DO WHAT YOU WANT

You roll to the edge of the bed and lower your feet until you feel the brown bedside rug. Standing, you look around for your bra and squat to pick it from the feet of your bed and put it on. You grab a cigarette pack from the top of the bedside cabinet and light one as you walk to the balcony, your bare ass trembling with every step you make. You lean over the balcony, take a drag and spell the smoke in a smooth tiny stream, watching with a smile as it floats in the air before fading into the evening's breeze. You look over your shoulder and gaze at him. He lifts his eyes from your ass to meet your gaze and you both stare at each other in silence until you take another long drag, let the smoke out through your nose and ask him to leave.

"Nothing is sexier in this world than a naked smoking woman," he says.

"You need to leave," you repeat, ignoring his remarks.

"I thought I was to spend the night."

"You thought wrong. I never allow men spend the night in my house."

"Come on, Talona, my memory never fails me."

"So what if I did? Can't I change my mind anymore? Please, dress up and leave. You can use my shower if you want, but you must leave."

He throws off the covers and walks over to you. He is naked. He wraps his arms around you and you can feel the touch of his penis on your ass. It sends shivers down your spine, and you provocatively rub your ass on it until you feel it start to grow before pushing him away with your back.

"I have had enough for tonight," you say.

"Does that mean we can have it again some other day?"

"No."

"We need to be in a relationship for me to have sex with you more than once. And we are not in a relationship, are we?"

"We can be if you want." He touches your waist, gently tracing your skin with his fingers. "Which man will pass the chance to be with a woman like you? A woman with curves and—"

"We are never having sex again, Mister, so calm down." You turn around and place your left hand on his shoulder. "Neither am I interested in being in a relationship with you. I reckon you are only saying the things you are saying because you are horny and horny men can say anything as long as it gives them a through pass to a woman's vagina. So dress up and go home."

“So, you were only using me?"

"Who was using who? Did I, at any point, insert anything in you?"

"Come on, you know what I mean."

You sigh. "Seriously, man, why do you have to make things difficult. The sex we just had was good and we I believe we both enjoyed, but there was never a bigger agenda other than the sex."

He nods before walking away. Putting his clothes on in haste, he grabs his shoes and storms out, banging the living room's door shut. Smiling in amusement, you grab your phone, also from the bedside cabinet and scroll through his naked pictures, which he drunkenly allowed you to take, with a wicked smile.

"Surprise, surprise, Sasha," you say, lowering yourself on the bed, "You will know better than to mess with me next time."

You can almost see Sasha gaping and cursing after receiving the images: "Oh Bitch you didn't! Think you can play me and get away with it? I will show you!" But you know there's nothing she can do to you that would be worse than what she already did. You were once best friends, working as bank tellers before she got an accounting job in an ICT firm. But though you liked each other a lot, there is nothing similar about you two, not in looks or behaviour. While you are dark with a curvy body, Sasha is light-skinned and with a slender frame. You are also in touch with your feelings, believing in love and in mankind, while Sasha is free-spirited. She loves sex, but not the people she has sex with. You used to think that maybe it was your difference, your diversity, that brought you together, and that whereas you had different views in life, there were lines neither of you would cross, at least for the sake of your friendship.

You were wrong.

Your friendship suffered when she started her new job. You did not see each other as often as you would have liked and not even the numerous phone calls and WhatsApp messages to each other could bridge the gap. One day you decided to pay her a surprise visit at her new workplace when you bumped into this fine man who turned out to be her boss. His name was Mike. Tall and dressed up in a fitting suit. Smile brighter than the smiling emoji. When you greeted him, he held on to your hand for a little longer, prying your eyes with his.

"Did you say you are Sasha's friend?" he asked.

"Best friend."

"I see. Do you think she will mind if I ask you out?"

"Are you asking me out? If you are, it will be helpful if you are direct about it. I love men who don't beat around the bush."

"Fair enough," he shrugged, intensifying his gaze. "My lady, will you do me the honour of having dinner with me tonight?"

"Tonight?"

"Tonight's good, but I am a flexible man."

"Let's do tomorrow night."

"Tomorrow night it is. If you give me your number, I will call you then we can plan on where to have that dinner."

You took his phone from him and dialed your number. You expected him to call right way to ascertain it was truly your number, but he didn't. He was too confident to assume you would give him a false number, something that made you think that perhaps, for shits and giggles, you could have given him a wrong number. Sasha sat with her elbows placed on the table and hands holding her cheeks, listening to you tell her how smitten you were with her new boss. Normally, she would interject with questions but not on this day. She waited until you were done, leaning back against the chair and looking at her with your dreamy eyes before she spoke.

"What happened to not sleeping with a man unless you are sure he is the one? Or you are no longer serious about finding the man after your heart now that you are thirty?"

After your last breakup, you had promised yourself that you were not going to waste your time on men who only wanted to get in your pants. You wanted something more now that you had hit thirty and was afraid you will never find the one. At least not in time. But it was a resolution you held on to for approximately two weeks before deciding it was stupid, only you hadn't told Sasha yet.

"And who said Mike cannot be the one?"

"Does he look like he can be the one?"

"I am going out with him so that I can find out. I am not going to find the one by sitting around my house doing nothing, right? I have to throw myself out there. Come on, aren't you happy for me?"

She forced a smile. "I am thrilled for you."

"Haha. Mike won't get anywhere near my pants if he doesn't show he is serious."

The date with Mike went on well and soon after, you were a thing. On your third date, you tried to calm down your screaming loins after he dropped you home but your loins refused to be calmed down. You welcomed him in and as soon as the door banged shut, you wrapped your arms around his neck and kissed him, begging him to take you. And he did. He lifted your dress, lowered your pants and bent you over the dining table before proceeding to ram into you, drawing quick gasps from you. He grew bigger inside you with every stroke and you felt ashamed that you were enjoying it, even though what you were doing was against your initial plans. But you were still together two months after the sex so you stopped feeling bad about yourself and your life choices. You got preoccupied with Mike that you stopped noticing when Sasha missed your calls and took ages to reply to your messages. In fact, you wouldn't have noticed that it had been over a month since you saw each other were it not for Mike asking what you and Sasha planned to do on a Thursday Ladies' Night.

"Uhm, we haven't decided yet," you said, unwilling to admit it to Mike that you and Sasha had no plans. You feared he would think he was the reason you two had drifted apart.

To make up for your guilt, you decided to stop by Sasha's office one afternoon and she was happy to see you.

"I am sorry I haven't been a good friend to you ever since Mike and I started dating," you said.

"You have nothing to be sorry about. So are you here to see Mike?"

"What are you talking about? I am here to see you."

"Oh, really?"

"Why do you act surprised?"

"Forgive me. Some calculations here screwing me up."

"No worries. Do you want to hang out this evening?"

"I would love to but I am feeling a little bit tired. Maybe we can hang out next weekend?"

"Next weekend is fine by me," you said, sensing she was only trying to avoid you.

"Thanks for understanding."

"Hey, forgive me for asking but does it make you uncomfortable that I am dating your boss? Because the truth is you've been acting strange ever since I started seeing him."

She laughed off your suggestion. "Now you are sounding crazy. Me? Uncomfortable? Please! You can date my father and I still wouldn't be uncomfortable. You know me, don't you?"

"If you say so. Our friendship means a lot to me and I was thinking of breaking up with Mike if that's what was going to take to maintain it."

"Really?" Her face lightened up in a split second before she blushed with embarrassment. “I mean, that would be crazy, jeez! I wouldn't let you ruin this beautiful thing that you both have."

“That's a relief to hear because Mike and I are so much in love.”

You both feigned chuckles because now you were sure she was jealous and she knew that you knew. But the next weekend she called and asked you to meet her at your usual bar and you hesitantly agreed. After a few drinks, she confessed that indeed she was at first jealous of you because you seemed to be doing well yet she sucked in her relationships.

"You suck in relationships? Which relationships are you talking about? Because the Sasha I know doesn't do relationships, no?"

She laughed.

"Anyway, it was foolish of me to be jealous of you. You are my friend and I am supposed to be happy for you not jealous."

Your kind heart couldn't allow you to let her apologise for the more. "It's okay, and I am sorry I haven't made things easier for you either. I shouldn't have stopped checking on you."

You then spent the better part of the night drinking and enjoying being hit on by men, some good looking and others with terrible pick-up lines that were last used in 1783. The night went on well, free drinks from hopeful men kept coming and you drunk yourselves to stupor.

You woke up the next day feeling dizzy and with a minor headache. You do not even remember how you got home last night, the last memory you have is of you drinking in the bar. You roll on the bed and feel a cold thing touch your skin. It's your phone. You look at it and you have a hundred missed calls all from Mike. Panicking, you call him back and the first thing he tells you is to never call him again.

"What? I mean, why?" You ask.

He hung up and before you could swim out of this pool of confusion, your WhatsApp came alive with a string of messages, again from Mike, and in shock, you actually saw that you did send him naked pictures of you and a strange man in bed. Your eyes bulged out as you tried to make sense of what was happening and when you couldn't control your emotions, you hurled the phone over the wall but luckily, only the screen cracked. You tried calling Mike to explain things to him but he didn't pick your calls. Neither did Sasha.

“That bitch played me!” You mumbled.

You went to her place to confront her and she denied doing such thing. You would have believed her eventually if it were not for the fact that she and Mike started dating not long after. You knew about them from her Instagram Page, which was splashed with images of him and her having fun in beaches, restaurants and other exotic places. With every photo you clicked to look at, anger built up in you, you could feel it burning in your belly. You went to her inbox and asked her, politely, at first, how she could do this to you, followed by a second message, a longer one, cursing and threatening.

She wrote back: "People fight for love, my dear, I fought for this one and now I have it. I suggest you find another man or, I don't know, do what THE FUCK YOU WANT!"

What you wanted, at that time, was to squeeze the life out of something with blood running in its veins.

You took your time to heal and to plan your revenge. You knew it wouldn’t be long before they broke up because that's what Sasha was good at. And true, they broke up.

You spied on her through her colleagues who hated her and were more than willing to tell you anything you needed to know and when she finally hooked up with John, a filthy rich bank manager, you knew the time had come. You watched closely every move they made and with no time you had every information about John and most importantly, where he drunk.

You took your bow and arrow and hunted him down, inspired by the fact that he had already proposed to Sasha. You met him at the bar, seated on a high stool at the counter, drinking whiskey. You were in a short black dress that deepened with your waist and protruded with your hips. When you sat on the stool next to him, the dress moved an inch hire to flaunt your thighs and you could see from the corner of your eye his eyes roaming your body. As the waiter leaned forward to take your order, he jumped in and said you should be given whatever you wanted on his tab.

"So, beautiful lady, what's your name?" he asked.

You were glad he asked. You drunk. And talked. And invited him in when he dropped you home. He was about to sit on the couch when you took his hand and led him to the bedroom, guiding his hand to your thighs. He was drunk, but alcohol was not going to prevent him from having fun, so he slipped his fingers up your dress, hoping to rub your vagina over your underwear but you weren't wearing any. So he touched your lady part before sliding one finger in, and then another, and soon you were moaning loudly, struggling with his belt. He stumbled out of his trousers as you yanked your dress over your shoulder before tossing it to the ground. He knelt between your legs, took a nipple into his mouth and slid into you. Slowly. But firmly. And the test of victory was stronger and sweeter in your mouth.

… So now, lying in bed, you scroll through the pictures, and then forward them one by one to Sasha, each one of them captioned: I DID WHAT I WANTED, BABY!