“Sometimes you even feel as if you’re on the wrong side of the world. So, still friends with Lulu?” asked Samson.

“That friendship ended the same year it started,” Nothando said.

“Me too. I don’t know where Thami and Clement went?”

“Eish, life. Thami, the lovely boy, I remember that he used to crush on Lulu. But they’d make a great couple. Lulu also possessed great beauty and kindness.”

“Yeah, I hope she hasn’t changed,” said Samson uncomfortably.

“I remember the both of us with our behind-the-shadows love. I feared boys and let the opportunity slip away,” confessed Nothando.

“Oh Nothando, about us. I don’t know what to say, looking at the way things happened it still feels embarrassing. Tell me you hate me for what happened between us?”

“No I don’t, I wouldn’t have asked you to let me in if I hated you.”

“It’s just that the dream made me question a lot of things. I know it sounds crazy, but I believe in them. They tell us exactly what’s going to happen in our lives and so it showed me how you feel about me,” Samson said confidently.

“How I feel about you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, go on and tell me my feelings.”

“Well, I’ll explain everythin,g starting from how it all happened. In the dream, I saw myself coming back from school, our then school. As I walked, I saw you in front of me at a distance. I called you by your name, but you ignored me. I ran to catch up to you and asked you why you ignored me. You said that you were angry with me and I asked you why. You said that you’d waited so long for me to come to you. Talk to you like a boy to a girl whom I love, confessing my love to you and asking for a second chance to share my life with you. You said you’d agree and love me back as my girlfriend.”

“And, what happened?”

“Yoh…you walked away, I tried to follow you but I couldn’t move my legs. I couldn’t walk any longer and so you walked away without looking back until you disappeared.”

“Impossible, that’s not true,” Nothando shook her head.

“So you’re not angry?”

“I felt so, but now I’m not. It’s how I felt years after what happened between us. You know that I loved you so much that I couldn’t stop thinking about you every day. Every time I saw you, my body, my eyes, my heart; I just got flooded with love.”

“And I also felt the same way about you, Nothando. But when I wrote you that letter confessing my love to you, everything changed.”

“I never replied, you came and asked for my answer and I said I’d think about it and tell you the following day but I didn’t, I never told you. I got shocked, afraid of others’ thoughts about us; our friends, our classmates, our teachers and my parents; I thought about all of them. Samson, you weren’t up to my expectations. If you really felt the same way as me you could’ve came to me and said that you loved me personally not through some piece of paper. I got embarrassed.”

Nothando took a breath then continued. “Somehow I hated you after that. I just got angry, but I waited patiently to see you take action and guess what, you didn’t. I remember one day you celebrated the award achievement you won in the school’s speech competition. You didn’t tell me or invite me. I started to see the bad side of you, the side I couldn’t see while blinded by my feelings for you. And came your birthday, still it happened the same way. And I thought, poor Samson, you’d ask me for money and food and I always gave you whatever you asked for. But you couldn’t give me one thing: love.”

“Wow, Nothando, I don’t even know what to say,” Samson said, bewildered.

“You never know and won’t know, ever. But I want you to know that I’ve moved on, I no longer hate you or hold any grudge against you. We’re adults now and we’ve matured. What’s in the past stays behind and let’s move forward,” Nothando said.

***

Tell us: Do you think that Samson and Nothando will get back together?