"Crap. I'm out."

"What do you mean 'you're out'?"

"I mean, I'm out. I forgot to put more in my wallet."

Donna sat up violently and snatched the wallet from him, rifling through the compartments to be sure. When she was sure that he really was out, she threw the wallet back at him. It landed with a smack on his bare chest.

"Jeez, Randy! The one night when we've got the house to ourselves you forgot to bring condoms?!

He scratched his head, unsure how to proceed. "Uh, yeah. But don't, you know, you have any?"

"Randy!" she glared at him. "It's always been your responsibility to..." she trailed off, remembering that she did have a couple lying deep in her drawer somewhere back from her days when she and Eric couldn't keep their hands off each other. "Desk drawer, dark corner in the far left," she instructed him.

He gave her a cheeky smile and leapt off the bed to get them.

Donna flopped back on her bed and stared at the ceiling, hearing him moving things around in her drawer. "You found them?" she called.

Randy didn't answer her, and she frowned. She opened her mouth to ask again when she saw what had him all quiet. She froze.

He looked at her gravely. "Donna?" He looked down at the sheaf of letters and pictures and the two rings from another life in the middle of his palm. "You told me you'd gotten rid of them."

Shit. Donna stared at the items in his hands wordlessly, and the fingers that were gripping the sheet to her breasts turned white. She looked back up at Randy, wondering how she could explain. She forced a nonchalant laugh.

"I must've forgotten to," she said lamely. "Here, give them here, I'll throw them out now." She stretched a hand out for them.

He shook his head and looked at her again. "It isn't because you still have them. It's just..." -he looked a little lost as he placed them back on the table- "why did you lie?"

Donna had no answer for that. She just knew that she couldn't throw away the rings Eric had given her as proof of his love.

One Promise ring. And one Engagement ring.

Rings that stood for a vow of a future together.

A lifetime with him.

She lifted her shoulders in a helpless shrug. "I don't know," she told him.

Donna had struggled with her relationship with Randy. She loved that he was so different from Eric and yet she hated that he wasn't anything at all like him.

She had intended to throw out everything that Eric had given her in all their years together, but when the time came, she found that she couldn't. She had gone through the trash just to retrieve them again.

All of it, including The Breakup Letter. And had them stashed away in the deepest corner of her drawer and forgot about it all, until today. Randy hadn't asked her to dump Eric's stuff, but she had told him that she had. Up till now she had no idea why she had done so.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

His smile was sad, but he made no comment. Just walked over to her bed and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. She leaned into him and he dropped a kiss on the top of her head. "S'okay."

She hid a watery smile. Randy was such a good guy. In all respects, he was more of a catch than Eric was, even Eric's own father seemed to think so.

So she was having a little trouble letting go of her scrawny first love. But that was to be expected, wasn't it? She was sure it was just a phase. One that didn't mean anything at all.

She pushed Eric out of her mind and fused her lips with Randy's in a hot kiss, pulling him down towards her on the bed.


Jackie sat absently brushing her hair at the small vanity that Eric had taken a whole week to piece together for her; one item at a time. He brought home the little table when he had bartered his time to fix the falling roof off one of the villager's huts and had managed to get the stool from a woodworker in the village who was returning a favor.

She had gotten up about twenty minutes ago and didn't see Eric in their hut. Their friendship had deepened ever since he had had that nightmare almost a week ago, and though he had made no mention of that night since, Jackie had heard enough and seen enough that one time to chance a rough guess at what he was trying so hard to hide.

She was afraid — of the terrible truths he was guarding, and for him as well. The possibility that she wouldn't be able to help him in any way at all terrified her.

Giving her appearance one last check, she put her brush down, and headed out the door to look for him in the village. The heat hit her as she left the cool confines of their little dwelling and as she walked pass, several people offered her smiles and called out 'Jambos' in greeting.

Jackie stopped by one of the neighboring huts for a quick chat with the mother of one of Eric's students. She accepted a cup of strong black tea and mentioned that she was looking for Eric.

"He be at da schoolyard. Wer-king."

Jackie frowned, not quite understanding. She had been to the schoolhouse several times and never noticed a schoolyard. But she nodded anyway, thanked the woman for the tea, and headed off in the direction of the schoolhouse. The woman called her back.

"No, no," she said amusedly. "Not school. School yard. It be over in dat way," she said as she pointed in another direction, "there. You walk un-teel you see Ebele's hut, then you turn this way." She indicated 'Right' by waving her right hand.

Jackie smiled and thanked her again. Everyone knew where Ebele lived. Being the only healer in the village, and it would be to your advantage to memorize the way to her hut blindfolded. If you were to consider the fact that the way of life in a village was fraught with mishaps and with the nearest modern medical facility a plane ride away, Ebele was definitely your best bet.

She took the longer route looking for Eric, and dallied along the way to buy some food for him. She realized that the schoolyard that he was working on wasn't anywhere near the actual school, and was located off the village perimeter, adjacent to where the crop fields were.

She spotted him almost immediately when she turned the corner, and stopped short, for whatever she had expected to see him doing in this 'schoolyard', she had not expected to see him building one.

And building one he definitely was.

A newly constructed low retaining wall had blocked off three sides of a large square area, and a series of deep troughs in the shape of an 'S' had been dug in the hard ground.

She watched a shirtless Eric throw down his shovel as he pitched the last bit of earth out of the last trough in the 'S'.

The sun blazed down on his dark head and picked up hints of dark gold in his short hair. He brushed sweat off his brow with the back of his hand, and headed towards a heap of thick, huge, rubber tires; old ones that used to belong to a large truck or similar, piled haphazardly far off the side of the square. The muscles in his back rippled as he hauled one off the ground and slung it over his shoulder in one strong move. He turned slightly and heaved another one up with his other arm, carrying the both of them back to where the line of hollows were in the yard.

Jackie couldn't help herself, her mouth fell open.

She remembered how he used to buckle under the weight of mere boxes of her clothes when he helped her move in with Donna. She remembered the last time she had seen Eric without his shirt on had been years ago, when they had all gone skinny dipping together in the lake. She had been with Michael then, and Eric had made no impression whatsoever on her.

Now though, she found that she could hardly keep her eyes off him; her brain finally registering changes that she refused to accept before. For this was Eric, her friend. Steven's best friend. The love of Donna's life. Geeky, scrawny, twitchy Eric. But the man standing in front of her couldn't be further from the boy that she had grown so used to seeing in her mind's eye.

Eric would never be beefy and bulky, but what he was, was whipcord lean, and she found him sexy as hell. He had always been tall to her, and while his shoulders had never been his best feature before, toiling away for more than a year had packed them with sinew, and they had finally filled out to fit his long frame. Veins ran down the length of his well-muscled arms and her eyes raked unabashedly down his hard form, taking in the ridges on his stomach and the sculpted planes of his chest. She followed a dark line of hair from his navel that disappeared into the waistband of his low-slung jeans and felt a heat low in her belly that she couldn't ignore.

He dropped the tire he had in one arm, and it fell to the ground with a heavy thump. Then he hoisted the other off his shoulder to drop it vertically into the hole he just dug. He went back for two more tires, gripping them by the rim and lugged back one in each hand. Back and forth he went, hauling two at one go until all the hollows in the ground were filled. Then he picked up his shovel again and dug it in the pile of dirt that he had previously unearthed, pitching it back in to the troughs to anchor the tires firmly into the ground.

The tires stood half buried in the ground, and Jackie saw that he was creating a sort of balancing beam, or a series of stepping stones, for the kids to climb on top of.

Something must have alerted him to her presence, for he stopped digging suddenly to turn around and scan the line of huts at the edge of the village behind him. He spotted her immediately, and a smile broke across the tan of his face.

Jackie's own smile was just as bright and she realized that she was giddily happy to see him, and that she had actually missed him in the short time that they were apart. She shook her head dismissing the thought and was soon jogging over to where he was.

"Hey you."

"Hey," she smiled up at him, feeling shy all of a sudden. She looked around for something to say to him when she remembered that she had brought him food. She held up the cloth-wrapped bundle in her hands and waved it in front of him. "Look, I brought you breakfast!"

Eric chuckled and threw her a look. "Jackie, it's close to noon."

She pouted prettily. "Why didn't you wake me this morning?"

He shrugged disarmingly and said, "Nah, you looked so peaceful, I couldn't wake you." He changed the subject and pointed to her bundle. "What did you get? Cos I'm starving."

She unwrapped it to reveal the puffy triangles of mandaazi, a semi-sweet fried dough that she had developed quite a fondness for. His hands were covered with dust and dirt, so she took one out and brought it to his mouth.

He took a huge bite and mumbled his thanks. Jackie ate the remainder of his half-eaten mandaazi and Eric narrowed his eyes at her. She grinned and took out another, offering it to him. This time he bit on to the whole thing and pulled it out of her hands with his mouth.

"Pig!"

He swallowed and accepted the bottle of water she handed him. "Never come between a starving man and his food."

He took a long swig of water and dunked the rest over his head in an effort to cool off. He gave his head a hard shake and sent droplets of water flying everywhere. She yelped and laughed and then reached up shyly to finger the sun-bleached ends of his hair.

"Looks like someone's been spending a lot of time outdoors."

A small smile twitched at the corner of his mouth, and he said, "It'll be hard not to. Look around you. Everything is outdoors."

She gave a slight nod, appreciating the simple truth in his statement. She looked around her and placed her hands on her hips.

"So. You're building this?" she asked.

Eric drove the head of the shovel into the ground and leaned on it slightly. He followed the direction of her eyes and and nodded an affirmative.

"Yep."

He bent over and grabbed his shirt, pulling it on before jamming a hat lying near on his head. "C'mon," he said, "I'll show you what I've got going here."

They walked together as he explained. "The idea is basically the same, I wanted a safe place outside of school where the kids can have fun and learn at the same time. They haven't really got a proper place to play, you know, and I thought, why not build one for them?"

Jackie passed a section on the ground where someone had marked with deep grooves on the ground.

"What's this?" she asked and pointed to the markings.

Eric looked over at what got her attention. "A diagram," he said. "My plans for a climbing frame that I want to build."

He walked over to where he had scratched a large square in the ground. "Here, see," he squatted down and pointed to it, "this is where I'm gonna build a play tower. It'll have three open sides, and it's gonna be about six feet tall, with a cargo net leading up to the platform on one side, a slide on the other and stairs on the third side."

He got up and walked over to the other deep grooves in the ground, patiently describing to Jackie his ideas and intentions.

She was impressed. She had never seen anyone build playground equipment from scratch before. She had existed in a world where Daddy or Mommy handed over cash, and things just magically appeared where she wanted them to.

"It looks like it's going to be hard work," she commented to Eric.

He was still staring at his drawing on the ground but looked up when she spoke. He lifted his shoulders in a shrug.

"Yeah, but it's worth the effort, so…" he trailed off as he noticed the reddening tip of her nose and frowned.

"Should have told you to bring a hat or something," he muttered. "The sun's pretty brutal."

He took his hat off his head and placed it on hers, adjusting it so it didn't fall over her eyes. "There," he said, "much better."

She was strangely touched at the gesture. She felt…

Cherished.


In between helping with the farming and the never-ending odd jobs around the village, Eric worked at his schoolyard. There was always one or two of the men in the village who would help him with it at any given time, but it was mostly his work and his project.

He would leave the village from time to time and would always take Jackie with him as he drove to the city center or other more well-developed areas nearby to look for building materials or scrap metal that would work in the yard. He showed Jackie the plans that he had drawn up for his project, and she helped by offering one or two novel ways of adapting the playground to the children's tastes.

He enjoyed having her around him, and made it a point to include her in his comings and goings. Except when he was teaching, although Jackie found herself sitting in on his classes on more than one occasion. Mostly though, Jackie would involve herself in the lives of the village women, and to her surprise, learnt that she had an ear for languages, and was learning new words and forming rudimentary sentences so quickly that if given the chance, she could nearly eclipse Eric's grasp of Swahili, even with his year-long head start.

She loved spending time with with Afia in particular, and was learning new recipes that she added daily to a notebook which was fast running out of pages. She thought that the baby, Desta, with his drooling, gummy smiles, was simply adorable, and Afia's elder son and daughter thought her the prettiest thing they had ever seen, and pretty much worshipped the ground she walked on.

She learnt something new everyday, and Africa seemed to be bringing out a side of her that she never knew existed.

She kneaded dough with the women, fried root vegetables with the women, hung out laundry with the women, but firmly drew the line at collecting eggs with the women. She was terrified of the clucking chickens, and no amount of teasing and cajoling by the women could ever convince Jackie to touch something that came out of a chicken's butt.

"I'm never eating eggs again," she declared over dinner one night, "or anything to do with chickens."

She stabbed at her plate viciously and gave Eric a look that dared him to contradict her. "I hate them."

Another vicious stab. "I'm boycotting them."

There was a glint in his green gaze as he said, "That's a bold statement to make. That means you'll be giving up, hmmm let's see. Cookies. Cakes. Pancakes. Brownies. Scrambled eggs."

He flashed her a wicked grin. "Mandaazi. All the things you love." He brought a forkful of roasted meat to his mouth. "Are you sure about that?"

She glared daggers at him.

He had been on his way home earlier that evening with despicable timing, and caught her in the middle of a running frenzy, flapping her arms and screaming her head off in sheer panic; terrified of the squawking brood of hens hot on her tail, convinced she was going to be pecked to death because she had wrongly gotten in the way in the middle of their feed.

She was nursing a grudge with him for laughing at her predicament. For she had shrieked at him to save her and had expected him to show some chivalry and whip out a gleaming sword to slay them chickens, but he had failed miserably on both counts.

He leaned over and to brush her nose lightly with a finger, and pointed to her plate. "Just so you know, that's roast chicken you're having for dinner now."

Her eyes flashed fire and she willed them to incinerate him.

He lifted his shoulders in a nonchalant shrug. "Just sayin'."