Lusaka didn’t wake up that morning. It lingered. It was caught somewhere between the fading darkness and the slow creeping light. Mutinta squinted at the ceiling, which was as indifferent to his confusion as the headache that sat on his temples. Time felt irrelevant—whether it was seven or nine didn’t matter. What mattered was the sun forcing its way through the curtains, flinging golden bars across the room.
Mutinta looked at the woman besides him. Her hair spilled across the pillow in a way that reminded him of something.
Not Jane. Definitely not Jane.
Mutinta’s gaze faltered, drawn instead to the scuffed tiles beneath the bed. He clung to the illusion—it was the whiskey. The late-night indulgence. The reckless abandon of it all. When his eyes returned to her face, recognition crashed over him like a freight train.
It was Emily!
Emily, of all people.
Her name burned into his mind like a curse. It was impossible to ignore, impossible to erase. The woman he had sealed in the vault of memory, vowed never to summon again.
And yet, there she was, curled in the crumpled sheets of his disgrace.
This was not the birthday he had dreamed of. He should have woken to the sound of his kids’ laughter and Jane’s voice carrying wishes of joy.
Mutinta sat on the edge of the sagging bed. His hands trembled as they cradled his head. The room reeked of stale decisions and half-truths.
“How did it come to this?” he muttered under his breath.
Was it the whiskey? Or was it the gaping void of his own stupidity?
Mutinta’s eyes darted to the nightstand, where a half-empty bottle of Glenfiddich stood like an accuser. The bottle hadn’t coaxed him here—not really. It wasn’t the whiskey that pulled him back into Emily’s orbit—it was something else. Something he had buried long ago but had never truly let go of.
Emily.
It was Emily.
Her laugh flared in his mind. Emily had always been a storm that swept him up and left him stranded. Back then, he had been captivated by her chaos.
But that was a lifetime ago.
Before Jane. Before the kids. Before he had built the life he was on the verge of destroying.
He glanced at Emily again. Mutinta could not breathe. He needed air. He needed clarity. Mutinta rose and grabbed his scattered clothes and dressed himself. He kept his gaze fixed anywhere but on her, on the delicate rise and fall of her breath, on the remnants of a night that should never have been. Emily scooched, but she didn’t wake.
Mutinta clutched his car keys and made his way to the door. His hand gripped the handle. Then, he hesitated.
Should he say something?
The thought clawed at him. What could he possibly say? Words wouldn’t undo this. They wouldn’t turn back time or erase his mistakes.
“Mutinta!” Emily yelled. Mutinta froze but didn’t turn around.
“How did we even get here, Emily?” he asked. “I don’t even remember.”
She sat up and wrapped the sheet around her like a shroud. “You don’t need to remember, Mutinta. You only need to know I’m here now.”
“I thought…I thought I left you behind. For good. Years ago.”
Emily smiled and said:
“You did. But I never left you.”
Mutinta turned, enough to catch her gaze.
“Why now?” he asked. “Why on my birthday, of all days?”
“Because birthdays are for beginnings,” she replied. “And I’ve waited long enough to start over with you.”
“This isn’t a beginning, Emily. This is a wreckage.”
Emily rose from the bed.
“No,” she said, stepping closer. “It’s a chance. You’re miserable with her, aren’t you? Jane doesn’t understand you the way I do. She never does.”
Mutinta flinched at her words.
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t bring her into this.”
“She’s always been in this,” Emily countered. “You’ve been lying to yourself, Mutinta. You still love me. I see it in your eyes, hear it in the way you said my name last night.”
“That wasn’t love,” he said finally. “That was weakness.”
“Weakness?” she repeated. “Is that what you call the fire between us? The way you looked at me like I was the only woman in the world?”
“You’re not the only woman in the world… Jane is. She’s my world.”
“Then why are you here with me, Mutinta? Why did you let me back in?”
He didn’t have an answer. Or maybe he did, but he was too ashamed to say it aloud.
“I’ll tell you why,” she continued. “Because deep down, you know you were never truly hers. You were always mine.”
“No,” he said. “I was hers the moment I chose her over you. And I’ll keep choosing her, every day, even after this.”
“We’ll see,” she said as she walked back to the motel bed. “We’ll see if you’re still hers when she learns the truth.”
Mutinta opened the door and stepped into the daylight; the sun biting at his skin. His Audi sat in the parking lot—pristine and reliable. It was a cruel contrast to the mess of his life.
Mutinta slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine. The engine smiled to life yet his thoughts refused to quit. The road stretched endlessly before him and offered no solace, no answers.
“Why am I not home with Jane and the kids?” he whispered.
A laugh escaped his lips. He already knew the answer. He wasn’t home because he had chosen this.
He didn’t know what he feared more—losing Jane or facing her and confessing the truth. He had built his life on love, trust and responsibility. But it felt like a house of cards teetering on the edge of collapse.
The passenger seat caught his eye. A small blue box was neatly wrapped. It was a birthday gift Jane had tucked away weeks ago. She thought he wouldn’t notice. She had always been thoughtful, always attentive to the little things.
Mutinta’s heart burnt.
He could see Jane’s smile as she teased him about his age. Mutinta could hear her laugh, the light, beautiful sound that had made his worst days bearable. He remembered the way she looked at him when they first met—like he was the answer to a question she hadn’t known she was asking.
Yet, he felt like he was the question she’d never want to ask.
Emily’s name crept back into his thoughts. How had it happened? How had he let her pull him under again?
And then came the memory of their first meeting. It was a romance that had burned too hot and too fast. She was everything Jane wasn’t: unpredictable, wild and talkative. The same qualities that had drawn him in were the ones that had driven him away. He thought he had closed that chapter for good.
Instead, the pages were wide open.
Tears escaped from the corners of his eyes as he gripped the wheel. The road blurred into a monotony of grey and green but his thoughts blurred like the rain of time.
He had lost it all.
Sometimes, the problems that destroy us aren’t the work of fate. They are born of our own reckless hands. Our own foolish hearts. Mutinta knew this. Oh, he knew it too well.
The realisation hit Mutinta harder than any bottle ever could. He sank back into the leather seat staring at the horizon as if it could provide answers. Was it whiskey? Or was it stupidity?
Neither mattered now.
…..
Image: Dall-E remixed