The next morning, she was ready an hour before WaxLyrical was supposed to pick her up. She had changed her clothes five times, before deciding to stick with her first outfit. He called when he was about to arrive.

“I’m on my way, Sweets. How ’bout walking down the road to the stop? I’ll pick you up there. I don’t want your jealous boyfriends seeing me and getting all upset.”

“I don’t have a boyfriend. If you mean Jimmy – he’s just a friend.”

“No boyfriend? What’s up with those campus boys? Anyway, hey, I don’t mean to pry. You do whatever you want with your life.”

“You’re not prying. I don’t have a boyfriend. Really.” She walked down the road to the stop and waited. Within minutes he was there, smiling widely. She got in the car. It smelt of new leather. And it had a whiff of a perfume that reminded her of her mother’s.

“Since you’re actually all done with your piece IMO we can talk about you instead of me. What are you studying?”

“I’d like to add more about you,” she said. “But, I’m studying journalism.”

“Ahh…”

“I love writing, but I’m really shy around people.”

“I guess it’s like what I do too. I prefer to be on my own unless the person is really special.”

Then he had asked her how old she was. She giggled a bit before responding.

“Eighteen ’n a half, nje.”

WaxLyrical laughed and she was thrilled that she could make him laugh.

“Why the ‘nje’?”

“Just.”

It didn’t matter that he was thirty-five … just a few years younger than her father, if the date on his Wikipedia page was correct. His phone rang. “I need to get this. My manager.” He pulled a face as he walked away. She laughed.

They sat in the restaurant for three hours that morning. It was only when he said he had to be going that she remembered to get out her notepad. She scribbled her questions down for him and tore the sheets out.

“I’d like to do an … um … follow-up story about you for the mag. When you have time could you write about one of your pieces … explain the lyrics and why you wrote it? Maybe we can talk again after that?”

“Cool. I like a woman who goes after what she wants. So, let me take you back. Safe and sound.”

He drove her home. He waved as he left. She walked to her room feeling a little odd. She had hoped for something more. A kiss on the cheek, maybe. A promise of another meeting. But he had not suggested anything. She sent him a text:

Tnx for a lovely morning.

He responded with only one word:

Peace.

Every day she checked her messages but there was nothing there. She was beginning to worry, wondering if he was ever going to talk to her again, checking her email, checking her phone, asking her friends if their phones were working, checking her inbox for his messages. She had given up when she received a message from him.

He was direct. Would she visit him at the end of the month and spend the weekend with him? She was reading the message when Jimmy knocked on her door.

“Hey, DeeDee. Where you been? You look like hell. You wanna hook up this weekend, DeeDee? Haven’t seen you in ages.”

“You’re right Jimmy. I feel like hell. I really need to go home. I haven’t seen my folks in too long.”

“You want me to take you?”

“No thanks, Jimmy. You do too much for me already. I’m going to hop on the bus. I’ll be back on Monday morning.”

Once she had agreed to visit WaxLyrical, he bombarded her with words. He promised her dreams, but they were unlike the cosy ones in the romance books she read. He said they would explore fantastic places together. They were going to make a powerful team. He made up words she had never heard and every day he sent her a line from the song he was writing for her. He posted it on Facebook. He didn’t say it was for her because he said he wanted to protect her. He said there were too many people after him. It was crazy. They had to keep it to themselves. She understood, so they kept their conversations private.

Thank you so much for that.

For you, anything.

She silenced that inner voice that warned he probably said this to all the girls who came to his shows. She was going to act cool and professional and she wasn’t going to throw herself at him. She persuaded herself, knew, that she was special and not just one of the groupies that he had everywhere he went.

It was a four hour bus ride to Pretoria. All the way she fought to control her desire to tell someone that she had fallen in love – but he had told her again and again that what went on between them was strictly between them.

Her visit to WaxLyrical was blissful. Her Facebook status on the bus ride back from seeing him was one word:

BLISS!

They had been great together. When he told her how sexy she was he made her blush from the top of her afro to her soles of her feet. And all the way back to varsity he bombarded her with messages that made her believe that he missed her and needed to see her again – soon, he said.

She said she could come again that weekend. He said that was great … but there was no hurry. They had plenty of time. He was going to be away that week for a few days but he kept telling her over and over, “We have all the time in the world, Sweetness.”

What they had would last for as long as she wanted it to last. That’s what he told her.

***

Tell us what you think: What is your feeling about Jimmy? Do you think DeeDee is being as good a friend to him as he is to her?