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Coming out of the shower with a towel draped around his neck, he slumped down beside his bed_right on the floor and stared at his phone solemnly. His hands itched to pick it up but his resolve held it back like a night club bouncer. It had been one long and tiring day and there was only one person he wanted to talk to but She was the only person he couldn’t call _ or much like wasn’t allowed to. He wouldn’t allow himself to. It had been 3 months, 4 weeks and 16 days since he last heard her voice, not that he was counting. He sighed a great deal for the relief he felt for having overcome the temptation of calling her. He was up now on his feet and shuffling towards the…

boombox to have Edith Piaf sooth him, just like she did most nights. “Non, rien de rien… Non, je ne regrette rien! ” the sound filled the room. What was wrong with him lately? And why did the song get more sadder every night?
He threw these questions around the imaginary ancillary room of his mind ,waiting for some form of an answer_ an answer that will never come. In the past, he would have called her up without a second thought. They’d have talked about nearly everything under the sun and would have fallen asleeep doing so; two bodies joined together by miles and miles of wire.

He would wake up to hear that beautiful rhythm of her long drawn breaths as she slept over the phone. “you asleep? ” he would ask already knowing what her reply would be. “No, kofi, mete dua so,” she’d always say in her lazy and sleepy voice. It was during one of their midnight calls that he’d gathered ‘vim’ to tell her how he truly felt about her. She’d been quiet for a while after his confession d’amour and gently declined his supposed interest in her saying she’d always seen him as a “friend”

The other five times he’d confessed again, she’d graduated him to a “brother” status.
Their midnight calls after those episodes had developed a gaping black hole that absorbed the things they really wanted to talk about and gave nothing but uncomfortable silences back as recompense. The “Hi, how was your day? ” that would usually meet a 240 words essay reponse lately received a dry and morose, “good.’

The silence grew so spectacularly huge that now, they, who could not go a day without talking to each other, now had gone 3 months without any meaningful conversation.

He knelt beside his bed after switching of the lights and said a midnight prayer before slithering into the bed.
Somehow, his hand found his phone beside him and unlocked it. He tapped on the icon that read, “cellular data” and WhatsApp messages came pouring in. She had texted him! His heart did a somersault in his chest. 3 months, 4 weeks etc but she had finally texted him. “Kofi, ” the message read, “can’t we just go back to before?”

He knew, logic told him going back to before was a Sobibor he wouldn’t escape from but he would take it. Just a word from her and look at how hard his heart was beating. “I’d like that too.” he texted back and watched as it got blue ticked immediately. Esi is typing the window read. He waited…
Twenty minutes passed and yet the message had not come through. He called her. The phone rang for a while before it was picked up. “Esi, you asleep? “
“No kofi, mete… “

flashfiction #writing #Crushes #TBT #Ghana #Writers #fiction

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