Chapter 17
NOVA
Crystal didn’t knock. She never did. She leaned into my doorway with an envelope already in her hand, like she had been waiting for the right moment to appear and had decided this was it.
“My husband can’t go,” she said, setting it on the corner of my desk as if it already belonged to me.
I glanced at it, then back up at her. “To what?”
“A Sneaker Ball,” she said, easing further into the room. “Celebrity one. Some football player is hosting it, which apparently means it’s a whole situation. Black tie, but everyone’s in sneakers. People care about both, from what I’ve been told.”
That got my attention.
“You’re giving a ticket to me?” I asked, reaching for the envelope now, feeling the weight of it before I even opened it.
She gave me a look that suggested I was already behind. “Two tickets for Saturday night. It’s a fully catered affair, there’s a celebrity DJ people are excited about, and something involving a sneaker archive installation that felt like it had your name on it.”
“Where did this come from?” I asked, turning it over in my hands.
“My husband’s colleague’s cousin,” she said, already halfway out of the doorway. “Which means it’s real enough.”
“That’s not how verification works.”
“It is where I’m from,” she said, and disappeared before I could follow up.
I opened the envelope once she was gone.
Inside were, in fact, two tickets. I closed it again and sat there for a moment, the day now shifting slightly around me.
My mother would have known exactly what to do with something like this.
Not just what to wear, but how to arrive.
How to leave an impression without ever appearing to try.
I picked up my phone before I could overthink it and stepped into the break room, closing the door behind me. The quiet in there gave me just enough space to feel the decision settle before I acted on it.
Deion picked up on the second ring.
“Hey,” he said, like I had caught him in the middle of something he didn’t mind setting aside. “You happened to catch me between classes. What’s up?”
“Don’t think too hard,” I said, leaning back against the counter, the envelope still in my hand. There was a brief pause on his end.
“That depends on what you’re about to ask.”
“I have two tickets to something on Saturday,” I said. “And I need you to say yes before you start making sense of it.”
The quiet stretched in a way that told me he was considering it fully instead of reacting to how I framed it.
“That’s not how I operate,” he said finally.
“I know,” I said. “I’m asking you to try something different this one time.”
Another pause, softer now.
“What kind of something?”
“It’s a Sneaker Ball,” I said, letting it come out in one thought instead of breaking it apart. “Black tie, but everybody shows up in their best sneakers. Athletes basically coming to show up and show out.”
“All right,” he said.
I smiled, pushing off the counter, already knowing he would. “You didn’t even ask where.”
“I’ll find out when we get there,” he said, easy.
“That feels reckless.”
“You asked me not to think too hard,” he said, and I could hear the slight shift in his voice that meant he was enjoying this more than he was letting on.
I let out a quiet breath. “All right. That’s fair.”
The silence that followed settled into something easier, something that didn’t need to be filled right away.
“What are you going to wear?” he asked after a moment.
“Maybe something black,” I said, letting my voice stay even.
“I mean, the shoes.”
I exhaled, letting my head rest lightly against the cabinet behind me. “That’s what I haven’t figured out yet.”
“It’s not a question,” he said, and something in his tone made me still before he added, “The Air Max 95s.”
I didn’t answer right away. The memory of discovering pieces from her fashion capsule when I sorted through her items in the closet came back all at once. The box in my hands, the tissue paper still intact, the quiet that followed when I realized what I had found.
“You remember those?” I asked.
“You showed them to me,” he said. “You didn’t say much, but you didn’t have to.”
I let my hand rest against the counter, grounding myself there.
“They were my mom’s,” I said.
“I know,” he said, and there was nothing in it but recognition.
I looked down at the tickets again, the quiet promise of the night waiting on the other side, and thought about the way my mother used to hold on to things until the moment she knew they belonged somewhere.
“Saturday,” I said.
“What time?” he asked, his voice lower now, already there with me.
The event was in a converted space in Northern Liberties, exposed brick and high ceilings and the energy of a room full of Black people who had decided to be both dressed up and comfortable while choosing to give back.
The sneakers were extraordinary. I saw a pair of 1985 Air Jordan 1s that made me stop walking mid-sentence.
I saw a woman in a floor-length gown and off-white Dunks that I spent several minutes studying from a respectful distance.
I saw a man in a double-breasted suit and a pair of New Balance 990s that worked so completely that I had to recalibrate everything I thought I understood about what New Balance was capable of.
Deion had his hand at the small of my back, steady and present.
“The 990s,” I said, nodding toward the double-breasted suit.
“The v4,” he said. “Look at the sole.”
I looked at the sole. He was right. The v4 had a specific profile that worked with the suit in a way the v6 would not have. “How do you know the v4 sole profile?”
“You talked about it for forty minutes while out at Suburban Square last Black Friday when we were looking for Aunt Rhonda’s gift,” he said. “I retained the information.”
I put my hand on his arm.
He looked at my hand and then he looked at me. “The Air Jordan 3 retrospective is in the back room,” he said.
“I know.”
“You want to see it?”
“In a minute,” I said.
He turned and looked at me in the middle of the room with the formal clothes, the exceptional footwear, and the DJ in the corner doing something with a Chaka Khan record that was very much working.
Deion looked at me the way he had been looking at me since the Archive, as a man who had been paying attention for a long time and had finally been given permission to let it show.
“Nova?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Your mom would have loved this room.”
I looked around at it. The sneakers, the gowns and the suits, the joy of a room full of people who understood that how you showed up somewhere was a form of expression and had taken it seriously tonight.
The DJ moving into something slow, the energy in the room shifting, people leaning toward each other.
“Yeah,” I said. “She would have played it.”
“She would have known exactly what it needed.”
“She always knew.” I looked at him. “I think I’m starting to.”
He took my hand and held it at his side, easy, the way he held things he had decided to keep.
“Let’s go look at the 3s,” he said. He kept his hand in mine all the way there.
On the way home, I had already slipped my sneakers off and tucked my feet beneath me, the leather seats warm from the drive. I wasn’t putting them back on. Not tonight.
He drove with one hand, the other resting loose at his thigh, steady in a way that had nothing to do with the road and everything to do with him.
Outside the city had gone red for the Phillies, the skyline carrying it in waves.
It started along Boathouse Row, that clean line of light along the water, then climbed its way across the buildings, catching glass and steel and bridges until it felt like the whole city had decided, all at once, to show up.
Philadelphia never did anything quietly. Not celebration. Not disappointment. Not love. You knew where you stood with it, always.
The color moved across his face as we drove, red light catching then slipping away again as we passed through it. It softened him and sharpened him at the same time, the way certain songs did when they hit just right, revealing something you hadn’t been looking for but recognized anyway.
Outside the window the city kept going, lit and alive and entirely itself, and inside the car it was just us, the quiet between us settled into something that didn’t need to be filled.
“I think it was seeing the 3s,” I said.
“The elephant print,” he said.
“Nobody makes an elephant print like that anymore.”
“Nobody makes anything like that anymore. That was a moment in design history that understood what it was doing.”
“The midsole on the original,” I said. “The visible Air unit was a statement.”
“The shoe said, ‘We are showing you the technology because the technology is beautiful and beauty is structural and structure is the point.’”
“Deion,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“That was a really good first date.”
He glanced at me. “Yeah,” he said. “It was.”
His hand found mine on the center console. I turned mine over and let him hold it. The rest of the way home, neither of us said anything.
I stepped out of the shower, steam still clinging to my skin, the air in the room cooler as I tied the satin robe at my waist and pushed damp hair back from my face.
He was standing near the edge of the bed when I came in, working the buttons at his cuff, like he needed something to do with his hands, like he had been waiting without saying so.
I didn’t say anything. I crossed the room and wrapped my arms around him from behind, pressing in before he could turn.
He did anyway, his hands coming back to find me before I could even think about stepping away, that easy grin just barely there before I kissed him.
He answered immediatelym like this had been sitting between us long enough to feel inevitable.
“You smell like shea butter,” he said against my mouth.
“I know what I smell like.”
“I know you do,” he murmured, his nose brushing along my cheek, then lower, breathing me in slower this time. “You used to hug me and I’d have to act like I didn’t notice it. Like it didn’t stay with me after.”
Something in me stilled. His hands slid from my waist up along my sides, unhurried, stopping just beneath my chest like he was hitting a familiar boundary.
“I had to keep it right here,” he said quietly, his thumbs resting there, not moving yet. “Every time.”
My breath caught under his hands.
“You don’t have to now,” I said, softer than I meant to.
His eyes lifted to mine.
“I know,” he said, and then he moved. His hands came up fully, palms settling over my breasts through the thin satin, slower now, like he was taking his time because he finally could. I felt it immediately, the weight of it, the intention in it, my body answering before I had a chance to manage it.
His thumbs brushed over my nipples through the fabric, once, then again, more deliberate, and I leaned into him without thinking, my breath breaking on the second pass.
“That’s it,” he said, watching me closely now, his voice lower, steadier. “Stay with me.”
“I am,” I said, but it came out thinner than I meant it to.
His mouth curved slightly, not amused, just… knowing.
“You think too much,” he murmured, his fingers shifting, pressing just enough to pull another reaction out of me. “Don’t do that right now.”
My hands tightened on his shoulders.
“Then tell me what to do,” I said, because I was already past pretending I had control of it.
His gaze sharpened slightly at that.
“Look at me,” he said.
I did.
“Stay right here,” he continued, his thumbs moving again, slower now, more focused, his voice dropping just enough that I felt it as much as I heard it. “Don’t leave the moment. Let it happen.”
The knot at my waist loosened under his hands before I registered he had touched it, the robe falling open as his palms moved with it, no break in contact, warm now against bare skin.
The shift was immediate. Coming sharper. Closer. I inhaled, my head tipping back before I could stop it as his thumbs returned, this time without anything in the way, the sensation pulling low and insistent through me.
“There you go,” he said, softer now, like he was confirming something he’d been waiting to see. “I wondered about that.”
“Deion—” I exhaled, not even sure what I was asking for.
His mouth followed the line of my throat, then lower, lingering where my breath changed the most, his hand sliding around my back to keep me there, steady when my knees felt less reliable than they had a second ago.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured against my skin. “Stay with me.”
I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure he could see it.
My hands moved over him, pushing his shirt away from his shoulders, needing it gone, needing to feel him the way he was touching me.
I dragged my palms over his chest once it was off, down his back, and when my nails pressed lightly into his side, he exhaled low, controlled, like it cost him something to keep it that way.
“That’s not fair,” he said quietly.
“Neither is this,” I managed, breath uneven.
His mouth curved against my skin. “You don’t want fair.”
No. I didn’t. We made it to the bed without deciding to move. He followed me down, slower than I wanted and exactly as slow as I needed, his weight settling over me, his hand finding mine and holding it there like he wanted me present in it with him, not drifting off somewhere else.
“Stay with me,” he said again, softer this time, his forehead brushing mine.
“I am,” I whispered.
His hand moved over me again, more certain, and I felt every second of it, every place he chose to linger, every pause that stretched just long enough to make me feel it before he moved again.
“That’s it,” he said, his voice rougher now, closer to losing control. “Don’t hold back.”
I didn’t. I let it take me, the heat of him, the sound of my name on his mouth as he moaned Nova against my flesh when his body met mine by thrust, the way he stayed with me through every shift of it, like he had been waiting for this long enough to know exactly what to do with it now that he had it.
And for the first time, I didn’t try to manage any of it. I stayed exactly where he told me to. With him.