1.Beginnings

LEONA'S POV

"Deborah, I will kill you if you dare say another word!", the shout tore through the house like thunder.

Leona’s eyes snapped open. Something crashed in the next room—glass, maybe a plate—and the sound echoed through the hallway.

For a moment, she lay still in the darkness ,her sisters slept beside her, their breathing slow and steady. They had learned how to sleep through it.
Leona never had.

Another bang rattled the wall.She pushed herself upright, heart pounding.
Her parents were at it again and it was always after midnight.

Her brother wasn’t home tonight. He was probably out with his friends, doing whatever boys did when they wanted to stay away from a house like this.
Lucky him.

The house fell quiet for a few seconds.
Then her mother’s voice rose—sharp, angry, fighting back.
Leona closed her eyes.

Please stop. She wanted to scream.

But the shouting only grew louder.
A chair scraped violently across the floor, and before, he knew it a door slammed.

Words blurred into noise until the walls themselves seemed to tremble with it.
Leona turned toward the wall and pulled the blanket up to her shoulder.

If she could just sleep.If she could just disappear for a few hours.

The argument dragged on for nearly an hour before heavy footsteps thundered down the hallway.

The front door opened. Then slammed shut, and silence finally settled over the house.

Leona exhaled slowly, relief washing over her.

Her father had left. Again.

She reached for the worn paperback on the small table beside her bed. The corners of the pages were bent from being read too many times.She had read this story countless times.But readers never grew tired of their favorite worlds.

In books, people loved each other.
In books, love didn’t sound like breaking glass.Leona read until the words blurred and sleep finally pulled her under.

Morning arrived like nothing had happened.Sunlight spilled across the kitchen table.

Her father sat calmly reading the morning newspaper while her mother moved around the kitchen, placing eggs and toast in front of him.

“More tea?” she asked softly. Leona paused in the doorway.

If she hadn’t heard the shouting herself, she might have believed they were a happy family.

Her mother even rested a hand lightly on her father’s shoulderaffectionate gesture.

The performance was flawless.Anyone outside these walls would have admired them.

What a perfect couple.

But Leona knew better, She noticed the faint shadows beneath her mother’s eyes, the tired way she moved.

Her mother smiled easily, too easily and sometimes, Leona wondered if the smile she wore was real anymore.

Or if her mother had simply become very good at pretending to be okay. Jad she just learnt to take things in.

That morning, while chewing slowly on a piece of toast, Leona made a quiet decision.

Marriage would never take her.
Not now.
Not ever.

She wanted to be an engineer.
An aerospace engineer.
A woman who built machines that touched the sky.

Where would she find time for babies and a husband?
She had watched what marriage did to her mother.Years of smiling for guests.
Years of forgiving her father’s cheating.
Years of raising children he had with other women.

Leona had watched the life drain slowly from the woman who once laughed easily and somewhere along the way. Without realizing it, Leona had become the second parent in the house.

Cooking dinner, helping with homework, washing school uniforms late into the night packing lunches, and she wasn’t even the eldest.

Her two older siblings had escaped already. They hated the house and only returned during the holidays.

Home was not a place anyone wanted to stay in.

Leona often wondered if her parents had ever been in love. Really in love.
The kind where people looked at each other with dreamy eyes.

The thought made her stomach twist.
Because if love like that could exist…
Then what had happened to it?
And if it could disappear so easily—
What was the point of believing in it at all?

The night her father threatened to kill her mother was the night something inside Leona quietly died.

Every dream of love.
Every soft idea about marriage.
Gone.

When she got older, boys tried their luck with her, and one of them once approached her upfront

He told her she was beautiful. He said he liked the way she carried herself. That her smile made his day.
For a moment, she caught herself smiling in amusement at him

The moment she realized it, she ignored him and every other boy who tried.

There had been one exception that she never talked about it. Never even allowed herself to remember.
To her, it had never happened.

By the time she finished high school, she had never had a boyfriend while her friends talked endlessly about love and relationships.

Leona only laughed along with them.
At night, she escaped into books.
Stories about men who would burn the world down for the women they loved.
TikTok called them book boyfriends.
Leona had many of them.

But strangely, she preferred the darker characters. The dangerous ones.

The kind of men who were intense and complicated and maybe because real men had already disappointed her.

University quickly changed things for her when she realized avoiding men completely wasn’t realistic, so she created her own rules to protect herself

No love.
No commitment.
Just pleasure.
An itch to scratch.

Nothing more, and for a while, it worked until she met Terrence Mwelwa.

He looked like he had stepped straight out of one of the books she loved.Tall. Nearly six feet. Light-skinned, with waves that fell perfectly over his forehead.

A silver piercing glinted in his left ear.
And when he smiled—
Leona felt butterflies.

Terrence noticed her quickly, not because she was the loudest or the prettiest girl on campus.

But because she was quiet.
“The quiet ones,” he once said, “are usually the most interesting.”T heir rendezvous started casually.

Exactly the way Leona liked it, no expectations, no promises.
Just two people enjoying each other, and that was what she told herself every time she went back to him

Not the way he laughed with her.
Not the way he looked at her.
Just what they had to give each other and for a while, their arrangement worked perfectly until Terrence began wanting more.

Longer conversations, actual dates, and sleepovers that turned into mornings together.
Eventually, he introduced her to his sisters and then his mother.

Leona should have run. Instead, she stayed.l and before she knew it, Terrence stood proudly beside her at graduation, holding the largest bouquet she had ever seen.

For the first time in her life, Leona allowed herself to feel something dangerous.

Belonging.

After graduation, she moved in with him, and for a while, life was good.

Until the night, everything shattered.

“Who is she?” Leona asked quietly.
Terrence laughed.

The next thing she felt was the sharp sting across her cheek as silence filled the room.

Leona tasted blood as she watched him realise what he had just done, the shock clear on his face too and suddenly, she was ten years old again.

Listening to her father shout in the dark. That night, she packed her things frantically while terrence begged.
He pleaded  and reminded her of his promise to marry her.

But Leona had made herself one promise long ago.She would never become the woman who stayed.
So she left.

The months after their breakup were hard.Their friends couldn’t believe it.
Many of them thought Terrence had been planning to propose.

Leona scoffed at the idea. Better it ended before it began.

She buried herself in work instead.Leona had always been an overachiever, and that was why she chose aerospace engineering.

She wanted the kind of independence money could buy. Vacations to the Bahamas.Trips to the Caribbean.

A life where she never depended on anyone.
Especially not a man.

Whenever she slept with someone, she reminded herself of the rules.

No love.
No commitment.
It's just an itch to scratch.

                               *****

It was her twenty-fifth birthday when her friends threw her a party.

“Lee,” Mwenya said suddenly, “when are you going to get with someone?”

Leona rolled her eyes.

“I don’t know. I'm not interested.”

“Mmm,” Tanya hummed.

“Not you too,” Leona groaned.

All her friends were in serious relationships.

Dating.
Engaged.
Married.

And her excuse was always the same.
She was chasing the bag.

“Don’t say you're still chasing the bag,” Mwila said, earning an eye roll.

“God forbid a girl is single without people thinking something’s wrong with her,” Leona muttered.

Mwenya didn’t mind Leona being single.
What worried her was something else.
Leona was single quite alright, and yet there was always someone in her bed.

“Have you ever actually been single?”, Tanya asked suddenly.

“What do you mean?” Leona asked.

“She meant… single single.”
Mwila clarified.

“No man in your bed.”, she added
Leona sighed.

“Single and celibate are two different things.”

“I actually think sleeping with someone you’re not married to is harder than simply dating them,” Mwila said.

Leona nearly choked on her drink.
When did Mwila start talking like this?
Her eyes immediately shifted to Mwenya.
She had to be behind this.

“I didn’t do anything,” Mwenya mouthed quickly.
Leona narrowed her eyes.

“So you’re not sleeping with Gift anymore?”

“I ended things with him,” Mwila answered calmly. Nothing on her face gave off someone going through a breakup. It was almost like she was relieved.

Leona blinked.

“What?”

“We tried being celibate,” Mwila explained. “And I realized the only thing keeping us together was sex.”

Leona laughed.
“How does that even work? What exactly do you do in a relationship then?”

“Nothing,” Mwenya said softly.

“Boring,” Tanya said immediately.

She and Leona high-fived each other
Mwenya just smiled patiently.

********

Later that night, Leona lay in bed staring at the ceiling. Mwila’s question echoed in her mind.

"Have you ever actually been single?"

Single without someone in her bed.
Single without the rules she set and without always exerting control of the rendezvous she was in with the man at the time in her life.

Her thoughts drifted to a memory she hadn’t allowed herself to revisit in years.

A season
A person
Years of friendship
A moment she had buried so deeply, she pretended it never existed.

For a long time, Leona stared into the darkness.

Then, slowly—
She allowed herself to remember.

How was chapter 1?

Who's your favorite friend so far
?
What do you think chapter 2 will hold ?

Let me know all your thoughts in the comments.

Till next time
Unathi 🤍