"Oh..." her chapped lips parted. "It's you."
At that moment, all words had left my mouth because the person standing before me looked worse than a homeless vagabond.
With her hair in a lumpy mess, Princess stood in the open space, wearing a large Lacoste t-shirt and clutching a grimy frying pan. Her eyes were bloodshot, hosting two saggy bags underneath them and a white smear of powder on her left cheek.
"If you're just gonna stare, then you should leave." She stepped back, sending the door my way until I stopped it with a hand. She arched an eyebrow.
"Can I..." I cleared my throat. "Can I come in? We need to talk."
For a minute, I thought she wouldn't let me, but she soon moved away from the open door, tossing the dirty frying pan onto the floor.
I took a cautious step in, trying to suppress my reactions as my eyes flitted over the place.
Geez, no wonder her roommate moved out, my subconscious remarked. This place is literally a junkyard.
I had to agree. My nose was currently wrinkling from the faint smell of alcohol and burnt food wafting in the rectangular room. The sooty pan sitting on the table-top stove still held black chunks of whatever Princess tried to cook before deciding to live off fast food. White take-out packs along with piles of laundry littered the floor and the two beds. Books were scattered all over the study table, some with burnt edges, others had traces of white powder on the cover. I moved closer to examine it and found more of the white powder in a half-filled ziplock bag, hiding in the corner of a slanted stack of books.
"Princess." I pulled out the bag. "Please don't tell me you've be-"
"Don't touch that!" She yelled, snatching the bag from me with frightening speed.
Ok...I guess Akweley wasn't exaggerating after all, I thought. To resort to drugs, that meant Princess had completely lost it.
"What do you want, Akwasi?" she quizzed, after successfully hiding the powdery stuff. Grabbing a can of Gulder beer, Princess snapped it open, but before she could even take a sip of the alcoholic beverage, I snatched the can from her.
"No. You've had enough alcohol," I said, emptying out the beer in a nearby flower pot and tossing the can into a bin, which was already overflowing with similar cans.
Princess shot me a glare of a thousand daggers then sighed, plummeting on her rumpled bed. "What do you want from me?"
"It's simple. I want you to get out of this gunk," I replied, carefully brushing away a pair of lacey underwear from the only available chair in the room. Turning it, I finally settled down, facing Princess on her bed. "You can't keep missing swim practice. Amina has threatened to tell Coach to take us both off the Regional line up if you don't show up for practice on Friday."
Princess blew a sloppy raspberry. "No surprise there. Amina has always hated my guts ever since I stole her breaststroke title during last year's Annual Swimming Competition. She pretends to like me, but I know she only does that to stay in Ethan's good books. What I don't get though is, why she's dragging you into it." Princess angled her body to the side. "This has nothing to do with you."
"Actually, it does. It does because..." I heaved out a breath. "I told a lie to cover up for you."
"You covered up for me?" She sat up, surprise soaking into her features. "Why?"
"Well, because I think it's hypocritical of Amina and everyone in school to judge you and call you names when half of them are secretly doing the same thing you did."
"Hm."
"And because..." I rubbed both hands against my jean cladded thighs. "Apart from Ethan, you're the first friend I made on the swim team, and as my friend, it hurts me to see you like this, living like some hopeless junkie all because of him." My eyes drifted up, catching the emotional turmoil churning inside her. "It's not cool, Princess. You're acting as if Ethan ended the whole world when he broke up with you."
"For me, he did," she admitted, brushing away a stray tear. "This is the longest Ethan and IÂ have spent apart. Usually when something happens between us, it only lasts for two or three days, then we have hot sex and everything goes back to normal. But this time...this time it's not like that." A loud sob left her mouth, as she collected her legs into a hug. "It's been a week, Akwasi, a week! And Ethan hasn't come by or even tried to contact me." She sobbed again. "It's like he has erased me completely from his life."
"If that's the case, then it's only fair that you do same."
"No!" Princess shook her head with so much vigour. "No! I can't do that. Ethan is my rock; I can't survive here without him. I need him."
Now it was my turn to shake my head. "No, Princess, you don't."
"Yes, I do!" she fired back.
"No, you don't."
"Yes, I do!"
"No, you don't!" I yelled, startling her into silence. "This is your life, Princess. Your life! Not Ethan and Princess' life. You can't shut yourself down because Ethan dumped you!"
"B-but I love him." Her face scrunched up, making way for another stream of salty tears.
Love.
A sigh seeped past my lips. It's always love. Every couple thinks they're swimming in a pool of sweet, romantic love until something bad happens. They'll try to fight to stay together, but in the end, one person always goes away, leaving the other with nothing but heartache. My mother flashed in my head, sending a jolt of remorse through my heart.
"When my father left us for his sugar mama, my mother used to cry her heart out," I paused. "I didn't think she'd find love again, that's until she met my stepfather, Mensah."
Princess' sobs had reduced to sniffles now.
"They got married, had my sisters and for a couple of years everything seemed fine. Then Mensah also left us. He left us to become a drug lord."
When I looked up, Princess's bloodshot eyes were wide with surprise.
"The point I'm making here is that, people will definitely enter your life and you will fall for them, give them everything you have, including your heart... and they'll break it." My gaze locked on hers. "They will leave your heart in a thousand pieces, but that shouldn't be your end. In fact, that should be your beginning, a beginning of a new chapter in your life without them."
I slowly pushed myself off the chair, kneeling against the bed beside Princess, who still hugged her legs tightly. "Just because Ethan dropped you doesn't mean you should stay on the ground. It's time for you to get back up."
"But I don't know if I can," she cried, burying her face in her arms. "I don't know if I can continue living without him."
"Yeah, I agree it's not gonna be easy forgetting someone who has been so influential in your life but, you have to at least give it a try," I pressed on. "Time isn't sitting down waiting for you, you know. You need to step up, let go off everything that has happened these past days."
"I don't think that's possible."
"And you'll continue to think that way if you don't give it a try. That's your keyword right there, try, and you can start with this." Digging a hand into my back pocket, I pulled out the two short strips of paper I had bought before coming here.
Princess took them from me, examining them with furrowed brows. "A Night of a Hundred Laughs and Music," she read from the paper. "You got us tickets to a comedy show?"
"They say laughter is the best medicine to cure a broken heart."
"No one says that," she snorted with a chuckle
"Yeah, but it made you smile." I pushed myself off the floor. "C'mon, get dressed and let's go."
Princess sat still, glued to the spot.
"I'm not taking no for an answer, you know."
"Fine," she groaned then scooched off the bed.
¤¤¤¤¤
A couple of hours later
"...and that look on the captain's face when he saw that the girl was wearing padded hips," Princess chortled out. "Oh my God, it was beyond priceless. It was as if the discovery had fried his brain cells, he couldn't even talk."
"I know right, he actually thought 'oh I'm gonna have the time of my life with this hot chick' only to realise that everything she was wearing was fake," I laughed, following her through the throng of people to the auditorium's exit.
Halfway down the stairs, Princess let out a sigh of contentment. "Thank you so much for this, Akwasi. I really enjoyed the show and all the music. If I'd known the theatre students were this talented from the start, I wouldn't have wasted a good 80cedis subscribing for Netflix."
I chuckled, "I'm glad you had fun, Princess. It's nice to finally see you smile and be happy."
Her lips slowly crawled up, cheeks turning into cute round spheres. "So... what happens now?"
"Uuh...I don't know." I shot a look around. The crowd was dispersing, making us the only people standing in front of the auditorium. "I can walk you back to your hall."
"Ooorr..." my companion began with a twinkle in her eyes. "We can go somewhere else, to have some more fun. It's just a few minutes past nine. The night is still young."
"Ok," I smiled, buying into the idea. "Got a place in mind?"
After a twenty minutes taxi ride, we arrived at an outdoor smoothie café. Rainbow fairy lights hung from the surrounding trees, working in co-ordination with the colourful furniture and the artful designs on the sides of the smoothie summer hut. Fruits & Shakes glowed in neon lights on a board atop the thatched roof.
"Wow." My eyes moved around. "How did you find this place? It's way off campus."
"I didn't find this place, Ethan did," Princess responded, leading us to a table close to a garden of purple hollyhocks. "Last year, he...organised a surprise birthday party for me here."
"Oh that's nice." I settled down.
"Yeah, it's still my most favourite birthday...one I'd never forget." Her eyes drifted down to the table, a mixture of sorrow and nostalgia wafting in them.
I was about to ask her if we should leave when a waiter came by, ready to take our order.
"Oh, hang on." Princess quickly grabbed the colourful card menu. "Umm...I'll have the raspberry shake with the kiwi buns."
"Oh kiwi buns, that sounds interesting. I'll have that too, but with a mango milkshake instead," I said and the waiter took his leave.
"Mango." An expression of disgust touched Princess's face. "Bleh."
"Why?" I relaxed in my seat. "You don't like that fruit?"
"Why should I like such an oddly shaped fruit that attracts flies when you're eating it?" She shuddered.
"Oh c'mon, it doesn't attract that many flies."
"Tell that to ten-year-old me who accidentally chewed one while eating a mango."
"Oh my God, you chewed a fly?" I burst out laughing. "That's beyond disgusting."
"No kidding. Though I washed it all out, I couldn't help but feel..." she twitched in her seat. "Yucky. Even some of the guys in my class started calling me fly chewer."
"Princess, the fly chewer," I threw my head back, laughing.
"It's not funny." She playfully tossed the menu card at me.
Soon, our orders arrived and I took a sip of my tall glass of mango flavoured shake. "Mhm, this is very good."
"I know right." Princess slurped her purple coloured shake. "When Ethan brought me here, I couldn't stop drinking their beverages. I've tried every single one of them except the mango milkshake. I don't want to have anything to do with mangoes."
A soft chuckle left my mouth as I picked up a kiwi bun and took a big bite. The bread was soft and warm until a tangy sour taste joined in. It started off mild, but as I continued to chew, the tartness grew. "Mh!" I quickly swallowed, surprised by the biting intensity. "What the-"
"It's the kiwis," Princess grinned. "They put chunks of kiwis in the bread dough before baking it. That's what's giving it that sour taste."
"Mh," I swallowed down some of my milkshake to wash the tartness away. "Then these buns should come with a warning. It's like you're chewing a whole packet of Sour Patch kids at once."
"Ethan said something like that the first time he tried them," she giggled, then the smile faded off. "I'm...I'm sorry, Akwasi. I know I should be forgetting about Ethan but I-"
"Oh it's fine." I assured her. "I mean you can't just get up and forget him in one day. You have to take baby steps."
That cute smile of hers returned as she nodded. "Yeah."
Silence joined us for a brief moment.
"I have a question though," I cleared my throat before continuing. "Don't get offended but...if you care so much about having Ethan in your life, why did you cheat on him?"
Princess sighed, toying with her drink straw. "When you're under the influence of alcohol, you don't really give much thought to the things you do, you just do them. That's what happened to me that night."
She took a pause, then began. "During last semester's break, Boris, the captain of the football team, he invited me and Ethan to a party at his house. But Ethan was out of the country at the time so I... went alone. Met a few friends, had some fun and eventually had too much to drink. The following morning..." her lips quivered as she sighed, "I woke up in Boris's bed, stark naked with him by my side."
Regret morphed onto her face. "I begged him not to tell Ethan, and he promised me that he wouldn't. But what the douchebag didn't tell me was that he'd recorded us having sex."
"Oh shit." I drew back.
"Yep." Princess still kept her eyes on her drink. "The video was just circulating amongst the boys in the varsity team, until it finally got to Ethan. He wouldn't even listen to me when I tried to explain. He just...called it quits." A tear slipped past her lashes and she tried brushing it away but wasn't quick enough.
Pulling out a tissue, I leaned over and wiped it away, earning me a soft smile.
"Thanks," she mumbled, taking the tissue from me.
I watched her dab at her eyes. "Sorry about what Boris did to you. He's an ass."
"Well, I learnt my lesson, didn't I? Never attend a douchebag's party without your boyfriend," she managed to let out a nervous chuckle. "But enough about that. Let's enjoy our shakes."
"Yeah sure." I sat up, bringing the straw to my lips.
*****
Btw, true story about the mango flies thing. It happened to me way back in primary school. There was this mango tree behind our headmaster's office. One day, I missed lunch and was really hungry so after school I just went there, plucked one mango and started eating. Halfway into the fruit, I realised I was chewing something crunchy, so I spat it out.
Low and behold, I had murdered a fly to bitsðððð you should've seen me that day. I screamed like a maniac, threw the rest of the mango away and went to wash my mouth like a dozen times. Since then, I've never eaten a mango. Yeah, I eat mango flavoured stuff but I don't think I can eat the actual fruit without remembering that whole incident ðððð
Next chapter comes up same time next week. There's also a Val's day chapter in the works so stay tunedð