Breakup Lines {Part 03}

BREAKUP LINES

03.

He was, for the most part, a wrong number dialed. But still she had loved him; and she had loved him perhaps more than anyone who knew him or didn’t know him. She had loved him, perhaps more than his mother, the one who had left him on the steps of a dimly lit missionary hospital, wrapped in polythene bags and a hospital pillowcase.

She had loved him through all his fears and his nightmares and his personal demons; all one hundred and fifty-three of them. She had loved him like a sister, like a brother, like a wife. And she was none.

It was a Monday night, two years ago on a park bench, just at about the time when Millennium Park closed. She remembers that he wore a pink, pinstripe Marks & Spencer casual shirt over charcoal-grey Dockers. She remembers that he wore Zara loafers on his sexy brown feet, and under his clothes, Fruit-of-the-Loom briefs and an undershirt. She remembers because she bloody bought them all. She remembers because it was the first time he had said to her, “Love is not always enough…”

She remembers because it was the first time he had kissed her. Just like that. Her sexy, melancholy friend with the personal demons.

Her friends said their story was like a terrible Nollywood script. Most Nollywood scripts were already terrible. Still it was a beautiful story, and she had loved like it was her last chance.

One evening, halfway through a heated argument, he had mentioned that she was smothering him. Lord have mercy! She had poured out her fury in screaming decibels, throwing clothes and shoes and throw-pillows at him. Throw-pillows, heh! How ironic. She had raised a storm and he had stood there and taken it all like the man she had made him. And when she was spent, and the storm had passed, she had fallen into his arms and cried. “But I love you,” she had said.

He was wearing blue jeans, and a blue pinstripe shirt over Fruit-of-the-Loom underwear and Zara loafers. She remembers because it was the second time he had said to her, “Love is not always enough…” But first, he had said, “I love you too.”

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Hey…thank you for dropping by. Breakup Lines Part III is part of an experimental fiction thing I started, where I take a random tweet from one of the people I follow and create a fictional breakup story out of it. If you’d like to contribute to the series, please email me {email@ashiwel.com}, or tweet at me, {@iamashiwel}. Many thanks to the lovely @Ngoreh_ for letting me (ab)use her tweet this way.

Go here to read Breakup Lines Part 01 or Breakup Lines Part 02.