Just like that, Joe became overly protective of his phone. With complex screen locking patterns and individual passwords for every app, his secrecy piqued my curiosity.
It’s not like I didn’t know Joe well. The college campus was a maze of fleeting connections. Every time I visited him, there was always something suspicious —a stray strand of a wig, a forgotten lip balm. I knew I would only be an addition to his so many female friends, and that was okay with me.
Sooner or later, like Samson of old, Joe would be in my arms, and I would deflate what attracted women to him. I didn’t have the beauty and figure, but I was not named Malita for nothing - I knew who to get in life, having done that to four men before.
So, the plan was simple—to win him over before he graduated last December.
Truly, our relationship started a bit late, in the second semester of his final year. Everyone doubted Joe could fall for me, but I knew better. Joe, himself, was confused about how he ended up being in love with me.
To say the truth, Joe had his own way of spoiling me as far as romance was concerned, buying me the gifts I needed and appreciated. I was surely winning him and I made every minute and day count.
But Joe – this guy of privacy, he never talked about us, nor celebrated our relationship in public. That did not move me, because it was my task to make him accept the reality that he was mine, regardless.
Knowing how dangerous women are in snatching men, I was cautious. So, I gave him a list of the top 10 women, and another list of top 3 I wanted him to distance himself from including those he befriended before he knew me.
As the semester drew to a close, the number of women who interacted in person with Joe dwindled. I could not be any happier. But the quieter Joe became, the louder my doubts in my mind. He seemed to have discovered a new social media hobby burgeoned with pictures and messages from unfamiliar women was like a newspaper ad page.
The sight hurt, like a thorn piercing deeper into my skin, but I refused to let the wound fester. I would remain in control for leaving Joe on a free-range mode would have made me a loser.
One day I gathered courage to demand his phone. Surprisingly, he handed it over willingly unlocking all his apps. In fact, I did not need any confrontation. He asked what I needed to do with it. I feigned interest in playing online games, though we both knew the target.
Well, I got what I wanted – a conversation so romantic and with several love and smiley emojis.
I sweated and filled with anger upon seeing the name, Janet, hanging in his pinned chats. The first Janet I thought of was my best friend. But then there was no way it could be her for I knew her inside out. The second one was Joe’s biological cousin and way older than us. It could not be her, either.
Joe kept looking at me without any emotions.
But I determined to identify the Janet among the Janets in the world was keeping my man busy. That would take me a day or two. But poor me, I had not jotted down her number. So, I waited for next time.
Two days later was his gala dinner and with how busy he was, it was a great advantage for me to have his phone again. I was geared up to gather as much information as possible.
I went back to the chats with Janet to connect all the dots and build evidence of their secret love. The plan was to hurt them both – to humiliate Joe by refusing to join the gala dinner, and mercilessly beat up Janet. If she existed on campus, my gang of ladies would assault her and if she was elsewhere, we planned to cyberbully her.
But then in their conversation, nothing had really changed; there were no new messages, nothing was deleted. Instead, I found other flood of similar exchanges with other women. Joe was simply an old dog in with his flirtations.
Some messages were clean jokes and football talks with other men and women, too, but that was not my concern.
I was on the second, then third conversation and Joe was still either running errands to get his gala suit in place or taking a long shower. I was then on the fourth conversation and wondered where he got all the time for these chats, and then Joe walked in. Our eyes met. My heart skipped, and I nearly jumped on him to vent my anger.
Then something happened. I didn’t attend the planned dinner, and neither did Joe.
It was 9:23 p.m. when I came to and kept asking what had happened and where we were. The clinical white walls of the hospital room felt cold. The doctor had yet to diagnose me, but the beeping of the heart monitor revealed that I had developed high blood pressure. Joe was in tears, and I was more confused and disoriented. The phone was still in the other hand, whether staged or whatever.
My Joe was very bad at explaining everything. He got defeated and kept silent when confronted. Here he was at it again, failing to finally explain not who Janet was, but who himself was beyond what I thought of him.
But as I gathered my thoughts, the truth dawned on me like a sun breaking through storm clouds. His overprotectiveness wasn’t about hiding other women I thought I was competing with, but about shielding me from my wild, untamed jealousy which would kill me. He loved me, but most of all loved himself and things that brought him joy. He only never wanted the two to mix.
