Hard and Fast Rules 3

Jide ran into someone from way back and asked of Adaulo, he could never remarry and he still regretted that he did not try to hold on to the only girl who made an impression on him. What was the worst that could have happened? Her parents would have just said no or maybe not but he would never find out.

He met many other women after Adaulo but none of them came close to what she was to him. It took losing Adaulo for Jide to realise that he was deeply in love with the young girl that he let slip through his fingers. 

She was willing to fight for what they had but he was a coward and would suffer the consequences his whole life.

He compared every woman that he met to Adaulo; the smile was never perfect like Adaulo’s and none was as soft spoken as she was. She laughed heartily at his jokes but with any other lady it was like being live in the Apollo trying without luck to make an audience laugh. 

Something was always wrong; the woman was shorter, thinner or fatter than Adaulo and no one could touch him the way that she did.

It took some years before he realised that he had a problem called “Love withdrawal Syndrome”. Within the short period of being intimate with Adaulo, he got addicted to her and found it really hard to cope without her for a long time. 

The only thing he did not do was cry; he was embarrassed by his emotions but had very little control over them.

When the young man approached him after a training session that he facilitated to remind him that they lived on the same street at some point, the next thing he did after exchanging pleasantries was to ask if he knew who Adaulo was. 

The guy was still in touch with Adaulo and innocently gave her number to Jide. Jide's heart beat a lot faster as he put a call through to her that evening.

To Adaulo it was a pleasant surprise, she spoke to Jide for hours and it was just like their first meeting; they discussed everything under the sun. 

That marked the beginning of a forbidden relationship and it felt like the years stood still for both of them. Nothing changed, they felt exactly the same way about each other and for the first time Jide let it all out, he sobbed as he apologised to her for letting her go. 

He should have fought for love, Adaulo was worth fighting for but he realised it when it was already too late. The only consolation was that the feelings he had for her were mutual.

They spoke very intimately on the phone for about three months; in those months Eloka could never get it right with his wife. All of a sudden, he became disgusting for farting and messy for throwing his dirty clothes on the sofa in their bedroom. 

For over fifteen years, she had picked after him without complaining. He also discovered that the way he gritted his teeth when he slept upset Adaulo so much. It was something that they joked about in the past. 

Eloka was overwhelmed by the entire fault finding but was not sure what to make out of the situation.

In the fourth month of talking, Adaulo and Jide decided to take their reunion to another level. The date was set and Jide came into town earlier in the day; it was such a perfect timing because Eloka was out of the country. 

Adaulo spent a long time trying to find the perfect outfit for the occasion, she wanted to look perfect and felt bad that her killer body wasn’t a hundred percent. She wanted so badly to have a taste of Jide again and as she thought of the past, she had goose bumps which made her vjayjay breathe very hard.

Finally she had the right set of under wears; Eloka bought them on his last trip abroad. The little black dress she selected was perfect on her body and she splashed on an Elizabeth Arden perfume. 

Adaulo sent her driver home early and as soon as her children were done with their homework and ready to go to sleep, she left them with their nanny and drove out into the night.

As she parked in the hotel car park, she wondered what she was doing there and remembered her mother’s voice “gbaalu ekwensu oso” (run from the devil) just that she wasn’t sure if Jide was the devil.

"There are no hard and fast rules to life but one must pay attention to certain occurrences which may be the guiding principles towards leading a drama free life". Those were Adaulo’s thoughts as she sat in her car for over twenty minutes. 

She was sure that she would have two regrets; first, cheating on Eloka with Jide and second, not getting a taste of Jide again but she had to choose a less complicated one.

Jide had called her phone severally and was still calling her as she drove out of the hotel, she did not touch her phone until she got home. She sent him a text which read, “I couldn’t do it”. Adaulo knew that it wasn’t worth it, her marriage would be destroyed totally and she did not want any of that.

She deleted his number and severed every other contact with him.   

It has been a few months of being Jide free and Adaulo is glad that she could over come that sweet temptation from her past.

PS: All names in the story are fictitious and certain event changed for privacy sake