The Sparkles of a Budding Romance and That Quiet Voice of Doubt

 

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I sat across from her, reclined on the sofa with my feet up on the coffee table, while she was seated on a pillow on the floor, on the other side of the table, across from me. She had just won a game of Scrabble, after laying down the word ‘Absquatulate’, and her face was beaming as she looked at me through my feet.

“You only won because I let you,” I said in jest.

“Mmhm,” She replied in kind, rubbing the ‘S’ tile on the soles of my feet, and making me tickle. I wriggled my feet about but did not move them. It felt good.

“Your feet look weird,” She said as she continued rubbing pieces up and down my feet as I wriggled my toes about.

“Hey, that’s not very nice,”

“No, seriously,” She said as she started laughing, “Your toes are splayed open as if it pains you to bring them closer together.” As she said that, she tried to push my toes together and then watched with exaggerated disappointment as they went back to being ‘splayed’ open.

“Look at that. Your big toe looks like a lollipop,” She said as she broke into a cheery chuckle.

“That’s not nice again,”

“Your second toe looks like a half-chewed Pin-Pop? Unakumbuka Pin-Pop?”

“Yes, I remember,” I said, “But is this how you are talking about a man that you want to have sex with? Words have meaning, you know.”

“Oh, come on,” Ovelia said, laughing. “Your feet do nothing to me sexually. I don’t get turned on by a man’s feet.”

“Still, do you want thoughts of these ugly feet in your head when I am on top of you?”

“Eh, it won’t turn me off. Your face does it for me, so that’s what I will be looking at,” As she said that, she began playing with the third toe. “And your third toe with its bulging joints looks like… like…um,” She stared to the side, her eyes sparkling in glee, her cheeks folded in joyful mirth as she thought of a roast. I looked at her with a broad smile on my face and a calmness in my heart only rivaled by the silent Nam Lolwe in the dead of night. Then she turned abruptly back toward me as she laughed to herself, her eyes looking at me as if to say, ‘You don’t know what’s coming.’

“If it's something nasty, I am docking you of the 23 points, and we are playing the last word again.”

She broke into another loud laughter and covered her mouth.

“You see how you like eating chicken feet?” She said amidst bouts of laughter. I sat back with a smile on my face, awaiting either the best roast of the night or something that would ruin my mood completely, neither in between.

“Yeah?”

“Whenever you eat the feet, sometimes the muscle on the joints is hard for you to eat, right?”

“Yes.”

“That’s how your third toe looks like a half-eaten chicken foot.”

“Wewe ni fala sana,” I said, breaking into laughter as I took the pillow beside me and hurled it playfully at her. She ducked with a short scream and continued laughing as she hid under the table.

“Mr. Chickenlegs!” She said from behind the table.

“Okay, I have heard enough. Deduct Ovelia twenty-three points! Uko relegation zone.” I said to no one in particular as I lowered my feet and crawled to her side of the table on the floor. She looked over at me as she continued laughing as I made my way over to her.

“Aaargh, Eli,” She screamed playfully as she fell back on the soft, fluffy Persian carpet, and I fell on top of her.

“Unaita nani Chickenlegs?” I asked, pinning her by her hands to the ground. She wriggled playfully about as she giggled.

“My husband!”

“I don’t have chicken legs.”

“Well, you are not my husband yet, are you now?”

“Oh, so there is another man?”

She looked around.

“I don’t see him,” She said with a shrug and a chuckle.

She looked into my eyes warmly, a longing gaze in her look as they sparkled tenderly at me, and in them, I saw love. I saw perfection. That look alone forced its way through my cold, closed-off heart and pulled out the still smoldering embers of the man that I had been – well, almost fully pulled them out.

“Well,  what do you think?” She asked, her voice soft and flirty.

“I think you are full of shit!” I fired back, pushing her gently back to the ground as she fell back, giggling foolishly.

“Well, I mean, have you seen my ass?” She fired back. “That’s like half my mass.”

“Did you just rhyme?”

“What can I say, Honey? Ngugi wa Thiong’o steals my homework.”

I fell on her in a fit of laughter. Not because what she had said got me hysterically laughing, but because I had never felt so connected to someone before in my life. It was as though, in that very night, these long ropes extended from my back and wrapped themselves around her, and I never wanted to let go.

Then we stayed thusly, me on top, pinning her to the ground with her hands above her head, while she lay there supine, submissive, giving me this passionate look that made me feel as though she wanted to devour me. It was lust that did not just want to rip my clothes off, but burrow into my flesh and become one and the same with my skin. And I honestly felt the same, too.

I leaned down and kissed her. She kissed me back, and we let the passions consume us on the floor. But just as things were getting hot, she pushed me back. I continued kissing her for a while longer as she tried to push me away.

“Hey, hey, Sweetie.” She said, pulling her lips off mine enough to catch a breather and speak. I reluctantly pulled back. Of course, she was pushing me away. It had all been too good to be true. Nobody ever cared about me and how I felt. It was always about them. She had used me to feel good about herself this night after a fight with her father. Of course. How could I be so stupid as to imagine that this gorgeous woman who could have any man she could dream of, truly be in love with me? It was all a game to her.

“Did I do something wrong?” I asked, sitting beside her.

She looked at me and sighed.

“There is nothing that I would want more than to rip off your shirt and do nasty things to you.”

“Well, why don’t you do it? What’s stopping you? I am here for the taking!” I said, opening myself up as I reached over and kissed her again. She kissed me back and even grabbed the back of my head. But then she pulled back.

“It’s...it’s just,” She said, in between kisses, “It’s just... that...I am...sworn to...celibacy...until...marriage.”

I pulled back from the kiss and thought it was a joke. In fact, as I pulled back, I had started laughing and was ready for her to join in with her infectious, loud laughter, which never seemed to have a low-volume option. Instead, she chuckled and then stopped as I continued laughing. Her eyes went from staring deep into mine in admiration to a look of betrayal.

“Oh, ulikuwa serious?”

“Yes, Eliaquim. I am serious,” She said.

“Oh.”

I didn’t believe her.  She was lying. She had to be lying! I could see it in her eyes. The look she was giving me wasn't that yearning look of burning passion. It was a look of deceit.

She simply had wanted to see if I would fold under her smoldering eyes, be mesmerized by her bubbly ass, and I had done precisely that, hook, line, and sinker. It was I who was burning with longing, while she held all the power now. She wanted to control me, own me, possess me like I was a doll from her childhood, and then discard me when she was done playing with me, as she discards her worn-out makeup brush. Oh, I was such a fool. Yet now it was too late for me, because I was already falling madly in love with her.