Chapter 3 - Stoep Evenings

Three weeks in and I had started cooking enough for two without admitting why.

Not announcing it. Not telling Mama Sithole when she asked why my pot was bigger this month. Not telling Xoli when she came over and helped herself to dinner. Just doing it. A little extra rice, a little extra chicken, an extra slice of the bread I baked on Sundays.

I told myself it was polite. He pays cash. He fixes things. He doesn't put his eyes anywhere they don't belong.

I told myself.

Wednesday evening. The yard was quiet — the machines off, the lines bare, the sun doing that thing it does in May where the light goes copper just before it goes. I was on the stoep with my feet up on the second chair and a bottle of Amarula on the small table.

He came out of the back room in clean dark jeans and a fitted button-up I hadn't seen before. Black. The first time he'd worn something that wasn't a work T-shirt. He stopped at the bottom of the steps when he saw me with the bottle.

"Sit," I said. Before I could think about whether I should be saying it.

He sat. I poured him one. Two fingers, the way Sipho used to like it, before — no, don't bring that man onto this stoep, Irene.

He pulled something from his pocket. A small dark bottle, no label, the kind you'd see at a chemist if you weren't paying attention.

"What's that?"

"Something to make it better."

I laughed. Haibo. "T, you're mixing my Amarula now?"