Chapter 1 - Chapter 1: The Middle

CHAPTER 1: THE MIDDLE

"Nice one, Naledi," Siyabonga and I said together, staring at the single queen bed in the middle of the Umhlanga hotel room.

The room was too small for three adults and far too warm for the way my nerves had begun to buzz. There was no sleeper couch. No spare bedding. Just one wide mattress beneath an overconfident white duvet, with the Durban lights blinking beyond the curtains.

"It was the last room they had, neh," Naledi said, lifting both hands as if the booking had personally betrayed her. She tried to laugh it off, but I knew that hopeful little shine in her eyes. She had spent two weeks telling me Siyabonga might finally notice her on this weekend away.

If only she knew.

Siyabonga and I had been sleeping together for months. Not dating. Not anything we could name without making it heavy. We were just the late library sessions that ran too long, the lift rides where his hand landed on my waist, the nights he drove me home and somehow ended up parked outside my flat with his mouth on mine. Easy, we had agreed. Private.

At first, it had felt almost harmless. We would meet on campus with highlighters and laptops between us, pretending we were working until the last people left the library. Then he would walk me to my car, except somehow his hand would settle at the small of my back and I would forget what we had been studying. Other nights he would take the long route past the beachfront, park where the promenade lights could not reach us, and kiss me until I was breathless against the passenger door.

Afterwards, he was always gentle. He would smooth my vest down, check that I was okay, make some stupid joke that let us pretend we were only two friends who had made a slightly reckless mistake. Then we would do it again the next week.

No one had been meant to get hurt because no one had been meant to know.

Naledi had no idea.

"Where do you want to sleep?" she asked Siyabonga, too casually.

He looked at the bed, then at me. It lasted half a second, but it was long enough to set my stomach tightening.

"Anywhere is fine," he said. "You?"

"I’ll take the left." She said it quickly, already moving that way.

"I’ll take the right," Siyabonga said.

The brightness left Naledi’s face so fast I nearly hated him for it.

Which left me in the middle. Between the man who had had me shaking against the passenger door of his Polo Vivo on more than one stupid, glorious night, and my best friend, who thought this trip might be her chance with him.

"Sucks for me, I suppose," I muttered.

Naledi gave me a small smile and climbed onto the bed. Siyabonga followed, lifting the duvet. I came last, trying not to notice the way his gaze dropped when I got on my knees to reach my pillow. My loose black vest shifted at the neckline. The moment his eyes found me, his jaw went hard.

I shot him a look. Don’t.

He looked away just slowly enough to make me warm.

Naledi pulled a black satin eye mask from her toiletry bag. "Goodnight, you two. And please don’t steal all the duvet."

"As if you’d allow it," I said.

Her smile came back for a second. Then she slipped the mask over her eyes and turned toward me, as though even asleep she wanted to be facing Siyabonga’s side of the bed.

The bedside lamp clicked off.

Darkness made every ordinary thing feel guilty. The hum of the air-conditioning. The crisp cotton beneath my palms. Naledi’s breathing, soft and regular after a few minutes. The heat of Siyabonga’s body at my back.

I lay on my side, rigid, staring into the dark. If she was awake, I could not tell. If she had any idea how often his hands had been on me, how badly I knew the sound of his breath when he was trying not to lose control, she gave nothing away.

For once, Siyabonga did nothing.

I could smell Naledi's coconut hair oil from the other pillow. It made the guilt too real. Earlier that afternoon she had asked whether the new lipstick she bought at Gateway looked desperate. I had told her it looked beautiful. I had watched her put it in her handbag for this weekend, hoping Siyabonga might notice the shade on her mouth.

He had noticed me instead. He always did.

I kept my hands folded under my cheek and tried to count Naledi's breaths. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. If I could stay awake until sleep took him, we would wake up with nothing to explain. We would still be the three people who had arrived here laughing about a bad booking, not the kind of friends who made a secret out of the space between one sleeping body and another.

Relief came first. Then the stupid, secret disappointment of it. I should have been grateful. Naledi was right there. She trusted us. Whatever Siyabonga and I had was already selfish enough without turning her into part of it.

I was beginning to think sleep might save us when the duvet shifted.

Not much. Just a careful pull of fabric against fabric.

A hand slipped around my waist beneath the cover and settled flat against the bare strip of skin above my shorts.

My whole body locked. I caught his wrist at once, gripping hard enough to make my fingers ache. Under the duvet, Siyabonga did not pull away. His thumb moved once, slow against my stomach.

The sheets whispered. Naledi stirred and made a small sound in her sleep.

I let go of him before she could wake properly.

My surrender only gave him full permission to keep going.