Chapter 10 - Chapter 9

"Pizza's here!" Zee shouts up the stairs.

"It's paid for, Zee!" I shout back. "Just take it in and you two can eat."

I shimmy to get the jeans down over my backside. Yoga three times a week, and this booty isn't budging. I cross the bedroom to the dressing room, dropping the jeans in the washing basket. The dressing room is huge, as big as the whole of that first flat in Yeoville. My bags and shoes, slotted into cubbies, take up one wall. Dresses, trousers, blouses, playsuits hang loosely coordinated by colour on another. Wearing just panties and a T-shirt, I sit on the round tufted sage ottoman in the centre of the space, eyeing the empty slots and shelves that used to hold Siyabonga's things. For a long time I left his side completely empty. It felt wrong somehow to "replace" his things with mine when we'd designed this room together, leaving plenty of space for his massive sneaker collection. I stare at all the empty slots I haven't been able to fill yet. I'll never love shoes as much as Siyabonga does, but only a small section of what was his side is still bare.

Piece by piece, I'm filling in the gaps with my new clothes, with my new life.

Standing, I walk over to his side and open a bottom drawer. It's empty, except for a pair of powder-blue Air Jordans.

"I can't find my University Blues," Siyabonga said a few weeks after he'd moved out, fresh resentment still marking every exchange between us. "You seen them?"

"No," I'd lied. "But I'll keep a lookout."

Ao. Why am I still holding on to this pair of shoes?