"She doesn't belong to you. Someone else is stroking that pussy."
He knew that now and that thought made him feel sad. He had just seen her sneak into the neighbour's house in the next compound.
"You should have known."
He picked up his stove and headed back inside. His friends had called him a peasant because he cooked with makaa but he didn't really care. He liked the way it warmed up his apartment. And he rarely burned his food. Plus they weren't really his friends so what they thought didn't matter. Some nights he would switch off all his lights and sit in the dark with her in his arms staring into red hot coals.
He placed the stove on the high table in his kitchen and placed a pot with water on it. He took out the leftover grits from the fridge and cut it up into little pieces and put them into the pot. Waste not, want not. Then he stood there staring mindlessly at the pot, waiting for it to boil.
"I really should have known."
He had seen her several times going into the neighbour's. He had thought she was just being friendly. That's what they're like, he reasoned.
He made the grits, turning it over twice to make sure it had cooked properly.
The feeling of being betrayed crept up in him the more he thought about her. Right now, she was the only one in his life. He had taken her in when it seemed nobody had wanted her. He had fed her, cared for her even when others thought he shouldn't have. He hadn't realized until now that he actually sort of believed that she had meant to come to him, to be with him. It hurt him to know that she could so easily go to someone else, that he wasn't special to her at all.
"I feel like crying and I'm chopping onions"
He really did feel like crying. The sudden sad feeling he had when he watched her slaunter into the neighbor's house had ballooned to full on depression. And he still could not comprehend why.
"Come on! She's just a..."
He finished dicing the onions and tomatoes and placed them in another pot and placed it on his stove. The makaa was lit now, nothing but red embers. He added some oil and let the tomatoes cook to a beautiful, red mush. He then took out of the fridge four boiled, pre-shelled eggs and added them to the tomatoes whole. He sliced a bright red chilli pepper down the side and threw it in with the eggs. One cup of coconut milk together with some garlic powder and he covered the pot and waited for it to boil.
"Love"
He knew that that was it even before he thought the word.
"I love her"
Months ago, he would have laughed at the idea. It seemed foreign, but now he knew that he did really love her. He loved her because he had someone to come home to. He loved her because of the way she looked up at him with those beautiful eyes. He loved the way she sounded when he held her close. He loved it when she slept in his bed and didn't mind one bit when she woke him up too early.
His egg curry was ready. He took it off the stove and placed a final empty pot on the now diminishing hot coals. In it, he dumped spinach from a plastic bag he had bought earlier. He added some salt and covered it with a glass plate and let the spinach steam for a few minutes without adding water.
His dinner was now ready. It was only 6 PM. Someone had once teased him that he was a senile, old man because he ate his dinner that early, but fuck that someone.
He served himself a plate. It was a quarter of grits, a couple of eggs sitting in creamy, rich, red, hot curry and green spinach. The chilli pepper was half floating in the curry daring him to take a bite. He grated a bit of carrot over his plate and sprinkled in some finely chopped dhania.
He set it down on his coffee table. The TV had been on while he was cooking but he wasn't really watching it. He rarely watched it except when the internet went down. He wasn't hungry. He couldn't make himself lift up a spoonful to his mouth. He sat there and stared at nothing in particular.
Then he heard a noise at the door, the one he always heard when she was at the door.
"She's not staying here tonight!"
He wanted to be angry at her. He wanted to do something to hurt her so she would go away. He wanted to be tired of her. But those feelings seemed to dissipate as he grabbed the handle and opened the door.
She stood there looking up at him.
"Hi," he said.
All was forgiven. He was just happy that she had come back to him.
"Meow," she replied as she walked past him, rubbing her body against his leg.