I Hate Saturdays

You used to love Saturdays because of him. You loved the bustle and the quiet moments that the weekend brought. You loved the leisurely passion that you both woke up with on Saturday mornings as he touched you and reawakened the desires from the night before. You loved the way he stole kisses from you in the private restaurants he took you to on Saturday nights. Saturdays held magical memories for you.

Now, you hate Saturdays. You sit, alone in your room, angry, hating every moment you see him on the blogs with his fiancée, Tabitha. You hate Saturday mornings when you wake to the yearning of his touch, only to immediately crash into the reality that Tabitha is the one now waking to his caresses.

You hate him. You want to hate her. But you can’t. She is not the one who lied to you, who made promises that have now been broken to the pieces that is your heart. How could you have ever believed him? How could you have ever thought this was going to be forever with him?

You started working for his record label on a Saturday, hired as his personal assistant. You had just finished the defense of your final year project on a Thursday, when you got the call from his management that you’d gotten the job you applied for a few months back. After dancing around in glee with your friends in celebration of your new job, you took the night bus from Enugu to Lagos. You got to your aunt’s house and slept away most of Friday, waking up in the evening to plan your wardrobe for the following day’s outing. You got to the office of the record label and after a series of meetings with some execs, you were told to immediately move in with him. You were startled by the directive, but you soon got over that when you saw that the job paid good money and realized the benefit of the free accommodation.

When you started working for him, you hated him. They say you should never meet your idols, because they might disappoint you. Ade was a music superstar who the media had spun to be an industry darling. He was loved by everybody. His fanbase was fierce and constantly in support of him.

But privately, he tormented you. He would throw things at you whenever he was angry. He would lash out with cruel putdowns whenever you made a mistake. For a whole month, he terrorized you. And one day, you broke down and began crying. You cried so hard, your distress startled him out of his antagonism. You had crumbled to the ground, your body shaking with the force of your sobs, and he came to kneel beside you, holding you and pleading with you to stop crying.

He held you and wiped at your eyes. You were shocked by his tenderness, and felt something stirring inside you as he cradled you and dropped small kisses on your forehead. The stirring turned to vibrations, and when you looked into his eyes, you could see that he was feeling things too.

When he leaned forward and kissed you, it felt like the most natural thing in the world. And in that moment, you stopped hating him and started falling in love with him.

He let you in. He told you stories about his past, his childhood. He told you about his demons, stories about his trauma that no media outlet would ever have access to. He told you about how all he’d ever wanted was just to make music; and how the bigger his star got, the harder it was for him to deal it all. He asked you to forgive him, that his nastiness toward you was his way of unleashing his frustrations with the burden of his public image.

As the love between you two bloomed and your relationship blossomed, he began to make you his muse, to write songs about you. It often amused you whenever his new releases topped charts as girls all over the nation swooned, imagining he was singing to them. But however much he gave to them in his concerts and meet-and-greets, he always came home to you. You were confident that they could never have him, not the way you had him. No one ever would.

However, eight months of blissful happiness later, your confidence began to lose its foundation. It started with the distance that started stretching between you two when his first tour in America and Europe was announced. His record label did not make any bookings for you to join him on the tour. Logistics reasons, some executive assistant told you. But you wouldn’t have it. He was going to be away for six months on the tour, and you couldn’t bear to be separated from him for that long. You fought to be part of the tour. But surprisingly, everywhere you turned, you were met with a brick wall of futility. You could have asked Ade to fix it, but he was too stressed with rehearsals and you didn’t want to burden him with this too.

But you were at the end of your rope and was strongly considering letting him know about the antics of his management, when the label boss called you one day and said something that shocked you.

“Johnston, I know what is going on between you and Ade,” the man’s ugly bass cut through the phone line. “It was cute at first, that’s why I ignored it. I figured he was having his fun and it wouldn’t last. But it has gotten dangerous. He is showing signs of becoming too attached to you. And it has to stop. I’m putting a stop to it. And believe me, if even a whiff of this leaks to the press, I will kill you.”

He hung up, leaving you with chills racing up your spine.

You called Ade, and in near hysteria, told him everything. He assured you that everything would be okay.

But everything didn’t become okay. The next day, you were fired by the record label. A crew headed by the executive assistant came to Ade’s mansion and monitored your eviction from the house. You were devastated. You called Ade multiple times, but got no answer. You suspected, from the smirk on the executive assistant’s face, that someone was probably close to Ade ensuring that he stays incommunicado with you.

You moved out, confident that Ade would eventually reach out to you. You waited all day, then the next day, then a week. There was no word from him. Your hurt deepened. Surely, by now, he’d have noticed your absence and called to get you back. Surely, the record label couldn’t have this much of a control over his life.

But you tried to stay understanding. The publicity for his upcoming tour was heating up and he was frequently going on interviews. You’d watch him on television and your heart would constrict with both affection and pain. You missed him. You wanted him. But you were willing to wait until he was fine.

Then you watched him on an interview Ebuka Obi-Uchendu on Rubbin’ Minds. The interviewer asked him about his love life. This wasn’t the first time he’d been asked this since you started dating, and he’d always responded that he is single. You had no problem with this answer.

But on that day, you were surprised when he said with a coy smile, “I’m actually in a relationship. Been seeing someone for a while now.”

Your heart started beating fast. What was he doing? Was he really about to claim you on national television? Was this superstar about to come out? Was he ready for that? Were you ready for that?

You were both thrilled and scared of what he was doing. But all that short-circuited to shock when Ebuka pressed him for the identity of who he was in a relationship with, and he gestured to someone off-camera, moments before a young beautiful woman stepped forward. The shock chilled your blood and bones as you recognized the cocoa-skinned beauty of the fashion designer, Tabitha. She had styled Ade a few times; that was the much you knew about her association with Ade.

And now, he was telling you – and the world – that they were dating?!

You stared at the TV screen, watching them as he kissed her. They beamed at the interviewer, before sitting down next to each other and going on to gush about how they met and fell in love. You were aghast. You couldn’t believe what you were seeing and hearing.

But your heartbreak had only just started.

The next day, Ade’s Instagram page was updated with a picture of Tabitha’s long fingers sporting an engagement ring. The rock of precious stones sparkled against the coffee complexion of her hand, above the caption: ‘I proposed last night. She said yes for a lifetime.’

They were engaged. The internet was going wild with the news. The portmanteau ‘Adebitha’ was trending on social media. And you were in our lonely corner of the world, feeling your heart break over and over again. In the following weeks, your heartbreak would congeal to hate.

And now, you hate him. And you hate Saturdays.

Written by TK