Unconditionally Bae

25. Drown or get eaten by sharks

As I listened to the man rant, I realised that he may have felt betrayed by his own son. We all have expectations on those we love. My expectations on Shane were that he would love me and treat me as he’d always done over the years. I would feel betrayed if one day he told me that he didn’t love me anymore.

“Why am I the one to end it?”

“You are his first love. They often end in tears mostly in two or three years or they fizzle out with time but you two are an exception. A heart break from your first love changes you. One minute you’re floating on cloud nine and the next you’re drowning. It’s in the drowning that most of us either mature up or have our hearts turned to stone,”

“You are desperate enough to do that to your son?”

“I trusted Shane to make better life choices but he disappointed me. If doing this will get him to see sense again then I’ll gladly do it a million times over until he does,”

“What if you don’t get the desired results?”

“You underestimate the power of the first heart break. I speak from experience but I don’t regret it. It was for the best and you and Shane will see that too. You might think you’re mature enough to know what you want at your age but you still have a lot to experience and learn,”

“Shane won’t let it be. We’ll be working at the same place. I know because it’s happened before,”

“I know that. That’s why I can get you a job in Saskatchewan or Montreal. No, with your qualifications and achievements, it’ll be easy for you to get a job anywhere around the world. I can just speed up the process there. All I have to do is, make a call and have you and your mother moving there and maybe your sister too, the one that gave up her dreams to look after her,”

“You’ve just threatened the lives of my family and now you’re offering a golden ticket? Take a side,”

“I’m not as evil as I come across. I’m just trying to look out for my son’s best interest,”

“Why don’t you offer him the job? That will put the distance between us,” I said knowing that he’d already done it.

“I want him near me. I want to keep an eye on him, try and guide him back to the right path,”

I got a call from Shane asking me if I was back home and I needed him to bring back something. I told him that the lunch had taken longer than I thought it would but I would be the one to pick up whatever I needed. He told me he loved me before he hang up.

Maybe it was because I found it hard to utter those three words that made Shane say them often. He told me he loved me after every call whenever we were apart. He told me he loved me before we slept, when we woke up, when we were getting intimate and simply whenever. He told me he loved me so often that when he didn’t it would feel off.

“Was that him?” Mr Yegon asked after I hang up. I confirmed it and he laughed, “You both act like a normal couple,”

“We are a normal couple sir,”

“Normal is the last thing I’d use to describe what you are. I’m a renowned person in this country. My father was a long standing politician and among the front runners that fought for our independence.

What would people think if it came out that my son, my heir, was someone’s bitch? Following in the footsteps of the same colonialist his grandfather fought so hard to free himself from not including all the blood that was shed?”

“I would think it was selfish of you to prioritise what strangers think instead of your son’s happiness but that’s just me. Also being gay isn’t a race thing and you can’t be influenced into being gay, if that was the case then you won’t have a problem convincing Shane to be straight,”

“This has nothing to do with his happiness. A lot of people are lost these days because they are constantly chasing after that high called happiness, little do they know that it’s like a drug, the more you chase it, the more addictive it becomes and that’s why there are a lot of depressed and suicidal people. Happiness is fickle. A few months or a year from now, he’ll have moved on from you and found joy in something else,”

“I hope you are right,”

“Do we have a deal?”

“I don’t have much of a choice, do I? I have to break your son’s heart or risk losing my family to death. I know Shane will live through it but I won’t be able to live with myself if anything happened to anyone I cared about because I chose love over them. And if I got a better paying job in the process then I could say I at least got something out of it,”

“Would it be wrong to assume you stayed with my son in campus due to his financial position?”

“I don’t care what you think of me Mr Yegon and I hope this is the last time you and I ever cross paths in this lifetime or any other,”

“You might not understand me now but when you become a father, you’ll understand. I’m also sure your father would agree with me if he were alive,”

“You don’t know what my father would have done so keep him out of it,”

To my relief, Shane wasn’t around when I got home. He would have immediately known something was wrong with me as soon as he saw me. It gave me time to get my emotions and story in check.

There was no use postponing the inevitable. It didn’t matter if I did it that same day or weeks later, the outcome would still be the same. I wanted my last night with him to be as memorable as my life had been with him and to do that I had to pull myself together.

I had to end this beautiful thing I had with this amazing man that I had grown to love so deeply and not only did it make me want to breakdown and cry but it hurt physically too.

I watched him eat as he happily told me how he’d spent his day.

It was fortunate that his back was to me as we sat in the bathtub, otherwise he’d have seen me trying to fight back the tears I was desperately trying to hold back. He did ask if I was okay several times because according to him, I looked distracted. I had to come up with some pathetic excuse to get him to not pry further.

As I walked out on him, I could hear him crying. I had never felt shittier in my life.

How could I claim to love someone and intentionally hurt them so deeply? I didn’t deserve his love. I never did from the start and I hoped that he’d realise that sooner and forget about me. I knew I would never forget about him. I would probably never move on from him and that was going to be my punishment for hurting him.

I’d called Timothy that morning as I packed and asked him to get Ryan to come be with Shane because we’d broken up. It was mostly to keep him company because I was scared of what he’d do and I didn’t want to risk it.

Cy was shocked to see me back home with my language but she didn’t question me. None of them did when they found out I had moved back home.

Mr Yegon kept his word and I got a job in Montreal. When I told my sisters about the benefits that came with it, they all said it was god-sent. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that I had sacrificed the love of my life to get it. I would kill for my sisters but it was only for Shane that I was willing to die for.