There was no reset button. You didn’t get a second chance because you always carried the baggage from the first time. We were a sum of our histories and each other’s past. Made by our mistakes and the people who didn’t love enough.
Or too much.
I stripped and headed to bed, remembering to take the anti-malaria medication. I understood why Callum loved this continent. It contained something magical, something bigger that what we knew.
Sleep came easy, dreamless. As if somebody had spelled away the worries and hang ups that had weighed down my shoulders.
I felt freer than I had for years.
Callum
It was barely dawn when we left the hotel and Harare. Already the heat was rising, the sky clear.
“It’s going to be a hot one.” Maarku, our guide while we were here, sat back in the jeep and leaned out of the window. We had a five-hour drive ahead of us towards the Matusadona National Park on the border of Zimbabwe and Zambia and near to Lake Kariba. The plan was to stay in rented lodges, not far from the lake while me and Wren worked with two vets who were affiliated to the national park on whatever they were doing, while Jaime went off filming for the wildlife spotting element. It was a five-day stop before we headed west.
“It’s always a hot one,” I said, stretching out as best I could. It was also a cramped one, although I was glad I hadn’t been stuck in the truck with the camera equipment. We had three cameramen, one of whom was about as happy as Seph with a hangover.
“True. But today…” He gestured upwards. “Today will be hotter than normal.”
May was usually one of the best months to visit Zimbabwe. The rains had lessened and it wasn’t usually as hot as later on in summer. Lake Kariba would be populated with tourists, some fishing, some on safari, some inevitably hunting. It was likely that Wren and I would deal with an animal at some point that had been injured by poachers. It used to make me angry, to want to go out and poach them, but I had mellowed since turning thirty and now I understood more about the way of the world and how I couldn’t fight every battle.
Wren was watching the scenery, the buildings becoming more sporadic, the population less dense as we left Harare. She was all legs in her taupe cotton shorts and green t-shirt, her short hair pulled back into a tiny ponytail.
I’d forgotten how beautiful I’d found her. Right from when I’d first sat next to her in lectures to the day when she’d walked away from me and told me she couldn’t, I’d never laid eyes on a woman who fascinated me as much as Wren. She was petite, tiny frame, tiny hands and this big strength as if she could take everything you couldn’t hold in your head and carry it for you, temporarily. Then she’d make sure you took it back, bit by bit and deal with it.
“Are we stopping somewhere?” She turned to look at Maarku, or Mars as he was known.
“Maybe. See what they do in front.”
We were in convoy, Jaime and the producers in the vehicle ahead of us, the crew behind. We had it easy in that all we had to do was our job with the animals and a few straight-to-cameras. It was the crew’s job to get the best shots; ours was to do what we’d been trained to. I knew Jaime had a list of things to go through while we travelled and I knew she’d been up until late last night, making plans, researching.
I knew because she’d knocked on my door, wearing just a robe.
It would’ve been easy to say yes. It had been a couple of months since I’d last fucked someone, a woman I met while I was out with Seph. I’d gone back to hers and enjoyed her company until the early hours, when I’d left her satisfied and feeling good. That was the point.
But I couldn’t say yes to Jaime. I was pretty sure she’d slept with Seph and I could never be a hundred percent sure about who Max had slept with, so there was the chance she was attempting a full house – and there had been a couple of women who had tried the same thing.
Marie had taught us never to brag. She never told us what not to do; that was a pointless exercise, but she had us told how to treat women. She had always been open and honest, no subject taboo. Totally different from our father who was traditional and closed and cold. Shut off in his cave and barricaded in with legal journals and case files.
I couldn’t say yes to Jaime because of Wren.
I’d talked to Wren about sex lots of times. We’d talk about it the day after she’d lost her virginity to Jonah and after I’d fucked a girl in her halls who - I hadn’t known at the time – had been pretty much obsessed with me and then cried the following day. I’d talked to Wren about blow jobs and anal sex and different positions and never thought about what it would be like to do any of that with her because at first, I’d never wanted to do that with her. It just wasn’t like that.
We weren’t like that, not until much later. And then we were like two kids who had never touched anyone before, tentative. Unsure. Because it was more than just exploring a body.
Sleeping with Jaime while Wren was in the next room probably wouldn’t have been an issue for Wren. I don’t think she’d have thought anything less of me; she’d have expected it to an extent. But I didn’t want to do it.
It was clutching a handful of sand, knowing that within it there was the smallest, most precious, diamond and you didn’t want to let it slip away.
I didn’t know if I was ready for Wren, didn’t know if I’d ever be or even if I could be. But I couldn’t let that sand slip away.
“I didn’t expect the green.”
I laughed at her words. “Everyone thinks Africa is just one big desert.”
“I know. I knew it wasn’t, but this…”
I moved my arm, my hand, touching her shoulder near to the window. Needing contact. Watching out of the window, seeing the same things that she did.
