Last weekend saw me getting up early to head out to one of the most remote parts of the city for my girlfriend’s birthday barbecue. Her parents owned a beautiful place right by the waters and despite the less-than-ideal winter temperature, we’d thought that sitting by an open fire with friends was the perfect way to spend a Sunday. Needless to say, I was running late as usual and had barely settled into the back of a cab with obvious relief when my phone rang.

Thinking it must be some of my other friends who wanted to check in with me, I answered the call without a pause. Only to find myself pausing for quite a few minutes after hearing the voice on the other line. Mr. F. My goodness, the man had disappeared into the sunset after our parting of ways (I couldn’t bring myself to compromise on the open relationship) and it had been weeks since I last heard from him. So shocked was I to receive a call from him, at his own initiative no less, that I was pretty much speechless. And the hits just kept on coming. He wanted to ask me to some open studio day by this group of artists and dinner with him after that.

As I made my apologies to him and explained that I had already promised my day and night to my girlfriend, I couldn’t help but marvel at the irony of it all. Mr. F is a player and I never got to dictate the game. But it seemed that I had the upper hand now. Throughout the entire afternoon and later evening, his text messages continued. I reckoned he must have broken some kind of record for correspondence. Questions about how I’d been, what I was up to for the next week, did I remember the last time we went to a studio together, etc. I felt strangely out of my depth. Was Mr. F still playing a game, albeit a different one?

My curiosity got the better of me when I reached home and I gave Mr. F a call. Just a chat, I told myself. His voice was as husky as ever and turned out that he wanted to see me but this time round, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to get back on the rollercoaster. To give him credit, he didn’t pressure me into meeting him but teased that I would be hearing from him again. After we said our goodbyes and hung up, I spent the rest of the night thinking: was it really true that all it took for a player to relinquish the game was simply to quit playing along?

Image courtesy of -bast-