TRAPPED

"Who is this girl?", Ella asked.

Jack was silent.

"Jack, am I not talking to you? Who is this girl?", Ella asked the second time while pointing at the screenshot of the lady on her phone screen.

Jack looked away from his phone and to Ella, stared at her phone, and shook his head. He gave her a wry smile and went back to operating his phone. This annoyed Ella and made her stand up, knock Jack’s phone off his hands and ask him again:

“Who is this girl, Jack?”, Ella asked for the third time as she tapped her feet on the ground repeatedly, placed her right hand on her hip and stared him down.

“Your insecurity is obnoxious and quite frankly, I’m not having it anymore.”, Jack replied. “Well, Ella, look at that picture again and tell me if that person does not look like my cousin whom you met at the wedding that we attended last week”, Jack suggested. Ella took her hands off her hip and took a closer look at the picture, on her phone screen. She even zoomed in on it to ascertain if truly, the person looked like the girl whom she had met the week before.

“Oh, that does look like her a bit”, Ella said sounding defeated. In a bid to cunningly get herself out of the awkward situation, she lied to him that she was only joking and suggested that because there wasn’t any filter applied to the picture, his cousin looked quite different from who she saw at the wedding party. Jack was really getting tired of her incessant nagging and stalking of his social media activity. He was looking for a way to end the relationship and she had handed him a reason on a platter of gold.

“How is Tobi doing today?”, Jack asked Ella as she made her way to the bathroom. Ella stared at him bemusedly. The question had caught her off guard. She walked back into the room and feigned not hearing the question properly. She cleared her throat and asked him in a low tone with a stutter to repeat his question.

“Okay, you didn’t hear what I said, right? I asked you how Tobi is doing today.”, Jack responded.

“Tobi? Who is Tobi?”, Ella asked, sounding flabbergasted.

“Ella, I asked you a question and you’re asking me back, right?” Jack said

“Jack listen, I know many people named Tobi. How can you just randomly ask me how Tobi is doing? Which of them are you talking about? Can you be a bit specific?”, Ella asked boldly.

Jack smiled and replied: “You want specificity, right? Alright, I will give you just that. At 8pm yesterday, you thought I was asleep and ran into the sitting room. You’ve been fond of doing that lately and so I decided to find out what was up with that. I walked gently to and stood behind the curtains to eavesdrop on what you were doing there. You told him that I was asleep and wasn’t hearing anything. After talking with him, you ended the call with; ‘Love you babe’ and started arguing playfully over who should end the call.”

“Oh, and by the way, he called when you were in the bathroom earlier and I answered the call. He asked who was on the line and I told him that I was your brother. He greeted me and asked you to call him the usual time.”, Jack explained further. There was an awkward silence in the room, as Ella was trying to think of a possible way to wriggle herself out of the ‘allegation’ Jack had just made. She stared at him for a while and then broke the ice:

“Jack, so we answer each other’s phones now? Wow. You have no respect for my privacy, is that it?”. “No, No, No, is that what you do now? Go about eavesdropping on people’s conversations and going through my phone when I am not around? What sort of behaviour is that? That’s really low from you. I expected better”, Ella responded, feigning vexation. Jack ignored her rant because he knew her manipulative tendencies, as he had fallen victim to it several times. They had dated for three years, so he knew all her maneuver tactics in evading the subject matter of arguments.

“Well, if you must know, Tobi is a cousin. I didn’t want to bother you with my calls, that’s why I was always going to the sitting room. As you must have seen, it is an American number and the time zones are different, hence the timing of the call. Also, we are pretty close, that’s why you were hearing those intimate-like remarks.”, Ella explained.

"I'm pretty sure you told me both your parents are the only children of their respective families", Jack replied. Ella looked anxious to clear her name and blurted out:

"Hey, you don't understand, we're from the same hometown, we call ourselves cousins. He’s a family friend sort of”.

“Awwn, is that so Ella? Wow, then you guys must be really close.”, Jack responded to Ella while pretending to be convinced by her explanation. Ella thought he had bought the farcical explanation a little at the least and tried to divert the conversation somewhere else. She touched his head playfully and pecked him on the lips and said they do not need to be arguing a lot, as it wasn’t healthy for their relationship. She smiled at him, laid on the bed and asked him to join her. She sought to bribe him with sex that night to take his mind off the topic. Jack did not respond to her invitation and after a while, she tugged him by the vest and urged him to get into bed with her. Seeing that Jack wasn’t responding to her manipulation, she tried to get his attention through pity. She claimed to have a headache and opened Jack’s bed side cupboard to get a couple of paracetamol tablets. After she had taken the medicine, she complained about the room being hot, so she turned on the air conditioner.

“Babe, I still wonder how you survive in this room every day when there’s no power. It is poorly ventilated”, Ella remarked. After a while, she stood up and looked at the temperature of the air conditioner. It was on 22 degrees Celsius. “Hmm, so even at 22 degrees, it’s still not cool enough. Baby, when last did you clean your air conditioner or check the gas?” Ella asked Jack. Jack was now on his chair watching all her drama and didn’t respond to the question she asked him. Ella left the bed and went to sit on his laps, and spoke to him playfully:

“Baby, am I not asking you a question? You have been quiet for a while now. Is anything the problem?”, she asked and then pecked him on the lips again. Jack was amused by her behaviour but did well to hide it and only kept staring at her. His gaze penetrated her soul and it was becoming quite uncomfortable for her.

“Baby, why do you keep staring at me?”, she asked him and then covered his eyes. When she lifted her hands, he was still gazing firmly at her. His eyes pricked her conscience and she was running out of options on how to persuade him. She tried to lure him into bed again but he was not interested. She laid in bed and covered herself with the duvet and uncovered it several times to find out what he was doing. By now, Jack had stopped looking at her and began operating his phone again. He was thinking about what to do and for 5 minutes, there was an awkward silence in the room. Ella broke the ice again and said to him:

“Baby please say something to me, are you mad at me?”

“Mad? Why would I be mad at you? Did you do something I should be mad at?”, Jack replied sarcastically.

“So, why were you not talking?” Ella asked meekly.

Jack ignored her question and said: “Uhm, Ella, please its 6pm, I want to go watch football. Kindly lock my door when you want to leave and take all your stuff along with you. Keep the key in the normal place.”. Ella knew in her heart, that this was the end of their story.