Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
PRESENT DAY
Hot water hit the back of my neck.
I stayed under it longer than I needed to, both hands braced against the tile, trying to wash off the gala, the applause, the room full of people calling my name, and the feel of Imani’s fingers at the side of my neck while we danced.
The shower did nothing.
The cold water I switched to after my dick started getting ideas did even less.
Neither did the grown-man lecture I tried giving myself about patience, timing, and eight years not disappearing because she looked at me like she still knew me.
I shut off the water.
For most of Crown Weekend, I had let myself stand in questions. Did I still want her? Did she still feel something? Was this real, or was AWU putting old perfume on old feelings and making both of us breathe it in?
Enough.
The only question left was what I planned to do now that she was here.
I grabbed a towel and stepped onto the bath mat.
Before Mama and Pops left the hotel earlier, Pops had caught me near the elevators while Mama finished saying goodbye to somebody she had apparently known since the beginning of time.
He studied me for a moment. “You happy?”
“Yeah.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“What?”
He clasped the back of my neck, the same way he had since I was too young to pull away without getting myself in trouble.
“I know you.”
I laughed. “Everybody know me this weekend.”
“Nah. I know you.”
I already knew where he was going.
“I saw you with Imani.”
“Pops.”
“I ain’t asking your business.”
“You currently in it.”
He ignored me.
“You looked happy.”
I didn’t answer because there wasn’t much use lying to a man who had known my face my whole life.
Mama called his name from farther down the hall.
Pops squeezed the back of my neck once before letting me go.
“Get your girl back, son.”
Then he walked away like he hadn’t just dropped something heavy in my hands and left me standing there with it.
An hour ago, I had taken that like advice.
Standing in the bathroom now with a towel around my waist, I understood it as a challenge.
Getting Imani back could not mean dragging her toward the past. I did not want the girl I loved at twenty-two to shrink herself into a version of us that no longer existed.
I wanted the woman who had sat beside me tonight in black silk with tears in her eyes.
The woman building something at Saint Aurelia.
The woman who still knew when I was lying about my knee and still made room for me without turning it into a wound.
I wanted to know her again.
This time, I was not going to stand there quiet and proud while she waited for me to ask her to stay.
My stomach growled before I could get too deep with it.
That helped.
Room service sounded depressing, and I was too wired to sleep anyway. I pulled on dark jeans, a white T-shirt, and a black hoodie, added my chain, then grabbed my keys.
Mason’s.
If anywhere in Pittsburgh could make a man stop thinking for half an hour, it was Mason’s.
The diner sat close enough to campus that half of AWU had eaten there at some point, but it had belonged to me in a particular way before I ever brought Imani through the door.
Freshman year, when football swallowed most of my schedule and the dining hall closed before I was finished with practice, Mason’s kept me fed.
Burgers after late lifts. Fries after film.
Pancakes when we had early workouts and I had no business eating pancakes.
Ms. Jean had been there for all of it, calling me baby when I looked tired, greedy when I ordered too much, and “that handsome boy with the big legs” until I became old enough to tell her she needed to stop saying that in public.
She did not stop.
Then Imani became part of the place too.
The second time I ran into her, she had been outside the athletic center with too many books in her arms and irritation all over that pretty face.
We had just beat Banneker State, and I was feeling myself enough to think two hundred twelve yards and three touchdowns should impress anybody with sense.
Imani had looked at me and asked, “Is that good?”
I should have known then.
Instead, I took her to Mason’s.
Ms. Jean served us in the back booth, side-eyeing me because she knew when I was trying harder than usual.
Imani ordered fries and a strawberry shake, then dipped the fries into it like she had no respect for food groups, potatoes, or my opinion.
I talked too much. She acted like she was only halfway entertained.
Then she laughed, and Mason’s stopped being only the place I went when I needed to eat.
It became ours too.
Maybe that was why I went there that night.
Maybe grease and fries could do what the shower couldn’t.
Late-night traffic moved easy through the city, and Mason’s old sign came into view a little after midnight, the windows fogged along the bottom and the parking lot half full.
The smell hit me as soon as I walked in.
Burgers, onions, grease, fries, and sugar from the shakes.
The black-and-white floor was still there. Same booths. Same old counter. Same framed AWU pennant hanging crooked behind the register because Ms. Jean had sworn for years she liked it that way.
A few heads turned. A younger dude near the register stared for half a second before giving me a nod, while an older man lifted two fingers from his coffee cup.
I took the booth in the back.
Ms. Jean appeared with her order pad tucked into her apron, a silver-streaked pixie framing her warm brown face and gold hoops glinting beneath the diner lights.
Her lipstick was berry today, her glasses perched low on her nose, and the years had done nothing to soften the knowing look she turned on me.
“Well, look what walked in here wearing all that money.”
I laughed. “How you doing, Ms. Jean?”
“Better than you, judging by that face.”
“What is wrong with my face?”
“A woman.”
I frowned. “What?”
“You got a woman written all over it.”
“Ain’t nobody done nothing to me.”
She looked at me like she had known me too long to accept bullshit from a grown man.
“You eating?”
“My usual.”
“Burger, everything on it, fries?”
“Yeah.”
“Coffee?”
“No.”
“I’m bringing it.”
“I don’t want coffee.”
“You look tired.”
“I’m trying to sleep tonight.”
“Then you should’ve stayed home.”
She walked away before I could argue.
I was still smiling when my phone buzzed.
Malcolm had sent a picture of Imani and me dancing.
Malcolm: This nigga deep in fucking love
I sent back one word.
Me: Die.
His answer arrived almost immediately.
Malcolm: And miss this? Fuck that.
I locked the screen and put the phone facedown.
Ms. Jean returned with coffee I had specifically declined and pushed it toward me.
“I’m not drinking this.”
“Then let it cool.”
The bell above the door rang.
I looked up.
Imani stepped inside.
For half a second, I wondered if I had spent so much time thinking about her that my mind had started putting her places.
Then she moved farther into the diner.
Cream knit pants and a matching top beneath a long coat. Hoops. Braids down her back. Most of the gala makeup gone except a little gloss still catching on her mouth.
She saw me.
Stopped.
Then laughed.
“What are you doing here?”
I stood. “I could ask you the same thing.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Me either.”
Her gaze moved around the diner before coming back to me. “I wanted somewhere that felt like home for a minute.”
That answer settled in my chest.
Mason’s had been mine first. Then I brought her here. Apparently, she had carried part of it with her too.
“Come sit down.”
She crossed toward the booth, and my hand found the small of her back while I guided her in.
Ms. Jean appeared before I had completely sat down.
Her eyes moved between us, and the smile came immediately.
“Well. Ain’t this nice.”
Imani laughed. “Hi, Ms. Jean.”
“You want your old order, baby?”
“Fries and a strawberry shake.”
“I knew it.” She pointed at me. “His burger coming.”
When she walked away, Imani watched her.
“She remembered me.”
“Ms. Jean remembers everybody.”
“No, she doesn’t.”
“You right. Everybody she likes.”
Imani smiled and looked around the diner. “This place still smells exactly the same.”
“Yeah.”
“Looks the same too.”
“You saying they need to update?”
She shook her head. “I’m saying some things are good the way they are.”
I looked at her.
She heard it after she said it and narrowed her eyes.
“Do not.”
“I ain’t say nothing.”
“You were about to.”
“You still know my face?”
“Unfortunately.”
I laughed.
For a little while, we sat with old R&B playing low overhead and dishes clattering somewhere behind the counter. There had been plenty of silence between us over the weekend, but this one didn’t feel like something either of us needed to escape.
Then she looked at me.
“You meant what you said tonight?”
I didn’t need to ask which part.
“Every word.”
Her gaze dropped briefly to the table. “That was a beautiful speech.”
“Thank you.”
“I didn’t know you remembered those questions I used to ask you.”
“I remembered.”
“You didn’t always answer them.”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t.”
Her eyes came back to mine.
There was the opening. The kind I used to let pass because saying too much felt like handing somebody a weapon. At twenty-two, I had loved her with my whole chest and still let pride stand between my mouth and the one thing she needed to hear.
I was not twenty-two anymore.
“You once told me you thought God made me for you and you for me,” I said.
Her breath changed.
“Dre.”
“I carried that longer than I ever told you.”
Her fingers stilled against her napkin.
“When you got Tiffany and started talking about New York, I didn’t know where to put that. All I could think was, how could God make you for me and still let your life pull you somewhere I couldn’t reach?”
Her eyes shined.
“You were hurt,” she whispered.
“Yeah.” My voice came rougher than I expected. “And too proud to say it like that. So I made it sound like I was giving you room when part of me was trying not to beg.”
Her fingers tightened around the napkin.
“I was scared too,” she said quietly.