Joan stared at her phone in disdain and horror. Her face contorted in a serious frown with her veins sticking out fiercely. Her chest heaved as she struggled to breathe, trying to calm down.

She was beyond steamed and even fury was not suitable enough to describe how she felt.

The last time she was this miffed was in junior secondary school when Jack Woodsucker, the infamous school bully had called her ‘tub-shaped’ because she had yet to lose her baby fat at 14.

It hadn’t been his first time mocking her weight and usually, she coiled in embarrassment. That day, however, alongside the embarrassment was unfamiliar deep anger and hatred towards him.

It was just so bad she hadn’t been able to do more than express her irritation and contempt through her countenance.

She had found consolation though, in his surprise at her defiant reaction and in his joke of a surname.

Now Joan wished she could see him someday so as to make him eat his words. Seeing his jaw drop in shock over her nicely put-together body presently would more than compensate her for the consistent torture she had suffered in his hands.

She laughed briefly at the memory and was grateful the trip down memory lane had somehow pacified her.

She had always prided herself on being imperturbable.

But she had been unable to keep up the placid front when Bill, a man she called her boyfriend had all but insulted her when her only crime had been desire to spend the day with him.

He was with his friends in the bar and she knew he had to be drunk or getting there at least.

At any rate, nobody would accuse her of being tactless in dealing with him.

She had told him as subtly as she could manage that she was lonely and needed company and all he had been able to say to that was, “I really wish you would understand that I need to spend time with my friends too.

I have known them forever, even before you came into the picture. You can’t just expect me to get rid of them just because I have you now”.

Okay, just what exactly had she said to warrant the epistle? It wasn’t as if she did not get him; at least there were times when she wanted to spend time with her friends too but it just happened to be never at the expense of him.

It amazed her that when they started dating, he practically wanted to spend every waking hour with her. Now, it sometimes looked like he couldn’t stand her presence at all.

Alright, maybe, that wasn’t exactly true and he was just in one of those moods, even if it was a lot these days. And she knew that when he was in that sour mood, nobody could get to him.

But seriously, who was she kidding? She had known even before she got into the relationship that she was probably making a costly mistake. He had seemed shifty to her even then.

However, nice guys evaded her; someone like Seth, her colleague and friend for instance completely kept his emotions locked up. And because she had lacked better alternatives, she had chosen Bill.

She had also done her best to keep him happy but all she had gotten lately for her efforts were unnecessary outbursts.

Usually, she kept her temper in check but she had been unable to restrain her tongue this time around. It was his fault she had gotten all heated up and had cussed him out.

When she had tried complaining about hardly seeing him, he had said, almost yelling “I can’t understand why you love nitpicking. It’s hardly my fault you have nothing else to keep you company. Why don’t you find something to occupy you so I can breathe sometimes?”

The words that came out of her in reply alarmed her herself. She didn’t know why the male species were always at the root of getting her dander up.

As far as she was concerned, the only decent men she had been fortunate enough to come across were her brother and Seth. As ridiculous as it sounded even to her, she was going to stick with her opinion.

And maybe she was been a bit biased about her brother but everybody who got within ten feet of Gregue would attest to the fact that he was a perfect gentleman. She wondered why he had yet to find some girl to call his own.

It must be because he was still sitting around waiting for Clara, the cute little colleague, as Joan liked to call her to discover he had feelings for her.

Why men like her brother, whom as a matter of fact, any woman would be lucky to have, lacked insight was beyond her.

Didn’t anybody tell them that they had to go after what they wanted, to get it? The main reason why she was pathetically stuck with Bill was that some nice guy was yet to come sweep her off her feet.

That wasn’t exactly true, she quickly reminded herself. She had had a few ask her out and had shown total disinterest. To be fair, it was in secondary school and she had considered it morally wrong to be in that kind of relationship with the opposite sex at that stage of her life. She had known she wasn’t ready.

Now that she was, it was as if she put a “no room for a nice guy in my life” sign on her forehead because they just plainly avoided her.

It wasn’t her fault she was intimidatingly beautiful, nor should she be blamed for getting a modelling gig in her year 1 in the university; making her a very comfortable student.

She couldn’t understand why her success was a hindrance to meeting nice guys; only the bad ones had enough confidence to approach her. And one of that category of men had just put her in a snit.

She sighed as she remembered that she should be thinking about how to deal with the situation instead of rambling.

Bill had not only told her to get a life but he had been shameless enough to be indiscreet about it.

When did it become a crime for a girl to want to spend time with her boyfriend? The least he could do was tell her nicely that he wouldn’t be available. She wasn’t a whiner for goodness sake; she would have understood.

It wasn’t even that he had refused her invitation that made her furious; it was the fact that he hadn’t had the decency to excuse himself from his friends to berate her in private.

He had practically been screaming at her to let him be, giving his friends, if not the whole bar an earful. Her stay with Bill was unfathomable, and it was nobody but Seth’s fault.

The guy literally worshipped the floor she stepped on but he wouldn’t say anything about it. If not that her radar was more sensitive than most women, she wouldn’t have known he had feelings for her, he was that good at masking how he felt.

They had been friends since their first year in university and it was the most productive friendship she had ever been part of. Seth was close to, if not perfect, he gave chivalry another meaning.

They were graduating in a couple of months and he had yet to tell her he had feelings for her; that is if he ever told her at all. And regardless of the fact that she knew without a doubt that they would make the perfect item, there was no way she was helping him do the telling.

She had waited three years for him to voice out and he hadn’t. She could hardly be living in a fantasy land with the hope that it would come to pass someday when all indications showed chances were bleak.

Though Bill was a total thorn in her flesh most of the time, they had their good times. Although he smoked and drank to a stupor sometimes, he was great company when he was sober.

Seth, just like her brother was one of those good guys who let girls settle for the undesirable. She was done waiting for him to realize they should be more than friends and no one could blame her for sticking to the available when the desirable was unavailable.