18. If This World Were Mine #2
“Now, before we let you all go enjoy the rest of your evening, a few quick reminders. The silent auctions in the foyer close at eleven sharp. We have art from Tasha Pryce-Allen, private studio sessions at WadeHouse with Tre Wade and Raschad Carter, one week at the Granger family’s place in Sea Island, and a custom piece from Naima Pryce’s atelier.
Bid early. Bid often. Don’t make my sister chase you down to close them out.
She’s been planning this night for months and her patience is not something I’d test.”
Laughter.
“And in about thirty minutes, after dessert is served, we’ll run our fourth annual bachelor auction.” I paused. “Bid generously and thank you again for being here. To Lennox Falls. To community. To family.”
I let the applause settle. Then I walked off the stage.
The next twenty minutes were a flood of donors finding me on the floor, people I hadn’t seen in ages pulling me into handshakes and hugs. A tearful older woman from Mount Zion, who’d been at our parents’ wedding, holding my hand and telling me Mama would be proud. I thanked her and meant it.
By the time I made it back to my seat for a quick breather, I had ten minutes before the MC took the stage for the auction.
Alyssa was leaning into me as I sat down. “Your speech was very moving, Julian. So good,” she said quietly.
“Thank you.”
Suddenly, the MC was tapping his microphone.
“Brace yourself,” Simone whispered to her. “This is the part where my brother gets sold.”
“Simone.”
“I’m just preparing her. They bid hard.”
Alyssa took a sip of her champagne and said nothing. We hadn’t talked about this part of the night or much else for that matter since the gazebo. I’d had half a dozen chances and let every one go by.
The auction was the auction. The MC turned it into the production he turned it into every year.
I went first because I had to set the tone.
I stood at center stage with my philanthropist face fully deployed, and I knew within the first thirty seconds that I was not going to make it through this auction without breaking my own discipline.
Because I was supposed to look at the bidders. That was the script. You stood up there, smiled, looked at the women raising their paddles, and played gracious.
But I could not stop looking at table eleven. Alyssa. I tried. Looked everywhere else, ran the names of the bidders in my head as a discipline exercise. The cobalt dress. The development consultant. The woman from Raleigh.
Then somebody called out fifteen thousand and the room gasped.
Sabrina.
I genuinely had not expected her to be here, let alone bid on me after making it clear that our time together was done. My eyes landed on Alyssa, who was looking at me. Steady and composed.
“Twenty thousand.”
Sabrina’s voice again. I did not look at her.
I looked at table eleven. Long enough that Alyssa’s eyes shifted and she dropped her gaze to her glass.
Long enough that when I finally pulled my eyes away and made them land on Sabrina, she was already looking at me with a curious expression.
She had clocked it. That the man she’d just bid twenty thousand dollars on was looking at a different woman.
Her smile recovered fast.
“Going once. Going twice. Congratulations to Ms. Sabrina West, our winner at twenty thousand dollars.”
I stepped off the stage and the next bachelor went up and the room moved on.
The band kicked back up after the auction, and the dancing portion of the evening began. I ended up at the back of the room where Khaz was waiting with two bourbons.
He handed me one. “Good speech, cuz.”
“Thank you.”
I looked out at the room and found Alyssa near the silent auction tables.
A lawyer I half-recognized was talking to her too close, leaning in, doing the thing men do when they think they’ve found something nobody else has noticed.
She was wearing a polite smile, keeping her glass of wine between them.
Khaz looked at me. “You good?”
I nodded.
“Julian!” called out Vincent Thompson, a real estate developer I’d known for years. He approached with two other men I knew, Bill Hayes and Robert Lewis.
“Hell of an event,” Vincent said, clapping me on the shoulder. “You really outdid yourselves.”
“Appreciate it,” I replied, eyes still on Alyssa. The lawyer had leaned in closer and set his hand on her wrist to make a point. She slipped her hand free without making a thing of it.
I set my drink down.
“Speaking of impressive,” Bill said with a slow grin, following my line of sight. “Who’s the sister in the black dress? That woman is fine!”
My blood was already boiling, but I kept my expression neutral. “Alyssa Carter.”
“Goddamn,” Robert said appreciatively. “That dress is doing everything it’s supposed to do.”
“Dangerous,” Vincent added, his eyes tracking across the room to where Alyssa had moved on to the silent auction items. “Woman knows exactly what she’s working with.”
“I’m gonna make an introduction,” Bill said, adjusting his collar. “Maybe she’d be interested in some company later.”
The casual way they were discussing her, like she was their entertainment for the evening, made my vision blur.
“That’s not happening,” I snapped, glaring at them.
The three of them looked at me with surprise.
“Damn, Julian,” Vincent laughed. “You know her like that?”
“She’s spoken for,” I said flatly.
“By who?” Robert pressed.
“Just find someone else to talk to,” I said, turning away from their confused faces.
I heard Vincent mutter something I couldn’t make out as I walked away.
Khaz fell in step with me. “You growled at three dudes you’ve known forever.”
I didn’t respond.
“You know these guys in here are naturally gonna assume she’s single, right?” he asked.
“She’s at one of the family tables.”
“At the family table with no one claiming her as his. Long as you don’t make it clear what she is to you, men are gonna keep walking up. You think any man here does that… talks like that, knowing she’s with you?”
A muscle in my jaw moved once.
“You’ve been doing this dance for months, Jules. Go do the actual dance.”
alyssa
She came over ten minutes after the auction. Simone spotted her first. “Heads up. Inbound.”
Taryn drained the last of her drink as Sabrina arrived in a cloud of perfume.
“Simone. Beautiful event. Truly.”
“Thank you, Sabrina.”
Her eyes moved off Simone and landed on me.
“You must be Alyssa. I’ve been wanting to put a face to the name. Sabrina West. So nice to finally meet you.”
“Likewise.”
“I’ve heard so much about you. Small town and all.” She let out a light laugh. “You know how it is.”
“I’m learning.”
She took Julian’s empty seat next to mine, uninvited, and folded her hands.
“That’s a beautiful dress.”
“Thank you.”
“It really is. It’s so bold.” She let the word do its work. “I don’t think I’d be brave enough to wear it, honestly. Different bodies do different things in different cuts. But you wear it beautifully.”
Taryn, very softly beside me: “Hm.”
“Thank you,” I said again in the same flat note.
“Anyway, I just wanted to come over and say what a lovely thing it is to see Julian extend himself the way he has been with you. He’s such a generous man. Always has been. It’s one of his gifts.”
Simone set her glass down. “Sabrina.”
“What? I’m acknowledging that what your brother has been doing for Alyssa and her son is exactly the kind of philanthropy he’s known for.
He’s a giver. He sees a need, and he meets it.
It’s beautiful, honestly.” She turned her fake smile back to me.
“I’m sure being new in town with a child has been so hard.
After everything you’ve been through, I can’t even imagine. My God —”
“That’s enough.” Simone’s voice didn’t rise. It went the other way, down to the register that ended things. “You’re a paying donor and we appreciate it. But you don’t get to sit at my table and do this. Leave.”
“I think I’ve been misunderstood. I was paying her a compliment.” She stood up and turned to me. “It really is so nice to finally meet you, Alyssa. Enjoy your evening.”
I didn’t reply.
Taryn watched her go. “She’s a miserable bitch. Don’t take in a word of that.”
“I’m not.” But I was, a little, and I hated that I was.
She’d all but called me a charity case. The poor widow with the son and the sad story. She’d built the whole thing out of a few true facts arranged in the cruelest order, and the trouble with cruelty arranged out of true facts is that some piece of it hit before you can ignore it.
What if some of that is true. What if—
I didn’t get to finish the thought, because Julian was crossing the floor toward me, as the music changed, low drums first, then the slow press of a piano underneath. Luther Vandross’s If This World Were Mine.
Simone gasped looking at her brother like he’d grown a second head. Taryn set her glass down, speechless as Julian stopped in front of me.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.”
He swallowed. “Dance with me?”
“You don’t dance, Julian.”
“I know. I’m asking anyway.”
I nodded, put my hand in his, and let him lead me onto the floor.
Luther was half a verse in and some of the room came onto the floor with us. Most of it didn’t; it wasn’t a polite-mingling song. The strings had widened across the ballroom and Luther was singing in that low, warm way that asks you to come closer.
Julian turned to face me. His right hand went to the small of my back, the fabric sliding under his palm.
I put my left hand on his shoulder, he took my right hand in his left, and we started to move.
I fit against him, my body deciding where it wanted to be a second before his decided where to put it.
The thing I had not let myself know until then rose up: I wanted him.
For years I had kept myself alive by not wanting anything, and I had gotten so good at it that I’d mistaken my not-wanting for peace.
And now I was standing in the middle of a ballroom, being held by a man who did not dance, wanting him so plainly that the clarity of it frightened me.