Prologue #3
“And if you get drafted somewhere else, we figure that out too.”
“Yeah.”
I searched his face. “You don’t think we can?”
Dre took too long.
“I think I love you enough to want to.”
That wasn’t an answer, and we both knew it.
His thumb moved over the back of my hand.
“I just don’t know if wanting it is enough.”
My eyes filled again, but I let the tears fall this time.
Dre pulled me against him.
I buried my face in his chest while his arms closed around me, and for one reckless second, I understood exactly why everyone assumed I would follow him.
Because in his arms, I wanted to.
For Dre, I could make myself fit almost anywhere.
That was precisely why I couldn’t let love make the decision for me.
“I have to take it,” I whispered.
His arms tightened.
“I know.”
That should have made the choice easier.
It didn’t.
We stayed that way for a while because neither one of us seemed ready to admit the conversation had reached the place where there were no more words worth saying.
Eventually, I pulled away.
“I should get dressed.”
“Yeah.”
Neither of us moved immediately.
Then Dre picked my dress up from the floor and handed it to me.
“I’ll take you home.”
We dressed quietly, moving around each other with a familiarity that made everything ache.
He knew where I would step before I took it.
I knew where he had dropped his shoes. My dress slipped back over skin that still felt like his hands, my bra was near the foot of his bed, and my toothbrush still sat in his bathroom drawer like ordinary things did not know everything had changed.
When I reached for my things, my hand paused on his AWU letterman jacket.
Purple and gold. Heavy. His name stitched across it.
The number twenty-two on the sleeve. He had given it to me after a cold game sophomore year when I swore I wasn’t freezing and my teeth had started telling on me.
It had swallowed me then and still swallowed me now, broad through the shoulders, sleeves too long, hem falling low on my thighs.
Dre looked at it.
Then at me.
For a second, I thought he might say something.
He didn’t.
I put it on because I couldn’t make myself leave it there.
The drive to my quad took less than ten minutes.
December had settled over AWU, bare branches cutting through the dark while students hurried between buildings with coats pulled tight. Dre drove with one hand on the wheel of his Hellcat, the other resting beside the gearshift.
Normally mine would have been there.
I reached for it.
His fingers opened immediately.
That almost broke me all over again.
He held my hand the rest of the way, and we didn’t talk because there was nothing left to explain. I was taking Tiffany. He didn’t know where football would take him. We loved each other. None of those truths knew how to make room for the others yet.
When he parked outside my building, I kept holding on.
“Don’t turn it down tomorrow because tonight hurts,” he said quietly.
I looked at him.
“What if I lose you?”
The sadness that crossed his face answered before he did.
“I don’t know.”
I hated the words, but Dre had never lied to me simply because a lie would feel better.
He leaned across the console and cupped the back of my neck until our foreheads touched.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
For a moment, I let myself have him exactly as he was. His scent still on my skin. His warm hand at my neck. His jacket around me like one more piece of him I was about to walk away wearing.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I whispered.
“Me neither.”
Neither of us said the word over. We didn't have to.
Then he kissed me.
Nothing like upstairs. There was no heat to hide inside this one, only the softness of his mouth and all the things neither of us could promise.
When he pulled away, I caught the front of his coat.
“Again.”
He kissed me again.
I held on until he stopped.
Dre walked me to the quad and waited while I fought with the key because my hands would not stop shaking. At the threshold, I turned, still wanting something impossible from him. A sentence that would make New York, football, and distance surrender because we loved each other.
Instead, he brushed the dampness beneath my eye.
“Get some sleep, Mani.”
He kissed my forehead and walked away.
I watched him until I couldn’t see him anymore.
Inside, the hallway was too bright and too quiet. I looked down at the jacket hanging off me, at the sleeves covering most of my hands, at his number on my arm.
I should have taken it off.
Folded it.
Given it back before I let myself leave with one more thing that belonged to him.
But I couldn’t.
Not yet.
I would mail it to him when my throat stopped closing every time I thought about his face. When my eyes stopped filling before I could make it across a room. When I could touch the purple wool and gold leather without remembering how special I had felt the night he gave it to me.
Tonight, I kept it on.
By the time I reached my room, whatever had been holding me together was gone.
Camille took one look at my face, closed the casebook in her lap, and stood.
“Oh, friend.”
I barely managed, “I got Tiffany,” before she had her arms around me.
Her happiness flashed first because she knew what that offer meant. Then she felt me shaking and understood the rest.
“He knows?”
I nodded against her shoulder.
Camille held me tighter.
She didn’t ask me to explain. She didn’t tell me love should make the answer easier or that I was supposed to choose one dream over another. She simply sat with me on the edge of the bed while I cried and the acceptance email glowed from my laptop across the room.
I had earned that yes.
And somewhere across campus was the man I loved enough to make saying yes hurt.
I just had no idea yet what they were going to cost us.