When Stars Collide

Affronté

"Mardiyah?"

Hibba watched in shock as Nana ushered in her best friend, she stopped applying the mascara she was swiping over her long lashes and put down the tube, not even caring about the mess it would make.

"How are you?" Mardiyah smiled and sat down beside Hibba, she had not said a word since she came in.

"Here, this is for you and Ummi." Hibba looked at the big gift bag, looked at Mardiyah face and then flicked her gaze elsewhere. She was not willing to be bribed.

"I'm sorry. I had a reason." Hibba raised her brows in question, the raised brows came very naturally to her, she was so amused and wondered how Mardiyah thought she could play with her emotions.

"What's the reason? I called you for three whole weeks everyday. After the first three days, you Mardiyah put me, on voicemail, all my calls went to voicemail. I didn't care, I kept leaving you messages like I didn't know you had blocked me from calling you. I was worried, I called your mom, asked her and she said they spoke to you everyday.

Every day! Mardiyah and you could not even text me to say, 'Oh Hibba, I don't want to talk right now, I'll text you when I'm ready'. I'd have understood. I would never have judged you, I would have prayed for you, not that I stopped anyways." She heaved and stopped sitting, she got up and walked to the room and asked Nana to take Ummi on a walk.

When she returned, she met Mardiyah the same way she had left her, her head in her arms. Mardiyah raised her head the moment she heard Hibba, She twisted her lips and asked for forgiveness again.

"I didn't just want you to worry about me. Life was hard there, in Nigeria, I was the second best graduating student, there, it was as though all I knew was high school level. It amounted to nothing. I clawed through every day. I also compared myself, lost my self esteem, lost everything positive about me.

Do I regret not calling back? Absolutely. Do I regret not keeping in touch? Every day. But I compared myself to you greatly and found out that I was lacking greatly. You're so beautiful, you're so smart, like the definite all round woman, how can I compare?" Hibba could not stop the dumbfoundment that came over her like a wet blanket, she shook her head and sat next to Mardiyah again.

"What is that supposed to mean?" She asked her best friend with her heart beating like a rattle drum.

"It means, I mean, take a look at you, you're here, raising a child, going to work everyday, being an employer, dating a good man- don't worry about how I know-, keeping your faith intact in spite of it all.

I felt useless. I just lost it, so I felt the way to deal with it was to stop speaking to you." Hibba shut her eyes slowly, tears came to her eyes with a tingling feeling. She just could not believe it.

"Really? This is how you feel? And you did not tell me?" Mardiyah rolled her eyes and Hibba could feel anger coming off her in waves, scratched an itch near her ear and wondered how she had offended Mardiyah again.

"This is it, you're always judging without actually judging. Always having a solution for something, always wanting to put your best foot forward. I don't just get it, fate is so kind to you, everyone want to help you. Don't you get tired? Are you even human? I just came here to say, I'm going to be staying in the United Kingdom for long long while, I won't be coming home. I need to put a wide berth between us or I'll never be able to grow myself, you make it hard to grow." Hibba kept shaking her head over and over, her heart felt like it was breaking into tiny pieces and she could do absolutely nothing about it.

"Are you sure you want to break my heart like this Mardiyah?" Mardiyah's reply was to pick the small purse she hand come with, hang it into her shoulder and walk away. When she reached the door, she turned around with a swish of the bridal net bell sleeved pink kimono she was wearing and pointed at the gift she had brought.

"That's for Ummi's first birthday. Have a good life."

Hibba sat there in deep thought for almost an hour until her phone rang, jarring her from the reverie she had been in. She picked without looking at the caller and when ChiChi's voice sounded in her ear, she burst into such loud sobs that Chichi stuttered and asked her where she was.

*****

"I'm so heartbroken. The pain I feel is so deep." Hibba shook her head, her tears spilled unto her folded hands, she leaned forward and folded her tear stained hands unto her chest.

"Why would she say that, how is she ghosting you your fault?" Hibba unfolded her hands and spread it out in question to ChiChi's question. When Mardiyah was talking, she had no idea how it had come to this.

"She somehow turned it into my fault, that I became so successful that I seemed to press her down. How is this?" She waved her hands around her small apartment, "Successful. I'm nearly living from hand to mouth, I have a child to feed, I have to save for her school, for rent, for paying my employee that it's not even time to get yet, everything is so hard on me. Yet that's all she can actually say? I'm so annoyed at myself, I should have been more firm with her earlier." Chichi pulled Hibba close and kissed her temple.

"It's going to be fine, maybe one day she'll see reason and come back. You guys have been friends for so long, her parents love you-" Hibba interrupted Chichi with a sniff. " Imagine oo, even the job I have today was gotten for me by her father, who do I even know in this Abuja apart from her parents. It's so stupid of her to be jealous of me, what's so special about me?"

Chichi pulled off a mock hurt expression on her face and asked, "What of me? Salman? God sef dey, you know plenty people oo." Hibba laughed so hard and picked a tissue from the box in the middle of the table and blew her nose heartily.

"Will we still go to that Home Depot place? Are you free now? Infact, you're free, get dressed and let's go." Hibba got up and left to get dressed. As she wore her gown, Chichi asked her what she was going to do on their off week.

"Salman's friend is going on a date, so he asked Salman and I to double date with them." ChiChi's cackle reached her from the living room, making Hibba laugh too before she asked the reason for the laughter.

"I didn't think people still did double dates. It's such a sweet gesture." Hibba sneered with a frown, wondering what was sweet about it. She didn't fancy meeting people that much, she just wanted to go to save face.

"What do you consider a relationship red flag?" Chichi asked her as Hibbalooked round the room for her phone. She found it in between the cushions of the chair and thought before replying very seriously.

"When a man tells me, I'm looking for a traditional African woman." Chichi laughed very loudly and made a good mimicry of a man saying that. Hibba couldn't help the laughter that bubbled out of her too.

"They say it as though women are commodities in the market or okra trees to be bent to their satisfaction. Rubbish." Hibba knew Chichi was talking from a place of experience, pain and lost relationships.

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