Chapter 14

“Are you okay?” Pete asked Stella.

Stella, holding a spoon in her hand, kept moving the food in her plate with the spoon without putting any in her mouth.

“Maybe you don’t like coconut rice?”

“It’s fine,” Stella replied.

“Are you sure? We could get you another,” Pete said.

“Seriously, it’s fine. I just don’t really feel like eating much,” Stella said as she took a quick glance at the door of the restaurant.

“Should we leave?”

“Without finishing your food?”

“Yeah, just say the word,” Pete said.

“Nah, you should finish,” Stella said. “Also, I like the view. This place looks good.”

Pete smiled as he put food into his mouth.

“How many girls have you brought here?” she asked, smiling.

Pete said nothing. He only shrugged and smiled.

“How many of them did you bring here after sabotaging their relationships?” She said with a straight face.

Pete held the spoon of rice in the air and took a quick glance at Stella. He went on to drop the spoon in his plate and placed both hands on the table.

“What’s this about,” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said, shrugged and put on a face as if she was just asking innocent questions.

“You barely said anything since we came here, barely ate and now you’re doing God knows what. What’s gotten into you?” he asked.

“Maybe I was just waiting for my fiancé, to get here,” she said.

Pete looked back, in the direction Stella was looking, and saw a tall black man in a T-shirt and a chino trouser looking at them and heading in their direction. It took only a few seconds for him to get to their table and he stretched out his hand to Pete.

“I’m Dennis and don’t bother, I know who you are,” he said as he shook the right hand of Pete which he extended slowly.

“I’m sure you know who I am, but this is your first time seeing me. Nice meeting you, man,” Dennis said, smiling.

"Can I sit down beside you?" Dennis asked, who had started to sit on the chair before Pete could say anything.

Pete moved to his right towards the window and from Denis, it was a long brown chair that could sit three people comfortably.

Dennis adjusted his sitting position, cleared his throat and took a long look at Stella who was sitting opposite to him before turning to face Pete.

"I see you're having a good time with my girl," Dennis said to Pete, who was yet to say anything since the whole event unraveled.

"What is he doing here, Stella?" Pete asked.

"Don't look at her, look at me," Dennis said. "I'll be answering all your questions and as to your first question, she invited me."

There was silence at their table for some time, Dennis and Pete kept looking at each other without saying anything while Stella kept shifting her eyeballs from one person to the other.

"I think I should leave, if you don't mind," Pete said as he began to stand up.

"Actually, I do," Dennis said slowly.

"Isn't it disrespectful to try to leave in the middle of a serious conversation?" Dennis asked.

"And don't think you'll pull any stunt here; I came here shamelessly and am ready to ridicule myself in front of all these people. Are you?"

At that point, Pete slowly sat down, sighed and decided to continue with his food.

"Good to see you're comfortable once again, I like that," Dennis said.

Pete continued his food as though he couldn't hear what Dennis was saying.

"You see, I was quite pissed to find out that Stella cheated on me and in my rage, I could not process anything else but why she would do such a thing to me. After a few days of sulking, I decided to think, and I asked myself about how I got to know that my fiancée was cheating on me. The answer? An anonymous text, a text that told me about the marks on her body, why she wasn't at home at a specific time and what trap I could set for her. But the next question was, who would have such information, and why would they give it up. The only answer I could come up with was that it could only have been her lover, but I wasn't sure about why, so I sent the number to one of my friends working at a telecommunications company and guess who owns the number. You!" he said, pointing at Pete, who had stopped eating and was paying attention to the revelations Dennis gave up.

"And then I did some digging and found out that you were the one she's seeing at the moment, and I thought to myself, how sick is that? So, I thought I would ask you to your face. How sick are you?"

Instead of answering the question, Pete opened a bottle of water and began to drink from it.

"The only reason why she's this calm is because I already told her about it but instructed her to behave normally. I didn't want it to be a case of “yeah, your fiancée is lying” and as far as I can tell, you haven't denied any of the accusations I brought forward," Dennis said and paused for some time, gauging Pete's reaction.

"But you don't have to, since I'm not done." Dennis continued.

He brought out his phone from his pocket and held it out to them.

"This was the number I got the text from and the most interesting part of it was that my friend told me the number was very much active and I thought to myself, how stupid is that? I guess we're about to find out."

In about 20 seconds, Pete's phone on the table, right in front of him rang.

"My work here is done," Dennis said as he stood up to leave.

"I would be talking about trust if I didn't break the one, I had with my fiancé but Jesus, the extent you went to," Stella said with an irritated look.

She stood up, packed her things and moved across to the other side where Pete was sitting. With as much strength as she could muster, she slapped him across the face, the sound of which could be heard by everyone in the restaurant. They immediately stopped what they were doing to look at what was happening.

"A parting gift," Stella said as she began to walk away.

She turned around almost immediately and walked back to the table.

"Also, good luck sucking up to your dad and while you’re at it, tell him to find another secretary."