Chapter 32 - Chapter 31

It's my favourite night of the year.

Or at least it used to be. On New Year's Eve you stand at the join between before and after. I know a new year doesn't actually hand you a clean slate. That overdue rent? Still overdue at the stroke of midnight. That dead-end job? Still going nowhere. The ailing marriage doesn't heal itself by the end of "Auld Lang Syne". This I know firsthand.

But the feeling of newness, the sense of possibility, can push you to change your circumstances in ways that matter. Other than the last two years, I've planned every New Year's Eve party uPhuthu has ever had. Last year Siyabonga and I were barely speaking, and I left the planning to Thobi and a few of the staff. Tonight we're on better terms, though a different kind of tension has crept up between us. We may not have discussed our two-fuck, one-night stand, but too often I wake up sweating and panting and wet between my legs because Siyabonga roams around naked in my dreams.

"Yoh, this party," Hlengiwe says beside me. "Good job, as usual."

"Thank you. The whole staff did their part."

Surrounded by partygoers halfway to their New Year buzz, we're seated on uPhuthu's upper floor at a huge table on the landing that leads out to the roof and overlooks the main dining room. Zinhle, along with Charmaine, her three girls, and — for once — her husband, Wesley, round out our group.

"Sjoe, I love the decorations," Charmaine says, peering over the side and scanning the tinsel and fairy lights still strung from the ceiling and looped along the walls. "Everything looks fantastic."