Chapter 2 #3
He made sense in photographs.
On paper too.
The problem lived everywhere paper could not reach.
The truth was, part of what drew me to Damien had been how safe everything felt.
We met through friends at a dinner in Manhattan.
He asked for my number before dessert, called when he said he would, and planned our first date without making me wonder whether there would be one. I liked knowing where I stood with him.
By then, I had already learned what it felt like to love somebody so deeply that losing him changed me.
Dre had understood parts of me before I finished explaining them.
He could make an ordinary night feel like something simply because he was there.
He made me laugh when I was mad, challenged me when I needed it, and never once treated my ambition like something I would eventually grow out of.
Losing all of that had hurt enough that I spent years making sure no man ever held quite that much of me again.
Damien was consistent. Thoughtful. Easy to understand. I cared about him, and over time I loved him, but if I was being completely honest with myself, I had also chosen a man I believed I could survive losing.
I had spent a long time calling that maturity.
Maybe some of it was. Some of it was me being careful enough that I never had to find out whether another man could break my heart the way Dre had.
Damien had done nothing to deserve being loved halfway because I was still protecting myself from something he had never done.
Bari glanced toward my phone. “You know you don’t get extra points for dragging it out.”
My head came up. “Excuse me?”
“I’m just saying. If it’s done, let that man go find somebody who likes him enough to answer texts before the phone goes dark.”
“Jabari,” Mama warned.
“What? That was compassionate.”
“That was not compassionate.”
“It was accurate with a little seasoning.”
I hated that I could not argue with him.
Bari knew about men I had no intention of discussing in front of my parents because twins knew things parents absolutely did not need to know.
He knew about Naz, about my questionable phase, about the man with money, cars, neighborhood reputation, and a calm confidence I found sexy right up until I realized he thought my ambition was something I would eventually outgrow once I understood he could provide for me.
One night, Naz asked why I worked so hard when I had him.
I never forgot the question.
Dre had been the opposite in almost every way. If I had an exam, the date changed. Food appeared instead. He stretched his long body across the end of my bed and complained about the number of highlighters I owned while quizzing me from my notes.
Dre never looked at my ambition and wondered why I needed it.
Which was part of what made everything that happened between us so much harder.
Mama sighed at my phone, and I knew that sigh.
It was not really about Damien. Mama liked him well enough, but she liked more what he seemed to represent: a good man who loved her daughter, a relationship with somewhere to go, maybe a husband eventually.
Maybe children. The kind of future mothers could picture clearly enough to start getting attached before anybody had promised them one.
She had never been the type to harass me about marriage or grandchildren, but I was twenty-nine now, and every once in a while I caught her looking at my life like she wondered whether there would ever be little people in it calling her Grandma.
“You could at least tell Damien you got his message,” she said.
“I will.”
“When?”
“When I know what to say.”
Bari slid another book onto the shelf. “You know.”
“I did not ask you.”
“You never do, and yet you keep needing me.”
“Jabari.”
He raised both hands and went back to the box.
Daddy set the screwdriver down and stood.
“You do not have to go Thursday.”
My stomach tightened before my mind could pretend not to understand.
“Camille would kill me.”
“She’d recover.”
“Eventually. I am not interested in finding out how long that takes.”
Daddy looked at me. “Is Camille the reason you’ve thought about staying home?”
The condo quieted.
Mama leaned against the island.
Bari managed to respect the silence for almost four seconds.
“Dre gonna be there.”
My body reacted before I did.
Mama turned toward my brother. “Bari.”
“What? That ain’t gossip. He goes to Crown every year.”
“I know.”
My voice sounded normal.
That annoyed me.
I had always been capable of sounding perfectly fine while my insides did something entirely different.
Bari caught it too.
“There go that voice.”
“What voice?”
“The one you use when you acting like you not bothered. Usually means you bothered as hell.”
“I am not bothered as hell.”
He stared at me.
“Okay,” he said.
That was worse than a joke.
Bari did not let me off easy unless he saw something that made him choose me over the laugh.
The night Dre and I ended, Camille had held me until I could breathe without crying long enough to leave the room.
Afterward, I crossed campus looking for my brother.
Bari was outside his quad with two of his line brothers, wearing a black T-shirt with old-gold detailing, jeans, and sneakers, walking a couple girls toward their cars.
I didn’t call his name. I barely made it close enough before he spotted me.
He knew immediately.
He said something quick to his boys, came straight to me, and took me upstairs.
I stayed at his place the rest of the night.
We played video games because I didn’t want to talk.
He found black cherry ice cream because it was my favorite, handed me the carton, and ate something else because I refused to share.
When I started crying again somewhere in the middle of a game, Bari put the controller down and pulled me into him.
He had gotten on my nerves since approximately nine minutes after I was born. But my brother loved me.
And something in my face now must have reminded him of the girl who had cried into his chest eight years ago, because he did not tease me again.
Daddy watched me for another moment.
“You scared to see him?”
I looked down at the sandwich in my hand. “Yes.”
Saying it aloud loosened something I had been holding too tightly all week.
Mama’s face softened, but it was Bari I glanced at first.
His did too.
“I’m not scared of Dre,” I said.
“I know,” Daddy answered.
I had never been afraid of Andre Jones.
I was afraid that seeing him would make eight years feel negotiable.
Dre had been the only man I had ever truly loved. I had cared about men after him. Wanted them. Slept beside them. Built relationships that were real because they were real.
But nobody had ever reached the same place.
Not in my heart.
Not in my pussy.
Sometimes I wondered if I had made Dre bigger in memory because we lost each other young. Then a picture would catch him laughing instead of posing, or an interview would play somewhere before I could escape his voice, and my body would recognize him before my logic got involved.
That frightened me.
So did wanting to see him anyway.
Badly.
“Homecoming was always going to be hard,” Mama said softly.
I looked at her. She remembered. Of course she did.
The last Crown Weekend Dre and I spent together, AWU had put crowns on our heads and called it tradition.
Homecoming King and Queen. Purple sash across his chest, red roses in my hands, both of us smiling beneath stadium lights while the crowd cheered like they were looking at a promise instead of two twenty-two-year-olds who had no idea what life was about to ask of them.
I still had pictures somewhere.
Dre in a suit. Me in a gown. His hand at my waist. My smile too wide to hide how happy I was. We looked beautiful together in a way that made people comfortable imagining us forever.
A few weeks later, I got the offer from Tiffany. By that night, everything between us had broken.
After we ended, Crown Weekend stopped feeling like nostalgia. It felt like walking back into a photograph where everyone still expected me to stand beside him.
“I left the first time for a reason,” I said, voice quieter than before.
Mama came closer and smoothed one hand over my braids. “You had a life you needed to build.”
I looked toward the windows. “I don’t know what he thinks about me now.”
Bari answered before anybody else could.
“He think you fine.”
I turned.
Mama closed her eyes.
Daddy looked toward the ceiling.
“What?” Bari said. “Y’all been too serious for eight straight minutes. It’s not that deep.”
A laugh escaped me. A real one.
Daddy smiled.
Bari had probably been aiming for that the whole time. Drag me out of my head before I disappeared too far into it.
“I’m going Thursday,” I said.
Bari nodded once. “Good. Send me the wedding invitation in a few weeks.”
I threw the nearest pillow at him.
He caught it against his chest, grinning. “See? Already emotional. Sounds serious.”
“Get out of my house.”
“After I hang this last picture. I’m the only one in here with a good eye.”
“You hung one thing correctly and became insufferable.”
“One more than you.”
The laugh that left me was real, and after that, the afternoon loosened. Bari finished the print and demanded credit. Mama refolded towels I had apparently folded without enough respect for the linen. Daddy finished the media console without cursing, which none of us trusted.
When they gathered their things, the condo felt less like corporate housing Saint Aurelia had arranged and more like somewhere my family had already disturbed into belonging.
Mama hugged me at the door.
“Rest.”
“I will.”
“That answer came too fast.”
“I will make a sincere effort.”
“Better.”
Daddy kissed my forehead. “Don’t make work the place you hide from yourself.”
“I heard you.”
“I know.”
Bari hugged me last, holding on long enough to make it sincere before he ruined it.
“If Milan start acting stupid Thursday, call me.”
I pulled back. “Why would you even put that in the atmosphere?”