Chapter 10 #2
“I know that now.” I leaned forward, forearms on the table, my voice low enough to stay between us.
“I didn’t then. All I saw was you leaving.
Tiffany. New York. A future that didn’t have me standing close enough to touch you.
And instead of telling you I wanted to figure it out, I tried to act like letting you go was love. ”
Her eyes shined, but she did not look away.
“It was love,” she said. “Part of it.”
“Maybe. But it was pride too. Fear. Me thinking if I asked you to stay, I was asking you to choose less for yourself.” I swallowed, because even after all these years, the truth still had teeth. “And Imani, I never wanted to be the man you had to make yourself smaller to love.”
Her face shifted.
Something in her eyes broke open, quiet enough that anybody else might have missed it.
“I know,” she whispered.
I shook my head. “You shouldn’t have had to guess that.”
She looked down at her hands.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Her eyes lifted back to mine.
I held them, even with my chest tight and my pride trying to find somewhere to hide.
“I’m sorry I let you leave thinking I was fine.
I’m sorry I made peace sound easy when it was hurting me.
I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I wanted you to go to New York and still find a way back to me.
Or let me find my way to you. I don’t know if we would’ve made it work back then, but I should’ve been honest enough to try with you instead of acting like loving you meant standing there and watching you walk away. ”
Her mouth trembled.
“I thought you didn’t fight because you knew something I didn’t,” she said.
“What?”
“That I would become a problem. Or a burden. Or one more thing you had to carry while everybody was already putting so much on you.”
“Mani.”
“I know.” She blinked, and a tear slipped before she could stop it. “I know better now. But back then, I was so scared of disappearing into your life that I didn’t realize I was making you disappear from mine.”
The words hit hard enough to make me sit back.
She wiped beneath her eye quickly, almost irritated with herself for crying.
“I’m sorry too,” she said. “I’m sorry I made choices in my head before I let you into the fear.
I’m sorry I acted like leaving clean would hurt less than staying messy.
I wanted Tiffany. I wanted New York. I needed to know who I was without everybody already deciding I was going to be Andre Jones’s girl forever. ”
“I know.”
“But I loved you.” Her voice cracked around it. “I loved you so much, Dre. And I’m sorry I let you think my dreams had no room for you in them.”
For a second, I could not speak.
The diner moved around us, dishes clattering, grease popping somewhere behind the counter, old R&B humming low overhead, but all of it felt far away.
I reached across the table, palm up.
She looked at my hand for a moment, then put hers in it.
Her fingers were warm.
Still trembling a little.
I closed my hand around them carefully.
“I never wanted you to choose less,” I said.
“I know that now.”
“And I never stopped being proud of you.”
Her eyes filled again.
“That would’ve helped to hear back then,” she said softly.
“I know.”
Her thumb brushed mine.
“It would’ve helped if I’d asked.”
I nodded.
We sat with that for a minute.
No fixing it.
No pretending the apology could reach back eight years and make us braver than we had been.
Just the two of us in the back booth at Mason’s, older now, quieter in some places, finally telling the truth where our younger selves had left too much unsaid.
Ms. Jean appeared with the food before either of us could drown in it. She set Imani’s fries and strawberry shake down, put my burger in front of me, then pushed that unwanted coffee closer like I had personally offended her by refusing it.
“Drink.”
“No.”
“You need something.”
“I got water.”
She looked from me to Imani. “You got something.”
“Ms. Jean.”
Imani laughed into her hand, a little teary and a little relieved, while the old woman walked away pleased with herself.
The interruption helped. It gave us food, napkins, a reason to breathe, somewhere to put our hands while the apology settled between us without either one of us trying to dress it up too fast.
Imani dipped a fry in her strawberry shake.
I stared at her. “You still doing that?”
“And it’s still good.”
“That is disrespectful to potatoes.”
“You eat raw onions on purpose. Your opinion doesn’t matter.”
We ate for a few minutes. Food had always been one of the ways we gave ourselves time.
Eventually, I set my burger down.
“Pops told me something tonight.”
Her brows rose. “What?”
“He told me to get my girl back.”
Imani froze with a fry halfway to her mouth.
I smiled. “Yeah. That was about my reaction too.”
She lowered the fry. “What did you say?”
“Nothing. He walked away like old Black men do after dropping some shit on you they don’t intend to discuss.”
She laughed, though nerves moved through it.
I held her gaze.
“I been thinking about what he said.”
“And?”
“After what we just said to each other, I don’t want to walk out of here and act like the apology was the whole point.”
Her fingers stilled around her fry.
“It matters,” I said. “It needed to happen. But I don’t want to make the apology the ending if both of us can feel this thing trying to start.”
Her eyes stayed on mine.
Fear was there.
Want too.
“What are you asking me for, Dre?”
“You.”
Her chest lifted with a deep breath.
“When this weekend is over. When nobody’s clapping for me, nobody’s checking a seating chart, and nobody with a clipboard is hunting us down. I want you then too.”
I watched her take a deep breath.
“I want to date you, Mani. For real. I want to call you after Crown Weekend and still have somewhere for us to go. Dinner on a regular night. A walk that doesn’t have alumni watching. Time that belongs to us because we chose it, not because AWU put us in the same room.”
Her mouth curved a little.
“I want the grown version of this,” I said. “The honest version. You tell me when something scares you. I tell you when I’m hurt instead of getting quiet and calling it strength. We move toward each other on purpose.”
Her smile faded into something softer.
“And if I’m not ready?” she asked.
“Then you tell me that.”
“That simple?”
“No.” I rubbed my thumb along the side of my glass. “It’d hurt like hell. But I’m not asking you to make yourself smaller for me. I’m asking if you have room to see what this could be.”
She looked down for a second.
The diner moved around us, plates hitting tables, grease popping behind the counter, old R&B low in the speakers.
Ms. Jean fussed at somebody near the register about trying to leave without their receipt.
Life kept going like I wasn’t sitting there in the back booth waiting to find out if the woman across from me had any room left for us.
Then Imani looked at me again.
“I’m scared,” she said.
“I know you are. You have a right to be.”
“I don’t know how to do this with you and not feel everything too fast.”
“That might happen.”
Her laugh came out soft and nervous. “That is not comforting.”
“I’m not trying to lie to you.”
She studied me, and I let her. If she needed to see whether I meant it, I could sit there all night.
“I don’t want to hurt you again,” she whispered.
“I don’t want to hurt you either.”
“And I don’t want to run just because this feels big.”
My chest tightened.
“Then don’t run tonight.”
Heat entered her dark eyes.
“We don’t have to name the whole thing in this booth,” I said. “We don’t have to promise more than we know how to keep. Just give me a real chance. Dates. Calls. Time. Honesty. Whatever comes after two people stop pretending they’re only remembering.”
Her thumb brushed the edge of her napkin.
“And you’re sure?”
I leaned closer, voice low enough for only her.
“I’ve never been casual about you a day in my life.”
She closed her eyes for half a second.
When she opened them, the answer was there, scared and soft and trying to be brave.
“I want that too.”
Everything in me wanted to reach for her.
I settled for putting my hand on the table, palm up.
She stared at it for a moment before sliding hers into mine.
I lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles because if I did anything else in that booth, Ms. Jean was going to call my mama before sunrise.
We finished our food slowly after that, easier conversation filling the places where too much truth had been. Ms. Jean refusing to retire. People we remembered from AWU. A professor Imani still believed had held a grudge after she challenged a grade junior year.
But nothing between us had gone back to casual. Not after that.
Once the last of her shake was gone, I didn’t want the night to end.
“You ready to go back?”
“I should.”
“Ride with me.”
Her eyes met mine.
“Okay.”
I paid before she reached for her bag.
She frowned. “I can buy my own fries.”
“I know.”
“And my shake.”
“I know that too.”
“Then why did you pay?”
“Because I wanted to.”
She gave me the look, which I ignored. I stood and held out my hand instead.
For a second, she stared at it before sliding hers into mine.
When I handed the Escalade to the valet, the air between us had changed.
Mason’s had given us words. The ride back had taken them away.
Imani walked beside me through The Nocturne lobby, quiet in that cream knit set and long coat, her braids down her back, her mouth still carrying the faint shine of gloss and strawberry shake.
My hand settled at her back because I could not seem to make myself stop touching her in small ways. She did not move away.
That did not help.
Two women near the elevator bank recognized me. One whispered my name, soft enough to pretend she had not meant for me to hear it. Imani heard it too. Her eyes flicked toward mine, but she said nothing.
The elevator opened.
We stepped inside.
I pressed eight, then leaned back against the opposite wall because some distance felt necessary if I planned to keep acting like I had sense.
Imani looked at me.
I looked back.
The doors slid shut.