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A story about guilt and fear.

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Awakened to desire,

To a wilderness within.

Thorns and thistles bruise the heels.

A deep dive into an ocean of error.

Drowning in raging waves.

Thrown against stone embarkments.

Flip.

Bones become chalk.

Flop.

Wounds leak blood.

No escape.

Love.

The four-letter word is thrown around often — the pedestrian end to the bidding of goodbye, an afterthought to carry the desired weight.

I said it often enough,?I love you.

It meant choosing with the beloved as a priority. It was the looking out for another when one’s natural inclination is to give into self. A readiness to provide fresh water from a well blackened by life pressures.

There were many before her, women I barely remember. A conjuring that brought forth confusion with faces merging into each other.

“I love you,” the first time I said it, the words slipped effortlessly off a tongue inebriated with desire. The second time, my body pulsated with a heat that cleaved my tongue to the roof of my mouth. When I slipped the ring on her finger that day in May, surrounded by a crowd of witnesses, I mouthed the now-familiar words again.

I meant them.

I did.

Yet, I failed to?love?like I claimed I did by slipping down the abyss of self when I started that affair.

It was just before our second anniversary. We were arguing a lot — if it wasn’t about money or sex. It was about, “Who left the toothpaste uncapped?” “Who forgot to pay the electricity bill?” “Why didn’t I pick up my socks off the floor?” In retrospect, those incidents were not worth losing sleep over. Even silly. But add the reality of two strangers, and that?is?what we were, two strangers cramped into one space for the first time. Slowly discovering each other’s idiosyncrasies without an escape, things can quickly go from zero to a hundred in a heartbeat.

We spoke the same language but barely understood each other.

The beautiful woman I married had disappeared — in her place — was this neurotic, quarrelsome individual who questioned every decision I made, nitpicking on details that had never been problems before.

I failed to see how?my?actions blighted our relationship. It was easier to cast the searchlight on Abike and blame her for our problems.

If only she was more understanding. More accommodating. Less abrasive.

I stayed back in the office, hiding behind more projects and taking on more responsibilities.

And?that,?right?there,?was the opening.

Her complexion was dark brown and polished, hair black like African blackwood. What got my attention was her slicked red lips. Their thickness reminded me of a ripe?agbalumo.?I wanted to taste them,?to explore the corners and crevices of their plumb curves with the tip of my tongue. The contrast to her complexion when the pearly white teeth flashed in a smile left my heart racing long after she left the room. We lingered after departmental meetings, finding other topics that had nothing to do with the project that brought us together, taking coffee breaks simultaneously, and lounging at lunch. My eyes fixed on those lips, imagining their fiery path on my skin. Her — laughing at my lame punchline, missing jokes that barely cracked a smile from my spouse. She lived off Allen Avenue, Ikeja, alone. Commuting from the office to her house took almost an hour. We stumbled onto her bed, coupling still half-dressed, taking turns mounting each other. Her throaty laugh in my ears made me want her.

Again?and again.

I crossed the threshold at home at one-thirty A.M.

Abike was awake, pretending to be asleep.

I offered some half-ass excuse about an unexpected meeting that lasted longer than planned in the morning.

She knew I was lying.

We sidestepped each other in the bathroom and the living room before going our separate ways to work.

Every time I scratched that itch, a pebble dropped at my core — the weight of indiscretion growing. It didn’t stop the lies about phantom meetings and traffic. When Abike questioned more deeply, I grew sullen and unresponsive.

Every time I peaked between her legs, our limbs entwined, disgust oozed from my pores, and no matter how much I scrubbed with soap, it stayed on like glue, a second skin.

The weight grew too heavy. I was drowning.

The lust had run its course. It was time to apply the brakes.

She knew it, and so did I. When I told her, she threw back her head and laughed! I was prepared for anger,?but not laughter. She pulled me by the lapels of my jacket and kissed me on the lips. The mirror on the wall opposite the couch reflected my face — the blood-red lipstick leaving a smudgy path along my cheek as I scrambled to my feet.

“Bade…I knew it was a question of time before you developed a crisis of conscience.…you’re not built for this kind of game.”

In a rush of anger, I pushed her away.

“Ahh…are you angry? Don’t be…okay…come back…one for the road.” She shrugged off her tunic, standing at my fore gloriously naked. A shot of desire fired up my veins — at that moment, postponing my flight.

That was it, or so I thought. We still sat across each other at meetings, her red Hyundai still retained its spot opposite mine in the parking lot, but that’s as far as it went. Infrequently we rode the same elevator. At times she responded to my hello with a smile — at times, she didn’t.

The flash of teeth behind red still made my stomach flutter.

I never told Abike.

I was not na?ve to expect that a confession of an indiscretion she knew nothing about would bring us closer. Redemption lay in retracing my steps. I took ownership of my part in the failures I complained about, making more effort to listen and working actively on meeting her needs. The frequency of altercations that drove me down the slope of imprudence reduced immensely.

One day, I got on the elevator, and she was there.?Alone. She didn’t smile. That was fine, but unlike in the past, this time, she eyed me with open hostility. I was taken aback. I opened my mouth and then shut it, shrugged, and ignored her. Then, after a full second, she turned on me.

I thought I could dispose of her like a piece of rubbish… I was a fool…a user…not worthy of my wife…a loser.?All the expletives used to describe me didn’t infuriate me since?this?response was what I expected when I broke it off.?But.?When she referenced Abike, a bomb went off in the pit of my stomach. She stomped off the elevator on the twelfth floor — I rode it to the twentieth, Human resources, and laid all my cards on the table with Deji, the head of the department and close friend.

She had applied for an open position in the Abuja office months earlier, and though there were better-qualified candidates, Deji recommended her.

She got her appointment letter a month later.

She stopped by my office before leaving for the airport to catch her flight to Abuja that Friday evening.

She shut the door and leaned against it.

“I just want to say goodbye.” I continued watching her pensively from behind my table.

She sauntered towards me, stopped before touching the mahogany wood, then sank onto the armchair opposite me.

“I’m sorry about how I behaved in the elevator. You didn’t do anything …. well… what I mean is…you made no false promises…I wasn’t expecting to catch feelings.”

After waiting for my response for a few seconds, she got up, walked towards the door and paused for a second, and turned around.

“I know it was you.”

When the door clicked shut behind her, I sagged with relief.

I heard of the accident the following Monday. A head-on collision. I imagined her red lipstick lost in her blood and the ichor, pooling with the oil and hissing smoke of debris that was once her car, becoming an indelible blotch glistening under the sun.

I killed her.

And because of?her,?not?Abike or the four-lettered words I continued to parrot, I stayed faithful to my vows.

Every time my eyes strayed to a pair of long curvy legs, ample bosoms, or luscious lips that were not my wife’s…a flash of red cut in my brain, and the stirring in my crutch would deflate.

Deji and I avoided each other.

A year after the accident, he took a position with a sister company in Kaduna.

He picked up after the second ring. We made light conversation, both of us skirting. There was a brief interlude where we didn’t speak. Before the awkward silence led to a goodbye, he took a deep breath and launched into it.

“I am ashamed and guilty….that I was party to it, and not just because she died, but unlike you, I am guilty of more. I can’t stand coming to that building…knowing what we did. Don’t call me anymore…okay?”

I sat on the closed commode, head in my hands for God knows how long, oblivious to the cold tiles underfoot.

How do I wipe my hands clean of her blood?

Did I even deserve joy?

With time I stopped asking myself those questions. Still, I worked purposely to give my wife happiness, denying myself the ability to revel in any accomplishment, providing more than I thought I had, so there was no room for anyone else. An epic devotion born of twins — guilt and fear — a crushing combination that started off as a heavy load on my head but had become a backpack carried with stoic determination.

When my mind wasn’t preoccupied, a memory would escape to the fore, brought on by a vision of red. Or it could be a flash of white teeth behind burnished wood complexion, the flighty touch of Abike’s fingertips on my shoulders during foreplay….and I would freeze.

Time passed, and those souvenirs drowned in the murky waters of a past I worked hard to forget. Infrequently, one would bop to the surface, manifesting in a nightmare. I would awaken drenched in sweat and unable to remember details, except for snatches of red escaping in trickles from a mangled vehicle, my teeth chattering from a coldness within, lips immobile and unable to answer Abike’s concerned inquiries. That stopped as our lives became riddled with the routine of responsibilities as our children were born, and my dreams became reflections of my mundane existence.

More years passed.

On good days, my obligations to my family were embraced with cautious optimism, and on bad days were penance for the life I destroyed.

Either way, it didn’t matter.

Then, Abike fell ill.

Before the test results came back,?I knew.

I was encased in the steel grip of vengeance.

Payback was a bitch, screwing everything in its path.

Especially me.