For AM and SA_girl. I added one line just for you. See if you can spot it!
**
“Ow! I will kill you, you fucker!”
I struggled with Greg, while he delivered three more smacks. I bit his thigh almost breaking a tooth on what felt like denim-clad steel pipes.
“Argh!” he shouted, smacking me one more time. I went limp. I could hear him breathing heavier from his exertions and when his hand came up one more time, I twisted away and returned the favour all over his face. Greg paused. He shook his head as if he had been dazed and just as I started crawling away, he pulled be back down, flipped me over and straddled me, pining my arms above my head.
“Get off me Greg!” I wiggled, trying to come up enough to knee him in the groin.
“No, you have bad manners, Otito,” he said. “And you’re a child so I will treat you like one. Is this the kind of shit you like eh, girlfriend?” He said the word with such sarcasm, it was as if he was flogging me with it.
“Get off!”
“What you don’t like me sitting on you?” Greg laughed. “But what about you spreading yourself all over me in the car and almost causing us both to die?”
I struggled some more. My arms felt like they were being wrenched from their sockets.
“How was I to know…”
“How were you to know indeed.” Greg’s face changed.
“Just get off, okay?”
“Keep still Otito,” said Greg through clenched teeth.
“You are not my lord and master Greg, now get off for chrissakes…”
“KEEP STILL OTITO,” Greg hissed at me.
And then I felt it pressing into my belly. Greg was hard. While I tried to get my breath back, I could see him gritting his teeth. He let go of my arms.
“I’m going to get off you, Otito and you’re going to leave and not come back,” he commanded his voice soft and firm at the same time.
“You’re going to have to make me,” I said. Greg got off me and moved far away. He sat of the floor, leaning against a heavy slab of something grey.
“This is not a game to me, Otito,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.
I jumped up. Greg looked startled by my sudden move but before he could do anything, I grabbed his face and kissed him. The intake of his breath in my mouth was ice cold and then he was kissing me back as fiercely as he had spanked me earlier. I had practice-kissed Greg before. This was nothing like that.
This was nothing like the slinky sexiness of Wes or the benevolent warmth of Charles’ kisses. This was not the murky depths of my booty-call-man, him of cold nights tasting of metallic loneliness. This was like no man I had ever kissed. I pulled his face into mine. I wanted to absorb and be absorbed by him. I tasted it all; it was spirit and fire and kindness and faithfulness. It was fear and gentleness and the heat of his desire nearly cooked me from within, I half-expected our lips to have melded together forever. I lost myself him Greg. I could feel our teeth graze and the impact of it jarred my bones, shaking something loose over the gaping hole in my heart which I had not ever been aware of.
Then Greg pushed me away. A slivery string of saliva linked us for a moment longer as if in denial of our individuality before it broke. I was elated. It was as if I had been suffering from a cold all my life; bunged-up and slowly viewing that as normal. But now my nostrils were clear and I could breathe better. I was elated. I smiled and looked into Greg’s eyes. I saw fury in them.
“This is NOT A GAME!” He bellowed. He stood to his full height and it seemed the sculptures around him took on all his rage.
“I am not playing a game,” I said in between fevered thumps of my heart. “Greg I…”
“Do you want to know why I did not tell you how I feel? You think I was being cowardly, but you have no clue. I love you, Otito. I have loved you since I was a kid. I love everything about you; and I have showed you this. You have been certain of my affections because I showed you. If you love someone then it should be more than just a…feeling,” Greg tossed the word out with some disgust.
“Greg you are my friend and I love you, you know this,” I got off the floor. “You were like my brother.”
“Yes, I know Otito,” Greg rubbed his head. “And that is why I have said nothing all these years. God, you are making me sound like a dick.”
“I don’t understand Greg,” I said. He looked as if his fury was dying away. I made a move towards him but he held out his hand.
“Stand there, Otito.”
“I feel as if you’re punishing me, taking yourself away from me, Greg.”
“I am not punishing you, far from it. I am just…I’m taking care of me for a change, that’s all. I need to think of me for now. I promised I would never judge you and I still won’t. I won’t stop being your friend either, but I just need to not think about you right now.”
“Well, I am standing right here,” I said. “You have to think about me. I am here, I CAME here to you. What is that if not thinking about you?” Angry tears itched my eyes. “I apologised for everything. I am sorry. I said I WAS SORRY. Why is that not enough?”
“Otito stop, okay?” Greg was looking angry again. “You don’t understand, anything. This is not about you. For once. For once in our twenty-plus history, this is not about you…”
“But it IS about me. It is. How can it not be?” I moved towards him again. I wanted to hold him. I wanted to kiss him and make him love me like he used to. I wanted one thing in my life to be the way it was before I went back to London. I could not stand to have everything in my life so altered.
Greg moved back. “Do you not see what you’re doing? Can’t you hear yourself? Yes, fine. It’s a little about you, but if you cared anything for me, even as a brother you’d just turn around and walk away because I asked you to. Love is…what you do. You’d do this for me even if it kills you because that is what I would do for you. It is what I have done for you. I could have told you anytime that I loved you. I was tempted to tell you before you left, and knowing you, it would have kept you here with me, beside me forever. But I knew you wanted to leave, you had to. And I said nothing to you because you being happy makes me happy. Otito,” Greg sounded exasperated. “This is not a Mills and Boon romance okay? You keep acting like I should have beaten my chest or roared and claimed you but you are not an object.” Greg’s eyes travelled all over my body. “You are a woman and you have a choice. I gave you that choice over and over and over…”
“And then you left when Wes arrived,” I snapped at him. “Some love.”
“I left because I could no longer watch what you were doing to yourself,” Greg smiled; a mordant thing that twisted the corners of his mouth. “And yes, because it almost killed me.”
“See?” I crowed wiping away the tears furiously before they could fall. I held on to my anger. Anger was good.
“I’m a man, Otito. A real man. I am not going to heft you over my shoulder and carry you into the night just so that you know I love you. I have fears too – and none greater than loving someone who has no desire to love you back.” Greg moved closer and held my hand lightly as if the contact with my skin burned him. “I want the best for you, even if that best is not me. So please, go back to London, live your life, date many many men, even more than you’ve previously dated. Don’t tell me about it, because it will definitely kill me,” he smiled. “But do your thing, do it well and to the best of your ability.”
I sobbed and Greg tried to brush the tears away without touching me.
“Do whatever you need to do and when you are done, if you still decide that it’s me you want, if you still feel the way you do now, just say the word and I’ll be there.”
“Wha…what…word?”
“Any word. I know you. I’ll know if you want me to come.”
I could not look at him anymore. I only stared at his feet, at the heavy black boots with reinforced leather, at the grimy jeans, the sections of muscle on his abdomen. Greg lifted my chin to look into my eyes.
“I was not created for games, there is something in my genetic make-up that just can’t do them. I’m made to be a husband and a father and I have reconciled myself to this a long time ago. And I am patient, I will wait. But please don’t leave me hanging for another twenty years.”
My response to that was a sob-hiccup-chortle which caused saliva to splatter on my lower lip. Greg attempted to smile but he looked pained. He stared at my lips.
“But I can’t let you kiss me again. And I can’t kiss you before you’re sure because,” he looked me full in the face. “I intend to be the last man that you will ever kiss.”
He wiped the spittle from my lip and started walking back to his forge. “Take care, Abby,” he said.
“It’s Otito,” I said immediately.
Greg turned. “Good bye, Otito.”
I rushed out of the workshop. The sculptures looked sad. A few of them tried to trip me up as I hurried.
It was raining as I got outside. I stared at the January sky and wondered why it was weeping. Eke stood by the door with a big black umbrella waiting to walk me to my car.
“Take care of him,” I said.
Eke nodded. I ignored his unspoken offer of an umbrella and walked into the rain.
30 comments On Sexy Times with Nnenna Marcia: Rain
Good! Otito just leave. This man is cowardly for my taste! He has an opportunity to nail her for life but instead chooses to give her the option of coming back! Who does that? I can’t with him and his emotionalism.
Nnenna is it the fucker line?
Haha! No it was the ‘beating my chest and roaring like a lion’. Hahahahaha!
Or was it this line? “But what about you spreading yourself all over me in the car and almost causing us both to die?”.
Greg is still on probation, by the way.
This hit a little too close to home for comfort. The person I last said “I love you” to, believed love was more of the “when you love someone, you let them go and if they come back to you, yada yada” ish. I was more team “If you love someone, you make sure they know and fight for your love”.
Sometimes, the people we love don’t love the way we want/need to love. I will be happy if both find someone else, live happily ever after and continue to be besties.
I dunno… Maybe Greg loves her too much? That is a pretty heavy expectations bar he is setting and a pretty heavy love he’s throwing. One I’m not sure Otito could live up to nor carry. *sigh* But I could be mixing life and art here.
Been there, done that, couln’t take it anymore, left him 10yrs ago. I know without a doubt he still loves me I still see it in his eyes and he’s the only man I’ve ever loved (and still do) but I’ll never go back to him-he just isn’t man enough for me. Our problem was that I used to get hit on a lot, his response? Sulk and scamper away and we end up with what my bestie and I called “the Cold War” (he’d stop talking to me and push me away). Because he never did anything it got so bad guys used to ask me out or buy me drinks in font of him sometimes they’d go to him and tell him they are going to date me and he would keep mum. Who does that? Be a man! Stand up and claim what’s yours!
Eh-hen, you this girl. NOW you are saying what truly riles you. You expected your man to ‘man up’ and what about you kwa? You woman up! How about you CLAIM HIM instead. Abi you think guys don’t have feelings too, eh? What about YOU showing him that he was the only one who mattered out of all the guys buying you drinks, eh?
You talk about M&B men and you say Greg is one of them, but maybe YOU are an M&B woman, expecting your own man to act a certain way girl. Oya this is my challenge to you WOMAN THE HELL UP and maybe that will give your man the guts to know that he is the one. There would be no doubt and you guys will live happily ever after.
Can I just say how much I love you though? I LOVED your analysis. I even read it as soon as I woke up and it’s still making me smile.
Aaaa…Nnenna…me I tried. I tried and tried, the tears I cried, my declarations, I’d ignore the men…nothing worked I even put up with the Cold War in fact I walked away with a promise I’d never be that pathetic for a man again. At times the Cold War would ge too much for me and I’d be on some I’ve had enough and he’d pull a Greggie on me teliing me the Cold War is because he gets so jealous, angry and insecure so he’d rather not talk to me in that state or he wanted me to be free to do what I wanted. Me I will not lie I was once the girl who was like ‘haaaaahhh, sweeet!’ till I realised that was BS. Not that I expected him to fight physically but the least he could have done is that subtle male ‘I’m marking my territory’ thing then he wouldn’t have been disrespected so much.
I’m loving this more n more…. How manymen will do such a “selfless” thing tho?
Thanks Nnena
I feel like Kofi_A right now ima analyse the sh… out of this piece *glee* (forgive my essay) but 1st; the line is the one about this not being an M&B romance where he’s supposed to roar and claim her like some Neanderthal (okay I added my own 2cents there)
My Kofi_A moment: Greg is such a COWARD still!!!!
Nnenna, I appreciate you trying to explain his motivations behind his actions but those are motivations of a coward. They are just excuses to make himself feel better about his cowardice.
‘Go Abby, go…go sleep with other men. Spread yourself all over the world, share yourself with as many dicks as you can find. Because I love you I’m willing to be one of many–infact just to prove my love I’ll be the last one to take you. I’ll take you when you’re no longer as attractive to men and your options have started to water down. I’ll still be here, me, your Greggie doll–ready and willing to be your b***h nigger. Haaaaaahhhh…’
Pssh…nigger please *eye roll* that is soooo not romantic in fact it makes you more pathethic. I disagree with Greg the only reason he never told her he loved her is because he knew he would have lost her and probably forever. Abiotito would have jumped on that plane faster than the speed of lightning and cut all communication (until she needed something from him) Greg was just scared of rejection.
Nnenna you misunderstand us, we are not saying Greg should be Neanderthal, if anything HE’S the one living in an M&B romance! This whole *enter dramatic Elizabethen sigh* ‘woe begone me, for to prove to the on I love I love thee I must suffer for that love:look (–ta da!–) i love you and I know you love me but we cannot be together because I love you.’ (Nigger say what? Just repeat that slooowly in your head and tell me that make any sense to you?) This is classic M&B “sensitive guy” potrayal, it’s overrated in my opinion and a cover up.
1. How was Abby supposed to know he loved her? He expected too much, she’s not a mind reader. Even you, you know your husband loves you but you still need him to tell you he loves you just like he needs to hear it from you. That is something you don’t take for granted.
2. I feel Romeo & Juliet is one of (if not) the worst romance stories ever! Romeo, Christian Grey, Edward Cullen et al are fed to us as these heroic, ultimate romantics. Ppplease what’s romantic about a man who couldn’t face the world because some woman died or something was distorting their romance? So I’m supposed to trust you to be my man, to be there for me, be my rock when you wouldn’t be able to face life if wasn’t around? When you’d rather die than be man enough to face the world without me or to love me? That ish don’t fly with me.
When we say Greg should have manned up we don’t mean he should have thrown her over his shoulder and taken her to his cave. He should have been brave enough to step up to her back then, wooed her, done more than be her lap dog aka b***h nigger. I don’t blame her for not noticing him, nam I would have never noticed him as a potential partner – he was too much of a friend & brother. But I agree with him on one thing though: she is soooo childish I feel like force feeding her a bottle of Scott’s Emulsion to help her to grow. Look I like Greg, I hope he mans up, stops being her b***h nigger and finds himself a woman who truly deserves him (I think a nice, quite, church-going woman would be best for him) because I agree with him he is husband material but the ocean is not for him-he’s not man enough for it, he must stick to rivers and lakes.
Abby must just go back to London and go search for Wes they deserve each other and I hope he plays her for no tommorrow. She’s selfish and narcisstic to the core. She’s not weak at all, she just plays the ‘woe begone me’ card to gain people’s sympathy. I’m now #TeamB, yes B is a b***h but she’s straight upfront about who she is. I know Wes’s type B would do better not to marry him, he’s jungle-fever-man who views black women as nothing more than sex objects-at some point all men outgrow their fantasies there will come a time when he will leave her for a sunny, blonde-haired, blue-eyed babe to grow old with plus she already has a miserable life so her misdeeds are paid up already.
Hahahahahah! SA_Girl, you will not kill me!!!
I think what I am happy about is myself for being strong in the face of adversity and not changing one word of what Greg said or did. Okay, I added one word, but still, it would have been sooooo easy to give in to you and AM and all the other people with binders full of hatred for Greg (and his brand of selfless love/cowardice).
By the way, reading your experiences made me realise that I had a boyfriend like yours. He would sulk if I danced with another guy in his absence – say if I was in a club with all his male and female friends and he was on his way. It didn’t matter that they were his friends, I was just supposed to sit there and stare at everyone like DOrothy. The sulking GOT TO ME which is why ‘I used to have’ a boyfriend. I think it is amazing that even though this is not what I think Greg’s character is like, that it’s what you read and that what you interpreted harks back to my own experiences. Hmmmmm…..I wonder if subconsciously I am writing that?
Anyway, there is the epilogue which was written almost at the beginning of the whole series. I can’t wait to look at it to see if it applies still but I promise, I won’t change one word. I’ve stuck to this many times in spite of the instant feedback being downright negative at times – kai, especially when the hatred for Abby was at an all time high – so I hope the ending commands as much passion as all the others. 🙂
I do wonder why I enjoy flawed characters.
Me, I like Greggie. I think he’s a hot some-body (pun intended) he deserves me not Abiotito :p I’ll bring out the man in him…
Alas, today is the last day of my month and a half long holiday so from tommorrow onwards I shall not be active on the site but I will come and check up on Greg now an again and just cause I’ll be quite doent mean I’m not watching Abby and the gang. *thanks for entertaining me 😉 *
Ps I compare Greg to him coz remember @ the night spot Greg allowed Wes to move into his territory and when Abby told him about her and Wes he chose to sulk and run away and avoided Abby- that’s when I started my Greg-must-man-up campaign 🙂
Ah, but he was busy! He didn’t run away, he has a business to run now! Look, they are both adults. Why fight for someone whose eyes, heart and clit are somewhere else biko nu? I don’t understand that. LOL
Abby would not have paid attention. It was probably best to let the fever of Wes run its course.
Girl, there is just one more. I’ll put it up today and then you can go. In fact I won’t divide it. I’ll post as is.
I love Greg again!! These ultimate sacrifices and declarations of love get me. I do understand his misgivings although it was cowardly. But I kove him for being honest. We ALL fear rejection. He was the one person she told everything. So he was probably assessing the info while measuring himself against it. Poor Greg.
One thing I do enjoy as much as the stories, is the comments 🙂
lol @ SA Girl…. pull a Greggie. I died.
Can’t wait for the last bit Nnenna. Let it be an extra long one.
So I was agreeing very much with Greg until he said he would wait 20 years if need me. Puh-leeze. Just say you’re not into games, and Abby should bounce..,for the record, since we’re all on teams, I’m #TeamAbby, she’s a regular flawed woman which I can relate with
He never said he would wait 20 years o.
Nnenna, you have to admit that this was very operatic. The forge, the clanging hammers, the soprano crying Stop It… hitting (!!!) the high notes, as the deep kettle drums thwacks on the ass went down. Then the embrace, but the baritone pulls back and casts the heroine out of Paradise into the impure world, so that he can continue his higher work of refining ever-purer pieces of metal, living in his splendid isolation.
Sarastro in Mozart’s opera Die Zauberflöte battling the Queen of the Night?
Anyhow, I loved it!
But then in the ongoing commentary on who’s right: Abby/Otito vs. Greg.. I suppose I’m obliged to have a view of this. Irrelevant, I say. No one is right, everyone is wrestling with their inner demons, and sometimes that is the end of the story. Pressed, though, I’d say that Greg’s maximalist positions point to a deep-seated brittleness – a counterpoint to the exterior manliness… No doubt, the disturbing intrusion of Otito’s appearance in the forge – a living swirl of movement among the perpetually stilled forms – stunned him into confronting himself… stilled forms or movement? As for Otito, na wa ooo.. I have to think more about that… [Okay, hope I haven’t analyzed the sh-t out of this and ruined anyone’s enjoyment of the fine fine work here…. 😀 ]
Kofi to quote my future wifey Nnenna, you will not kill me 🙂
Nana D, oh, yes, I will.. 😀
Hmm … I can’t imagine telling someone I supposedly love so much to take as much time as they need coz I am “patient”. That person could end up becoming “the one who got away” and then I’d spend the rest of my life wondering about what may have happened. Greg needs a backbone (or some cajones) real bad!
Nnenna — great piece (as always). I didn’t cheat by reading the comments before the story so I spotted the ‘quiz sentence’ – recognised it immediately upon reading it. I vociferously called for Greg to ‘man up’ and in the last three editions, Greg’s character has developed or risen to the occasion.
However, now – I’m undecided about whether I want him to ‘get the girl’. These sentences “…live your life, date many many men, even more than you’ve previously dated …do it well and to the best of your ability…Do whatever you need to do and when you are done, if you still decide that it’s me you want … I’ll be there” he effectively told her “go and be a whore, be the best whore you can be and when you’re done come back to me – I’ll be waiting”. To be clear I’m being melodramatic and for the record, I love Otito!
Back to Greg – I cannot imagine the man I want in my life telling me that. I’d wack him on the head and send him for an MRI scan!
I feel that I have contextual background to Greg’s character (which explains his relationship with Otito over the span of twenty years) and I have watched him ‘man up’ in the last three editions but reading this edition I feel as though Greg has reverted to his old ways vis-a-vis Otito, his attitude being ‘I want what’s best for Otito, which is, Otito wants to go to London to be cosmopolitan, where she’s happiest then she should do that – I’ll wait”. He has resumed his enabling role (20 years worth of being an enabler) despite the fact that Otito has changed or at least her outlook has changed (over the last two editions) and she’s ready to be with Greg. He is so caught up in his idea of who Otito has always been, to the point that he cannot see or perceive her transformation.
Or he refuses to see the change because he’s scared – scared it’s temporary and he’s second prize (at least in his head). He said that it is not about Otito however, everything he has said and done shows that it is about her – I’m wondering ‘am I missing something?’
I look forward to the next piece!
Eish. I enjoyed Saffron’s analysis of the whole Greg-Otito dynamics. It felt like reading Cliff notes to a book so you could pass your literature exam. Ha
Nana D — hahaha…I took my ‘Literature in English’ classes very seriously – old habits die hard 🙂
SA_Girl: #Keepingquietforachange
You just kept a sister hanging o. I don’t want to believe Greg let her go, just like that! Kilode? Say wetin happen nah?Please where is the conclusion of the story @Nnenna.
I don’t understand why people turned on Abby. It seems like it is a case of expecting women to be perfect.
Abby is childish and selfish, but no one wants to look at why she is that way. They just want to vilify her for being human. How is someone supposed to mature when they have no one to show them how? People don’t grow up on their own. All those people who claim that they raised themselves are the most immature people you have ever met. Abby didn’t have a mother because her mother was too busy trying to make up for the past and some perceived wrongdoing to take care of her daughter. Abby also didn’t have a real friend in Greg. Real friends point out your mistakes and try to help you change for the better. Real friends tell you the truth when you hurt them or others. Greg just sat and watched her hurt herself and him and then threw it all in her face when he was mad. With no role models and no real friends, how was she supposed to know that she was childish and selfish? The people in her life failed her and apparently that’s somehow her fault.
As for what happened with Wes, well of course that is what happened. Belinda treated her like trash her whole life. I know what that is like and up until a couple of years ago I would’ve jumped at the chance to get something over on that person. Fortunately, I realized how damaging that way of thinking was before I ever got that chance. Abby didn’t learn that lesson until it was too late.
Something else that bothers me is that no one is holding Wes accountable for his actions. He is the fiance and the one who actually owed Belinda something. Abby doesn’t owe anything to someone who treats her badly, family or not. But, as usual, people are blaming the woman and letting the man go free. Aren’t we supposed to be working past that mentality and realizing that men and women are equal and deserve equal blame? Why is it that women are responsible for their own actions as well as everyone else’s? It took this entire family, Wes, and Greg to make this happen.
Sorry about the essay, especially since this post is almost a month old, but I had something to say.
Nail. on. head.
@Lotus – I am so with you. I feel like Abby is a very normal woman, and I can imagine being good friends with her.
Hmmmm I hope there is a final post coming soom I have been refreshing this page for a while lol (greedy me I just cant get enough)
*soon