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The first time I understood what sugar Daddy is, was in 2010. It was the same year I knew that most girls have boyfriends in all cities they've spent at least two days.

I I had begged this fine girl, a fellow awardee, to let me travel with her to Port Harcourt to submit the documents required of us. I hadn't been to Port Harcourt before. She was young and dainty. Not quite a native city girl but she strove to show her knowledge of the contemporary. And that made her what is known today as slay queen.

She said we should get to Enugu a day before, and from there take a bus to Port Harcourt. She had detached a little to make a call. Soon after, a shiny Camry pulled over at our feet. I had run back, cursing the driver in my mother tongue. Stella hopped in. I stood, staring at both of them. He was a middle aged man. I had been warned never to enter a stranger's car.
'Olodo, hop in!' Stella shouted, laughing.
Insult was insult, whether said with a smile or a frown. I bore it. I had no option.
I clinched my file in my armpit and entered the back seat. They kept their voices low while I pretended to be deaf. We got to the man's house at dusk.
'Stella who's this man? I remember asking.
'He's just a friend.' She'd answered.

The man went inside the kitchen and cooked us indomie with chicken, and for the first time I thanked God for travelling with Stella. I lay on the padded settee in the sitting room, ruminating some chicken bones and picking some remnants in between my teeth.
The man begged Stella to move in with him to the inner room but Stella refused. She said she was comfortable in the sitting room. He came to me and whispered that I should please go and sleep in the inner room and I refused too. I was scared. That night, I was so afraid that the man would kill me and have his way. I couldn't sleep. He came out seven times in the dead of the night, and while standing at his door watched Stella with her blouse rolled up her smooth, oily thighs and her chest heaving up and down as she slept. I had noticed something nodding unrepentantly in between his thighs. I pitied him.

Stella woke me up the following morning. Sleep had overcome  me at some point. The man didn't drop us off at the park.

'Stella, I'm not happy?' He said while standing at the door.
Stella turned and gave him a peck. 'You should understand!' She whispered.
'But....'
'Don't worry, I'll come next week.' Stella said, cutting him short.

As soon as we reached Port Harcourt, Stella called another man.
'I have reached.' She said on the phone.
Not more than five minutes later, a cab pulled in front of us. A light-skinned man in his late sixties came out. He quickly hugged Stella, and while looking at all directions briskly waved Stella into the cab. Stella dragged me along. The man was acting as if something was after him. I noticed the chagrin on his face the moment he realised that Stella wasn't alone.
'Good afternoon, sir.' I had greeted.
'Thank you.' The man giggled in response.
'Is he your dad?' I asked, turning to Stella.
She clasped my lips with her left hand while forcing a loud hiss to mask my question. I then understood.

The man took us to everywhere we needed to go. He drove us to Tantalizers along Trans-Amadi way and watched me devour a plate of rice and sauce with turkey. It was the first in a long time that I was eating turkey.

Trouble ensued between me and Stella. The man had paid for our tickets back to Abakaliki, after Stella had assured him that she was going to come alone the following week. I had watched him count fifty thousand naira and handed to Stella, an equivalent of all my dad gave me in a whole year!
Stella gave him a warm and long embrace. On returning to the bus, I asked Stella for my share.
'Which share?' Stella asked with such a mean tone.
'I just saw him give you 50k!' I interjected.
'And so? Obinna, you're so ungrateful. You travelled with me free, ate everything free yet you're not satisfied!'

'He's not your father nah! The money is for both of us! I intoned.
'Thunder fire you there! I blame myself for travelling with you.'
I kept quiet. I didn't want to create a scene in the bus.

I called Stella many times the following week to know if I could travel again with her but she didn't pick my calls. She never picked.

Four years later, I ran into Stella carrying a baby, hustling to cross the road with a man I would later learn to be her husband. She looked like an old G wagon; full of frame but void of flesh. Her blouse hung loosely on her skeleton. The man himself was looking so haggard and lost in his pair of rusted jeans and faded polo. Both of them looked like survivors of the Rwandan genocide.

I had greeted them with a familiar tone and overt enthusiasm. Stella turned to notice it was me. Her face full of shock glittered with dark spots like the dotted leopard. But as the man forced a smile, trying to exchange pleasantries with me, she hurriedly dragged him into the traffic with such a force.

'Obinna, bye, bye!' She shouted from the other side of the road.
I stood and watched them for some minutes and shook my head. I laughed. I knew it was just an escape; she was scared of what I might ask.

One thing is true and sure; sugar Daddy pays well. Yes, it does. It pays both now and later, in a regrettable way.

But in all later on, atrocities of the past, sorrows of the present and fear of the future, all scare the guilty conscience!

Sorry, dear Stella. At least, you enjoyed sometime in your life.

Wetin konsine me! 😂😂

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