Prologue #2
“You staying?”
The question was sleepy and easy. He only meant tonight.
My eyes filled anyway.
One tear landed on his chest.
His hand stilled.
“Mani?”
I turned my face away.
“Nothing.”
He shifted beneath me and slid two fingers beneath my chin.
“That ain’t nothing.”
“I’m okay.”
“You crying on me.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
I tried to swallow it and couldn’t.
Another tear came, and Dre sat up, bringing me with him until I moved away and pulled the sheet over my chest.
“Imani.”
“I got the offer.”
His brows pulled together. “What offer?”
“The internship.”
He waited.
“The Tiffany one. In Manhattan.”
His face changed slowly.
“You got it?”
I nodded.
“Damn.”
Something in my chest dropped. “That’s all you have to say?”
“What?”
“Damn?”
“I’m trying to catch up.”
“With me getting my dream?”
“With you moving to New York.”
There it was.
I wiped beneath my eyes. “You could sound happy for me.”
“I am happy for you.”
“You don’t sound like it.”
“What you want me to sound like, Imani?”
“Like my man.”
That hit him. I saw it in the brief pull of his brows before his jaw tightened.
“You worked for this,” he said. “I know how bad you wanted it. I’m proud of you.”
“Then why are you choosing every word like you’re speaking to a reporter?”
“Because you told me while we still naked in my bed, and five minutes ago you were wrapped around me telling me you love me. Now you’re talking about New York.” He rubbed one hand over his mouth. “I’m trying to catch the fuck up.”
The hurt beneath his irritation took some of the fight out of me.
“I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“When did you find out?”
I hesitated.
His expression changed.
“When?”
“This afternoon.”
“Before you came over?”
“Yes.”
Dre looked away, and somehow that felt worse than him getting loud.
“Don’t.”
His eyes came back to mine. “Don’t what?”
“Make tonight ugly.”
“I’m not making it anything. I’m trying to understand why you came over here knowing this and didn’t tell me.”
“I wanted tonight.”
“For what?”
“For us.” My voice cracked. “I wanted us before everything became New York and the draft and whatever happens after graduation.”
“But that was already here, Mani. You just didn’t tell me.”
I got out of bed and pulled the sheet around myself because sitting naked in front of him suddenly felt too exposed.
“My whole life is changing too.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“I think everybody forgets.”
His brow pulled together.
“Everybody talks about what happens next like there’s one future we’re waiting on, and it’s yours.
The draft. Teams. Contracts. Where you might live.
My friends joke about me being a WAG. Your family talks about visiting us wherever you land.
My parents ask which NFL cities have good marketing opportunities. ”
Dre stared at me.
“Nobody is trying to hurt me,” I said. “They love us. But somewhere along the way, everybody started acting like your future was the plan and mine was something we’d fit around it.”
“I never told you to do that.”
“I know.”
“Then why does it feel like I’m the one on trial?”
That quieted me.
Because he was right.
The sheet tightened in my hands.
“You’re not.”
“It damn sure sounds like it.”
“I’m scared.”
The anger in his face shifted.
I took a breath, but it shook before I could steady it. “Because I could do it, Dre. That’s what scares me. I love you enough that I could follow you wherever somebody sends you and keep telling myself I’ll figure my life out when we get there.”
His face changed.
“And maybe I would. Maybe I’d find a job and make friends and be happy. But what if I wake up one day and everything people know about me starts with you? What if I become your girl and forget I was supposed to be something else too?”
His jaw tightened. “You think that’s how I see you?”
“No.”
The answer came quickly because it was true.
“I don’t think that’s how you see me. I think that’s how everything around us is starting to see me. And I let it happen because I love you so much that being close to you started feeling like enough of a plan.”
For a moment, Dre only looked at me.
Then he stood and pulled on his boxer briefs, not in anger, but because he needed something between us besides the bed.
“You know I don’t even know where the fuck I’m going,” he said.
“I know.”
“Everybody keeps talking about the league like I got some map they forgot to give me. I don’t know who drafts me.
I don’t know what city I’m gonna live in.
I don’t know if I play right away or sit behind somebody.
I got men I never met asking about every injury I ever had, measuring shit, talking about how much weight I can add without losing speed. ”
He shook his head, frustration roughening his voice.
“They talk about moving me around like I’m equipment. Scouts. Coaches. Reporters. Alumni. Folks who ain’t never sat with me a day in their life. Everybody got a plan for what Dre Jones supposed to become because twenty-two can run through a hole and make people stand up in a stadium.”
His eyes came back to mine.
“They don’t see me either, Mani.”
I swallowed.
“I know,” I said softly.
“Do you?”
The question stung because maybe I didn’t.
Not enough.
“I’m trying to.”
“I never asked you to follow me around.”
“I know.”
“And I wouldn’t.”
“I know that too.”
“Then what are we arguing about?”
“I don’t know.”
The words came out tired instead of loud.
“I got that email today and I was so happy,” I said. “I wanted to scream. I wanted to call my mother. I wanted to tell Camille. And then the first thing I thought about was you.”
His shoulders dropped a little.
“I thought about New York and graduation and the draft and how neither one of us knows where you’ll be six months from now. And I hated myself because part of me was relieved that Tiffany gave me somewhere I was supposed to be.”
“Mani.”
“I love you so much.”
My voice broke.
“Sometimes I look at you and swear you were made for me.”
Dre went still.
I pressed my hand to my chest because saying it hurt there.
“Like somebody knew before us. Before any of this. Him for you. You for him. That’s what being with you feels like sometimes.”
His eyes held mine.
“And I don’t understand why loving you that much doesn’t make me want your life to decide mine.”
There it was, the truth I had been trying to name all night.
For several seconds, Dre only looked at me.
Then he said, “Maybe loving me ain’t supposed to decide yours.”
My throat tightened.
“Then what happens to us?”
“I don’t know.”
“I need you to know.”
“I’m twenty-two, Mani.” A tired laugh left him. “I don’t know shit.”
I laughed through my tears because he sounded so irritated by his own honesty.
Dre rubbed both hands over his close-cut hair.
“I know I love you. I know I want you. And I know I’m not about to ask you to turn down Tiffany so you can sit around waiting to see what team picks me.”
The pain came fast even though that was exactly what I had been arguing for.
“You sound so ready to let me go.”
His head lifted.
“I’m not.”
“You just said—”
“I said I’m not asking you to shrink your life for mine. That ain’t the same thing.”
My tears came harder because I heard him then. Heard the hurt under the restraint. The anger too. Not because I had gotten the offer, but because I had come to him with my decision halfway made and still wanted him to somehow make me feel chosen without asking me to choose him over myself.
“I want you with me,” he said, stepping closer.
“I want you at my games. I want to come home and find all your expensive shit taking over my bathroom. I want Sunday dinners when we can get home for them. I want you stealing my hoodies and acting like I forgot where they went.” His mouth twitched for half a second before the sadness returned. “I want all of that, Mani.”
“Then ask me.”
His face fell.
“No.”
I stared at him.
“How the fuck am I supposed to ask you to become exactly what you standing here telling me you scared of becoming?”
That shut me up.
Dre’s voice lowered. “I could get drafted somewhere you hate. Then traded two years later. Then cut. I don’t know. You could follow me anywhere, and every time something changes, you gotta start your life over again. I’m not asking you to do that.”
“But what if that means we lose each other?”
“You think I ain’t thought about that?”
“I don’t know what you think when you won’t say it.”
His jaw worked before he looked away.
“I’m scared.”
The anger left me.
Dre did not say things like that easily.
“I’m scared you go up there and build this whole life and realize you don’t need none of this anymore. Pittsburgh. AWU.” His eyes came back to mine. “Me.”
“Dre.”
“I’m scared I get drafted somewhere far as hell and every time I call, you busy. Then we start missing calls, missing weekends, getting mad about shit neither one of us can control.” He exhaled. “I’m scared we fuck this up.”
“So am I.”
The room felt quieter after that.
No argument to win. No perfect answer waiting underneath the next sentence. Just two people who loved each other and did not know what to do with the lives opening in front of them.
Dre looked at me for a while.
“You already been looking at New York stuff, haven’t you?”
Of course he knew.
“A little.”
His brow lifted.
“Okay. A lot.”
“What you been looking at?”
“Everything.” A watery smile tugged at my mouth. “Apartments I can’t afford. Train routes. Restaurants. Which neighborhoods have the best shopping.”
Dre’s mouth moved.
“What?”
“You researching shopping before you got somewhere to live.”
“I contain multitudes.”
That got a real laugh out of him, brief but familiar enough to hurt.
“I also found grocery stores and laundromats.”
“Congratulations.”
“And three places I want to try for brunch.”
“Priorities.”
“I have them.”
His smile disappeared slowly.
“So you been picturing yourself there.”
“Yes.”
That hurt him.
I saw it.
I crossed the space between us and rested my hand against his chest.
“What if I go and we try?”
Dre covered my hand with his.
“Then we try.”
“We call. We visit. We figure out what we can.”
“Yeah.”