Now

Chastity was a questioning-commitment kind of girl because of her very cliché parental issues. She had never thought of herself as traumatized or anything – just smart enough to understand that putting yourself in a situation that required some kind of union to be considered romantic was, at best, questionable. At worst, stupid.

Unlike Ivy's parents who genuinely seemed to like each other (as much as Kenyan parents did anyways) she couldn't remember a time when her parents had been civil for the sake of being civil.

The toothpaste had been pressed on wrong. The food had too little salt. Why was the telly on fucking KTN when the house was a Citizen kind of house? Who dared to not tumble dry the bomber jacket that clearly was specified to tumble dry?

In Chastity's life, the worst her parents ever got was when they had come to her academic day in form two. It had been a shock for her. They never actually came to any school activity together – certainly not one where they would have to actually interact for long periods of time. Academic day was exactly that. Long lines and talking to one another to alleviate boredom and pretend to actually care about Chastity's academic performance.

Mercifully, they had gone through most of the big six; English, Maths, Kiswahili and Chemistry. Chastity had done everyone a favour by booking space on both the Biology and Physics lines so that everything could go faster. They could ignore the humanities and technical subjects – they weren't important enough for her to risk an outright war between her parents.

She had been wrong.

Her mum had forgotten both her lip-balm and Vaseline in the car and her father was not having any of it. "Surely," he had said in a clipped voice that was low but still high enough for Chastity to register the fight in it, "you could do the bare minimum and look decent. What do you want the people around to think? That I don't know how to control my wife? Are you purposefully trying to embarrass me with your chapped lips? At least pretend to think about your daughter and the precedence this sets out for her."

They had been one student away from her Biology teacher. It was supposed to be fine.

"Oh," her mother had snapped back, "now you think you own me?"

Her father gave a sharp almost triumphant nod. "With your dowry expense, yes. I do actually own you."

Because her parents thrived off drama as much as they did fighting every chance they got, they had migrated from using Kamba and were straight up using Kiswahili, earning a few looks here and there. A few interested looks that had Chastity's heart pounding. If they didn't stop, they were going to completely embarrass her.

"Did I actually tell you to pay any of it? You could have said no. Be the modern man you like pretending to be, eh? Maybe if I actually ended up with the second contender, we'd be at our son's academic day!"

A sharp and piercing noise rented the air. Her mum gasped in outrage and those around followed suit. Chastity had taken a step back. She'd never actually seen either of her parents result to physical violence. It always remained in the verbal. Then again, she'd never heard her mother insinuate anything of the sort she'd just heard.

"You will respect me," her father had said through gritted teeth, her mother still clutching at her cheek, eyes wide in absolute shock.

Everyone around them had been quiet, vampirically taking it all in. Chastity was in a kind of state; the one that had her questioning why no one was stepping up front to make the whole thing better. She couldn't. She was the child and she hadn't wanted to risk being smacked in front of everyone in her form.

"Such a big man then," her mother had said, pulling herself out of the shock and coming to her height, "hitting me because I don't want to put lip balm on to please you?" Her laugh right after was a mock. "You want to hit me again, oh great one? Show everyone here just how manly you are? How you hit women when they don't do exactly what you want?"

"Not in front of the child," her father had answered. Chastity had been surprised that one of them had actually remembered she as there.

"Now you remember she is here? Maybe you even remember there are more children around us? This is a school. You understand how they function, Ezekiel?"

It was another first. Other than very far off people in their social vicinity, Chastity had never heard anyone call her father by his actual name. Even at fifteen, she was under the sinking suspicion that if she looked at his birth certificate, she would find Baba Chastity where Ezekiel was supposed to be.

"I dare you to disrespect me one more time..."

The family in front of them was done and they were looking curiously at the very not well-functioning family behind them. Her classmate had taken her hand and squeezed it, giving her a very polite but pitying look as she said, "You're next."

Chastity had given her a curt nod and tried to ignore her wobbling lower lip. She wasn't a child. She couldn't cry about her parents arguing and expect everything to be better in the end. There were levels to such behaviour and if she was being right anyways, it seemed her being a girl was causing a bit more friction so behaving typically like a 'girl' would help nobody.

"Chastity," her biology teacher had called sharply. "Your parents, I assume?" She had nodded and made herself comfortable in the middle seat, hoping that would mend the friction hot in place.

Noting the empty seats, her parents had taken one either side of her and huffed like children as they looked back at her teacher. "Report," her father said sharply, not bothering with niceties.

"You hit your wife in front of everybody then snap at me?" her biology teacher had asked in an acrid tone. "I don't know if you've realized it but you are in a school and your behaviour is what I expect from children in kindergarten, not even primary and you behave like that, at your big age, in front of everyone? Have you even taken a moment to consider your daughter?"

Her mum had sighed in exasperation. "We pay school fees to get progress on our child not some telling off. Report please so that we can leave."

Chastity had not even been mad at the fact that they wanted to leave without going through most of her classes. She had prepared to end up choosing her subjects alone in the end anyways.

She could tell that it was taking everything in her teacher not to snap and actually kick them out of the hall. In surrender, she'd pulled out Chastity's progress report and handed it to her mum. "Good student. I hope she continues on with it." Then she was done and calling for the next family to come join.

"For how much we are paying," her father had said once they were far enough from her teacher, "we shouldn't be treated like that."

"Agreed."

Chastity thought their small honeymoon phase was going to end up sizzling and she was going to bare the sharp end of it if she'd stayed with them long enough.

"Here," her mother handed her two one thousand shillings notes and patted her on the shoulder. "Keep that. You might need fare. I don't know if I'll get time to come pick you up especially with just how much time off I've taken today." Her eyes gradually rose to her husband. "And we know one of us is not the definition of responsible enough."

It had been too short lived – their not too hateful covenant.

Not wanting to be part of any of it, she had waved them bye and insisted she had something to do as well and rushed away. She hadn't realized then that she had witnessed the very first shift in her parents' relationship. They had added physical to the roster and no one was going to stop them.

Having bared witness to their fucked up nature, wishing and hoping they would just separate and move on, Chastity had ended up coming to one inevitable conclusion; relationships were too much of a hustle and she didn't vibe well with the hustle of it all.

As she thought of the very alarming feelings she had for Ivy, she shook to her core, wondering if the end had come too swiftly to their always and forever friendship. It would figure, she thought grimly, that even her one long lasting relationship was going to end because of that wonderful fear.

She'd wanted to take back what she'd sent her. She hadn't actually meant it. The month stipulation had been such goals and it was unfortunate that one week into it she discovered she was in love. It wasn't shocking. With deep deliberations with herself, she realized she'd probably always been in love with Ivy. Who wouldn't have been? The only problem was that she hadn't wanted to see their easy relationship turn to the one she'd always hated.

She didn't want to become the grown adult who couldn't figure out that separation was a far better option to constant fighting.

Chastity also hadn't wanted to be a wuss. It never made for great stories being an absolute coward on all fronts. The easy way would have been to do what she'd planned on doing all along; talk about how they should have never done anything and move on like nothing ever happened. Then she would find a way to crush the feelings into dust and resume life as she knew it.

The hard way was to confess her actual feelings and wait for Ivy to respond. She could easily tell her she didn't feel the same way or she could somehow end up saying she did and then they wouldn't need a time limit to their sexual relationship. It will just be. It was also going to be the first relationship Chastity had ever had the chance of being in.

With either scenario, she liked to hope that she had little to lose. Their friendship had weathered time itself so her confession would not truly alter their dynamic. She didn't want to be like her parents at all and she suspected the first step toward that was facing something as big as confessing love and hoping for the least.

She texted Brent. If she was going to be magnanimously stupid, she was at least going to do it right.