ORE
The news of their father’s remarriage was a welcome distraction for Ore.
Things had been tense since Wednesday when she had the text mix-up with Ramsey and Terry.
At first, she had ignored Ramsey’s question mark message because her hands were trembling and she couldn’t seem to type anything.
Her chest felt like it was exploding, and she placed her hand over her heart to calm its racing.
This was it, she thought. This was how her life ended. In this car. Panicking over a wrong text.
Either that or Ramsey killed her with his bare hands. She leaned over the steering wheel, gasping.
She didn’t know how long she stayed that way before she heard a rap on her window. She looked up, it was Aisha and she was holding a phone to the window. Ore rolled down the window.
“Yes, Aisha?”
“Oga wants to speak with you,” Aisha said, pushing the phone in through the window.
Ore wiped her wet palm against her dress before taking the phone. Her heart palpitations resumed as she spoke:
“Hey babe, what’s up?” she infused a fake cheer into her voice.
“Why aren’t you responding to my messages?” his voice was gruff.
“What message? I thought I did! You asked what was for dinner, right?” Ore looked up to see Aisha hovering next to the car. She waved her away. No way was she going to give Aisha fodder for gossip.
“No, not that one. Honestly, I think you need to turn your read receipts back on,” Ramsey said.
Ore said nothing. She wasn’t going to do that because it made it easier for him to control her.
“You there, babe?” Ramsey asked.
“Yes, yes I am, I was just checking my Whatsapp to see what you sent,” Ore lied.
“You said something weird, and I didn’t understand it, so I wanted you to explain,” Ramsey said.
“Ah yes I see it now,” Ore burst into a coughing fit, buying herself time to think.
“Are you okay?” Ramsey asked, concern tinging his voice. “Shall I come home?”
Sometimes, Ore could swear he really loved her.
“No babe, I’m fine. I just swallowed saliva,” she cleared her throat. “Oh um…I see the message now. It’s so funny, I meant to send that to my dad. We were chatting, and he was sharing some news with me, and I responded but accidentally sent it to you. Silly me. I’m sorry for the mix-up babe.”
“Your dad, really?”
“Yes babe.” Ore knew that Ramsey didn’t have a good relationship with any of the men in her family so it was unlikely he would reach out to any of them to check her story.
“What news did he share?” Ramsey asked.
“He…uh, he asked what I think about him getting married again,” Ore said. This was true but this was a conversation she had with her father nearly three days before and she had forgotten that conversation happened up until that moment.
“He wants to remarry? Wow, isn’t he like seventy or something?”
“Seventy-two,” Ore said. “Well, I guess he’s still got it and he wants to flaunt it.”
“Indeed,” Ramsey chuckled. “And so what did you say to him?”
“I…uh, I said I wanted him to be happy. Hence that message.” Lies. Ore had, in fact, said it was his choice and decision to make. Ever since the scales had fallen off her eyes about his treatment of their mother, she found herself distancing herself from him emotionally. Of all three of them, she was closest to him; she was the one who spoke to him the most, she was the one he came to with his money troubles, and now, his romantic kerfuffles.
“Hmmm, your dad sure is every man’s hero, because if he’s still getting some action at seventy-two…whew.”
Ore laughed, the knot in her gut loosening. She had gotten away with it, she realised.
“So, do you know anything about her? The woman replacing your mother?” he asked.
Ore cleared her throat to hide how uncomfortable his statement made her. No one could replace their mother, but she wasn’t about to get into it with Ramsey – she was learning to pick her battles.
“I get the idea she’s young-er. He says he wants to arrange a Whatsapp video call so I can get to meet her before things progress.”
Ore realised that she had pushed her father and his news to the back of her mind because she wasn’t exactly excited about it plus she had been heavily focused on flirting with Terry this past week. Good God, cheating took a lot of time and effort these days, honestly.
Yes, these days. Ore would never call herself a saint, especially from her university days. She had dated multiple men at once in her twenties but had rationalized it with the idea that one couldn’t put all their eggs in one basket. The problem was, everyone she was dating at the time thought she was being exclusive with them, and she didn’t bother to dissuade them because a.) she was having too much fun and b.) none of them had been serious about her in the first place anyway.
It had been easy to rationalize her habits and behaviour at that time, but now, being married and encouraging those moments with Terry, letting him linger in her thoughts in an inappropriate way, she realised she was in over her head.
She wished she could talk it over with her brother, who by the way, was going to be a father soon. What! She could have bet her life savings that of all of them, Benjy was the least likely to experience parenthood. He was so afraid of commitment of any kind that she couldn’t even picture him committing to parenting.
Somehow, the news of his impending fatherhood made her happy. And if she was being honest, the reason she was pushing for him to see it through was because if she was sacrificing her own ability to become a mother, she still wanted the opportunity to play doting Aunt to his child.
Deji’s children were adorable; she especially loved the twins, but she didn’t see them often, plus Ivie scared her. There was something off about the woman that made Ore uncomfortable and made her keep her distance.
She was a hypocrite, Ore realized. Who was she to comment on people’s marriages when hers was a sham? Who was she to ask Benjy to do morally right by his unborn child when she was entertaining thoughts of another man?
After the text mishap with Ramsey, she had been so shaken that she had simply responded have a safe flight instead to Terry’s message.
That was their last communication so far and she wasn’t sure how to move forward. Was it strange that she missed him? She missed opening her Facebook app and seeing the little messenger icon alerting her to one new message but perhaps this was for the best.
She needed to get back on track, get her marriage back on track. But how?
She thought about a conversation she’d had with her friend a few days ago where they were talking about the concept of happiness. Ore realised how cynical she had become from that conversation.
“Happiness is a social construct,” she’d said, “because let’s face it, what does true happiness mean? What does it look like?”
Her life seemed to be a series of mishaps. She’d thought Ramsey was going to be a bright spot in her otherwise dark life; instead, he’d turned out to be an extra source of darkness. The worst part was that her friends envied her life, they thought she was living the dream: big house, executive husband, chef and housekeeper, they thought she was happy.
But it had been a while since she recognized the feeling of happiness in her life. Happiness didn’t happen to you, she told herself, you made your own happiness.
For example, going to work every day was something that gave her a feeling of happiness simply because it meant she wasn’t cooped up in their big empty house waiting for Ramsey to come home.
This was one reason she kept fighting Ramsey on the idea of quitting her job to become his full-time trophy wife. She would probably go mad if that happened.
There were many things on her mind as she drove home from her brother’s house. She had to call her father back; the man had been wanting to talk to her ever since he broke the news of his possible nuptials but she hadn’t been in the mood to entertain his grovelling.
Her visit to Benjy made her happy, she loved her brother, loved spending time with him and now this news! It was exciting!
So distracted was she that she didn’t notice the other car in the compound as she pulled in and walked to her front door.
It wasn’t until she opened the door, until the lingering citrusy scent of his perfume hit her nose, that she realised she wasn’t alone.
Terry was here.
