LORI: Sure. Why not

JAKE: Okay, so planetarium starts at seven

LORI: Shall we meet there?

JAKE: Sure I usually offer to pick the girl up, but you’re not like any other girl I’ve ever met. Anything but JustLori . . .

I stared at the message. What did that dot, dot, dot mean? And how did I respond to it? I typed:

LORI: See you soon . . .

Adding some dots too. Just in case the moment called for more. Another message popped up on the screen.

JAKE: . . .

Oh my, now what? Four dots? Too many? My finger hovered over the dots, trying to figure out how many dots were appropriate. If dots were even appropriate anymore? He sent me another message.

JAKE:

I breathed a sigh of relief, at least we’d left the dots behind. I’d never been a fan of pointillism. So I sent him a smiley face back, too, whatever that actually meant. I really sucked at this, didn’t I?

We walked into the planetarium and stopped when we saw the poster for the show. A bright, cartoony-colored poster hung on the wall. I read it out loud:

“Bob and Sipho Fly to the Moon.”

I turned and looked at Jake. He half grimaced, half smiled.

“Yeeeeah, I guess he was expecting me to come with Lisa.”

I laughed.

“Let’s go anyway,” he said, handing the tickets in.

The show kicked off, and it was definitely aimed at kids, but somehow that didn’t matter. By the end of it, we were both laughing our heads off and screaming out with the audience, “Five, four, three, two, one . . . blast off!” We stumbled out of there forty-five minutes later, the biggest smiles plastered across our faces, and I realized that I hadn’t laughed like that since being with the guys in Joburg.

“Thanks for that,” I said to him, still smiling. “I needed it.”

“What?”

“A good laugh. I don’t think I’ve had one like this since leaving Joburg.”

We ambled into the parking lot, and I was just about to walk to my car when he stopped me.

“Hey, let’s walk. There’s a cool park around the corner. Besides . . .” He paused and looked at me and I felt that bloody flutter again. “I don’t really feel like going home.”

“Cool,” I said, trying to act casual, even though on the inside I was exploding with excitement. We walked into the park. The sun was still up, and the light was soft and diffuse. Beautiful. Once again, the mountain took up prominence in the background. It was always there, no matter where you went in Cape Town, like a beacon that guided you to the same spot every single time.