Mr Not Quite Good Enough

Mr Not Quite Good Enough by Lauri Kubuitsile Page A

Book: Mr Not Quite Good Enough by Lauri Kubuitsile Read Free Book Online
Authors: Lauri Kubuitsile
huh,” Gorata said. “He’s telling the truth, like always.”
    â€œYeah,” replied Kelebogile. “We know these thugs but we do nothing, since they’re robbing other people. Some of us even buy the stolen stuff from them, thinking we’re not wrong because we didn’t steal it ourselves. We’re just as guilty.”
    Gorata took the scissors from the kitchen drawer and cut out the column. She dropped it in her purse but wondered when she would see Ozee again. No one at the petrol station seemed to know where he’d gone. She had tried his cell number and either it was off or he wasn’t taking her calls. How do you kiss someone like that and then disappear forever?
    She guessed Alfred was part of the problem. Him showing up in his R4 000 suit couldn’t have made Ozee feel very good. She felt awful when she saw Ozee across the garden, looking at Alfred on his knees proposing to her with that huge ring.
    Maybe Ozee thought she said yes and that it was over between them before it had even started. Maybe that was why he wasn’t answering her calls, why he had disappeared.
    Ozee probably thought she said yes to Alfred’s big diamond ring. But Gorata was realising now that none of that mattered really. The job, the stuff, she didn’t care about any of that. If there was love, real love between two people, it shouldn’t matter what job they did or how much money they had. She knew that now.
    She needed to find Ozee and let him know she knew it now too.
    * * *
    Monday morning, and the same old traffic to contend with. Minibus taxis diving and ducking. Horns hooting, tyres squealing.
    Kelebogile had slept over at Mark’s place, so Gorata was alone in the car. She was early, since she didn’t need to pass by her friend’s school, so she took the next turn to make a stop at the petrol station to see if Ozee had shown up yet, even though it was out of her way and involved a significant amount of backtracking.
    She’d passed there twice on Sunday, but never found him. It was as if he’d dropped off the face of the earth. She wondered if she’d ever find him again.
    Her mind kept drifting back to the night they were alone in her garden, under the moonlight with all of its promise. Thinking back about everything, she realised that was the moment when she knew Ozee was someone very special. There was a connection between them, something she’d never felt with anyone else before. An honest connection, a strong one.
    But now she had let him disappear without telling him the truth about how she felt. She wondered if she’d ever get another chance with him.
    She pulled into the station and was relieved when she spotted Ozee talking to some of the petrol attendants near the shop. He saw her and came up to the car.
    â€œMorning, Lady Gorata,” he said, but not in his normal cheerful voice. Today he seemed depressed.
    Gorata parked the car and got out. “Hi, Ozee. Do you think we could go somewhere to talk?”
    â€œSure, let’s go for a walk.” He shouted back at the other guys, “I’ll be back soon!”
    They walked to the park down the road. It wasn’t a storybook park with jolly yellow rocking horses, green grass and a rainbow-coloured merry-go-round. This was still Soweto. It had a tall, wobbly slide kids could go down if they didn’t mind falling onto the bare dirt at the bottom. There was a swing set with chains hanging and bits of broken seats that had waited so long for the fix-it man that they had forgotten their original purpose.
    The greater part of the park was taken up by the dusty soccer pitch. A huge jacaranda stood to one side with a rusty metal bench under it; that was where Ozee and Gorata headed.
    â€œSo where have you been? I’ve been looking for you,” Gorata started, suddenly nervous and unsure. She looked down at the ground, littered with purple flowers.
    â€œI had some things

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