For the past thirty minutes, I had been pacing my room because my head was a mess. My thoughts were jumbled up there and I still couldn’t stop berating myself for letting my mouth run like that during the lunch with those snide women.
Now I had made enemies of people who I should have just avoided because they weren’t worth the effort it took to argue with them. I knew I should have never gone in the first place because that wasn’t my scene, but I didn’t have the heart to refuse Dani.
I hated that smug look on Samantha’s face. I hated how sure and confident she was that she was going to end up throwing me out of this house and I despised myself for the litter of doubts that lingered every etch of my very being.
The insecurity I felt at the moment was very suffocating and nauseating. I never imagined that one day I would have to battle another woman for my husband, arranged or not. God, I remember the days when I used to brag to people that I would never fight for a man.
I would go around telling people that if my husband preferred another woman, I would confidently walk out of the marriage with my head held high because I believed I was too good for that. The embarrassment that crawled up my spine at those memories made me shiver involuntarily.
I was so stupid then. I believed marriage was nothing more than a change of name but now it was so much more. There was my pride, my promise to my father and the zeal to prove to that insect that I was more than she could ever be to my husband without love being present.
“Ughhh” I exclaimed in annoyance and flopped on my bed with a loud thud. It was the first time I was even letting myself calm down since I came back from that unfortunate lunch, I wished I never attended.
If I had stayed at home, no one would have threatened or dared me, and I would not be in this stupid mess. Should I just walk out already?
It was already embarrassing that practically everyone around me knew that my husband had a mistress whom he preferred over me. They would never look at me with the respect I deserved from them, and I hated it.
I was so torn about what to do. I miss dad a lot. If he was here, he would have a solution or even Duke.
If only I could see him, he would tell me what to do but he was no longer here, and
I was stuck on the fence. My indecisiveness was raising its ugly head.
It was moments like this that I could really feel how lonely I was and how partially stupid my decision to live life solo without any friends was.
I should have someone who I could call during times like this, but I didn’t and now I have to make my own decisions, and I would
have no one to blame if it all went wrong.
I think I should call Duke, I didn’t have a choice, and he was the only person in my life I could talk to freely without the fear of being judged about how I felt.
He would never judge me or make me feel less about my feelings but won’t calling him change the meaning of him being free? Would he look at me as a previous employer and advise me as such now that he was no longer working with us?
My phone rang loudly beside me and startled me out of my thoughts. Who could be calling me at such a wrong time?
I didn’t feel like talking to anyone now, but I hesitantly grabbed the phone to see who was calling me since I was the sort of person who hardly got called.
I was surprised to see that Danielle was calling. I ran my head through the several reasons she could be calling and was having a hard time deciding if I should pick up the call.
Was she angry that I spoilt the lunch she had put together? If I was in her shoes, I would probably be mad as well.
She was the wife of my husband’s best friend, and I would hate to give her the wrong impression, so I picked up the call.
“Hello?” it was more of a question than a statement because I was trying to ask if everything was fine without asking directly
“Hi girl, I was calling to find out how you are doing, today was a little hectic,” she said, and I could hear the sympathy in her voice and for the first time in a while, I didn’t hate it.
“I’m fine, I guess. I am just trying to get my thoughts together”
“I totally understand, and I want you to know that I am with you. If I were in your shoes, I would have probably pulled out her hair” Oh If only she knew I already did that and worse but in my head.
“I’m sorry for ruining the mood of the lunch. You must have put in some effort to organize that” I apologized just because I felt it was necessary.
“Oh honey, don’t worry about that. It is perfectly fine and for your information, I would have done worse. I know that my husband may fuck a lady or two, but they better not let me find out or else it would be the end for both of them” she exclaimed, and I could not help but burst out laughing at the way she said it.
“But I can’t do anything in my case. Everyone knows they were supposed to get married, and they see me as the intruder who came to snatch her place so no matter what happens, I will be the villain in their eyes”
Mine was a unique case where the mistress was seen as the real deal and the wife became a thief.
“Don’t say that, Hazel. As long as you are the one with his ring and his last name officially, she would always be the other woman irrespective of what people say.”
“But she was here first” As much as I hated it, it was the truth.
“And so, fucking what? Listen to me, you didn’t steal him from her. If he loved her so much, he would have married her instead. Atticus betrayed her and not you so don’t have any right to come at you for any reason. You can fight for your man”
“Fight for him? Why should I fight for something that doesn’t exist?” I scoffed.
“What are you trying to say? Would you let that girl kick you out of your home?” She practically screamed from the other side of the phone.
“Danielle, I don’t know how you want me to fight for a man that would not look at me except it is absolutely necessary. We don’t even have any form of relationship between us that is worth the struggle” I tried to explain to her.
“Then make it something that you can fight for” She exclaimed.
“What do you mean? I don’t understand what you are trying to say”
“You keep saying that there is nothing in the marriage to make you fight for it right? So why not turn it into something you can fight for?” She still wasn’t making any sense to me.
“You just said the same thing again, so I still don’t understand what you are hinting at”
“You are hopeless, you know? Look at it this way, your marriage was arranged, right? And you don’t love each other? So why not make it so that he falls in love with you enough to get rid of Samantha himself? Won’t that be a sweeter victory?”
“Make him fall in love with me? Is that even possible?” I asked her, baffled by her suggestions. She kept surprising me with every word that came out of her mouth.
“Of course it is. Have you ever been in love before? Not just casual attraction but intense love for someone?” she asked me.
“No” I had never even been in a long-term relationship before because most of the ones I was in were never meant to last long-term. They were just me acting on the emotions I felt at
that moment and once it fizzled out, the relationship died too with those dead feelings.
“That’s fine but you have been attracted to people before, right?” She asked again.
“Yes, I have”
“Okay, that’s good. I can work with that. What made you attracted to those people?”
“It was never the same with each person. Some were their personalities; some were their look, and others were just their mannerisms” I answered.
I was still confused as to why she was asking me these questions, but I answered her anyway because that was the only way, I would find out why she was asking me these questions.
“And there is your answer,” She said “You can either use your actions or something else to make him attracted to you or even fall in love with you”
Huh? That was possible?
“Can you hear yourself, Dani? Someone like Atticus get attracted to me? How do I even make him get attracted to me?” From what I had seen, Atticus didn’t look like the sort of person to be easily swayed by emotions.
“That’s for you to figure out. My husband just arrived so I have to go but make sure to think about what I said” With that, she ended the call, and I was engulfed with silence and her words ringing loudly in my head.
Danielle made sense and at the same time didn’t. People fell in love every day with other people, both intentionally or not so how was I going to make my husband have eyes for only me?