Aeipathy ➳ Normani ✓

twenty-three

C H A P T E R  T W E N Y - T H R E E
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Normani had known without a shadow of a doubt that she needed to get back to the United States as soon as possible and couldn’t wait for the next eight days to use the original return flight. The earliest return flight before then was two days after she’d checked into the Sheraton Hotel.

Those days passed in agony. She couldn’t bring herself to leave her hotel room, too heartbroken to face the outside world and too miserable to talk to anyone. She had to dig into her precious savings to book this new flight and she had no idea how she’d make up for it but knew she’d worry about it once she was back home.

Come hell or high water, she would not reach out to Keith for help. Joseph had already been so gracious and kind to have booked her room for three days on his card and he’d assured her over the phone that she didn’t need to pay him back and if she needed to stay longer, he would cover it for her. No one but Anika knew she was returning early and that was only out of necessity.

She’d lost count of the tears she’d shed in the past few hours. She felt as though she was reeling from the Earth’s axis and didn’t know how to make it back to the centre. Everything had fallen apart and the man she’d loved for close to two years of incomparable bliss had to be left behind. Things could never go back to how they’d been before, it was over. The only relief she had was that this break up didn’t hurt as much as her break up with Arabella. She didn’t feel as though the world was over.

On the day of her return flight, Normani had woken up in the late morning hours and had gone through the motions of getting ready.

Sometime between when she was trying to have a few bites of brunch before the cab she’d ordered through the hotel would transport her to the airport, her phone started going off with incoming calls. They were all from Keith.

She ignored them as she had ignored the one’s he’d sent for the past few days.

The cab arrived at 11:00 and once her luggage was stored in the boot of the car the driver began to drive towards the highway. The nostalgia that assaulted her was almost too much to bear and her heart felt crushed under it.

She couldn’t help but think of the first day she’d been on this highway, when summer had stretched beyond them full of endless possibilities and joy. She could remember the awe that had touched her face the first time she’d laid eyes on Nigeria, how unburdened and in love she’d been then.

Her phone started going crazy with messages again and she ignored them. After another twenty minutes, her phone went off again and she intended to answer it and tell Keith to stop bothering her when she realised that the call was coming from Joseph.

He hadn’t spoken to her since he’d told her about booking her hotel room for her and she wondered what was going on. The call went to voicemail but soon after, a text came in from him.

Joseph : Hey, Mani, there’s been an emergency, please call me back as soon as you can.

Her heart froze. An emergency? Her mind immediately latched onto the worst case scenario and imagined that someone had died. With shaky hands, she dialled his number and waited for three rings before he picked up.

“Hey.”

“What’s going on?” she asked.