Embraced (#2 Natives series) #ProjectNigeria

Chapter Eight

*Author's Note At The End. Please read. Thanks*

Chapter Eight

"HUSBAND?"

Rashida Abdullah nodded to her daughter's inquiry like it was the most normal of conversations. Like telling an engaged lady that ending her engagement was the best thing that could happen to her in the world.

Fatiha shut her eyes as she tried to soothe her frustration. She peeled it open when her mother began to speak again.

"I don't think that boy is ready," she declared as she rummaged through her closet, littering the already littered bed. "The both of you have been engaged for years. Who does that?"

"He's still planning. He's still preparing." Fatiha jumped to her fiancé's defense. "Would you want a penniless man to marry me?" she asked her mother although it didn't much matter to her because she knew Faisal was hardworking. If anyone could make it work, it would be him.

"God forbid!" Fatiha's mother exclaimed in Hausa. She pivoted with a much more comfortable cotton gown in her hands and a scowl on her face. "I don't care if he's planning or preparing, end that relationship with him today."

Fatiha groaned silently. "Mommy-" Her hopes of placating her mother failed as the woman warned sternly.

"Listen to me, Fatiha. This kind of relationship is not going to work. Do you know how many of my meeting members have asked me when you'll be getting married? You're getting old. When I was your age I was already pregnant with Zarah. People those days barely knew the men they were getting married to. But, not me though. I looked for a man of my taste. A man that could provide me with comfort and not leave me lacking. Marriages these days are not..."

Fatiha watched her mother as she gesticulated and talked simultaneously, her own lips moving soundlessly to the story her mother had so often told her. Fatiha found her mind trailing to the thought of marrying someone other than Faisal and it was terrible.

She could feel the beginnings of her throat closing up and her palms sweating at the idea of being eternally tied to someone who resented her body fat and shape. Someone who wasn't Faisal. Someone who wouldn't be able to accept her as she was. The thought almost made it hard for her to breathe.

She couldn't do it. Fatiha mentally shook her head. No! She wouldn't do it. Faisal was the only one who had accepted her the way she was.

Fatiha could remember years back when she'd been crushing on a certain classmate of hers in Jss2. His name had been Habib and they were in the same class. He was new in town and was kind and smart and beautiful and funny, and Fatiha had really liked him. She had crushed on him through the three terms of Jss2.

During their first term in Jss3, she had doodled on the back page of her notebook; stick figures of a man in a polka-dotted bow tie with a woman in a flowing gown layered with flowers holding hands, and at the very top of their heads she had written in bold blue ink Fatiha weds Habib.

Somehow during break period Habib had seen her drawing and had thrown up, literally, at the idea of him marrying an hippopotamus. The entire class had laughed at her and Fatiha who didn't know how Habib had gotten her notebook had torn it from his hands and bolted out of the class.

She remembered wishing she could disappear and how dread had consumed her when she'd had to go back to class because break period had been over. Hippopotamus, that was what he'd called her. That one word had ruined the perfect image of Habib she had engraved in her heart. After that day Fatiha didn't see Habib as kind or beautiful or smart. Instead she had seen how ugly he was and now thirteen years older, she found herself wondering how she had ever liked a jerk like him.