Decota

They ate in complete silence but her mind wasn't silent at all. All the accusations she had thought were over with had come back, pushing against the bounds of her conscious reminding her just how vulnerable she was. As she bit into her food sitting opposite her man, she felt the guilt trying to bring down her mask. She would not let it. She was determined not to let the man that she loved see her flaws. She gave him what she imagined to be a soft smile before taking a drink from her glass. She was feeling sated after that session, so much so that she had easily lied to him. When she had walked out of the bathroom and found the laid down attire, the guilt she had so fervently washed away had come storming back at her. She had had other flings, she had even gone all the way with them but just one encounter with Arsher and her life was in shambles. In that moment she had decided to erase the feeling of him fingers and the ghost of his breath from her skin. It wasn't easy but it was absolutely doable, and do she did. She smiled as she thought of how tenderly Uriah had taken care of her. She could still feel him inside her and she ravished that feeling. She tried wiping the smile off by taking a sip of her wine.

"You seem happier." He commented looking into his phone. If she had to guess she'd say he had a radar on her feelings even when she herself didn't. She smiled even harder at that realization. He was a keeper. She didn't even deserve him. He was attentive to her needs and very caring. She wiggled a bit and the comfort of her Dera, the dress a deep emphasis of exactly how good of a man he was and what a mess she was. Sadness threatened to dampen her mood but she was quick to thwart the thought. She was going to celebrate and be happy with her man. She was going to embrace every achievement with him. This time she was determined to focus only on him. Yes she had messed around in the past but that thing with Arsher would not happen again. She was already feeling like a fish out of the water and she did not want the feeling recurring again, not when she had the best guy a woman could ask for right at her beck and call.

"I am happier. You make me happy." She confessed and this time she meant it. He was the true definition of joy and that wasn't something she wanted to change soon.

***

The deadline for the wedding felt close, too close for her liking. Somehow whatever she had tried burying the entire night was not dead and had started digging away on the soil around its grave to get out. The feelings she had thought were forgotten somehow made their way to her but she smiled her way through it. She made sure to keep busy with all the events she was planning so as not to get to a contradictory point. She had teams working on various things but she still made sure she was hands on, ensuring that everything was on point for each event. The office party she was supposed to have completed planning kept her busy the most with most of the suppliers running out of flowers just a few days before the event. It was days like those and challenges as such that made her happier as a woman because she had the chance to think outside the box so as to achieve what she wanted. Even with all the stress in her mind and the pain in her ankles for standing too long, she smiled as she thought of what to do. Her brain had a way of finding the best solutions even for the very worst situations and this one was not any different.

As she made her way through the various teams brainstorming within their workplace, a brilliant idea hit her. She quickly rushed to her office before gathering the various sizes of ribbons she needed to carry out the task at hand. Decota had always been a creative and that did not change even after her father had thrown her out. If anything it had made her better as a human being. It did not break her even to the least bit but instead it built her character and resilience but also advanced how she was able to handle to various things that came up in her life. That same gift beckoned to her by God was what helped her come up with an amazingly shaped flowers that solved all the problems she had been having. A joyful shriek came out of her before she went ahead to guide the team working on the office party on how to create more flowers.

***

Blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. Whoever spoke those words had to be right except sometimes it felt as though he was wrong. She felt the gap left more than ever. She had distanced herself from all of them but somehow she had still found herself longing for the love they only could give. She recalled the bitter words that had been spoken. She recalled the harshnesss that she had been regarded with. Her mind could recall every last time that this people had had things to say to her but never a moment of love. She longed for it and was sad to know that she would never have that. Was she too difficult to love? Did her life not matter any more to them. None, literally none of them except her sister had reached out to her but Decota had decided to have her at an arms length. She was well aware that if she had been hurt once there was no telling what other way she would be hurt again. She wasn't willing risk her still fragile heart again. She wasn't willing to risk loosing it all when she had just built it. And Arsher.

Oh Arsher, a dream. He was meant to just be a figment of her imagination but she found herself being more than intrigued by his mysterious ways. She knew that the man was a one way ticket to failure. He was an express way to a hurting as hell situation yet stupidly even in that moment she longed that her parent would have regarded her with the same eyes that the man did, want. She had never been wanted, never truly loved, except by Uriah but somehow she stupidly felt it was enough to risk it with the one man she was not supposed to risk it with. She smiled as she recalled the ghost of his lips on her and rough and wanton they felt. The man would be the death of her, her morals and all she regarded herself to be. She sighed sitting back on her desk, her eyes finding the family in the lobby again through the frosted windows.

A strong conviction overcame her as she admired the thing she never had growing up. In that moment she decided she was going to have that family. If she had been able to build her company from scratch then she was going to build even a family.

She was going to be a dang good mother who would hold her child whenever she cried. She was going to steal ice cream from the kitchen and eat it over a movie under the blankets when a heartbreak happened. She was going to show her baby just how a family should take care of each other. If she found herself inadequate then she was going to ensure that her babies found someone who would take the best care for them. She was going to give them a father who wouldn't punish them for the errors of others. She was going to find them a man who would show them how to love and be loved. With that thought in mind an image of her and Uriah and three small children drifted into her mind. He was the man she was going to build a family with. No one would show the kind of love a family could have more than the man that had held her hand as they both built their lives. The ashes they came from were not forgotten but instead were a stepping stone to an amazing future that they were building day by day. She felt ready for it. The smile did not rub off as she decided that if he wasn't going to propose she would take matters into her own hands and ask him to marry her. All the men were just chaff. It was not worth destroying the entire of her life for. She would stick to her man and build what she didn't get too have. All she had to do now was get Arsher out of her head and system.