Tunde loved you, and his mistake was making that love too obvious. It was too much revelation at his own expense. You knew he had eyes for you alone—guys like Tunde weren’t wired to be polygamous. They couldn’t love two women. They couldn’t date two women at the same time; they simply couldn’t cheat. If the woman they loved died, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find a replacement.
By John “Penwielder” Ebute
Tunde is a fine boy. Not the Adonis-Ares type that draws women with raw, masculine appeal, but fine all the same—finer than average. He’s somewhat short, though not so short to earn your blatant disapproval. He is slim, athletically slim in fact, and there he has your thumbs-up, unreserved.
You prefer light-skinned guys, so although he isn’t exactly fair, the fact that he’s not dark-skinned either, but somewhere in between—chocolate brown, you call it—is another plus to his advantage. His facial features are generally pleasant, not great, but good enough to create an overall coherent picture– eyes that are neither large nor squinty, a straight nose, a sturdy chin, and lips that appear just succulent enough.
So for looks, Tunde is good to go, the kind of guy you won’t mind being seen with in front of a wedding jotter, the words “Beautiful Beginning” boldly emblazoned on its surface.
Beyond looks, Tunde is the type of guy every girl would be eager to introduce to her parents, a task she’d undertake with pride, her face beaming with smiles. The parents would size him up, ask a few questions, nod in approval and satisfaction, and soon start discussing when to set a date for the big day. He is focused, reasonably ambitious, and hardworking.
A fourth-year dentistry student, he attends all his lectures, spends most of his spare time in the library, and shows the same level of dedication to whatever his hands find to do.
A guy who’s sure to graduate with a fine result, quickly find a good-paying job, be a good employee and so earn some quick promotion, and end up being comfortable financially. What girl won’t like the prospect of tying the knot with such a guy? You, yes you.
Your friends themselves couldn’t understand why you kept treating him the way you did.
“Babes, this guy is a hot cake o,” was Layo’s anthem to you. “See the way he’s loyal to you. With him, you can go to sleep and know that you’ve no rival contending with you for his attention.”
“Guys like him are rare,” Bisola would add. “They’re not plenty again. If I’m the one he has eyes for, I swear I’ll just be treating him like egg.”
You never replied to them. Your disdainful chuckle was answer enough. You scorned such mediocrities, willing to settle for the first option that presented itself. How did you even become friends with them in the first place?
It’s true that Tunde is a nice guy—too nice, in fact. Nice to a fault. Far too gentlemanly. You want someone more adventurous, someone who shares your audacious approach to life, someone ready to push boundaries and rebel against normalcy. Tunde doesn’t have that; guys like him bow to systems, not defy them.
Tunde is always smiling, as if laughter resides permanently in his face, as if joy and happiness have made an unbreakable pact with him. But his smiles aren’t born of peace and contentment. They are the smiles of a painfully shy guy, hiding his awkwardness behind a simpering façade.
Tunde loved you, and his mistake was making that love too obvious. It was too much revelation at his own expense. You knew he had eyes for you alone—guys like Tunde weren’t wired to be polygamous. They couldn’t love two women. They couldn’t date two women at the same time; they simply couldn’t cheat. If the woman they loved died, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find a replacement.
Girls fortunate enough to be the object of their affection would remain the supreme goddess in the shrine of their hearts, their position unquestionable.
You knew these things, and that’s why you toyed with his heart, and took him for granted.
The day you finally agreed to be his girlfriend, after months of persistent pleading and gift-giving, he ran around campus as if he had just won the lottery. His excitement was so palpable that, for a moment, you felt truly flattered. But then, you shook it off.
Guys like Tunde are good husband materials– devoted and loving. But they’re not suitable for romance, the thrill and the fun of it. They’re just not fun, too boring, too predictable. They do not get tired of rituals, the dreary monotony of their self-written schedules. They do not make attempts, once in a while, to disturb the still waters of their routine, for the mere delight of adventure, the adrenaline rush that accompanies a self-declared break from the known.
Three months into your relationship, Tunde never attempted to as much as kiss you. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to. You could see the desire blazing in his eyes, but he was afraid—afraid that you might take offense. This irked you. You wanted a guy who was demanding, who wouldn’t hide his desires behind the mask of affected chivalry.
So you were the one who kissed him first, and he responded with such gusto that showed how badly and desperately he’d wanted to do this for a very long time. You did more than kiss him. You allowed him to make love to you. But he didn’t make love to you; he only poured his semen into you after a few uneventful thrusts. You continued to endure this, and allowed him to do this whenever he wanted, because it made him happy.
After all, you knew where to get your real pleasures from. You are a hot girl, every guy wants a piece of you. Guys fall on themselves to get your attention. From them, you took your pleasures. As you endured Tunde’s one-minute performances, you found your satisfaction in the beds of other guys, especially Lukman’s.
Lukman is everything Tunde isn’t– wild and daring. With him, you wondered why religious folks believed in the concept of heaven– a paradise righteous people go to after they’d shed off the encumbrance of their body, their physical flesh. But how can anyone truly know the bliss of heaven—the one Lukman often transported you to, in the secrecy of his room—without their flesh? That heaven was the seventh heaven, higher than anything religion could offer you.
You never had any scruples about what was happening between you and Lukman, and you never considered how Tunde would feel if he caught you. Perhaps that was why, when he eventually did, his face ashen and drained of colour, his voice horror-struck as he asked, “How long has this been going on? If you must cheat on me, couldn’t it be with anyone other than my roommate?” you literally felt nothing. Nothing at all.
You expected Tunde to come around. You were sure he would. Guys like him are puppets in the hands of their love interests. But he didn’t. When you finally got his attention and tried apologising, an apology that reeked of formality, of something done to fulfil all righteousness, you were shocked to see a look of defiance in his eyes, an expression that clearly said, “You can go to hell for all I care.”
You stared at him in disbelief because guys like Tunde are not so easily embittered, and they don’t hold grudges for long against their love interests. Your real horror wasn’t that you knew you’d lost Tunde forever; it was because, for Tunde to harbour such hard feelings against you for so long, it only showed how deeply you’d hurt him.
The understanding of what gem you had lost only began to sink in after you came online to find nude pictures and videos of you and Lukman. When you confronted him, he confessed that he’d been recording your escapades and had sold them to a blogger.
That was when you realised that your friends were right – guys like Tunde were rare, and they needed to be treated with respect and guarded with jealousy.
In the light of Lukman’s treachery, every little thing about Tunde began to take on greater significance: how, even though it was obvious he’d desired you, he demonstrated great restraint, which you now see as a sign of the deep respect he had for you; how, even though he wasn’t satisfying you as you wanted, he kept making improvements, eager to please you; how he sought nothing for himself first but always put you ahead.
For Lukman and all the other guys, you were nothing but a plaything, a toy, another fling. But in Tunde’s heart, you’d had a home, an entire shrine for yourself.
So as you sit in your room now, weeping for Tunde, it isn’t first of all for your great loss. It is because you have made the earth fall short of one good guy. It is for the innocent girls who will suffer from the distrust you’d sowed in Tunde’s heart for all girls. It is for the girls who will be his victims when he decides to stop playing cool and start playing “sharp” like Lukman.
Your tears are because you had been fortunate to be loved by a good guy, but you ate the goodness out of his heart and turned him into a cynic.
John “Penwielder” Ebute is a Nigerian medical student, a storyteller, a certified copywriter and a trained screenwriter. His works have appeared in Brittle Paper, African Writer Magazine, Kalahari Review, Farafina Blog, Muse Journal, Arts Lounge Magazine, Ta Adesa, World Voices Magazine, Words Empire Magazine, Joints Anthology, Stethoscopes and Pens, and elsewhere. He was the winner of TWEIN Recreate Contest 2024 (Prose category), RIEC essay contest, NIMSA-FAITH Suicide Prevention Campaign (Prose category), first runner-up in the Paradise Gate House Poetry Contest and shortlisted for African Writers Awards 2024 (prose category).
Cover photo credit: Pexels