All's Fair In Love

By Mariyam Johar

“We need to talk.”

The words chilled her. Tysha knew what they meant.

When the phone call came in at precisely 3:20 PM, she had just returned from an important meeting with a potential client and was about to take a tea break. Tea soon flew out of her mind as she heard her husband’s tense voice on the phone urging her to get home as soon as she could.

Now, as she prepared herself for the worst, she thought of her first meeting with Alex, the immediate connection between them as if they were soulmates, and the warnings of almost everyone in the family who had advised her not to get married to him.

“Sit down, please.”

She sat down on the sofa of their small 1BHK apartment and waited for him as he prepared coffee for both of them.

“He is not husband material…”

“He will walk out as soon as he stops getting what he wants from you…”

“Think about your future... Don’t take such a hasty decision…”

She tried to stop these voices from playing in her head, but they just went on and on, mocking her, taunting her, until she could take it no more.

She got up and walked to the window on the far end of the room. Unlike most apartments in this part of the city, their building was located facing an open field where they could often see adults and children playing on a clear pleasant day.

As she looked at a team of college boys playing football, her thoughts went back to the first picture she had seen of her husband on Facebook. It was in a running pose after he had completed a 20K marathon showcasing his weeks of practice through his well-built muscular body. As she explored his profile where she had landed through a mutual contact, she discovered that he had a flair for writing and he had written some exceptional blogs and instructional articles. She had always been an avid reader and before she knew it, she had already spent hours reading his published articles. By the end of the day, she was consumed by his writing style and she knew she just had to talk to him.

They had clicked immediately. She had been intrigued by his charm, knowledge, and his passion for the things he believed in. Alex was one of the few people who had been able to inspire the best in her. She had not only fallen in love with him, but also with herself in the short time she had known him. Within 6 months, they were married despite her parents and family trying to convince her to wait for some more time and get to know him better.

A gentle hand on her shoulder brought her back to reality.

“Hey, here’s your coffee.”

She looked into his soft brown eyes and tried to read his mind.

He just smiled, took her hand and led her back to the sofa.

She sat sipping her coffee in silence for a few minutes until she could take it no longer.

“What is it? Why did you call me home suddenly from my office?”

He placed his half-finished cup of coffee on the small table in front of the sofa and took her hands in his.

“You know I love you.”

She waited.

“Something happened today that I felt I needed to share with you. It was heavy on my mind and I was feeling guilty about it.”

She said nothing and waited for him to continue.

“Emma called me this morning.”

“Who’s Emma?”

“Emma… Emma is my ex.”

“What?! You never said anything about her before.”

“I know I didn’t. It happened almost four years back and I thought it was over. It was a long-distance relationship that just didn’t work out because we were both too busy. We just grew apart and it ended. Last year, I heard from a friend that she’d got married.”

Tysha could feel her heart sinking. “So what does she want now?”

“Well, she had heard that I’d got married too. She called to tell me that she was heartbroken, that she was unhappy in her marriage and she had been thinking about me for the past few months.”

He was silent for a few minutes.

“Go on…,” she said with a tremor in her voice.

“She said that she had slashed her wrists a month back because she didn’t want to live without me. Luckily, her husband discovered her at the right time and took her immediately to the hospital where she recovered.”

Silence again.

“She said that we should break up with our partners and get married.” He spoke so softly that she had to strain her ears to hear him clearly.

A small tear slowly left her eye and fell to her cheek.

He let go of her hands and went to sit beside her on the sofa putting an arm around her shoulder. “Hey, why are you crying?” he said as she put her head on his chest. He stroked her hair softly, allowing her to cry for some time before he spoke again.

“You didn’t ask me what I said to her?”

He put a finger under her chin, lifted her face and wiped her tears.

She looked at him with some trepidation, waiting for him to speak.

“I told her that I loved my wife and that I would, on no account, leave her for someone else.”

Relief came over her as she melted down in his arms again.

Suddenly his phone rang. It was an unknown number. She looked into his eyes and knew who was calling him.

He gently pushed her away, got up from the sofa, and answered the call as he walked towards the window.

She sat waiting on the sofa.

When he came back, her eyes asked him what her lips couldn’t.

“Nothing, she just wanted to know what I was doing,” he said as he threw the phone on the sofa.

She frowned and said, “Why? I thought you had made it clear that you were not interested in her.”

“Yeah, I had. I don’t know… Maybe she will stop calling in one or two days. Are you planning on going back to your office?” he asked, quickly changing the subject.

She considered the question. “No. I think I’ll stay home and get dinner started.” She figured she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on her work anyway.

As she started prepping for dinner, her husband’s phone rang again. It was still on the sofa where he’d left it earlier. She came in from the kitchen, took a quick look at the number on the screen and found that it was the same… his ex-girlfriend. As her husband was in the shower, she let it ring until it stopped and went back to her dinner prep.

At 8 pm, they sat with a plate of rice and chicken stew in front of the television watching a movie and eating their dinner in silence. Neither of them was too interested in what was happening in the movie, and the noise from the television just served to fill the awkward silence.

After a few minutes, as she took both their empty plates and started going towards the kitchen, Alex’s phone rang again. She looked at the number on the screen and then looked at him. He quickly glanced at her and answered the call as she discreetly walked away to the kitchen. He ended the call quickly, aware of his wife moving around clearing the dishes behind him. This time she didn’t bother asking him why she’d called.

She slowly washed the dishes and cleared away the kitchen counter, all the time brooding over the events of that afternoon. She didn’t know why Alex hadn’t told her about his ex earlier. Had they been deeply involved? Was he still in love with her? All kinds of possible ways this whole situation would end started flashing before her eyes.

Having grown up in an extremely protective and stable environment, this was a very different experience for Tysha and she didn’t know how to handle it. She was scared to talk about it with her mother fearing that her mother would start again about how she shouldn’t have trusted Alex in the first place. She had no idea what to do.

She had just placed the remaining food in the refrigerator when she heard Alex’s phone ring again in the bedroom. As she heard him answer the phone, a plan slowly started forming in her mind. As much as she loved her husband, she knew that he was an emotional fool. Anybody could manipulate him and he would surely believe any girl who appeared to be a damsel in distress. She knew that if she wanted to save her marriage and her peace of mind, she had to take matters in her own hands.

That night, after her husband went to sleep, she cautiously went into the living room and retrieved his laptop from his briefcase. She switched it on, typed in the password, and was directly able to access his Facebook account through the bookmarks tab on his browser. She quickly went through his list of friends to find Emma Taylor. She clicked on her profile. Under the Intro section, she scanned the list of professional and educational achievements to find what she was looking for – Married to Sam Taylor.

She clicked on Sam Taylor’s profile and left him a message from her husband’s profile – “Hi Sam, I am your wife’s ex-boyfriend. I would like to have a word with you about a sensitive topic. Please give me your number if you are open to a brief conversation.”

She had nothing left to do now but wait and hope that he would reply with his number. She shut down the laptop, replaced it in the briefcase, and went to sleep.

************************

The next few days went pretty much the same. She would wake up in the morning and go about her routine, go to office, come back in the evening, have dinner with her husband, and after her husband went to sleep, she would check his Facebook account on his laptop to see if Sam had replied to her message. However, there was no reply from Sam. In the meantime, Emma’s calls on her husband’s phone came at least three to four times a day and they were slowly increasing in duration.

After about a fortnight, her patience was rewarded when a string of 10 digits appeared in the message box of her husband’s Facebook account’s chat box. She quickly copied it down in her little notepad, shut down the laptop, and went to sleep with a smile on her face.

************************

The next day, she went about her routine normally and patiently waited for her lunch hour. At precisely 1 pm, she went to the terrace of her office with her little notepad and dialed the number she had noted down last night.

The phone was answered on the third ring. A deep voice said, “Hello?”

“Hello, I am Tysha. I am Alex’s wife. I was the one who had contacted you on Facebook requesting for your number. Is this a good time to talk?”

“Er.. yes, sure. Please go ahead.”

“Um.. so, it’s like this. A few days back your wife contacted my husband and told him that she was unhappy and that she wanted to get together with him again. She asked him to leave me and get married to her for which my husband clearly refused. Despite that, she has been calling my husband multiple times in the day. My husband is clear that he doesn’t want to break our marriage but I don’t know what’s going on in her mind. So, I request you to kindly intervene and put an end to this.”

He listened to my monologue in silence. Finally he said, “Well, honestly I wasn’t aware of this. I don’t know what to say… I will definitely have a word with my wife about this.”

“Thank you, I really appreciate this.”

“You are most welcome. Have a good day.” And Sam disconnected the call.

She felt the call had gone well. Now, she just had to wait for the consequences.

************************

The next morning while she was making breakfast, her husband called out to her from the bedroom. She went to see what he wanted and found him holding out his phone towards her. With a confused expression, she reached out for the phone and saw a message from his ex-girlfriend’s number.

“I didn’t know you were such a coward. If you wanted to say something, you should have said it directly. You have been talking to me all these days and behind my back, you conspired with your wife to turn my husband on me!! I hate you!!! And I never want to talk to you again.”

Her heart was soaring as she read the hateful message on her husband’s phone. Just like that, Emma’s chapter in their book was over. She looked up to see her husband slowly walking towards her with an unfathomable expression on his face. She thought he would be furious for talking to Emma’s husband without his knowledge.

He came to her and gently took her in his arms. Suddenly, his serious face broke into a grin and he asked, “What did you do?”

She relaxed and told him the entire incident about how she had located Sam through his Facebook account and her conversation with Sam Taylor yesterday.

“Well, I think I am still discovering new aspects of your personality. I had never thought of you as the kind of person who would take such a drastic step,” he said with a mischievous glint in his eyes.

“Well… love does make one do unimaginable things…,” Tysha replied shyly.

“Hmm… talking of unimaginable things...”

They were both late for office that day.

By Mariyam Johar