How To Love

chapter ten

Lerato was coming to stay with me today until the weekend came. I decided to take Thuso's advice after the fourth day when I got overwhelmed by the emptiness in the house.

Speaking of Thuso, we've been FaceTiming every night. It was a nice routine, where we caught each other up about our days, and he'd go on for minutes about what went wrong with the project. At this rate, he was going to be staying an entire month. I found myself actually looking forward to these calls each night, and that realisation made me aware of how much I've grown as a person ever since I decided to let go of the hurt.

Anyways, back to Lerato. I actually spent my weekend at my previous place with her. It still looked more or less the same, though this time, it has more of her, instead of the balance of our two personalities. The place was lovely. I left this morning, which was Sunday, and she was coming in a bit later, since she wanted to visit her boyfriend first, before coming over.

Although I did say I wasn't going to be domesticated, for my best friend, I was willing to put in the work. Before going home, I went to the store to get a few guest essentials, like Lerato's favourite snacks, a variety of skin care products in little travel sized packaging, and other things I thought she, and future guests, might need. TikTok was a big help. When I got home, I made sure one of our guest rooms was ready for her, changing out the sheets even though they have never been used, spraying some room scent and switching on a diffuser so the vanilla smell could linger, basically making sure everything was in order.

Now I was in the kitchen, preparing some snacks for us. I made a charcuterie board for us. It had three types of crackers, the salted ones, the whole wheat ones, and the sour cream and chives flavoured ones. For my fruits I added some raspberries, blueberries, cubed pineapple and halved strawberries. I also added some cashews and whole nuts, different kinds of cheeses, different flavoured chocolates, cold meat(ham, pepperoni and biltong), and two kinds of dip. To go along with our board, I grabbed two bottles of wine, red for me since it was my favourite, and white for her, from the cooler thing we had in our kitchen. I set it all up in the informal living room and went up to change into some loungewear so I was relaxed for her arrival.

She came around 16:00, finding me in the living room with a mask on my face while I searched for another Korean drama to watch, I just finished one called The Good Bad Mother.

"Hey best friend," I exclaimed in excitement. She was a bit distracted as I hugged her, and I remembered that this was her first time seeing our house. Since I lived in it everyday, I've gotten over its beauty, for the most part at least.

"Wow! Your house is huge! And beautiful," she gushed, taking in the living room.

"Thank you, do you want me to give you a tour?" I asked.

"Of course, is that even a question. Show me what long money can get you!" She exclaimed and I laughed. Mmapula took her suitcase to the guest room, I picked the one upstairs for her, while I guided her throughout the house. We settled back into the living room once she had changed into her own lounge clothes and was wearing her own mask.

"Yah shame chomi, your house is beautiful. I think I'm gonna be visiting you more often, just so I can bask in all of this grandeur." I laughed at her dramatics, though I wouldn't mind having her over. Even when I was living with her, we lived in perfect harmony, so I'm sure her presence here wouldn't bother me.

We watched a newly released kdrama called King the land for the next four hours, deciding to eat our supper on the couch because the episodes were that good. We only tuned in for bed at 20:30, and it was only because we had work tomorrow, plus, the Korean drama we were watching had only four episodes on air, so there really wasn't anything keeping us awake.