I took more mouthfuls of the meal prepared by myself as I moved towards the table and lost the appetite for it, guess it wasn’t that bad even my beef soup, I’m not lying when I say proud of it.
Honestly, I’m proud of food!
As she opened the containers.
The nicely sumptuous dishes on the table are culpable of making me jettison my appetite for my own made breakfast.
So pleasing to the eye, and tempting to the throat, Mom must be expecting a prestigious visitor for preparing a meal this elegant. We normally have something of this standard on special occasions, perhaps I’m missing in on something here.
I shouldn’t care much, Mom certainly would have filled me in about updates and changes if there were any. My spaghetti sauce was substituted by the pleasing king’s portion but was preserved, as I sat to dine in our nondescript dining room.
Nevertheless, the concept of the dining room outlook doesn’t discredit my meal of jollof rice and beans, salad, plantains, prawns, fish, and grilled chicken. I ate voraciously and reached out for a cup of moderately chilled water, but seeing the red bull energy drink can sitting between my legs, with almost unnecessary efforts I raised the resisting tab opener, pried it open, and drank more than average, then burped.
“Were you saying something?” I asked my mom who reacted with a frown, I thought I saw her lips move as though she was saying something but with no eye contact as she was concentrating on her phone while I gulped the drink.
“What, Were you asking me that?”
I looked up at her confused, and watching her smile decline sparked a refined decorum in me; involuntarily I stopped chewing.
“I thought I heard you say something, I had missed.” The half-chewed food in my mouth detours to the side of my cheeks, allowing for the passage of the sound coming from the esophagus.
“Like seriously, reading between the lines. You’re in fact, implying that hitherto I’ve been throwing words at the back of your ear. Isn’t it?” She pestered disdainfully, though her face radiates disappointment.
I took a sharp look at my food, and with the utmost decorum I hadn’t added another morsel to my already stuffed mouth, “Well, I wasn’t listening.”
“Of course, you weren’t!” She remarked, and hiss.
“Just forget it, I’m off that.” She said, “What are your plans, Ryker? You don’t want to continue in this act, trust me.”
“Hmph” I huffed at that disapprovingly.
Already used to the fair enough but blatant mood swings of hers I had grown up with, but recently she seems to be growing cyclothymic.
I smiled, “Mom guess what I’m doing…”
“Yes, what? Tell me, son.” She said with much eagerness written all over her face.
“As you can see, I’m eating Mom, we could discuss this later. Please” I insisted, not that I will sit down to discuss at any time of the day, that which always had me deflated with uneasiness but I need to buy my way out first.
“Well, I’ll be back Ryker, you’ve got to tell me something, you can’t live without ambitions.”
She quipped and made to grab her handbag, “and that reminds me,” she stared into my eyes with a contagious reaction that seems to affect my reasoning.
“Ryker do not go anywhere today please, stay indoors. With what you’ve told me if that boy is still out there, I have no doubt he’ll be hunting you now.”
I said it, trying to affect me with her fear, but I nodded, no objections really worth it, I already contemplated that.
I concurred because I also want to evade much possible drama, everyone’s already tagged me as a crime peddler but I wanted a clean profile for commendable credibility.
“Before I come back home, efforts will be made to know how is the progress of the police on his case, okay?”
“Alright, Mom. I heard you.”
“Please subscribe to my network for me, will you?”
“It’s okay. I will”
“Make sure you stay indoors”
She included with a facetious smile and found her way out.
*****
I had eaten my full by now and was packing up the remaining to clear the table, then have the house all to myself when my phone chimes. I smiled knowing what that meant.
Coming back out of the kitchen, where I had to preserve the remaining food, ‘those were sure to serve in the nearest future.’
I sauntered to the sitting room, about to take a seat, I felt my pockets for the phone, took it out, and threw myself on the couch.
I was reconciled with the usual comfort of my home accompanied by titillating excitement as I lay on the comfy chair, in a recumbent position.
I unlocked my phone, and connected to the internet, load of notifications cascaded my screen much of which were annoying for their irrelevance.
Saw few of my distant, and in fact, less than a friend had messaged me mostly on Facebook and Instagram, very few on Twitter, though the relationship is not much more significant than that of an acquaintance, but the common factor is that either a fight or some dramatic instances likewise, has always been the starting line and again, aside from Jane.
And if that should fail to be the case to the very present, sure as hell we’ve never been acquainted not to talk of being friends. (Though that might cease to be the scope onward.)
I gave a wry smile at Donald’s message amongst other notifications popping up non-stop ascertaining occasional distractions. As I think about it; in the heyday of my wizardry with agonism, one of my unluckiest encounters was it I had with him, but on a rather lucky day.
With my significantly meager stake and a chronic gambler’s drive to achieve my goal, I had bagged yet again another rare luck of jackpot, my best type of game in the casino for its wild nature.