U N F A I T H F U L

I give him a long stare, I breath deeply as he takes my hand in his and whispers my name in my hair. He holds me close and strokes my hand with soft kisses on my forehead.

I look at him and he kisses me and whispers, “I love you”

“I love you too” I respond and my eyes goes watery as I think of the night before.

He ushers me into his car and we leave his flat and head off to the movies, I am quiet all along the drive, contrasting very much from my constant verbal diarrhea. He parks the car in the basement and we head off to the movies as we have done a thousand times before. He buys a popcorn and shakes on some cheese and chives flavoring and balances a giant Coke in his free hand.

We get comfy in uncomfortable cinema seats, he holds my hand and asks if I am ok, I Lie and say I am fine.

But I am not really, I am feeling guilty and trapped.

This perfection we have, ought to be enough, but it just doesn’t suffice and somewhere between being inlove and today I fell out of love with him.

It happened a while ago but the exact date I cannot decipher, the emptiness replaced the love that resided in my heart. I know he still loves me. I see it in his eyes, and I wonder if he can see in my eyes that I no longer love him. I suspect he does, cause he holds my hand with a tight grasp, anticipating I m going to leave him.

As the movie progresses he occasionally kisses my forehead and holds me tight.

I don’t touch the popcorn.

Midway through the movie I feel nauseous and run to the bathroom.

I vomit.

I don’t have much in my stomach but for three days in a row I have been waking up and vomiting.

He runs after me and into the cubicle I am crawling in. He pats my back and hands me a piece of hard paper, the kind you wipe your hands with not your mouth with.

He isn’t that stupid, he knows and because we never ever did it he knows it’s not his.

And even through all that he holds my smelly hand and we walk to his car.

We sit silently all the way till he gets to my place.

He leans forward and kisses my forehead.

I hug him tight.

The emptiness dimmers and I remember why I love him so.

I get out of the car relived, feeling somewhat safer and a bright light blinds me.

I wake u in a hospital bed, and a doctor standing next to me with my mother.

I barely make out what they are saying but I decipher the doctor with a heavy Durban accent saying, “She lost the baby” and I remember her astonished look, perplexed and puzzled.

They realize I am conscious and the doctor urges me to take it easy but I need to explain.

“He’s dead now.” She tells me.

I didn’t want the baby anyhow, it would have complicated life and mine was complicated enough. But having him with me I realized that I was stupid to have doubted this love he has for us, more so stupid for not realizing what a great thing it was that we had, that he and I were meant to be. That this was my Leo and I was his Kate, and then it hit me, it was way too early to know whether the baby was a girl or boy and the he my mother was speaking of wasn’t the he I had assumed it to be.

The end