Love Hates…

AARON ANSAH-AGYEMAN

LOVE HATES

A CHRISEFFE BLISS

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The Author

EPISODE 16

 

As the laughter of Wailer and Mike filled the intercom, Chris switched it off completely and replaced the receiver.

Heart pounding with trepidation, Effe pulled the screen aside and stood up from the bed. She came in through the seats and sat down on the passenger seat. She looked at him calmly enough, but her apprehension raged boisterously within her as he impaled her for a moment with his stare.

But the storm raging within her was not purely as a result of the unpleasantness she expected from him in the few minutes she was going to spend with her in this truck, no.

 

Somehow, she was suddenly experiencing a new form of restlessness due to the simple reason that he had agreed to listen, and possibly open up to her too.

And, undeniably, the fact that he had smelled her, just like she had found him, made her heart glad in a way she had not expected it to.

“Chris,” she began softly.

“You want to talk, please go ahead,” he said without looking at her. “I’m listening. Which lie are you going to tell now? What are you really doing here, Effe? Is this one of your schemes? What have you found me guilty of this time around?”

 

“Stop it, Chris, please!” she said, her voice pained. “Me being here is coincidental, but I want to believe that it is also by providence. I’ve been told that there is a town about three or four hours from here called Gabes where I can charter a car to Tunis. I want you to know the truth behind what I did to you eight years ago, Chris, before I get down at Gabes.

It is not redemption, no, and neither is it a vain attempt to earn any form of pardon or tilt your tender scale in my favour. I just think this is something we should have talked about a long time ago. And yes, looking back, I have had occasions to believe that my acts were dastardly, and wonder if they were worth the eventual sum of all that happened.

 

For saving a friend, I have no remorse, but for the subsequent fallbacks that seemed to have landed you in prison, and caused you to make life choices that you might not ultimately had made, under the circumstances, that I’m sorry for, and want to tell you the truth concerning that.”

He looked at her coldly.

“Are you capable of telling the truth, Effe?” he asked softly. “Just say what you have to say, and I’ll decide what is truth and what is you.”

Effe looked at him for almost a full minute, stung by his words, but she sighed deeply and began to speak as calmly as she could, praying that it would not escalate into one of their bitter and heart-wrenching clashes that always left her breathless, pained and utterly distraught.

 

“I called my sister, Chris, and she confirmed that she was the one who testified against you in court,” she said quietly. “Forgive me for doubting you on that assertion, but yes, you’re right…there was a court case, and Eyram testified against you pretending to be me.

She did it because she was convinced of your guilt, and Baaba asked her to, obviously turning my sister’s head in a way she could not refuse. I don’t know why I was never told about that, Chris, but I aim to find out. I’m beginning to think Baaba was very manipulative and utterly secretive.

Some things don’t seem to add up, and it is making me very angry but I’ll pick it up with Baaba. So, for starters, I want to clear the air about what happened in the courtroom. Eyram bore false witness, and I just got to know about it.”

 

He turned his head and gazed at her with cold assessment, and she could clearly see the doubts in his eyes.

“You want me to believe that?” he asked softly.

“It is the absolute truth, Chris!” she cried with a plaintive note in her voice.

“You have a sister? Older or younger?”

“Twins, actually,” Effe said softly. “And I’m not lying. She is Eyram, and you…you never got to meet her, I guess. Playing that role of Mabel, unfortunately, meant keeping a lot of things secret.”

 

“Very convenient to have a twin sister all of a sudden, isn’t it, Effe?” he asked coldly as his eyes looked at her suspiciously for a moment.

“What reason would I have to lie to you about something like that, Chris Bawa?” she cried, highly agitated. “It is information you can ascertain for yourself just by a single search on Google for Eyram Kedem! But, if you want evidence, I can show you pictures and videos on my phone or laptop now. I could’ve called her, but my roaming service had been off since I came to Libya.”

“Because of the revolt,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

 

“The disruption of roaming services was caused by the civil unrest in Tripoli,” Chris explained. “Most telecommunication networks were attacked, bringing down the system. Heard the Libyan government also wanted to blanket the news for a while and so took down internet and network services too.”

She looked at him for a while, and then she nodded and licked her lips.

“But you want evidence about all that I said” she said softly. “Don’t you, Chris?”

He turned his head and fixed her with a cold stare.

“I’ll never take your word for anything again, ever,” he said calmly.

 

Without a doubt, that was the most painful thing he had ever said to her.

His words made her stop breathing as if he had physically held her throat and smashed a fist into her heart. She gasped after a moment, and she could not stop the pain that slashed through her heart, nor the tears that she fought hard but which still glistened in her eyes, blurring her vision for a moment.

To know that there was someone who distrusted her that much would have made her distressed, even if the person had not meant anything to her. To know that Chris Bawa felt that way about her, therefore, tore at her innards and twisted the air from her lungs.

 

It was not a reaction she had expected to feel, although it was something she knew he was entitled to feel after what she had done to him. His opinion of her should not have mattered in any way. She was there to give him the truth, as she had become acquainted with, and that was that.

All other feelings should have been incidental and absolutely negligible in the current state of the scheme, but somehow, she was realizing quite quickly that she was very susceptible to his opinion, and that he had the power to hurt her.

And that, as mad as it seemed, as unreasonable as it was, shook her violently.

“You have hurt me very deeply, Chris,” she whispered.

Again, he looked at her shattered face for a second.

 

“I suppose I have, Effe Kedem, I suppose I have,” he said softly. “But, even now, I don’t know when you speak the truth, because I am convinced that you and the truth aren’t quite the best of buddies. And right now I’m not saying things to hurt you intentionally, Effe, no. I’m saying it as it is, as I want you to know if we’re indeed intending to clear up the bitterness between us. That is the way I feel because that is the way you let me feel about you.”

 

Effe turned her head and stared out of the window for a while as the car moved along. She wanted the pain to sink in, do its worst and taper off. This, finally, was the extent to which Chris mistrusted her now. Nothing she said would ever be the truth to him unless it was backed by hard evidence, and of course she could not blame him.

Her role in his life had been the ultimate betrayal.

He had opened up his heart to her in a way he had probably never done to anyone, but she had played with his feelings in the most painful way and betrayed his trust in the process.

 

She had been inexperienced then, and had really not been bothered about any long-time consequences. Her sole focus had just been the burning desire to help a friend out of a life-threatening situation, and all other fallouts were incidental and negligible, the inevitable spoils of war.

To her, Baaba’s health and longevity superseded all other feelings. What Chris Bawa felt, or would eventually feel, had not been in the equation. Indeed, above all else, she had wished he would suffer the most extreme emotional pain for the dastardly way he had treated Baaba. He had been a beast to her, and nothing else.

And yet here she was, lost in the dark web of conflicting and acutely painful myriad of complications woven by the mere fact that he distrusted the very essence of her.

 

Almost ten years on, this was the consequences of her actions: a man who would never believe her again, or ever trust her again. Ordinarily, that should not have been a case. She was engaged to a man she loved, and who loved her. She had a great job, a great family, lovely friends. So, the opinion of a truck driver she had hurt a decade earlier should have been the least of her cares.

But suddenly, due to some inexplicable reasons, she was finding out in the most painful of ways that losing Chris Bawa’s trust was something painful, and something she wished would not happen.

Not that she expected any long-standing form of a relationship with him purely on the basis of friendship. She knew she and Chris could never be friends. She had no qualms about that, and could have let the past slide away if indeed he were remorseful of his actions. But he would not do that, and he could never believe her.

 

Ultimately, it boiled down to one thing: tell him the truth as she knew it, and leaving his life forever in the knowledge that he knew the truth, but possibly still hated her, and would hate her, as long as he drew breath.

Effe took a deep shuddering breath and brushed the tears from her eyes, and then picked up her phone, navigated to her stored files on the external SD card, and opened up a file named FAMILY.

“Here, Chris,” she said softly. “You can have a look. Pictures and videos of me and my family. Eyram is in almost all of them.”

Deep down, she still expected him to believe her, to accept her explanation, and so she was more than a little bit shaken up inside when he suddenly swung the truck off the highway, cruised for a little distance, and brought it to a stop.

 

Without a word he reached for the phone.

Effe watched as he carefully went through the files and photos, paying particular attention to each. Finally, after almost fifteen minutes, he handed her phone back to her.

“Seems genuine, Effe,” he said softly as he engaged gear, signalled left, waited for two cars to pass, and then he joined the highway again. “So, this twin sister of yours testified against me in court?”

Effe nodded, and for a moment she was astounded by the feeling of great relief that filled her heart at the prospect that he was beginning to believe her side of the story concerning the court case.

“She did,” she said with a little sigh. “Apparently, Babs convinced her to do it.”

His face was bleak as he drove, and then he leaned back slightly.

 

“Tell me why you did what you did to me,” he said quietly. “Tell me why you toyed with my feelings and my heart. Effe, tell me why you desired to give me that terrible pain.”

“Oh, Chris,” Effe whispered miserably as her eyes locked on his profile. “It was never my intention to hurt you. I thought – from what I knew of you – that you would never fall in love with me, that you would only be interested in sleeping with me.”

“I didn’t ask you to think for me, damn it!” he hissed tightly. “Just tell me why you did what you did!”

 

Effe sighed deeply again, and then she proceeded to speak softly, rolling back the years and forcing herself to relive the pain all over again, from what she had seen, especially that day in Baaba’s room when she had seen him clearly assaulting her friend, to what Jonathan and Baaba had told her.

Chris listened without stopping her, without asking for any clarification. She noticed that at certain times during her narration his jawline tightened perceptively. At one point, he gripped the steering-wheel so tightly that she saw the leather gloves on his hands turning shiny across his knuckles because of the tension.

 

And then, finally, she was done, ending at the scene of the wedding and her final painful words to him.

“What can I say, Chris? What defence do I really have? I was naïve and gullible, but that was no excuse. Yes, it is true I wanted you hurt. I wanted you to suffer because of what I saw, and because of the pain and torture my best friend was going through.”

He looked at her bitterly.

“And you think hurting me that much, lying to me and toying with my heart, was the best way to help that damn friend of yours, Effe Kedem?” he asked so bitterly that it tore savagely at her heart.

 

“I’m very, very sorry, Chris,” Effe said, and at that particular point in her narration tears came to her eyes as she turned in her seat to look at him. “I believed strongly that you needed to pay gravely for your misdeeds.

If it had been now, I would have gone to Baaba’s father and told him the truth. I would have confronted you squarely and threatened to go to the police if you ever dared touched her again. Yes, I would even have gone to Jon’s father and forced him to end the relationship between you and Babs, to allow Babs’ father enough time to pay off the loan.

 

There are a million things I would have done differently. But I’m human, Chris, and I love my friend very much. Getting evidence against you to end the wedding seemed simple and straight forward, but unfortunately, it didn’t pan out that way.

One thing is for sure, Chris…if it had been now, I would never have agreed to lead you on like that, and to hurt you like that. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I want you to know that I’m very, very, sorry, Chris. I’m so very sorry.”

 

He stared straight ahead when she was done.

Effe expected him to speak, but he remained silent with his jaws clenched and his hands holding the wheel tightly.

“Chris-Love!” she whispered suddenly, reaching out to touch him instinctively, the endearment she had used for him so long ago coming out even before she was aware that she had uttered it.

With a low grunt Chris swung the truck to the side of the road again, rocking her backward so that she cried out with a startled moan. When she regained her balance, she saw that Chris’ door was open and he was no longer in the truck.

 

Effe opened her side of the door and got out quickly.

She saw him walking off the shoulders of the road toward a bridge.

She hurried after him, almost breaking into a run.

“Chris!” she whispered when she reached him.

 

He was standing on the bridge gazing out across the serene lake. There were fishermen in long canoes on the lake, most of them casting out fishing nets. Chris had a cigarette in his mouth and was fishing his gold-plated lighter out of his pocket.

She walked up to him and reached out for the cigarette without fear and hurled it over the bridge into the lake. He stared at her, and she saw that his eyes looked haunted, and were devoid of the deep-rooted hatred she had been seeing since she met him again.

She reached out and took his lighter, and again he made no attempt to stop her.

“Can you ever forgive me, Chris, please? I hate to see you wasting away your precious life like that. I was wrong please…” she said softly.

 

His eyes fixed on her.

And when he spoke his voice was filled with deep pain and sadness, making his words tremble. His sensuous lips trembled, and she could see that his hands shook a little too.

He was evidently so emotionally vulnerable that it brought out an unexpected feeling of tenderness in her chest, and she felt the strong urge to step toward him and wrap her arms around him.

“My father, Brand Bawa, died in a car accident when I was fifteen years old,” he said quietly. “His car veered off a highway and plunged almost a hundred feet to a ravine below and exploded.”

Effe’s lips trembled at the pain she heard in his voice, and for a moment she felt so passionate and mysteriously emotional that she felt a lump in her throat.

 

“You never told me about that,” she said painfully.

“It is not something I talk about easily,” he said softly. “I loved my father above all men, Effe. My heart was shattered when my Pops died. You see, my mother died shortly after my birth, and my pops was all that I had. He had two friends, Abeiku Brooks and Ransford Afful. When he died, his friend Abeiku Brooks took me in as his own son. I called him Uncle Brooks. I stayed in his home till after my education. And guess what, Effe, Uncle Brooks, the man who raised me, is entitled to everything I have!”

 

“Chris!” Effe said, shaking her head as the realization dawned on her, shattering her so powerfully that she just stared at him with horror. “You mean…you mean Babs’ father? The one she said…embezzled the money and you…you were going to send to prison if she refused to marry you? Baaba’s father is this Uncle Brooks who raised you after your father’s death?”

 

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“Yes, damn you, and Baaba, and that fucking Jonathan!” Chris said painfully, raising a trembling hand to his forehead. “Baaba’s father was my fucking father too! He taught me how to be a man! That man could have had my soul if he wanted it!

If he had asked me to sacrifice my bloody life for him, I would have done so! He could have had anything he wanted from me if he wanted it, my bloody life included! And you stand there and tell me he embezzled my damn money so I was going to send him to prison and force his only daughter to marry me?

Goddamn it to hell but I would bundle you and Baaba and Jonathan right now and throw all of you into the deepest heart of hell if I fucking could!”

 

And as tears of anguish rolled down the cheeks of that dark strong man, Effe took a step backward and raised trembling fingers to her lips.

“Oh, God!” she whispered, and for a moment felt her heart would explode from her own agonies and the sudden realization that Baaba and Jonathan had betrayed her in the worst kind of way.

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Premium Story: A ChrisEffe Bliss :: LOVE HATES :: EPISODE 15

 

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