Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
By noon Friday, The Yard was loud, beautiful, and crowded enough to make nostalgia feel like a contact sport.
Purple and gold wrapped the walkways, tied around lampposts, stretched across tents, fluttering above the heads of people who had come back to be seen and loved on.
Frankie Beverly and Maze’s “Before I Let Go” poured from the speakers near the student center, and the first notes alone were enough to make somebody’s auntie throw both hands in the air while three women in heels abandoned their conversation to two-step in the grass.
Smoke drifted from the grills on the far lawn, thick with barbecue sauce, fried fish, wings, hot oil, and funnel cake sugar.
Somebody had peach cobbler in little plastic cups, banana pudding stacked in clear jars, and lemonade sweating on a table already surrounded by people claiming they were only getting “a little something.”
I had missed this—the abundance of us, Black people coming home successful and fly and happy to see one another, with just enough vanity mixed into the joy to ensure nobody had accidentally worn their regular clothes.
I should have been able to enjoy it without thinking about Andre Malik Jones.
My body had other plans.
So did my mind.
Thursday night had not ended dramatically.
Maybe that was why it stayed with me.
The restraint. His voice near my ear. His hand at the small of my back, light enough to be polite and familiar enough to make my thighs remember things the rest of me had no business entertaining in public.
Then Camille appeared at my side with a smile too sweet to be trusted.
“Will you excuse me, Andre?” she asked, already sliding her hand around my wrist. “I need to borrow my friend.”
Dre’s eyes moved from her hand to my face.
“Camille,” I said.
“Imani,” she returned, still smiling for the room as she pulled me away from him.
I looked back because I couldn’t help myself.
Dre was still standing there, eyes on mine, his expression controlled in every place except his jaw. A waiter passed between us with a tray of drinks, and Dre reached for one without looking.
My stomach dipped.
He had been in Royal House all night with cranberry tonic in his hand, careful and clear-eyed, giving everybody the version of Andre Jones they were allowed to have. Now he lifted that whiskey to his mouth while watching me walk away, and the sight went straight through me.
Camille tugged me harder. “Girl, too fast.”
I faced her. “What are you doing?”
“Saving you from yourself.” She kept her voice low and her smile bright enough to fool anybody who didn’t know her.
“If I hadn’t come get you, you were gonna give up the coochie in front of everybody. Make the man wait a little, Imani.”
I sighed even though she had been right.
Behind me, Malcolm said something to Dre. Tee moved in too, and just like that, our little almost-private moment got swallowed by people who loved us too much and minded their business too little.
For the rest of the night, we kept finding each other across the room.
Little looks at first. Then longer ones neither one of us bothered to hide well enough. Every time his eyes caught mine, my skin warmed, my stomach dipped, and the same question came back.
How were we supposed to have a private conversation with all our friends in the mix pretending not to watch us?
When he finally disappeared into whatever important men did when rooms got too full, I was still feeling his hand at my back, his voice near my ear, and the sight of that whiskey touching his mouth like I had been the reason he needed it.
That was the part that kept replaying.
The heat, yes. Dre had looked at me like the purple silk was a personal problem and my tattoo had committed a crime against his peace.
My body had answered him so fast it embarrassed me.
One look from that man, and my heart beat harder, my pussy thumped, and eight years started acting like they had evaporated out of respect for his face.
Ridiculous.
Offensive, even.
I had been involved with Damien long enough for him to deserve more than being pushed to the side of my mind by one night in Dre’s presence.
Damien had been thoughtful. Patient. Successful.
Good to me in ways I would not dismiss simply because my first love had walked back into a room looking like dark chocolate, restraint, and unfinished business.
Still, I woke up Friday morning with Damien’s message on my phone and Dre in my body.
Damien: I know you don’t owe me anything. I just hate how we left things.
I had stared at the text until the screen dimmed.
I owed him honesty. I owed myself the same.
But I had not replied.
Maybe that made me cowardly for the morning. Temporary, definitely. I would deal with Damien. I had to.
Just not while Andre Jones was still all over my nerves from the night before.
“Are you listening to me?”
I blinked and looked over at Camille.
She stood beside me in a white romper and oversized sunglasses, holding a lemonade in one hand and wearing the expression of a woman who had been speaking for at least thirty seconds without being properly admired.
For Camille, a Leo by birth and by every dramatic choice she had ever made, that counted as a personal injury.
“Absolutely.”
“Liar.”
Noelle smiled from my other side. “You were staring at the alumni banner.”
“I was looking at the logo placement.”
Camille followed my gaze toward the banner stretched across one side of the lawn. “You were looking irritated.”
“Because the logos are too close together.”
Noelle’s smile widened. “That is exactly what she was doing.”
“Thank you.”
Camille lifted her glass. “I apologize. I thought you had drifted off into Andre-land again.”
“I have no idea where that is.”
Camille lowered her sunglasses just enough for me to see her eyes. “Girl, who the hell you tryna fool?”
Noelle made a tiny sound.
I turned to her. “Don’t join her.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You don’t have to. Your face is loud.”
Camille took a lazy sip of her lemonade, completely unbothered. “You are on that man’s dick the same way you were when I would have to slip right back out of our quad because I heard clapping and sighs.”
Noelle choked on her drink.
“Oh, Dreee, you feel so good.”
I covered my face. “Camille.”
“What?” She looked at Noelle, who was coughing and dabbing at her chin with a napkin. “Am I lying?”
“You are being obscene in public.”
“I’m being historically accurate.”
I wanted to toss something at her beautiful ass.
Camille’s expression stayed calm as she lifted her glass again. “Don’t be shy now, Imani. I was there. Got receipts. And enough audio memory filed away to last me for decades.”
Noelle patted my arm while still trying to recover. “It’s okay, boo. We’ve all been there.”
I dropped my hands from my face and stared at her. “Have we?”
“Well.” She cleared her throat. “Emotionally.”
“I hate both of y’all.”
“But we love you.” Camille blew me a kiss. “That’s why we’re giving you until tomorrow to accidentally-on-purpose fall on your man’s dick.”
“That is not my man, Camille.”
“Sure, baby.”
Noelle patted my arm again. “You’re doing great.”
“I need new friends.”
“No, you don’t,” Camille said.
“Unfortunately.”
For a little while, I let them have me. We walked the Yard, stopped for hugs, laughed with old classmates, and let Crown Weekend be the part I remembered without flinching.
Women I knew from business workshops and late-night study rooms were founders now, executives, attorneys, doctors, stylists, consultants.
Women with money, taste, stories, and the kind of attention luxury brands were always trying to earn and rarely understood.
For almost twenty minutes, I was fine.
Then a familiar voice came from my right.
“Still trying to figure out how to make folks want what you already see?”
My head turned.
Dre stood several feet away, and the entire Yard seemed to make room for the sight of him.
Dark jeans. White T-shirt beneath a custom Jeff Hamilton leather jacket in AWU purple and gold, the school crest worked into one side of his chest and twenty-two stitched small near the cuff.
Even his Nike Air Force 1s were one of one, white leather broken up with purple and gold and his number worked into the heel.
Sunglasses covered his eyes, but they did nothing to make him less recognizable.
The low cut. The full beard. The diamond at his ear.
The watch at his wrist. The mouth I had spent too much of the night before pretending I had not thought about.
Fine as fuck.
“Excuse me?”
His mouth curved. “You been looking around this Yard like the whole place is a campaign brief.”
“It might be.”
“I know.”
I stared at him. “You know?”
“You always did that.” He nodded toward the crowd. “Clocked who was looking, who was pretending not to look, what they reached for first, what made their face change. Then you figured out how to make people want what you already understood.”
Warmth moved through my chest.
Eight years. An NFL career. A life I had mostly watched through screens. And he still remembered that part of me. Not just my face or my body or the way I used to love him, but the way my mind worked when something caught hold of it.
“I didn’t know you paid that much attention.”
His smile deepened. “You were hard to ignore.”
“That sounds like a compliment.”
“It is.”
“Some things don’t change.”
Sometimes they got much better.
Daylight gave me information last night’s dim room had withheld.
The faint lines at the corners of his eyes.
The small mark near his jaw I did not remember.
The richer maturity in his face. His eyes once he removed his sunglasses, still dark and direct enough to make my breath remember him before I gave it permission.
His body was no longer built only for football, but nothing about that made him less powerful.
He looked like a man who had been forced to rebuild and had made something solid out of what survived.
He looked good. More than good.