Argument with my mum. Call? I need you. And miss you. No one gets it like you do. K
Though they weren’t together, Yaa and Kofi still had an attachment they couldn’t untwine themselves from.
Through ragged sobs, Yaa explained that she’d never cheated on Adric – that she would never. But she did have to explain that she had lied to him about who she was. He was confused, angry, heartbroken. He wasn’t bothered about her background – Yaa was still who she was, still believed in what she believed in – but the fact that their relationship had to be finite killed him. She told him that she had a plan, that Kofi was just a means to an end, that she felt she could change the system from within. Adric had laughed bitterly and stared at her before realisation softened his eyes. He almost looked sorry for her.
‘You really believe that, don’t you? I’ve seen you mobilise students and have the faculty shaking and now you’re talking to me about some archaic child betrothal shit. You have to be with this guy because of family alliances? You think you’re going to marry him and change the world? You think it won’t corrupt you? You think sacrificing us is worth it for a fantasy? Yaa, what are you even talking about? Who are you?’
She couldn’t answer any of his questions. She just didn’t see a way out of it. It was a world that she didn’t know if she could extricate herself from without parts of her falling away with it too. Kofi was part of her scaffolding. Kofi made sure to check in on her, reminding her of her duty, of the ticking clock on her happiness.
Both Adric and Yaa cried the night she confessed. They sat on the floor and whispered, holding hands, they stood up and screamed in each other’s faces, they paced, they embraced. They talked, and they talked, and they talked. Then, finally, in a low voice that reverberated through Yaa and made her heart shatter, Adric asked if their entire relationship had been an experiment. He asked if it was just an adventure for a rich girl who thought she would slum it to make herself feel better about her privilege. He asked her if she laughed at him behind his back, at his crappy car, at his bartender job. The tears were falling faster down Yaa’s cheeks when she grabbed his face and kissed him in response. He kissed her back. It was deep, the kind of kiss that reached all the way to the heart and twisted it, the kind that you both find and lose yourself in. When they finally pulled apart, she shook her head.
‘You’re the best person I know. This was real, Adric. This is real. I am the realest I ever am with you. I’m messy with you. All over the place, with you. I don’t have to be perfect with you, I just have to be. This wasn’t an experiment. This was me, the purest me I’ve ever felt. For the first time, leading my life . . .’
‘So, lead, Yaayaa. Choose yourself. Rid yourself of these people and their expectations.’
Yaa opened and shut her mouth. It wasn’t that simple. Their families had deals together, their futures were tied up in each other. Kofi and Yaa didn’t know a world without each other. Kofi had always been there: he was her first everything. Kofi didn’t know how to love because his parents didn’t, but he tried in his own way, made up for it where he could. There were worse ways to make a difference in the world. After a few lethally silent moments, Adric nodded, eyes steely, glinting.
‘I’ll miss who I thought you were.’
He walked out of her room.
Yaa didn’t know what she’d expected to happen. The bubble was bound to burst. The rupture felt bigger than a break-up with a boy – it felt like a break-up with herself, not because the boy had been sutured to her like Kofi was, but because she’d been most herself with Adric. She knew she would never feel that again. The heartbreak was so brutal that Yaa had to split herself in two to survive it. She managed to pack away one half of herself, the Yaayaa she wanted to be, and subdue it with the half that had to believe that Kofi was her destiny, and Adric was not. Adric was the break she needed in order to focus on her duty. Frivolity was now out of her system.
She let the shrewd Yaa take over from then on; the version of Yaa who would later have it in her to ignore the fact that her boyfriend was fucking another woman on her birthday. Kofi had inherited his father’s money and weak will, but Yaa knew that, if Kofi was going to listen to anyone, it was going to be her. He trusted her more than anyone else in the world. He was insecure, and as strange as it was, she knew that he admired her, relied on her strength. During their time apart at university, despite screwing half of the student body, Kofi had messaged her constantly, needing reassurance, needing someone who saw past his money and name. That Kofi-less time meant she had been able to grow without the spine of responsibility, learn who she really was. Now, she understood her purpose even more. Her power had to be channelled through him. Though Yaa now found herself having to cut and contort herself to fit back into her and Kofi’s world, she found that this was the most effective way she knew to make a difference.