Chapter 6

I dreamt that two big warm hands came and lifted me up. That they wrapped around my body tightly and cradled me. I dreamt that I could feel the warmth of someone else’s body against mine and that I could hear the beating of another heart. Warm breath on my check. I dreamt that the big hands carried me up the embankment and back to my room and that they lay me down gently on my bed.

“Just relax” It was Riaans voice. And I realized I wasn’t dreaming.

I nodded feebly, letting my aching body melt into the bed. I’d complained about it earlier, but right now, it felt like the softest most comfortable thing I’d even lay on.

I heard Riaan running some water in the bathroom and before long I felt a warm soft soothing rag being wiped across my back. His movements were slow, gentle. Why was he being so kind to me?

“I’m going to have to pull them out now,” He leaned in and whispered in my ear. His face way only a little way away from mine.

I realized that in that moment, he was in total control of the situation. I was like a baby bird with a broken wing that he’d rescued from the side of the road and was now trying to piece back together. I was utterly powerless. Physically helpless.

His previous animosity was gone. Instead it had been replaced with care and kindness. I wanted to cry for some reason- I was genuinely touched. The unexpected kindness was unfamiliar, but it was deeply moving and comforting.

I tensed my body as I felt his hand on one of the thorns.

“It won’t hurt a bit. I promise’ He was trying to sound upbeat.

I smiled a little at his comment, “Oh please, that’s like when the doctor says, ‘Relax, you might feel a bit of pressure’.

And then something odd happened. Something quite peculiar actually. I heard him chuckle. Not a mountain shaking, earth shattering laugh or anything, but a small soft breathy chuckle.

“Or when they take blood and the nurse says ‘ You might feel a little pinch’” He offered.

“Yes. Exactly.”

“Okay then…” His tone was almost playful now, “Just try and relax Zara, this is going to hurt like hell.”

“Thanks!” I smiled to myself and wondered if he was smiling too.  This was definitely a strange turn of events.

“On the count of Three.” Riaan said, “One, Two---“

“OUCH! You said three!”

“Sorry, I’ll count to three next time---“

“OUCH” I yelped again, “Please warn me next time you--- OUCH!”

“I thought it would be less painful if you weren’t expecting it.” Riaan offered.

There was a short silence and I got the feeling he was hesitating, “There’s one in your…” He didn’t finish the sentence.

“One in my where?”

“Your bum. I’m going to need to…It’s poking out of the bottom of your skirt. Maybe you can reach around and lift it a bit, so I can….” His voice trailed off nervously.

“Sure,” I’d never been the bendy type, even though I went to dozens of cool yoga classes, but no amount of Bikram this and yoga-laties that enabled me to reach around and pull my skirt up. My arms felt too stiff, weak and sore.

“I can’t reach. You’re going to have to do it.”

“Okay, sorry about this.”

He pushed the tight dress up slowly with one hand. The material clung to me and his fingers grazed the back of my thighs as he went. I couldn’t help but shiver. The contrast of his warm fingertips against my cold skin was intense. I was wearing a tiny red G-Sting, I’d picked it out especially for him, well at least he was going to see it now, just not in the way I thought he would.

“OUCH!”

“That’s it, the last one,” He pulled my dress back down, his fingers once again grazing my skin slightly.

“Impossible!” I said. It had felt like I’d fallen on hundreds of thorns. “There have to be more.”

“Nope. That’s it.”

“Never!”

I rolled over onto my back and came fact to face with him.

“Look,” He was holding up the four viscous looking large white thorns. “You’re lucky it was a young tree, these things can grow up to four inches long.” He dropped the thorns in my hand. “A trophy to remember it by.”

“Thanks.”

Our eyes locked for a moment and it was awkward- images of what had just happened flashed through my mind. Going to his room, tripping on the net, running out the door. A sudden heat rose up from the tip of my toes to the top of my head- I was mortified. I quickly looked away, I couldn’t bare to look him in the eye.

Riaan spoke, “Does it hurt anywhere else?”

“My ankle,” I whispered faintly, “The left one.”

I felt his hands on my ankle. He gently maneuvered and manipulated it around slowly. He ran his fingers up and down the outlines of the bones and down my foot.

He instructed me to wiggle my toes. I did.

“Well, it’s not broken or sprained, it’s probably just a little tender from the fall. It should be better in the morning.”

I managed another soft ‘thanks’.

“You’re lucky. It could have been a lot worse,” He said finally letting my ankle go.

I nodded appreciatively at him, but also decided that I no longer wanted to be in such close proximity, but as soon as I attempted to stand I was over come by a wave of dizziness. I teetered for a second before feeling the pins and needles in my face and hearing that sudden buzzing sound in my ears. I felt Riaans arms come up to grab me again.

“Easy. Easy.’ He lowered me to the bed once more and I felt the blood come rushing back to my head.

“I don’t feel very good,” My forehead was clammy and my heart was racing.

“I’m sure you don’t. You had a lot to drink before taking a tumble down a hill and impaling yourself. Added to that you’re also probably jet lagged and it looks like you’re a little sunburnt too.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to regain control of my body. My head was swirly, my stomach was choppy like a rough sea and I felt dizzy and sore. But beyond that, I also felt something else.

“Why did you come looking for me, after what I did? After what I said to you?” I opened my eyes, but still didn’t dare to look at him- I felt ashamed. I picked at my cuticle nervously. It was so unlike me to be feeling like this.

“No. After what I said,” Riaan corrected me emphatically. “I came to apologise. What I said was… it was cruel and inappropriate and I hurt your feelings.”

The sincerity of his apology made my breath catch in my throat. I hadn’t expected it, and truthfully, I probably didn’t deserve it.

“I’m sorry too.” I finally willed myself to look up at him and our eyes met.

Have you ever had one of those dreams in which a place looks so familiar, but you cannot put your finger on it? It looks like somewhere you’ve been. Somewhere you know intimately. You feel a certain comfort and familiarity, but still a sense of mystery and intrigue lingers- have I really been here before?

It was like that with him. Don’t ask me why, or how. It just was.

“Let’s just forget it happened. We can start afresh in the morning. I’ll leave you now to get some sleep.”

“No!” I sat bolt upright in the bed and the dizziness came back immediately forcing me to flop back down. “Please. Stay just a little bit.” I knew how desperate that sounded. How vulnerable and weak that made me seem, but I didn’t care. The sudden idea of being all alone again made me feel panicky.

Riaan sat down on my bed again, “I’ll stay until you fall asleep.”

“Thanks.”

The corners of his lips twitched slightly into the faintest smile, but it was enough to ignite his eyes like a firecracker. They were the kind of eyes that came alive when you smiled. They widened slightly which caused faint lines to radiate outwards from their edges. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, but in Riaans case that couldn’t be more apt. He didn’t wear his emotions on his sleeve, rather they reflected clearly in his gaze. I had seen it earlier when he was angry.

“ You have nice eyes,” I said and quickly slapped my hand across my mouth, unsure of how my inner monologue had suddenly became audible. ‘Sorry… I’m not trying to come onto you again or anything. But you just have nice eyes,”

His smile widened and his eyes practically gleamed. There was a kindness in them that was unmistakable, and a kind of dreamy- swirlyness that made me feel a little giddy when I looked for too long.

But that could be the alcohol too; I was still feeling the slight warm buzz of it.

“Oh my God! My eyes!” I suddenly exclaimed. In all the commotion I’d forgotten about the thick streaky inky make-up that I knew was covering my entire face.  “I need to get my make-up remover. I probably look like a drowned raccoon.” My fingertips went up to investigate and sure enough, the surface of my face was covered in a moist stickiness, I looked at my fingers and they were dotted and smudged with black.

“We don’t have raccoons in Africa. But we do have zebra’s though.” Riaan was clearly amused.

“Is it that bad?” I asked, the image of a black striped zebra was a powerful one.

He gazed at me with a look that seemed to imply that I didn’t want to know, “Where’s your make-up remover?” He asked already on his feet.

“Cosmetics bag. On the table.” I pointed feebly in the direction of the bag, my arms still felt a little shaky and sore.

He handed me the bag and I pulled the wipes out and started dabbing my face as best I could without a mirror, lying flat on my back unable to lift my head for fear of dizziness and with baby bird wrists.

Riaan looked at me queerly, he even appeared to wince twice before speaking, “I’m sorry I can’t watch this. Its painful, it’s like watching someone who’s been blindfolded trying to play tennis.”

I burst out laughing but quickly stopped when my head started feeling fuzzy again, “Ow, it hurts to laugh.’

Riaan smiled and pulled the wipes away from me, “Okay, so I just wipe it off… like this?”

His face scrunched up in such intense focus and concentration that it was an absolute anti -climax when the thing actually connected with my skin. The wipe barely touched me; it simply breezed past.

“You can go a little harder,” I offered.

He tried again,

“Not that hard, don’t pull the skin around my eyes, I could get wrinkles,”

He abruptly stopped abruptly, “You’re worried about wrinkles and you’re not even 21.”

“How do you know how old I am?”

“Your aunt told me,”

Suddenly I wondered what else my aunt had told him. Just how much did he know about me and my life in London? For some reason I didn’t want him to know it all.

“What else did my aunt tell you?”

“Not much. Just that you used to come here when you were young and that you loved horse riding with your mother.”

“My mother died,” I said quickly. I always corrected people when they mentioned a mother figure, or asked after one. It was just something I did immediately without thinking about it.

“I know. Your aunt told me that too. I’m sorry.”

“Ag, it’s okay.” I got ready to recite my upbeat mantra, “Life tough. It sucks. And you’ve just got to get up and get one with it.”

Riaan stopped wiping my face again and looked at me earnestly, “You don’t honestly believe that do you? You make it sound so blasé. Like it’s not a big deal.”

I shrugged, “It’s not a big deal.”

He looked at me for a moment or two as if he was trying to figure something out, I held his gaze, giving nothing away. Showing none of the emotions that had crept up at the mention of her.

Riaan finally looked away, “I don’t know if I’m making this better or worse,” He put down the dirty face wipe and pulled out another one. “It just looks like I’m smearing it rather than taking it off.”

“Oh God! Do I still look like a zebra?”

“It’s not as stripy now as it was. It’s more….” Riaan looked at me and tilted his head to the side examining my face, “It’s more Leopard I’d say.”

He kept going with slow, decisive wipes and then-

“Oh my God I think I broke something!” He had a look of fear on his face which immediately made me panic,

“What have you done?” I touched my face protectively.

“You’re eyelash it’s…..” He recoiled looking slightly repulsed, “It’s shedding or something,”

I immediately understood what he meant and my fingers went up to peel the long fake lashes off, “It’s fine, they’re fake.” The lashes clung to my fingertips like sticky spiders and Riaan looked at them with great fascination.

“You know, I’ll never understand it all.” He said.

“What?”

“Fake boobs, bums, eye lashes, lips. Fake everything.”

“Sometimes a girl needs a little help,” I suddenly became conscious of my chicken cutlets and wondered what he would say if he knew I had then.

“Do you always wear this much make-up?” He stood up with a handful of the black strained wipes and threw them in the bin.

“Sometimes I wear more, “ I ran my fingertips over my skin and it felt smooth, moist and clean.

“Well if you don’t mind me saying, you look better without it,”

“Bullocks, you’re just saying that cos I said you had nice eyes.”

Riaan shook his head immediately, “I’m not. It’s true. You look lovely without make-up.”

Gong, Gong, Gong.

You could almost hear the dramatic sound effect that came after his statement. It was one of the nicest things that anyone had ever said to me. In fact, he was being nicer to me that all the men I’d met over the years and I’d hardly done anything to deserve it. Since I’d gotten here- apart from the last half hour- all I’d done was insult him, throw myself shamelessly at him and be rude. For the first time in a long time, my behavior embarrassed me.

“Why are you being so nice to me?” I was finally able to sit up on the bed.

Riaan shrugged, “I’m a nice guy I guess. It’s in my nature.”

“The scorpion and the frog,” I said suddenly, remembering another African story.

Riaan’s face lit up in acknowledgement, “One day the scorpion decides he wants to cross the river. He asks the frog to take him. The frog protests, thinking that the scorpion might sting him-“

I continued, “But the scorpion says that if he stung him, they would both drown. Because he couldn’t swim.”

Riaan chipped in now, “ The frog agrees, but half way across the river the scorpion stings him and they both start to drown. But before they do the frog asks why?”

I filled in the rest, “I couldn’t help it. It’s in my nature. And they both drown and die. The end!”

We stopped and smiled at each other. Again, the moment seemed strangely loaded with an uncanny sense of familiarity and comfort. It was as if we shared some kind of mutual bond that transcended all our obvious differences and sought out rather our similarities instead.

“I…I better go.” Riaan said to my great alarm, but before I was even able to reply, we both heard a loud noise outside that made me jump.

“What was that?” I couldn’t hide the anxiety in my voice.

“Hyenas. They’re close, they’ve probably come looking for scraps. Lazy things, they never hunt and kill their prey, instead they steal and scavenge.”

“Are they dangerous?”

“All wild animals are dangerous,”

And then I realized that I had the perfect excuse to ask him to stay- because the truth was, I didn’t want him to leave me.

“You definitely can’t go now! What if one gets into my room, or breaks down my door or something, I wouldn’t know how to defend myself or---,”  I knew my reasons were starting to sound a bit far fetched and I expected Riaan to protest immediately, but he didn’t.

It seemed that he too was looking for a reason to stay.“Okay. I’ll stay… just in case.” He turned away from me quickly, but not quick enough that I didn’t see the cute little smile that had spread across his face and was lighting up those big blue eyes.