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That’s all it is.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Anita

E ven though it made me incredibly nervous, I forced myself to text Nuni first the next day.

I was the one who’d kept flip-flopping, going back and forth on whether anything more could happen between us. He

might have been thinking I’d changed my mind again in the cold light of day, so I wanted to make sure he knew I hadn’t.

I really wanted to make sure of that.

We hadn’t spoken through text since the day of the sauna incident three weeks ago. As I sat in my parents’ living room, I stared down at our previous conversation. My chest tightened with a hint of longing. I’d liked getting to see the other side of him—the casual, funny, slightly less mature side. I’d gotten another taste of it in person last night while we were fixing our clothes in the bathroom stall, and now I was hungry for more of it. I wanted to actually know him.

I checked the time. Just gone 1 p.m. That seemed like an acceptable time to text him. Not so early that I seemed embarrassingly eager, but not so late that I came across as uncaring or like I’d forgotten all about it.

Taking a deep breath, I started typing.

Hi.

I stopped, staring down at my screen. What else was I supposed to say? ‘Wanna have sex again? Maybe somewhere in private this time?’

Or maybe, ‘I promise I won’t change my mind this time’.

Suddenly, I felt kind of shitty. I had messed him around. I didn’t really understand why he was still interested.

I hoped he knew that I hadn’t been playing games with him. I really had been trying to do the right thing, but… something about him just made me not care about the right thing. Not enough to keep fighting it.

“Auntie Anita!”

The excited squeal of my five-year-old niece made my thumb accidentally hit send as my head jerked up. Oh god, now I looked like a complete idiot. I’d sent him, Hi. Nothing else. There was even a full stop at the end. Everyone knew that full stops in texts were pointed and annoying.

“Hi, sweetheart.” I had to set my phone down as Mina launched herself onto my lap, making me grunt. “Where’s your brother?”

“Look at the bracelet Nanny made me,” she was already babbling, thrusting her wrist in my face. “Daddy said he’d take us swimming tomorrow after school. Are you going to come?”

I chuckled. “Come swimming? No, I don’t think so.”

Mina pouted. “But you like swimming.”

“I do, but I’ll be at work.”

“But that’s boring.” She wriggled around in my lap as her seven-year-old brother Kiran ran into the room.

Mina looked almost exactly like Devi, with straight dark hair and light brown eyes. Kiran took more after their father, his colouring darker and his hair a curly afro.

My sister’s husband, Malcolm, walked into the room a moment later. “No running, Kiran,” he said sternly, then gave me a somewhat exhausted grin. “Hi, Anita.”

I smiled back. “Hi. Hi, Kiran!”

“Hi, Auntie Anita.” He rushed over to give me a distracted hug, then ran into the kitchen shouting for Grandad.

“Don’t get in Grandad’s way!” Devi called as she and our mum walked into the living room. “He’s making lunch!”

“Lunch!” Mina wriggled off my lap and raced after her brother. “I’m hungry! Grandad!”

“How was last night?” Malcolm asked me as he sank onto the sofa with a sigh. He jerked his chin at Devi with a grin. “This one came home this morning hungover as hell.”