A Fool For Love-Part Three

I stared at him perplexed. He looked startled, almost like someone that had been caught in the wrong.

My first guess was that he had been going through my stuff. I didn’t expect to find, in the middle of my room, someone that I had left lying down, watching a movie.

Click to catch up on what you missed in the first parts:

A Fool For Love-Part One

A Fool For Love-Part Two

He must have noted the confusion on my face.
“I was coming out to get you. I thought something had happened to you,” he explained.

Hearing that, I relaxed. Besides, everything looked as neat and organized as I had left it.

“No, I’m okay. I just needed some air,” I replied. I entered the room with my food and sat down on the floor. I was still eating and  scrolling through my phone distractedly.

Realizing that I was brooding, Jason tried to win me over. He tried to capture my attention. Owing to his charm, he succeeded. By the time he got up to leave, I wanted him to stay longer.

Earlier, as we spoke, Jason had brought up Edmond and asked if I loved him. Edmond was a guy that loved me. But I didn’t love him, and I assured Jason as much. Whether he believed it or not was entirely up to him.

Voluntarily, because I didn’t ask, he told me that there was nothing going on between him and Emily.
All that went through my mind at that moment was, “It’s not her I’m worried about”. Emily was the least of my concerns.

Several months back when I had first met Jason, I thought he and Emily had something going on. I swear that girl would have gone to war for him. I had concluded that she loved him. However, with time, I figured that there was actually nothing romantic about their relationship. Either that- or they did a great job at hiding it.

As it so turned out, my threat was actually greater than I could handle. The girl I now worried about was different. She had featured several times on his WhatsApp dp. And as if that wasn’t enough, one time when I was next to Jason, I saw that she was also his WhatsApp wallpaper. Jason and I weren’t dating, so I had no right to be jealous. But I was. That day I had asked if she was his girlfriend. He just laughed and replied that she wasn’t. I didn’t buy it. Neither did I push the matter further. That was months prior.

Back to our story, when he was ready to leave, I escorted Jason outside.  On the last steps leading to the ground floor, there was a group of Eritrean men climbing up. They were tall, handsome, well_built and they smelt good. They must have been eight in total. They were all chatting loudly and excitedly.

My instict was to push to one side of the stairs and slope down. Jason however stood aside patiently and allowed them to pass. I joined him. When they had passed, it occurred to me that Jason and I were holding hands. And we went down the steps in the same manner. Before hitting the ground floor, I pulled my hand out of his grasp. He noticed.

Outside, Jason kept glancing in all directions; looking at everyone and no one in particular. It’s as if he was searching for someone that he knew was around somewhere. It was evening and so many people were outside. Many of my friends were out too. I don’t know what or who exactly he was looking for, but if I took a wild guess, I’d bet he was looking for his competitor. From the frown on his face, you could tell that something was bothering him.

Truth be told, I didn’t pull my hand from his grasp because I had another guy or because I didn’t want to be spotted with him in public.

I pulled away because if my friends had seen me holding a guy’s hand, they would have jumped to conclusions. Jason and I were not dating. If anything, I still didn’t know what it was that was going on between us. I was confused. And he liked it that way. Therefore, I couldn’t risk being spotted hand_in_hand with him.
I couldn’t explain to others what I didn’t understand myself.

We stopped a taxi. I bid him farewell. He entered, it sped off. I turned to go.

End of Part 3.

Thank you so much for reading. Part 4 will be out soon.

Disclaimer: This is a true life story. To protect the identity of the characters involved, Jason and all the other names used in the story, were made up.

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