Chapter 6 - Round Two

CHAPTER 6: ROUND TWO

"I once loved people I wasn't allowed to," he said finally, into the dark.

She turned her head on his chest. "People. Plural?"

"A long story. No villain in it."

"Everyone says that when they're the villain."

He laughed, but it didn't go all the way down.

By two in the morning they were hungry. She wore his charcoal shirt from the lounge floor — bare under it, smelling of him and the whole night — and sat on his kitchen counter while he made toast like it was a safety procedure. The kettle ticked. Winter pressed at the window over the sink.

He handed her a mug of rooibos. Two sugars. No milk.

She stared at it. "How did you—"

"You look sweet but not soft."

She decided, then and there, that fate was real and that it drank rooibos.

Then, because it was 2am and the dark makes archaeologists of us all, the fathers came up.

"The man who raised me," he said, watching the toaster, "taught me to drive in a Shoprite parking lot. Sundays only. He said weekdays belonged to other people." A pause. "He died four years ago."

"Mine too," she said softly. "Four years in June."

The kitchen held them both for a moment. Two griefs, recognising each other across a counter.

"What was he like?" he asked. "Yours."

She smiled into the mug. "His name was Tšeliso. Twenty-five years at Impala — he probably knew your people, shame. He smelled like pipe tobacco and Vicks, and he could fix anything except being home."

The mug stopped halfway to his mouth.