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Greek gift

The demands must be met.

By Oluremi Adeoye Published about a year ago 11 min read
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 Greek gift
Photo by Christian Dubovan on Unsplash

‘Reset your password’ were the words on his screen; this was making Henry as frustrated as ever before; deep down in his heart, he knew what he was doing was uncalled for, but he had never been someone to lose gallantly.

His relationship with Eunice had ended over a year ago; it all started over the internet as a long distant relationship. He knew he was the one who caused the breakup but was still angry with Eunice because he didn’t feel she had any right to move on. At least not until he thought it was time for her to do so.

Because of his stalking and his hurtful words, she had blocked him. He couldn’t believe Eunice would be bold enough to stop him.

She’s an easy-going and peaceful woman in her mid-forties, recently widowed when he met her.

As for him, he is ten years older than Eunice and has never married, women always found him too intense, but he didn’t believe he was that intense; he sees himself as a passionate man.

Henry knows that intense and passionate are synonyms, but he feels passionate sounds more optimistic than intense.

He sits back in his chair; his laptop has gone into sleep mode due to inactivity. He hasn’t been able to get adequate sleep for the past five days. He smiled slyly at the lucky laptop already in sleep mode.

The reason might sound stupid if he mentioned it to anyone else, so he hadn’t bothered to.

He didn’t make a big deal of it initially. His relationship with Eunice had been online throughout the two years it lasted; this wasn’t intentional for both parties at the initial stage. However, after the first few months, he realized she was not keen for them to meet. His suspicions were confirmed when he tried checking her Facebook page and found out he couldn’t, he asked her directly why she blocked him, and he was surprised that she responded firmly that it was because she wanted to.

He then asked why, and she told him frankly that she didn’t see the relationship heading anywhere.

He was surprised, not because of what Eunice had said but because she dared to say it, he was quiet and listened as she reeled out why the relationship was over.

Reclining his chair, Henry tried remembering the points she made that day. She said he was too short-tempered, and there was never any argument they had that he didn’t end up flaring up. She said he always ended up using any information or discussion she had confided in him against her later and that he always had his way with words playing around them to suit him and him alone. She finally said she knew he had other ladies in his life and didn’t think she would be missed.

Her knowledge of the other ladies in his life was his fault, but how could she expect that she would be the only lady, especially after he had won the mega lotto just a few weeks after meeting her?

Henry is unattractive, of average height, and on the big side. Whatever Henry knew he lacked physically, his recently found financial status had succeeded in dwarfing it.

Eunice’s only advantage over his other girlfriends is her level of enlightenment and class. She was not loud and brash like Judy neither was she demanding and clingy like Sophie.

Even without physically meeting her, she seems a very reserved woman. Then unlike the others, she never demanded money from him. He was the one who always insisted.

She only conceded when he overheard the conversation between Eunice’s daughter and the babysitter. It was apparent to him that the babysitter was trying to calm down the twelve-year-old daughter who wanted something mummy had said she couldn’t afford. When he asked Eunice why her daughter was unhappy, Eunice excused herself from the phone and closed the door to conceal the conversation between her daughter and the babysitter. She refused to give any details. Henry had heard enough to conclude that sending her some money would be highly appreciated if not by the mother but by the daughter.

When Henry told Eunice his intention to send her money, she told him not to. He had to insist when he said that if she refused, it would show him that their relationship meant nothing to her. This made her accept it.

Henry lives in Swansea, and Eunice lives in Leeds. Driving there is just a little less than five hours and a little more than five hours by train.

He is a millionaire, all thanks to the money lotto jackpot he had won just a few weeks after he had become friends with Eunice on Facebook. He had spent only £1.50, and his numbers were the lucky numbers picked during the dip. This was his standard practice in support of his club and the community trust.

He can afford to invite Eunice, her daughter, and whosoever she wants to visit him. He had said this to Eunice numerous times, but she had been stubborn about it. She kept saying she wanted to get to know him better before making such a trip and committing to the relationship. That was probably one of the main reasons he couldn’t stop wanting her; his money didn’t make her cave like all the other women he had met since he hit the jackpot. They were always ready to jump; they needed him to tell them how high.

Henry saw and still sees Eunice as the lucky charm. He believed meeting her had a lot to do with him winning such a huge winning.

What convinced him more was that he had been playing the lotto for over a decade and had never won.

So that fateful evening after they had spoken, he decided to use a money transfer application on his laptop to send Eunice money. He knew if he asked her for her bank details, she would probably not give them to her, and he wanted to give her the money.

He felt so good as he wired her £10,000. He smiled as he could envisage the shock on her face when he wired her details of the transaction the following morning.

The following day his phone was ringing as early as 7.30 am as he made to pick up his mobile phone; he knew who the caller was likely to be before even checking his phone and why she would be calling so early.

Eunice was on the phone asking him why he had decided to send her such a tremendous amount of money and that she will have to refuse the money. When he told her it was a gift, she said that was why she should not accept the money because there was nothing she had done for him to warrant him sending her such a gift.

Henry was quiet for a while as he was busy sending her a text asking her to see it as a loan payable whenever; then, he requested to say hello to her daughter. Eunice couldn’t say no because the conversation was on speaker, and her daughter, who had walked into the room a few seconds earlier, could hear the request Henry had made. The next voice he heard was that of Eunice’s daughter Tracy. She sounded friendly and calm, unlike the angry twelve-year-old the night before.

Henry asked how she was feeling and asked her to plead on his behalf for her mother to collect a gift he had given her.

Obviously, out of curiosity, Tracy asked what the gift was, and he had to say with traces of pride in his voice that it was a gift that would provide her with what she had been requesting from her mother twenty times over and more. Tracy’s shrieks of joy were so loud that her mother collected the phone from her, thanked Henry, and asked that she call him later in the day, after which she must have gone to the post office to collect the gift.

When Eunice told Henry the following day that she had collected the money, he was glad and asked her to let him know how the money was being spent. When he heard Eunice take in a sharp breath of air, Henry knew she was offended by his request, but he chose to ignore it.

Knowing she had collected his money increased his confidence; though he never asked her how the money was spent, he waited a few months to be sure she had spent part, if not all, the money. Then Henry decided it was time to display his unkind nature. He decided to call at odd hours of the day and then request a video call; if Eunice complained that she wasn’t decent enough to answer a video, he would make her feel guilty by letting her know that he loved her the way she looked no matter how bad and that was why he had invested in her.

Henry knew Eunice didn’t have a high-paying job; he also knew that if she had started spending the money he had given her, there was no way she would be able to send him a refund. He felt he had gotten her where he wanted her because he enjoyed it.

This was when he started making unrealistic demands, like asking her to have him on video when she was in the shower or demanding such calls during unholy hours. He enjoyed how uncomfortable his needs made her feel; he loved that she tried to meet up with them, and even though he knew he was being mean, he would never stop.

Eunice must have known this because, after a few months, she told him she was done with the relationship. He thought it was a joke, but she showed how serious she was in a few weeks; he couldn’t access her on social media, first Facebook, then Instagram, and then WhatsApp. She didn’t block him on all platforms at once. She only did it when she read anything negative from him.

When he decided to abuse her indirectly on Facebook by calling out all widows and single mothers as users of men and tagging her was when he got blocked.

On Instagram, he had taken a picture with a fling and had captioned the photo, ‘only believe what you see, and touch’ made her block him there.

His direct abusive, uncomplimentary messages to her on WhatsApp got her to block him there.

So right back to him sitting here and thinking of what he could do to get her attention, he sent her an email requesting his money back, that it was a loan and that he wanted it back.

Eunice refused to respond to the message; it was so annoying because he didn’t know whether she had even read it. He was rich, and no one in recent times had ignored him that way.

Henry got even more aggravated because of the silent treatment he was getting from Eunice, so he kept sending condescending emails and reminding her of issues she had discussed with him when they were friends, turning around conversations that were somewhat innocent to make Eunice feel bad or ungrateful.

Still, Eunice refused to respond even when Henry insinuated that the conversation he overheard with the babysitter and Tracy was staged to get his attention and collect his money.

After a whole year of sending such emails with no response from Eunice, Henry decided that he was going to play the last card; he found out that he had sent Eunice a text that she should see it as a loan when she was reluctant to collect the money he sent to her.

Her silence of a year had got him vengeful. He was ready to give Eunice a very uncomfortable time.

With the text, he only needed the receipt of the money he sent her.

Henry logged in to the money transfer app, but then he met with a brick wall because even though he had started the transaction online, he had to make payment at one of the paid agent locations close to his house.

The brick wall was that he needed help accessing the receipt due to the method he used in sending the money to Eunice. The money-sending app notified him that the only records available were money transfers done in the last 90 days.

In anger, he closed the application; he was so angry that it got him so disoriented that when another idea occurred to him that he was willing to try out, he realized after three attempts that he wasn’t typing in the correct password.

After four attempts, he was asked to change his password. The instruction on his screen got him to rethink.

The £10,000 he had given Eunice was a small amount compared to his winnings and how much he is now worth. He allowed his anger and disappointment to get the best of him. He let his selfish and bossy nature turn a woman he liked against him.

He reclined his chair and decided he would let bygones be bygones.

He consoled himself with the fact that many ladies were ready to be at his beck and call at the snap of his fingers.

He decided it was time to stop vengeful and learn to be more accommodating.

There was that flicker of hope that maybe if he changed his ways and not just his password, he would find genuine love somewhere in the future.

THE END

breakups
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About the Creator

Oluremi Adeoye

An accomplished writer who loves contributing articles and stories to Vocal media. My writing focuses on a variety of topics and is known for clarity, insightfulness, and practical advice.

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