8.01 PM
"What's wrong," I asked rolling over onto my back.
"Sorry," she stammered, "it's just that I'm getting my feelings mixed up, emotional, I mean... you know?
With this ...physical–"
(Shit! Where I put my cigarettes... got to quit.) "What you mean?" I lied.
She pulled the curtain around her breast as she sat back against the cool wall.
Her brown eyes danced with light from the candle on the dressing table;
her small fingers rubbed at her knees as she rocked slowly.
"So you want to go to the movies still?" I said my gaze moving up from her legs to her dark face.
"No!" she answered curtly.
"I want ..." In midsentence she climbed onto her knees and brought her lithe body up to where I sat on the edge of the bed.
She put her lips against my ear and whispered, "I want to be with y-"
I got up quickly before she could finish. "I got to get some smokes," I mumbled as I crawled under the bed.
6.30 PM
"Come in." We exchanged smiles as she stepped past the front door and walked down the corridor to my room.
She wore loose fitting jeans with leather sandals.
Her skinny dreads fell around her mouth and over her undersized T-shirt.
She kept pulling the loose ones and wrapping them around her ear.
Sitting on my bed she looked smaller somehow.
I met her a week ago sitting on a bench and she had filled it up with her brightness.
Each morning I would walk past the little bench next to the bus stop on my way to get a newspaper.
It was quite absurd, actually, since no buses had passed this street for years and it was the new government's urban facelift program that had resulted in these bus stop signs and brightly painted benches being placed at strategic corners.
I was quite surprised when I saw her sitting there since I had never seen anybody actually doing that.
I asked her if she was waiting for a bus. She smiled and her face exploded into all kinds of interesting lines and curves.
Her eyes squinted down as her lips spread to reveal her white, even teeth.
"Still at school?" I asked, eying the large note books she balanced on her narrow lap.
"Secretarial course and no, I'm just taking a little rest."
"Well enjoy your day," I said, wishing I could have come up with some funny thing to make her smile again.
I turned around suddenly and there it was. She smiled at me coyly and I waved back like a nervous teenager.
6.57PM
"So how was classes?"
"OK."
"Just OK."
"Yes, just OK."
Silence.
7.10PM
"David..."
"Yes, what?"
"Kiss me."
8.07PM
"You don't smile anymore, Stacy, you don't smile, you don't talk, you don't want to have sex. What's the problem?"
"Nothing!" she shouted back, "Nothing you'll care about anyway."
She stared at me with sharp tear filled eyes, her nostrils flaring.
"You want to fight? Eh, you want to come test me?" I said, trying to lighten the mood.
"Yes!" she shouted and wrapped her arms around my neck, pretending to choke me.
"I'm dying, help! Police, police!" I screamed, getting into the game.
"Give up! Give up," she threatened now sitting on my stomach and holding my hand over my head.
"Say Greg. Say it or else you won't get what you want!"
"C'mon Stacy, cinema done start already, get off me."
"No. Say it!"
"Say what?"
"Say you love me."
"Greg! OK, you happy now?"
She crawled off me slowly. She looked as if she was in pain.
She limped/walked across to the candle.
I bit my lip trying to stop wanting, trying to stop falling in love.
It would make things too complicated, too real. She slipped out of the shadows blowing puffs of smoke into the air.
"Look, David, look what I found," she said, giggling and gasping at the same time.
"Give that to me," I shouted as I sprang off the bed. I grabbed the cigarette from her lips and her innocent eyes stared into mine, searching.
"Why David? You smoke. Why I can't?"
"Because you too young to smoke."
8.15PM
"Come Stacy, we have to get to the movie by 8.30. Hurry up and get dressed."
Ramses
