Chapter 19

Paul woke up that morning and stretched to feel the other side of the bed; there was no one there. He had done the same the previous day and had met with the same result. He was already used to sleeping and waking up beside someone within the few days that Helen was with him, and he wasn't sure how long he could cope without her presence.

He picked his phone from a compartment in his bed and decided to write Helen a text.

"Five minutes past seven," he said as he navigated to Helen's number on the messaging application. "Hey, beautiful," he said to himself as he wrote. "I felt the other side of the bed again only to find out that you're not here. It's only been two days, but I've missed you. I hope you have a wonderful day. said. Take care of yourself. I'll call you later."

He got out of bed and went straight into the bathroom, where he set the temperature of the water heater to sixty degrees.

He brought out his toothbrush and toothpaste from a cabinet in the bathroom, applied the paste and began to brush his teeth. That lasted for about one minute.

He went under the shower after brushing his teeth. He remembered that there was a time when his brother would have to knock multiple times to hurry out of the bathroom and sometimes, he would have to enlist the help of their dad or stepmother to get him out of the bathroom. He loved using the shower and he hated it when he had to be forced out of the bathroom. Well, no one could do that now and he could spend as many hours as he wanted, having his bath.

Unfortunately, since he began to work, he didn't have the luxury of spending so much time in the bathroom, especially not in the morning. He did that during weekends, or whenever he wasn't too tired to have a bath in the evening.

He got out of the bathroom and dried himself with a brown towel which he hung on the door of the bathroom as soon as he was done.

He began to iron the clothes he was going to put on. He picked them out the day before but pressing clothes was one of those activities he liked to leave for last. He also never gave his clothes out for dry cleaning, "why give it out when you can do it yourself," was one of his sayings.

When he was done, he picked up the phone to check his time.

"Seven thirty-seven," he said to himself.

He began to think that there was still time if he wanted to get to work early although he wasn't sure he wanted to. He wanted people to know he was back. His previous stint at the office was a quiet one and that was his natural disposition. But if he was going to go against his father, he would need help and for people to help him go against his father, they would need to see strength in him and not just a plan which he wasn't even sure he had totally figured out.

"In time," he said to himself.

Paul picked a food pack from his fridge. The food pack contained spaghetti, plantain and turkey. He didn't cook the food himself. In fact, he never cooked, and the reason was simple. He couldn't. He never had a cause to cook as a kid and he had money to buy whatever he wanted when he was in the university. It was something he had thought about learning, numerous times, but a few kitchen hazards and he killed those thoughts.

He put the food pack with its contents into a microwave and he set the timer to three minutes. He had a habit of not eating whenever he was going to do something important, especially in the morning but he slept off the previous night without eating and so, he was quite hungry.

While his food warmed up, he decided to dress up. He wore a white long-sleeved shirt over a black chino trouser. He put on a white Nike sneaker and went to a mirror beside the window to check himself out.

The mirror was about nine feet high, and it reached the ground. Paul spent about a minute checking himself out.

"Not bad," he said to himself just before the microwave pinged to alert that his food was ready.