“No, Babe. My phone is my business.” Samuel gently urges as he grabs the phone from Grace’s hand, quickly swiping away the open WhatsApp messages.

“But…I thought we didn’t keep secrets from each other.” Grace begged, trying to reach for the phone whilst maintaining her balance with her thigh draped lazily across Sam’s long legs.

“I’m allowed to have a life, I don’t have to share everything with you.” Sam said harshly. Grace didn’t say anything further about the issue, even though her gut was screaming at her that she was being played.

Samuel never hid his WhatsApp or even Facebook messages from her before, as far as she was concerned, her man was an open book. Something had changed in Sam during the summer vacation, but what? Grace was eager to find out.

Both being students at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) and living at the same University residence, Grace and Sam got to know each other pretty well in first-year, even though they studied different courses.

Grace studied Nursing and was always busy studying to make sure she held onto her bursary for another year. Sam, on the other hand, was an Engineering student whose parents were well off and gave him any and everything he asked for.

Their friendship and consequent romance was an unlikely one. Sam needed someone to ground him. Grace was a solid woman who had always felt like home to him. He had loved many other women before her, but none could fulfil him as much as she did, they had all been cheap and shallow. Grace was different. Grace was ‘wife material’.

When they started dating, Grace made sure to let Sam take the lead in all aspects of their relationship. Having been friends with him for months before they started dating, she knew that he was a bit of a player and didn’t want to force him to get serious with her, unless he was ready for that kind of a commitment.

He was the one to say ‘I love you’ first, he added labels and exclusivity to their relationship, he was the one rushing for them to ‘come out’ with their relationship and urged her to meet his parents. All of the relationship phases were initiated by him and thus she let herself fall harder and entrusted him to keep her heart safe.

A month after they’d started dating, the ‘#FeesMustFall’ movement started. Although Grace was more than happy to fight for the right of equal education for all, she was really disappointed that she and Sam couldn’t always be together to enjoy the honeymoon phase of their relationship.

Towards the middle of November, they both left their University residence and went home. With Grace living in Cape Town and Sam in Durban, they knew that a long-distance relationship was going to be really hard, but after careful consideration, they both decided to stay together and visit each other during the holidays. None of which came to fruition.

Even during the December holidays, Sam started becoming distant with Grace; taking long to respond to her WhatsApp messages, talking about ‘sexy girls’ on his Facebook statuses and even staying away from social media for weeks without communicating with Grace at all. Her man was changing and Grace was struggling to find reasons to hold on to her broken relationship.

One night Grace decided to text him first on WhatsApp.

Hey Babe.

Hey, Whatsup?

Not much. Just missin u  .

She waited but no response came. Then she wrote again…

Babe, remember when u said u’d visit me? Well, I waz wonderin when that wud happen. I knw you’ve been saving to come dwn. I need time with u.

Sori man, the guyz & I wanna spend New Years at Magaliesburg. All my savings went thr. I’ll c u whn Varsity starts…gotta run. Bye.

It was killing Grace to be treated like rubbish by a guy she was so deeply in love with. She then decided to back off until Sam returned.

***

Tell us: What do you think is happening with Sam? Has he gotten tired of the relationship?