PLAYING WITH FIRE
1723 Words
CHAPTER 5
Morning didn’t come gently.
It punched through the curtains like it had something to prove—sunlight too bright, too white, like judgment. My head throbbed. Not from the champagne. From the silence that followed everything.
I was back in my apartment. I didn’t remember the ride, or if Belema said anything when I got out. Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she knew better than to poke at something still smoldering.
The sheets smelled like laundry detergent and leftover perfume. Not his. Mine. And that was the problem.
There was no trace of Duke. Not on my skin. Not in the air. Just in my chest, where something heavy had settled without asking.
I rolled over, grabbed my phone, and stared at the screen like it owed me answers.
Nothing. No message. No missed call. Not even a dumb emoji.
I hated that I checked.
I hated it more that I cared.
My throat was dry. I padded to the kitchen in just my panties and a T-shirt that didn’t belong to any man. Not even him. Coffee didn’t sound appealing. Neither did food. I poured water, drank half, then stood there staring at the tap like it might turn into something else if I waited long enough.
It didn’t.
The silence in the apartment had teeth. And I was letting it bite.
I lit a cigarette. I didn’t usually smoke in the mornings. But this morning felt different. Like it needed breaking.
Halfway through it, my phone buzzed.
I moved slow. Not because I was scared. Because I wanted to believe it was him before I even saw the screen.
It wasn’t.
Belema: Alive?
I exhaled smoke and typed back:
Me: Barely.
A second later:
Belema: You always say that when you actually liked it.
Belema: You okay?
I stared at that last part for a while. It didn’t sound like her usual teasing. It sounded real. Like she’d seen something on my face that night I hadn’t meant to show.
Me: I don’t know yet.
No reply came. And honestly, I was glad.
I showered without music. Let the water scald the doubt off my skin. Pretended it worked.
By noon, I was dressed but nowhere to go. Black tank, denim shorts, hair slicked back into a bun I didn’t care to perfect. I looked good enough to be seen, bad enough to be left alone.
My phone rang. Not Duke.
My mother.
I almost let it ring out.
Almost.
“Hello?”
“Alice, where are you?” Her voice had that clipped edge it always wore when she wasn’t sure whether to scold or manipulate.
“Home.”
“Which one?”
“Mine.”
A sigh. The disappointed kind. “You didn’t come to lunch yesterday.”
“I wasn’t hungry.”
“You were in Lagos.”
I didn’t answer. She always knew more than she was supposed to.
“You’re seeing someone?”
I blinked. “Why would you think that?”
“Because you disappear when you are. Then come back worse.”
I laughed, but it didn’t reach anywhere near happy. “I’m not seeing anyone, Mum. I’m just tired.”
“You sound like your father.”
That was meant to sting. It didn’t.
She went on about a gala in Abuja, some senator’s wife hosting, some expectations. I stopped listening after a while, just letting her voice fill the room so it wouldn’t feel so empty.
“Your father says there’s been talk,” she said finally.
That got my attention.
“What kind of talk?”
She hesitated. “About you. And someone.”
I stiffened. “Who?”
“A man. Older. Politically adjacent.”
My pulse ticked higher. “So?”
“So be careful,” she said. “Names get ruined before they ever make it to the papers.”
I hung up before she could say anything else.
Not out of spite. Just out of instinct.
Something in my stomach turned. I didn’t like being warned by both Duke and my mother within twenty-four hours. It made the danger feel too real. Too pointed.
And yet…
I didn’t stop thinking about him.
The way he moved. The way he spoke like everything he said was a test I was already failing.
I didn’t fall for men like that.
I chose them.
And I walked away first.
So why did it feel like I’d already been left?
Later that day, I found myself at Belema’s place. Not because I needed to see her. Because I didn’t trust myself alone anymore.
Her penthouse was all glass and drama. Like her. Music thumped low from somewhere, a lazy beat that didn’t ask for attention.
She opened the door in a silk robe and no makeup, sipping something iced with lemon floating in it.
“You look like heartbreak,” she said.
“Do I?”
She stepped aside. “The quiet kind. The one that hasn’t bloomed yet.”
I walked in, dropped my bag, and collapsed on her velvet couch.
She sat across from me, curling one leg under herself. “So, talk.”
“I’m not in love.”
“Didn’t say you were.”
“I don’t even like him.”
“Didn’t say you did.”
I glared. “Then what are you saying?”
She smiled, soft and wicked. “That he got under your skin, and now you’re trying to claw him out with silence.”
I didn’t answer.
Because she was right.
She lit a joint, took a slow drag, then passed it to me.
“I don’t want to be seen as another one of his women,” I said finally.
“Then don’t act like one.”
“I’m not.”
“But you’re thinking like one,” she said. “You’re wondering what he’s doing. Who he’s with. Whether that night meant something or everything or nothing.”
I inhaled. Held it. Let the smoke fill the spaces his name had carved in me.
“What if I was just a game?” I asked.
Belema tilted her head. “Babe. You’re always a game. The question is whether you’re playing or getting played.”
And there it was.
The line I didn’t want to cross. But might’ve already.
That night, I checked my phone again.
Still nothing.
So I did something stupid.
I called him.
Once.
No answer.
No callback.
Just silence.
And somewhere, deep in that silence, a small voice whispered:
You’re not the one with control anymore.
And that scared me more than I wanted to admit.
It started with a selfie.
Nothing too obvious—just skin and attitude. Lips glossed, eyes slightly glazed, a crop top that didn’t try to hide what it was meant to flaunt. I posted it to my story without thinking. Or maybe with too much thought.
Within minutes, the replies came flooding in.
💦 “Where you at?”
👀 “Damn.”
🔥 “Pull up on me.”
😈 “I’ve missed you.”
I didn’t answer right away. I just scrolled. Looking for a face that felt easy. Familiar. Forgettable.
I landed on Tamuno.
He was a mistake I’d already made three times. Tall. Lean. Pretty enough to be dangerous but dumb enough to be safe. He knew how to f**k. That was all I needed tonight.
I typed:
Me: You around?
He replied in less than a minute.
Tamuno: Always for you.
I sent my address. No smiley. No tease. Just coordinates to the distraction.
By the time he arrived, I’d already poured two drinks, lit a candle I didn’t even like, and changed into the silk slip I usually saved for nights I wanted someone to think I had feelings.
He kissed me at the door. Eager. Handsy. Like he’d been waiting for this. Like I was the one he wanted.
And I let him think it.
I let him pull me to the couch.
Let his fingers slide under the fabric.
Let his mouth trace a line down my stomach like it meant something.
But it didn’t.
I closed my eyes, tilted my head back, and tried—tried so f*****g hard—to pretend it was Duke.
Tried to forget the way Duke looked at me. The way he didn’t rush. The way he made silence feel like foreplay.
But Tamuno’s touch was too loud. Too much. Too eager to please.
And all I could feel was the absence.
I faked it anyway.
Moaned like I meant it. Grabbed his hair like he deserved it. Rode him like I was chasing something that wasn’t already gone.
When it was over, he lay back, sweaty and smug, smiling like he’d won something.
“You missed me,” he said.
I didn’t answer. I stood, walked naked to the bathroom, and turned on the shower.
The water was too cold.
Good.
I needed to feel something that wasn’t him.
When I came out, he was still there. Shirtless, scrolling through my Spotify like he lived here.
“Don’t get comfortable,” I said.
He raised a brow. “I thought we were chill?”
“We’re not anything.”
He laughed like I was joking.
I wasn’t.
He left after that. Not angry. Just confused. Boys like him always were. They thought s*x was a promise. I’d only ever used it as punctuation.
Alone again, I curled into the corner of my bed and stared at the crack in the ceiling. The one I kept meaning to fix.
My phone buzzed once.
I grabbed it too quickly.
Just a bank alert.
₦25,000 debit. Tamuno had ordered an Uber on my account.
I let it go.
I deserved that one.
Then, finally, as if summoned by the ache I’d been trying to bury, his name appeared.
Duke: Still playing games?
I stared at the message for a long time.
Typed.
Deleted.
Typed again.
Me: What if I’m tired of playing?
No reply.
Not for an hour.
I left the phone on the nightstand, climbed under the covers, and closed my eyes.
Then it buzzed again.
Duke: Then stop pretending you ever had the rules.
And just like that, sleep vanished.
Because it wasn’t the message that got me.
It was the truth in it.
- Writer
