Chapter 28 - Chapter 27

"So room service for dinner?" I ask Naledi, poking my head into the bedroom.

In the few hours since our meeting, we've both been keeping to our own corners. She's lying on her side, one pillow beneath her head and one between her knees. The braids splay out around her, rippling over her shoulders and down her back. She's changed clothes since our lunch and scrubbed her face free of makeup. In her tracksuit pants and an old T-shirt with BUSH across the front, socked feet tucked under her, she could be that varsity girl I fell for practically on sight.

"Yes, please." She rolls onto her back, staring up at the ceiling and groaning. "I don't care if you bring the food to me in a trough, as long as I don't have to leave this room."

I walk in and sit on the edge of the bed, handing her the room service menu. "The steak looks good."

"Already had steak. I'm trying not to eat red meat more than once a week. But I may have to make an exception, because you know I'm weak for a good mushroom sauce."

"Still medium-rare?"

"Yup."

"All right. Well, lemme get this order in."

While we wait for the food to arrive, I change too, pulling on tracksuit pants and one of my Fort Hare hoodies. When I leave the bathroom and come back into the bedroom, Naledi is sitting propped up against the pillows.

"I'd love for the kids to have the kind of varsity we had," she says wistfully.

"Fort Hare? Bush?"

"I'd settle for anything with Zee at this point. She keeps saying she doesn't need varsity at all. Sphe will probably end up at Wits, or MIT, or somewhere."