Her Forever After. Nani Khabako
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tell me you’re still hung up over him. It’s been seven years! You’re not twenty-one any more.”
“I know. You’re right. And I couldn’t care less what he chooses to do with his debauched life – I just want him to stay the hell away from me. Look, babe, I’m sorry about tonight, let’s do lunch tomorrow. I have to oversee the cover shoot; it’s part of the main feature article. I’m not really sure when that’ll be done, but I’ll give you a heads up, okay?”
“You sure I don’t need to come over there with tissues and hard liquor in hand?”
“Tate, honestly! . . . Suppose I still have to ask Tholaphi for forgiveness as well?”
“Oh, honey, rest assured. No sooner had we realised you wouldn’t show than a canary-yellow Hummer, nogal, whizzed by to whisk her off to goodness knows what exotic location.”
“Oh, God help her. I’ll call tomorrow to make sure she wasn’t dumped in some ditch on the Flats.”
“Okay, sweets, bye.”
Tumi sat pondering the unexpected turmoil in her life. How could she, a woman who had it all, a woman with the whole world at her feet, be flustered by the untimely arrival of an ancient love? It wasn’t that she was still hung up over him, which would be the biggest act of stupidity on her part; it was just that Mandi’s return had brought with it unwanted and very painful memories.
She could count on one hand the number of men she’d gone out with since him. Only one had developed into a relationship, but she had never really let the guy in. She’d been constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, and he’d eventually given her an ultimatum: Be in it fully or let me go. So she’d let him go.
There were a few things Tumi knew for sure. She’d never allow herself to fail, she’d never let her mother go without, she’d one day run her own successful magazine – and no man would ever bring her to her knees the way Mandi had. No one should have the right to hurt another so carelessly, so heartlessly, and so devastatingly.
She remembered the first day she saw him as if it was yesterday.
He’d come striding into the lecture hall in the media studies building at the University of Cape Town chaperoned by a throng of admirers, a forward-thinking kasi boy with street and book savvy. And that skin . . . God help her, but Tumi had never been able to forget the shade, tone, texture and depth of Mandi’s cappuccino skin. Every other facial and body feature seemed enhanced by its smooth and perfect tint.
He had been perfect. He’d also unnerved her in every way possible. He’d been brooding and serious, hard to pull into conversation and seemingly above the banal interactions of the varsity experience.
He’d performed excellently academically, and he’d always been impeccably groomed.
But never would one miss that he was from the township. He’d worn his background and origins with equal measures of pride and arrogance, and seemed to dare anyone to judge him for it. She’d picked up bits of information from the gossips that he was originally from the Eastern Cape and had relocated to Gugulethu, Cape Town, when he was sixteen. They said he lived alone and had no family. They said a lot of things which she wasn’t sure were entirely true.
And how the girls would stare and gossip and speculate. Once in a while there would be one brave enough to approach the forbidding township hunk, but they soon found that he didn’t suffer fools gladly or allow any probing into his personal life. Tumi studied him too, though not as blatantly as the others. She’d almost wanted him to know he was not the centre of everybody’s world and that she had other things to do besides wondering about Mandi the African chocolate-drop-slash-god who didn’t talk.
She’d been so over him! Well, at least that was what she’d told herself, but if she’d really been honest, she would’ve admitted that he’d gotten to her in a bad way. It wasn’t until they were paired together for an assignment that she was forced to interact with this man who irritated her so. Even though she was studying literature and he politics, they shared a Linguistics class and would see each other twice a week. They were tasked with correcting punctuation and identifying parts of speech, as well as various other grammatical torments lecturers dished out.
“Do you wanna do your part and then I do mine, and we can just hand it in together?” Tumi had asked after the awkward silence that filled their initial meeting.
She’d been determined to show him that she didn’t care either way.
“Suits me just fine,” he’d said without looking up from his book on Marxism.
“Well, okay then. I mean, if that’s all?”
The jerk actually sighed like some long-suffering torture victim before uttering his few choice words. “Goodbye, Tumi.”
The absolute arrogance! She’d taken his indifference as a personal attack.
“At the risk of wasting more of your time, might you want to know which part you have to do and which part I . . .”
“Look, do the first two exercises and I’ll do the other two,” he’d interrupted.
“No need to be so short,” she’d found herself saying, hating how she was showing irritation when actually aiming for cold indifference.
“Lady, you don’t like me. I don’t like you either. I’m just making things easier for both of us.”
Oh, how she remembered that conversation! How she had tossed and turned that night, thinking how much of an arse he was, how his calling her “lady” had been a clear sign of misogynistic arrogance.
“Fine!” she’d said. A weak response, but she’d refused to give him the last word.
And with that feeble comeback she’d stormed off, seething.
She remembered how she hadn’t been able to shut up about her rude partner to all who would listen at res. She remembered how she’d been unnerved to find that he realised she didn’t like him and had made it clear he didn’t like her either. Oh, how Tumi remembered that from the very first encounter, Mandi had wreaked havoc on her soul and made her want to weep from the overwhelming obsession to figure him out.
If only she had been smart from the onset. If only she’d recognised the handsome and elusive stranger for what he was: a cold and heartless human being. But she’d been young and foolish. She had let her desperate attraction cloud her vision.
But not this time! This time she was ready to face him with her head held high. And boy, he was in for the shock of his life when he found himself faced with a brand-new Tumelo Vika.
2
It was deadline day. The magazine was being put to bed in just two hours and Tumi was still waiting for one junior to submit an article, an important piece.
Only God knew why she was both a writer and subeditor at this publication, but after the last subeditor left amid a fury of profanities, it was decided she would help out until a replacement could be found.
Six months later she was still doing the job – without pay.
Tumi was not the submissive sort, but she didn’t have the stomach to fight the big guns over what would eventually be only a measly salary increase.
It was a well-kept secret that magazine staff were not that well paid. The job seemed glamorous to many who didn’t know that behind the shoots, events, interviews and fashion spreads were endless hours spent putting everything together into something consumers would rush to pick up from the stands.
She’d been with Pri-Chic for the last five years, and in that short while she’d worked herself to the top of the writers’ pile, contributing features, opinion pieces and a column every month. She didn’t mind all this; she truly loved her job. She just wished other people had the same drive as she did, and it irritated her no end when young writers failed to produce copy on deadline. It was a sure-fire way of seriously damaging one’s writing career.