone had believed me. My secret had been so safe until I decided to come to this party so far out of school, and yet here was my nemesis and his gang of low lives, smiling and heading towards us.
"See who we found. Amara, you are such a terrible person. Who would have thought that under this innocent, beautiful face was a devil? You watch a woman cry over her child daily, and you deny knowing anything. Then you go back to this same person to do whatever you cursed lesbians do?" Luke said in disgust.
I fidgeted uneasily as I looked at my feet, I did sound like a terrible person.
"I will not let you talk to her like that, Luke. Leave us alone," Tejiri said with fierceness that I hadn't ever seen, I was taken aback and didn't like it at all.
"Hahaha, this must be your first time in a party, and this must be your first drink because you suddenly have balls to speak back to me, unlike the last time you knelt before me helpless and at my mercy. Listen, you two, I will ruin you. You are a curse, an abomination, and I will not stand by it."
Tejiri rolled her eyes and pulled me away to go look for Blaise.
"Les girls, a dirty bunch of perverse beasts," one of his friends called after us, but we never looked back.
Thankfully, no one else paid us any mind. We found Blaise and left the party for home. At home, there was a sudden unease. We both knew Luke too well to call his bluff, and the sadness hung around us until we finished our last paper and wrote our Jamb exams. We soon forgot about Luke and all the evil that he had planned, that was our gravest mistake. We had underestimated Luke yet again.
*****
That glorious day, I had kissed Tejiri so long and hard like it was going to be our last. We were through with exams, and I was to go back to the dormitory to get the rest of my things.
"I will miss you," I moaned as I climbed on top of her and let my hands squeeze her beautiful breasts. She turned her head to mine and caught my lips in a kiss that I could never get tired of, it seemed newer and better with each passing day.
"You should go," she said, breathing hard.
"I don't want to. I want you," I complained as I kissed her more, my hands on her breasts getting bolder.
She sighed into my mouth, and for the first time, she didn't stop me or complain or start to preach against having sex early.
"It would ruin everything, trust me. I read it somewhere that it could make our emotional growth stunted, it could mess up our minds and..." she would say talking on and on against sex and how it could ruin everything.
I always zoned out when she started, and most times, I would roll my eyes so hard that my eyeballs would almost run into my head. Tejiri was extra and passionate about whatever she believed in. That day, she let me grope her, and there was no way I would give that up to pick anything.
I decided to test my luck by placing my hands under her dress, she didn't stop me, so I touched her naked stomach, and it was so unbelievably smooth and soft. I started to grow faint, and when that passed, I began to go crazy. I wanted Tejiri, I wanted to taste her skin, touch her everywhere, and hear her moan in my ears. I wanted her to feel exactly how I felt whenever she touched me. I slid down her body and made to raise her dress when she caught my hands in hers. I looked up at her, and our eyes met.
"Stop it, Amy, please."
I should have listened, but I looked down her exposed thighs and came eye-to-eye with her panties, which looked soaked from arousal. It drove me beyond mad, and I found myself taking off her blue cotton panties like a hungry dog.
"Amara, stop it."
"Tejiri, please, just a little," I said in a frenzy.
Despite everything, she chuckled as she struggled with me to pull her panties back up.
"Just a little? Just a little what? What do you plan to do once you successfully get my panties off?" she asked cockily.
Tejiri could be so annoyingly right most times, and I hated her for it. I stopped and sat still and then thought about it. What would I do? I didn't know, but I was hungry for her, and that was all I knew, I trusted my instincts to guide me on what to do.
I did manage to make it out of the house despite how hard it was. I was gathering my stuff when a classmate came to me.
"Did you see Tejiri's parents today at the principal? It's like they haven't still found her."
My heart leaped in my chest as I got the premonition that something was going to go wrong that day. I quickly gathered my things and made my way through the fence and the bush path back home to Tejiri, but what I saw would forever be etched in my brain. My Tejiri on the floor, naked from the waist down, bleeding, blood everywhere, crying, looking faint and helpless, and so thoroughly beaten. I looked up in my rage to meet Luke and his gang, trying to pull up their trousers, and my mind could not work to comprehend what must have happened.
They had put their hands on my Tejiri, they had beaten her, touched her, and she was there looking at me with eyes full of emotions. I couldn't take it. I marched into our room and grabbed a knife. The guys had run off, but I knew the path better than them, so I trailed them. The ones at the front turned around and increased speed once they saw my mortal eyes, but Luke hadn't properly worn his trousers, so they sagged and restricted his movements.
I started to run after him. He must have seen the look in my eyes too because even though he couldn't see the knife, he knew that I meant no good.
I soon got to him and pushed him so hard that he tumbled on the floor.
"You stupid piece of shit, you thought you could do it and just disappear home, right? You waited till after the last papers to do this to me. What is my crime Luke, what did I do to deserve this?"
I didn't let him say a word, the rage was blinding, and without thought, I started to stab him, the first one entered into his sides. He wrestled, tried to tumble me over, but the fall he had taken was nasty, he was bruised over and already bleeding.
"Where are your friends now, Luke? Where!" I screamed as I stabbed him repeatedly; I wanted him dead, I didn't care about anything I just wanted him dead.
I was crying and screaming and stabbing, and then it dawned on me that Tejiri was lying in a pool of her blood back at home. I took the knife and ran madly back home. I threw it carelessly into the bushes and quickly ran to where I had left Tejiri. What I met was a circus, my parents, alongside Tejiri's parents, and it felt like déjà vu.
My mother rushed to me and
held me in a hug that I quickly got out of.
"Tejiri!" I called tearfully as I made towards her. Her mother stood sternly in my way as she said, "you will stay away from my daughter, you would never contact her, I would make sure that both of you never meet again as long as I am alive. Leave my child alone."
I ignored her and tried to get past her to Tejiri. She was being carried into their SUV by the driver and her father. Her eyes were closed in pain, and they didn't open even as she was put gently in the back of the car.
"Please get your daughter Mr. and Mrs. Okorie, because all this is her fault, would she kill my only child before she's satisfied?" Tejiri's mother barked. My father came and held me down.
"Amy, wait for me. Promise me that you would wait for me, I'll come back," was all Tejiri kept muttering under her breath as she tried faintly to reach for me.
"I promise I'll wait, I'll look for you, please don't leave me. Wolf! Please, don't do this to me again, don't leave me," I screamed as I tried to get to her, but my father held me back.
"We are so sorry, please take care of your daughter. We would go back to school and tell the principal that we have found them and thank the young Luke again for all his help, maybe he can also help us catch the hooligans that did this to your daughter," my father said.
They ignored my parents and got into their car and drove off without even a second glance, and just like that, Tejiri was gone.
I didn't cry this time, I was just numb. I stood there and stared into thin air as my parents loaded my things in the trunk of our car.
*******
Present Day
Tejiri held my hand like the first time and led me to the elevator once more. If I hoped that the sexual energy would reduce, then I was wrong, if anything, it doubled.
She led me to the VIP section, and we sat on a table situated at the extreme. We could see the entire room and the others sitting in groups and enjoying their meal in the quiet room.
The lights were dim, and I almost got away with staring at her. I was lost on drinking in her features.