CHAPTER FOUR: THE UNRESTRICTED

Raquel, is everything alright?” Nelly’s voice cut through my daze, her playful tone now edged with real concern. “You’re acting strange.”

Her fingers tapped a light, insistent rhythm on my shoulder. “Hello? Who is that? Cat got your tongue?”

I finally managed to unstick my throat. “Nelly, that is Frank.”

“Which Frank?” she pressed, leaning closer to the window for a better look.

“How many Franks have we personally known?” I retorted, my eyes still glued to the figure now confidently approaching our front door.

She gasped, pulling back to stare at me. “Wait a minute. Don’t tell me you’re talking about Frank Asamoah. Your ex-boyfriend. The guy who shattered your heart into a million pieces during our final year?” She searched my face for confirmation, her own filling with disbelief.

“Yep,” I breathed out, the word sounding hollow. “That’s him.”

“I remember when you first met him,” Nelly murmured, her gaze drifting back to the window, a nostalgic smile touching her lips. “That vacation excursion for all the senior high schools. You talked about that ‘chance meeting’ by the lake for months. You were so smitten.”

I managed a weak chuckle, the memory a phantom touch, sweet once, now just strange.

“And you were a total, utter mess when he dumped your ass,” she added, the tease gentle but probing.

I shot her a half-hearted glare. “Thanks for the recap.”

“But seriously,” she said, her expression turning thoughtful. “What was his reason again? It was so stupid I think I blocked it out.”

I folded my arms, the old hurt a faint echo beneath the present shock. “He said he was at the university and I was ‘just’ a senior high school girl. That we weren’t in the same class anymore. He’d met university women who were… well, according to him, prettier and more sophisticated.” The words still carried the brittle weight of teenage humiliation.

Nelly’s mouth dropped open. “That was vicious. And you never told me that part! I would’ve hunted him down the first weekend we got leave and slapped the taste out of his mouth!”

A real, albeit strained, laugh escaped me. “You’re unhinged. I just wanted to forget it. To avoid the drama. Besides,” I shrugged, the wisdom of hindsight coating the old wound, “I understand it a little now. We were kids. It was probably more about him feeling grown and wanting freedom than it was ever really about me.”

“Yeah, true,” Nelly conceded, nodding slowly. “We were all so busy playing at being adults, looking for storybook romance. We put so much on those poor boys’ shoulders. So naive.”

“Since when did you get so wise?” I asked, nudging her, desperately trying to lighten the heavy air settling around us.

“I’ve always been the wise one. You were just the pretty one,” she quipped, earning an eye-roll from me.

“Damn, girl,” she whistled, looking back down. “He did age… favorably. But what in the world is he doing here? How did he even find you?”

“That,” I said, steeling myself as the doorbell’s chime echoed ominously through the house, “is what we’re about to find out.”

We hurried downstairs, my heart performing a frantic tap-dance against my ribs. I took a deep breath and pulled the door open.

There he stood. Frank Asamoah. Time had sharpened his features, filled out his frame, but the easy confidence in his stance was achingly familiar.

“Raquel?” he asked, his voice laced with an uncertainty I’d never heard from him before. His eyes traveled over my face, wide with disbelief.

“Yep. It’s me. Flesh and blood,” I replied, my own voice surprisingly steady.

“What… what are you doing here?” he stumbled over the question.

“I should be asking you that. You’re at my house, remember?” I countered, crossing my arms.

He just stared, his gaze sweeping from my head to my toes as if trying to reconcile the memory with the reality. “Raquel… you look incredible. Better than I remember.”

The compliment, once something I would have craved, now felt oddly intrusive. “Come in, Frank,” I said, stepping aside.

He entered, letting out a low whistle as he took in the spacious, well-appointed foyer. “Wow. This place is… nice.”

“Well, is someone blind?” Nelly’s voice chirped from behind me.

Frank spun around, and his face broke into a genuine, surprised grin. “Nelly? No way!” He crossed the space in two strides and swept her into a bear hug.

“You look… expensive,” Nelly teased, wiggling her eyebrows at him as he set her down.

Frank laughed, a warm, familiar sound that unearthed a cascade of simpler memories. “You never change. Still flirty as ever.”

Nelly shrugged, a mischievous glint in her eye. “What can I say? I’m a white lady trapped in a black body.”

The tension broke for a moment as we all laughed, the old camaraderie weaving a fragile, temporary bridge over the years of silence.

Over coffee in the living room, I asked the burning question. “Frank, how on earth did you find me?”

He had the decency to look sheepish. “Honestly, Raquel? I didn’t. I wasn’t looking for you.” He took a sip, avoiding my eyes for a second. “I’m here to see Michael. We were mates during our master’s program in the States. He told me to look him up when I got back to the country.”

The world tilted slightly. Of course. The universe had a cruel, ironic sense of humor. “Michael isn’t here,” I said, my voice careful. “He’s traveling. I’m not sure when he’ll be back.”

Frank nodded, then set his cup down, his expression turning earnest. “Look, Raquel… about what happened back in school. I was an idiot. A class-A, immature jerk. I’m so sorry. I’ve regretted it for years.”

The apology was a decade late. I felt nothing but a mild, distant pity for the boy he’d been. “It’s okay, Frank. Really. I let that go a long, long time ago. We were kids.”

The relief on his face was palpable. “You were always too good for me. The kindest person I’d ever dated.”

I waved him off, a slight blush warming my cheeks. “Stop coaxing me. That’s ancient history.”

We fell into easier conversation then, reminiscing about inter-school sports competitions, infamous teachers, and the chaotic joy of those days. For a brief, sunny hour, the past felt harmless. I excused myself to get a bottle of water from the kitchen, my throat dry from talking and laughing. Nelly called out for a glass, too.

I was pouring her water when I heard it, a new, deeper voice joining the laughter in the living room. A voice that iced the blood in my veins. My hand stilled.

Michael.

He was back. Early. And he was in there with Frank.

A heavy sense of foreboding draped over my shoulders. Gripping Nelly’s glass, I walked slowly back to the living room, the cheerful sounds from within now feeling like a prelude to a storm.

I paused in the hallway. They were engrossed in conversation, Frank’s back to me.

“Raquel! Perfect timing,” Frank said, spotting me. He was grinning. “We were just talking about you. I was about to ask Michael why he’d been hiding such a cool sister from me!”

“Sister?” Michael’s voice was flat, incredulous. He was leaning against a couch , his travelling bag still beside him. His eyes, when they met mine, were chips of obsidian. “I don’t have a sister.”

Frank laughed, clueless. “Well, she lives here! And I know your fiancée isn’t her, so… what is she then? A cousin?”

The air thickened, grew taut. Michael’s lips curled into a smile that held no warmth, only a sharp, cruel amusement. He seemed to savor the moment, drawing it out. “Did it ever occur to you,” he said, each word deliberate and heavy, “that she is my stepmother?”

He practically gagged on the last word, his distaste palpable.

Frank’s grin vanished. “Huh? What?” He looked from Michael’s cold, triumphant face to my rigid stance in the doorway. The gears turned visibly in his head, confusion giving way to dawning, horrifying comprehension.

“Wait… How can that be?” Frank stammered. Then his eyes widened further, a memory clicking into place from their conversations abroad. His voice dropped to a disbelieving whisper. “Don’t tell me… Raquel is the… the ‘good-for-nothing, whorish gold digger’ you’ve been complaining about since you got back?”

The room ceased to exist.

There was only the echo of those words,Michael’s words, spat into Frank’s ear across continents, now flung back into my face like acid. The glass in my hand was suddenly the only solid thing in a swirling, red-hazed world. A tremor began deep inside me, vibrating up through my bones, making my very fingertips tremble against the cool surface.

I saw red. Literal, pulsing waves of it at the edges of my vision.

How dare he? How dare he reduce my life, my marriage, my hard-won peace to such a vile, slanderous caricature for his friend’s amusement? The shaking wasn’t from fear anymore. It was pure, incandescent rage, long-suppressed, now erupting.

Before Michael could open his mouth, to confirm, to smirk, to say anything at all I moved.

I strode across the room, the distance dissolving in two sharp clicks of my heels. My focus was absolute, narrowed to the arrogant, contemptuous curve of his mouth. Time slowed. I saw the flicker of surprise in his eyes too late, the slight shift in his posture as he belatedly recognized the storm in mine.

With a force that came from the very core of my fury, I flung the entire contents of the glass directly into his face.

The water hit him with a shocking, solid slap. It drenched his hair, streamed over his stunned features, soaked into the crisp fabric of his shirt. A perfect, silent droplet hung from the tip of his nose before falling.

For a heartbeat, there was absolute stillness. The only sound was the ragged pull of my own breath and the slow drip… drip… drip onto the Persian rug.