Clutching Hope

Chapter 8

"Why did you kiss me that day at the farwell party?" I asked Sion as he sat on a picnic mat with me lying down with my head on his lap.

I'd suggested that we leave the city's fast paced chaos today after a rough week with a wrong delivery yesterday and near robbery earlier in the week and barely seeing each other. Choosing a picnic slow pace towards my tribal lands. Machakos park. It's fairly new, not far from his place but a good fourty minutes or so from Nairobi city.

The vast and open park designed to resemble an outdoor amphitheatre not long ago had been a hit. The governor's vision of moving our country forward put to work than just pretty words.

Couples walked around. Others picnicked, some kids played a game of tag not far from us.

Sion dangled a chip over my mouth and I bit it. It wasn't the crispy franchised fast food ones, but the authentic street vendor Kenyan kind you longed for in boarding school. Knowing you weren't allowed out of school grounds to go buy some and could only wait until visiting day made it a delicacy.

They were oily, long and slightly wobbly but fried in oil that tasted of roasted stuff like they probably used it  multiple times. And best of all, you added tomato sauce into the plastic bag they put them in and tossed them around. Goodness.

Sion had refused to mix in the sauce though.

"I felt like if I never got to tell you how I felt then, I was giving someone else the chance to snatch you up and I'd have no place to get sad about it. I had to make my intentions known."

I tipped my head back to look at him and he peered down.

"And what were your intentions?"

He smiled. "To stake a claim even if I didn't know when in the future we might get a shot."

"Isn't that just blocking the door for anyone else who might have had the courage to approach me?"

"Fuck them all."

Wow. That sounded gutsy. A shiver ran down my spine at his take it or leave it tone. But I couldn't ignore the double standard of his past actions.

"So if I'd told you I liked you then and there wasn't a kiss, would that have mattered when you got down south and stayed celibate until you came back?"

He was quiet for a while.

"I'm gonna be honest," he began. Here we go, I thought and ate another chip. "Even though I kissed you then, I knew I would possibly date or fool around while away. I didn't expect you to wait on me. It was more of a way to keep it known I was still a contender when the chance came."

"Patriachy at its finest." I murmured.

"You didn't date or fuck around when I was gone?"

I frowned up at him, "of course I did."

He shrugged. "Exactly. It wasn't a, 'this is who we are destined to be, so wait for me' kiss, but more about letting the unspoken be known it wasn't a secret anymore. Did I miss you? Yeah, a lot, but I couldn't do anything about the other stuff, so I hoped."

"Like clutching hope." I murmured again.

"Yeah," he said, his eyes dropping to gaze at me. The look filled me with warmth all over that I wanted to hold him to me and not let go.

"So you really were sure that you'd come back and we would date?"

He gave me a confident look but frowned.

"You said, 'when the chance came', not if, how sure were you?" I made quoting marks as I said the words. I had to know.

"You're dating me right now aren't you?" He asked.