To Love And Be Loved

Chapter 34

Cass sneezed into a tissue paper. She groaned slightly and winded up the glass beside her. The taxi driver smiled sympathetically from the rear-view mirror. "Sorry," he said.

She smiled and said, "thank you."

Her tongue tasted like sawdust and her nose was blocked. She had been battling the cold all day. She wanted to give Victor his birthday gift before the day was over. So, cold or no cold, she took a cup of hot ginger tea that Zara had recommended and got into a taxi.

Twenty minutes later, she alighted from the taxi and paid the driver. She stopped and stared in amazement at Victor's loft. It was shaking with music. The ground beneath her feet was shaking with the beat. Dozens upon dozens of cars were parked.

A party?

She wanted to be surprised but she didn't register with the emotion. For a brief second, she considered turning around and going home to enjoy a hot cup of ginger tea but she wanted to see the look on Victor's face when she gave him the gift. She had also been worried about the way he had sounded on the phone.

People milled around, most of them drunk. She pushed through a throng of people and made for the elevator. Segun wasn't where he usually sat. The elevator opened with a ding and she stepped out immediately she stepped in. A guy and a lady were making out in the small space. They reeked of alcohol and she was sure they didnt know the door had opened.

She tore a sheet of tissue paper from her purse and blocked her dripping nose just as she heard a thick, husky voice behind her. "Step back." She turned just as Segun moved past her, into the elevator and with one heave of his massive hands, he threw the kissing couple out onto the cold tiled floor of the entrance hall.

"Thank you," she said, stepping into the elevator. She smiled at him, he didnt smile back. "What is going on here?" she asked. He was staring at her with a strange light in his eyes. The elevator suddenly closed before he could speak and rumbled upwards.

There were even more people in Victor's loft than there was outside. It looked like a dance club. The music was deafening and the whole place reeked sourly of alcohol. There were a million people, talking and laughing and holding suspicious looking red cups. A lot of girls. She saw the DJ bathed in a blue glow from the strobe light next to him. Moments later the whole loft was bathed in the flashing red of a strobe light.

People lay on the sofa, on the bed, some stood next to the window. A guy was puking into an empty vase. She had begun to think that Victor wasn't there when the light suddenly changed and the harsh bright fluorescent came back on.

Then she saw him.

Victor was seating on a sofa and a half naked girl was straddling him. She was beautiful and her lips were next to his ear. His hands were around her waist and his head was tipped all the way back, his eyes reduced to slits.

Her heart lurched. She couldn't move. The package in her hand dropped to the floor.

It wasn't like he was making out with her, she told herself.

It wasn't like he was cheating, she told herself.

But she couldn't take her eyes off the impossibly beautiful girl giggling in his ears. Anger and humiliation clawed up her throat.

He didn't know she was there.

She was going to go. As soon as she could look away.

Victor saw her just as she managed to rip her feet off the floor. She saw his eyes find her and she knew she had stayed too long. She turned and blindly made for the door.