Choosing Sides

“You either keep her as a friend or lose me as your wife.”

“Lisa and I have been friends for – like what – forever? Jace, don’t tell me you don’t know that…”

“Not anymore. She either leaves or I will be the one to leave…”

“You don’t have to rub it in for whatever God knows what. Do we really have to go through this again?”

“Guess we have to. I don’t like the way she looks at you, the way the world comes to a standstill when it comes to her, you might as well leave your house on fire to go rescue her when she’s playing damsel in distress, you…”

“Please, Jace. I am losing my mind…”

“No, you are losing your wife.”

I had to let go of my BFF, even speed-dialled editors of all leading media houses in the country and booked a full page space where my apology went.

Melissa had been my best friend for as long as I can remember. We grew up together, skinned our hearts and skinned our knees. During our courting Jacinta never showed, in the slightest, that she would ever wage war on Melissa.

“Now that we are married,” Jace said three days after the honeymoon, tinged by post-honeymoon blues, “Melissa has got to have a life of her own.”

“She is our friend, and it’s not like I am married to her…”

“Well, it feels that way…”

Yeah, new broom sweeps cleaner. Under new management, old curtains and rugs have to go.

That was then.

And this is now. “Explain to me why the man I gave my all, gave my heart to and I love more than anything else in this world, finds it disgusting a thought to have sex with his legally wedded wife, he is a vagabond when he has a home…”

“There is nothing to explain, Jacinta,” I quip.

“Yeah, ever since you buried your face between the glorious thighs of that whore you don’t have anything to say to me.”

“Your insecurity is your…”

“You cheat on me and say I am insecure?”

“I know you, Jacinta. You declare all women who look at me or smile at me your enemy, and worse still if I happen to talk to them. All people are not as conceited as you…?”

“Conceited? That slut…”

“No, that is me, your husband, in love with another woman…”

“Without me you are nothing. I have made you what you are. Now you think you can leave me…?”

“I can’t leave you, enhe? Watch me.”

“Jack, you won’t walk out on me. You will actually kiss my denim-clad ass or God help me you will regret…”

“You know what Jacinta, do your worst, and let it loose on me. I’m tired of your empty threats…”

“Empty threats, enhe!” Jacinta, for the first time in years, contorts a smile, sad but a smile all the same. What secret weapon does she have against me?

One thing I know for fact is that I have weapons of mass destruction to attrite her, Sun Tzu way, but as cunning as she is she might have secretly amassed nuclear, biological and chemical weapons in a far-flung land away from civilization; and God help me I don’t want to be within a thousand mile radius when she goes nuclear on me.

But guess that’s what she does. I hear the ‘missile launched’ message in my mind. When she goes decisive there is no stopping her.

Flashbulbs of what I will lose go on in my mind. Everything I own is hers, thanks to her money; my vasectomy will never be reversed and I will forever be on the run for my dear miserable life.

“You choose, Jack,” I hear her saying from a distance. “Wife or whore?”

Now is not the time for my infamous indecision. I let go Melissa, why not this whore?