Between the lines(3)

Chapter 3 - The smell of blood

Harmattan settles over the city like a held breath. Everybody’s strongest weapon is now Vaseline and shea butter. Lip oils and balms are now hot cake everywhere.

Nonso and I have been together for three months, which feels simultaneously like forever and no time at all. I’ve started keeping a toothbrush at his place, leaving clothes in his drawers. He’s started calling me “his” in public. “My girlfriend,” “my Lara” with a possessiveness that should probably bother me but instead feels like being chosen.

We’re at a gallery opening in Ikeja, the kind of event where everyone is wearing black and drinking free wine and pretending to understand the art. Nonso knows the artist, a brooding sculptor whose work involves a lot of rusted metal and uncomfortable angles.

“What do you think?” Nonso asks, his hand on the small of my back as we stand in front of a massive piece that looks like a cage made of ribs.

“It’s claustrophobic,” I say. “In a way that feels intentional.”

“Exactly.” He squeezes my waist approvingly. “See, this is why I bring you to these things. You get it.”

A woman approaches. Late twenties, expensive haircut, the kind of effortless beauty that comes from having money. “Nonso! I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“Jessica.” His hand tightens on my waist, just slightly. “This is Lara, my girlfriend. Lara, this is Jessica. We used to—”

“Date,” Jessica finishes, smiling at me warmly. “Don’t worry, it was years ago. Before he got all emotionally evolved.”

“I wouldn’t say evolved,” Nonso says, but he’s smiling too.

They talk for ten minutes about people I don’t know, places I haven’t been, inside jokes I’m not part of. I stand there with my wine, feeling like a child at an adult’s party.

When Jessica finally leaves, Nonso turns to me. “You’re quiet.”

“I didn’t have much to add.”

“You could have tried.” His tone is light, but there’s something underneath it. “You just stood there like a ghost.”

“I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“You wouldn’t have been interrupting. You’re my girlfriend. You’re with me.” He runs a hand through his really intricate all back, frustrated. “Sometimes I feel like you’re not even present, Lara. Like you’re just floating through things.”

My throat tightens. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. Just…be here. Be with me. Fully.”

I nod, swallowing the lump in my chest.

Later, in the cab home, he pulls me close and kisses my temple. “I’m sorry if I was harsh. I just care about you so much. I want you to shine.”

“I know.”

“Do you? Because sometimes I wonder if you really understand how much I love you.”

“I understand.”

But I’m not sure I do.

Oge notices the bruises at brunch.

We’re at our usual spot in Surulere, splitting a bowl of nkwobi and half a keg of palm wine. I’m reaching for the keg when my sleeve rides up, revealing the marks around my wrist. A perfect ring of them, like a bracelet.

“Lara.” Oge’s voice goes flat. “What is that?”

I pull my sleeve down. “It’s nothing jare.”

“That’s not nothing. Did he—”

“No nau.” The word comes out too sharp. “No no, it’s not like that. We were just… he grabbed my wrist during an argument. He didn’t mean to. He didn’t know that my pawpaw skin was that soft. He was just being so passionate about his argument abeg.”

“Passionate kwa.” Oge sets down her fork. “That’s a fun way to describe actions that lead to leaving bruises o.”

“You don’t understand. We were fighting about something stupid. I wanted to go home and he wanted me to stay and he just held on too tight. He apologized immediately. He felt so terrible.”

“I’m sure he did.”

“Ogechukwunna, stop. You’re making it sound like something it’s not.”

“What is it then?”

I don’t have an answer that doesn’t sound like I’m defending him, so I say nothing.

Oge leans back, studying me. “Do you remember your final year? When you made me promise that if you ever ended up with someone who hurt you, I’d tell you, even if you didn’t want to hear it?”

“This is different.”

“Is it though?”

I start noticing other things.

How Nonso reads my texts when I leave my phone on his kitchen counter. How he “suggests” what I should wear when we go out, in a way that isn’t quite telling me what to do but somehow always results in me changing. How he knows my work schedule better than I do and plans things without asking first.

“I thought we could have dinner with my editor on Thursday,” he says one night while we’re watching a movie on his couch.

“I have plans with Oge on Thursday.”

His jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. “You see Oge all the time.”

“I’ve canceled on her three times this month nau, babe.”

“Because you were with me. Is that really so terrible?” He pauses the movie and turns to face me fully. “Sometimes it feels like you’re looking for reasons to pull away from me. Like you’re trying to create distance.”

“I’m not.”

“Because if you don’t want to be in this relationship, Lara, just say so. I’m a grown man. I can handle it. But don’t string me along while you keep one foot out the door.”

My heart hammers. “I want to be with you.”

“Then be with me. Not with one eye always on the exit.”

I cancel on Oge.

At dinner with his editor who is a woman in her fifties who clearly adores Nonso, I sit quietly and smile and nod at the right moments. Afterward, Nonso tells me I was perfect, that I said exactly the right things, that his editor loved me.

I should feel proud.

Instead, I feel like I’ve passed a test I didn’t know I was taking.

That night, I dream I’m in the pen again.

The monstrosity in front of me presses backward, trying to escape. Another creature pushes forward from behind, its head seeking comfort between my rear legs. The closeness eases everyone’s terror, but barely.

Screams echo all around us. The smell of blood rises from the steel.

And then I hear it, a voice like smoke, like whispered static.

I am fear, begotten of the need to survive and the repulsion of death. I relish in the racing pulses. I marvel at the extent the human mind will go to remain alive, and I dislike those lethargic to fight.

I try to move, but there’s nowhere to go. We’re all pressed together, moving as one body toward something we can’t see but can smell, can sense in the very molecules of the air.

I am fear, the voice continues. Heed my bespoke narrative and I will find comfort in your darkness.

I wake up gasping, tangled in Nonso’s sheets.

He’s still asleep, one arm flung over my stomach, pinning me to the bed.

For a long moment, I lie there in the dark, listening to his breathing, feeling the weight of him, wondering when exactly I stopped being able to leave.

I find the article by accident.

I’m at work, procrastinating on the slush pile by reading essays on The Paris Review website, and I click on a piece titled “What We Talk About When We Talk About Control.”

It’s about coercive relationships. Not the kind with obvious violence, but the kind that tighten around you so gradually you don’t notice until you can’t breathe. The kind where your partner doesn’t hit you but makes you feel crazy for wanting space. Where they don’t forbid you from seeing friends but make it so difficult that you stop trying. Where they know exactly how to make you feel like the problem is your sensitivity, your neediness, your failure to appreciate how much they love you.

I read it three times.

Then I close my laptop before anyone can see me crying at my desk.

---

Hi Pumpkin.

I forgot to schedule this. I just wanted to read it because the time I thought I had scheduled it for has already passed, only for me to look and see that I never even finished the chapter or scheduled anything.

I apologize. I hope you enjoyed this one too. I’m also hopeful for what Nonso and Lara do next lmaoo

Till the next chapter!! Don’t forget to lmk your thoughts.

With all my love,

Head Pumpkin, Joké💕