CLEO
Cleo tiptoed out of the bedroom where her daughter Amanda was sleeping. She leaned against the door and exhaled deeply once she felt it was safe.
Was it terrible to admit that the only time she truly enjoyed being a mother was when her kids were asleep?
Of course, she’d never say that out loud, she had no interest in being crucified by the mum police.
She loved her little family.
It was just… sometimes, she wished someone would whisk her away to a remote island and cater to her every need. (Mostly good food and great sex.)
God, why was she thinking about sex right now? She was a terrible mother.
Still, she was grateful that her libido had survived childbirth. She’d been worried it would dry up with the placenta, but no, surprisingly, she still felt that familiar shiver of excitement whenever she saw her husband.
Let’s not talk about whether she was having sex as often as she wanted. The fact that her libido was still intact? That mattered. Whether or not it was being satisfied? Well, that was a separate conversation.
She felt a little bad about lying to Tara. Axel was going through a green-diet phase, but he was at daycare. She had breathing space with just Mandy sleeping peacefully, but honestly, she didn’t feel like socializing.
Not with other mums, anyway.
Sometimes, she just wanted to pause her life. Talk to someone who didn’t have children. Someone who didn’t want to compare sleep schedules or trade war stories about diaper blowouts.. She didn’t want to get involved in the ‘Who has it worse?‘ debates.
When she was a first-time mum, she had thrived on those conversations. Secretly, shamefully, she’d wanted to win.
She wanted to be the mum who had it the worst, who was surviving the absolute most.
So sometimes, she’d made up stuff about Axel, even when he was being a near-perfect baby.
It had been an attention thing. She realized that later.
Cleo had always been an attention seeker, probably because she was the middle child in a family of four and often slipped under the radar of her parents’ parenting.
Now, as an adult, she still caught herself overcompensating. She was often the loudest voice in the room, not because she wanted to be, but because she was afraid of being overlooked. Forgotten, like she had been as a child.
And no, she hadn’t come to that conclusion on her own.
She used to have a friend who, on the day she ended their friendship, called her an attention-whore.
At first, Cleo had blinked in confusion until her ex-friend elaborated.
“You pick fights with me just so you can ask if I still love you afterward. You flirt shamelessly with my boyfriend. You have zero respect for my boundaries.”
It had been a humbling moment, more so because Cleo had liked that friend.
They had been friends since their first year in University. They had ended things seven years later when the term “toxic relationships” began to surface on social media and among amateur therapists.
Cleo liked to believe she’d changed since then. (She went to therapy, for God’s sake.)
She understood herself better now. She could step back when she felt that familiar tug, the one that pulled her toward performance, overreaction, and need.
She chuckled to herself as she padded into the kitchen to figure out dinner.
Sometimes her life felt surreal, like she was playing house on a movie set. How did she end up here? A mum with a house and a husband?
She paused as she thought of Jacob and felt her body flush with warmth. She picked up her phone, adjusted her tank top, arranged her boobs just right, and snapped a quick selfie.
We miss you, she typed, and hit send.
She didn’t expect a reply right away. Jacob took his job too seriously to let a photo of her boobs distract him. He worked in construction and had a rough-around-the-edges vibe that had endeared her to him in the early days.
Before Jacob, she’d only ever dated Black guys; Kenyan, Nigerian, Ghanaian, men who matched her party-girl energy. Then she met Jacob. He was South African, and like her, had immigrated to Canada when he was seven. They also shared a love for… kink. (Don’t judge her, please.)
Jacob was not afraid to smack her in bed if she wanted that. He wasn’t afraid to grab her throat a little tighter when she whispered tighter. The African men she’d dated? Those ones could fear for Africa. Gbade, the first Yoruba guy she’d slept with had stopped mid-thrust when she’d asked him to pinch her butt hard.
“What?” he’d asked, alarmed.
“Pinch me. Hard.”
He’d slipped out, made a noise of disgust in his throat, and that was it. No breakup. Just stopped replying her calls or texts.
So Cleo learned to hide that side of herself. To wait. To test the pulse of a relationship, first.
Where had she acquired the taste for rough sex? That was a question she would like to know the answer to, except she hadn’t talked to anyone about it. Not even when she was in therapy, because no matter how ‘liberal’ she claimed to be, Cleo was still a Nigerian woman, and there were some things that were abominable to speak about.
Her phone pinged just as she began to dice the onions. Probably Jacob.
She wiped her hands on a dish towel and picked it up
Cute.
Cute? (Cute!)
That was all he had to say when she was trying to be sexy?
She shouldn’t have been surprised. They hadn’t had sex in three weeks, and she couldn’t even remember the last time he had initiated. She was the one spending her days cooking, cleaning, wiping spit-up.
And yet she still had the energy to want him.
Why wasn’t he matching her energy?
Oh God.
Was this the beginning of the end of their sex life?
She closed the thread without replying. Maybe she’d bring it up tonight.
Or maybe she wouldn’t.