Chapter 17

Two Sundays ago at exactly this time my life was going a little something like this;

I was sprawled out on Clay’s bed- he was on the floor, I can still remember the exact moment he went down, it was just after doing that Spice Girls impersonation. My head was throbbing like someone was using it as a chopping board. My mouth felt and tasted like a kitty litter box and my feet hurt so badly that I assumed someone had come inside in the middle of the night and used them as a pinboard and then set them on fire. My phone was beeping, which was causing my ear drums to shatter, sending shards of cartilage into my brain that got lodged   in my speech center, so that when I opened my mouth to try and communicate, I forgot all the words.

Tiny polaroid snap shots started coming back to me through the cloudy thick haze of awfulness.

Clay and I on the bar.

Clay and I on the table.

Clay and I on that statue that we really shouldn’t have tried to climb, not to mention that fountain that wasn’t a good place to swim, but was a good place to find spare change in.

All I had wanted to do was close my eyes and go back to sleep- wish the world away and stay unconscious for as long as humanly possible. The seconds were passing too slowly and I wished they would speed up…

But now the seconds were passing too fast. I wanted them to slow down. Because right now, every second counted. Every moment with Riaan, every look, every smile and every small touch. It all meant so much to me that I didn’t want to blink in case I missed one.

Funny that isn’t it, how we still wish we could bend time to our will, even though we know it cannot be changed.  But it’s about how we live those precious seconds that make the difference. Wow, that was deep! It seems like staring death in the face tends to make one more philosophical, I was a regular spiritual Guru right now. The Zara of a few days ago would never have been able to think that this.

We walked together down the hill and back in the direction of the lodge. Have you ever watched a Ping-Pong match?  The way the ball moves so quickly- at lightening speed- between the two players, how they react and respond instantly and how that keeps the ball in perpetual back and forth motion.

That was what this walk was like. It was punctuated with sideways glances, little smiles and the odd chuckle. It was as if we were hitting a ball back and forth; I would serve up a smile to him, and he would return mine with another one. By the end of the walk I felt drunk on the loaded looks-almost giddy. A feeling had settled into the pit of my stomach, it had moved in and taken up residence, pitched a tent and hung up a big sign that read “I like him. I really, really liked him.”

Once I had taken the two Malaria pills and Riaan was satisfied that I wasn’t going to get sick and die, we sat down outside on a bench together.

“So what do I have to do today?” It was already midday and I hadn’t done any work.

“Nothing. No work for you today- I told your aunt you needed a day to recover. And it’s my day off, so we both have nothing to do.”

But something was nagging at me- I did have something to do that day.

“I need to apologies to my aunt,”

“I didn’t tell her about the car crash, as far as she knows that never happened. All she thinks happened last night was that you got very upset over the tape- that’s’ all.”

“Thanks,” I said, feeling such a swell of happiness at this protective gesture.

I found my aunt sitting on a chair on the porch reading, she had her own house on the property, not a dormitory. It was an old colonial style house that had been build over a hundred years ago, with it’s wooden floors, pressed ceilings and that large wrap around veranda. Stepping into it always felt like stepping back in time- I remember that from when I was young.

I didn’t say a word; I just walked onto the verandah and sat in the empty chair next to her.

“What are you reading?” I finally asked.

“It’s one of those conspiratorial Dan Brown novels, you know the kind?”

I nodded even though I’d never heard of the guy, and hadn’t read a book since I'd been forced to at school.

“I’m sorry about what I did last night. It was out of order- I shouldn’t have.” My voice was quivering. I had told myself on the walk over that I needed to be strong, that I couldn’t crumble and fall apart. But the emotions were disobeying me and crawling their way up to the surface. Bastard worms!

She looked up at me and nodded, “I’m sorry too.”

“For what?” I was confused,

She closed her book, folded her legs and leant forward, “You were right. I haven’t been there for you as much as I should have.”

My eyes immediately started to cloud over at this revelation. I had desperately wanted someone to say something like this to me. I had been screaming so loudly and so long for someone to say those words to me.

“I let you down and I’m sorry Zara. You were a little girl who lost her mother and I should have been there for you more.”

I couldn’t hold back anymore and I threw myself into her arms. She embraced me, and I had almost forgotten how good it felt to be held and comforted by a family member. I couldn’t remember the last time I had just hugged someone like this.

We let go of each other and my aunt wiped my tears away, it was such a tender thing to do and it felt good.

“I need to apologise to those guests,”

My aunt’s face flashed a bright red, “No need. I kicked them out.”

“Why?”, My surprise was audible

“What they did was unacceptable.”

“Really?” I asked, the feeling that someone was on my side and in my corner was a hard one to fathom.

She nodded, "They left early this morning.”

We spent much of that afternoon talking, laughing and drinking sweet tea. We reminisced about my mother and she told anecdotal tales that made us both laugh.  When it was over, I felt as though a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. It was almost as if I’d been carrying a heavy backpack around, and someone had just removed a large object from it. I had a skip in my step when I left and everything felt just that little bit lighter.

I also realized that I was missing Riaan. He was the first thing that would pop into my head in the lulls of the conversation. And whenever I thought of him my stomach knotted and twisted and curled in on itself. I wanted to see him.  So I walked straight to his room.

Somehow he looked better than he had a few hours ago- if that was even possible. He was wearing a casual Adidas tracksuit that gave him an athletic sporty look, and the image of him bench-pressing me suddenly popped to mind. I smiled even more.

“Hi.” I felt and sounded like I’d been reduced to a schoolgirl on Valentines day receiving a rose from the guy she’d had a crush on for years. Luckily Riaan wasn’t far off either…

“Hi,” His little voice sounded deliciously coy.

“So….um, I thought I would pop by and… whatever.”

“Whatever?” His smiling eyes asked.

“Well, you know…say Hi, or something like that I guess or whatever…..”

God, the more he smiled, the more I lost linguistic control and sounded like a babbling idiot. The part of my brain that was responsible for adult conversation had gone on holiday. It was missing in action.

“You’ve said Hi!” Riaan looked amused, as if he was watching stand up comedy and waiting for the punch line to come.

“I guess I have,” I was trying to figure out how to steer the conversation back to a sensible one. “Are you busy now?”

Riaan looked around the room quickly as if he was looking for something, “Well I was kind of busy I was about to---“

And then I heard a noise.

A loud noise coming from his bathroom.

A noise that could only have been made by a person.

Someone was in his bathroom!?

The implications of noises made by a person, in a bathroom, with a closed door- suddenly gripped me.  My brain went into Formula One mode as it raced around from one possibility to the next. Could it be a woman? Was he hiding a woman in the bathroom?

Something took hold of me and pushed me through the door, past him and towards the bathroom.

“Zara wait” He sounded panicked. Guilt? Only guilty men sounded that desperate.

When I reached the door he actually grabbed me by the arm to stop me from opening it.

“Wait-“ He said once more trying to pull me back.

But I had super human strength right now and I flung the door open, only to be met by two big eyes.

“Be careful when you open the door, you don’t want her to escape,” Riaan puled me into the bathroom and closed the door behind us as quickly as he could.

“What is it?”

“It’s a young barn owl. I found her yesterday, her leg was tangled up in some wire, so I removed it and brought her here just to make sure she was okay. “

“And is she?” I asked staring at the little unblinking creature before me.

“She is.”

The owl looked like it had been gently put in a box that had been carefully lined with blankets. There was a hot water bottle in the box as well as an alarm clock ticking away. Riaan reached forward slowly and sucked up some water into a dropper, he offered it to the owl who opened its mouth immediately.

“Why the alarm clock?”

“It mimics the mothers heart beat, so it doesn’t feel alone.”

I gazed at Riaan thoughtfully, he was totally enthralled with the little bird. There was something so adorable about this rugged man rescuing a baby bird, lining a little box for it with blankets and caring so much that he’d even put an alarm clock in there so it wouldn’t feel alone.

“Not only does he rescue damsels in distress, but he rescues baby birds too-“

He smiled at me, “And I can also cook and I clean up after myself.”

“Is this an advert for yourself?” I asked teasingly

“Maybe.” He looked up at me with such intensity that it hit me in the gut.

We both smiled at each other again- the muscles in my cheeks really were starting to get sore.

“I was going to release her tonight, you can come with me if you want?”

“I’d love to,” I couldn’t hide the enthusiasm in my voice, I would have jumped at any opportunity to be alone with him.  He pulled me up by the hand and we slowly edged out of the bathroom together, carefully closing the door behind us. But once outside, Riaan seemed to get a strange look on his face.

“Did you think someone was in the bathroom, is that why you barged in?”

“Um…. No, yes I guess. Sort of.” My embarrassment was obvious.

“Did you think I had a woman stashed away in the bathroom?”

I blushed. My skin felt hot and I flushed a bright red.

“You did!” He pointed at me amused, “You were jealous.” He reached out and wrapped his arms around me playfully.

“I was not jealous.” I tried to push him away but he held on too tightly.

“You were so jealous,” he repeated, pulling me even closer towards him.

“Was not!” I tried a different escape strategy by wiggling furiously, but it didn't seem to be working.

He laughed and squeezed me into one almighty bear hug, “Were too!” His voice was playful and almost childlike.

“Okay, maybe a little,” I finally admitted it and stopped squirming, which brought us face to face.

“Its cute that you were jealous,” His smile lit up his eyes and he looked at me intently for a second or two, before kissing me again. It was a soft, small kiss on the lips. He kissed the tip of my nose, and then the corners of my mouth and my cheek.

“You have nothing to worry about. When I'm with someone, I would never—“

I didn’t hear the last part of his sentence, my brain and heart had kind of frozen around the words “with someone”. We hadn’t said anything officially to each other yet.

“Are you with me…” I asked nervously, “I mean, are we together? Is that what this is?”

“Of course it is Zara!” His tone was emphatic.

“I see.”

“If that’s what you want though,” His confidence seemed to waver a bit.

I reached up and took his face in my hands. It wasn’t smooth and perfectly shaved but was rough against my palms.

“Yes. I want that.”

And it was my turn to kiss him now, except I was going to do it properly this time.