Chapter 6 #2
Camille cleared her throat beside me, and I remembered she and Noelle existed.
His eyes moved over me once before returning to my face. And as if he had read my mind, he said, “You look good in daylight too.”
My stomach dropped. “Thank you.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
His eyes warmed. “Still humble.”
“Always.”
Noelle made a small sound that might have been a laugh. Camille, for once in her life, chose mercy.
“We’re going to get food,” she said.
I turned to her. “We are?”
“You are currently useless to us.” She looked at Dre, then back at me. “Find us when you remember community.”
“Camille.”
“Love you.” She kissed the air near my cheek and hooked her arm through Noelle’s.
Then they left me standing there with Dre like abandonment was an act of friendship.
The Yard stayed alive around us, not just loud but full.
Faces I almost knew and names I had to reach for.
Brown skin, deep skin, golden skin shining in the October sun with cocoa butter, body oil, and whatever expensive perfume somebody had saved for Homecoming.
Fresh cuts. Silk presses. Braids down backs.
Locs pinned up with gold cuffs. Bald heads gleaming.
Lashes fanning. Teeth flashing white every time somebody spotted an old friend and screamed like the years between them had been personally disrespectful.
AWU had always been like that during Crown Weekend. Or at least it had stayed that way, judging from the pictures and reels I’d watched while hiding.
A little reunion. A little fashion show. A little family cookout with sponsors, vendors, and better shoes.
The Greek plots had filled early too. Alumni in old line jackets stood shoulder to shoulder with students young enough to call them sir until somebody started a stroll and everybody’s knees remembered who they used to be.
A bark broke out somewhere behind us, answered by another across the Yard, and a cluster of women in matching colors laughed before falling into step like they had been waiting all morning for the right song.
Beyond the vendor tents, Century Walk curved along the edge of the green, ten bronze installations carrying ten decades of Black Pittsburgh life.
Porches. Mill workers. Jazz rooms. Storefronts.
Protest signs. Sunday hats. Block parties.
Ordinary people made permanent. Students sat along the low stone edges eating and talking the same way we had, living all over history nobody at AWU expected them to treat like it belonged behind glass.
For a second, neither of us spoke, and somehow the space between Dre and me still felt like it belonged to us.
Taylor Givens appeared then with a clipboard and the kind of smile that meant she was about to ruin somebody’s peace for the sake of order.
Taylor had been a year behind us at AWU, but nobody treated her like it.
She had been bossing people into position since undergrad with lip gloss on, a schedule in hand, and enough charm to make folks thank her after she rearranged their lives.
Everybody liked Taylor. Everybody also moved when Taylor said move.
“Perfect,” she said. “Everybody I need is finally visible.”
Dre sighed.
I smiled because his face looked exactly like it used to when a coach called his name after practice.
Taylor pointed toward the photo area. “Featured alumni first, committee members after. Dre, donor tent after this. Imani, I need you in the committee shots and near the Saint Aurelia table by three.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
Dre looked at me.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“That was not nothing.”
“You folded real quick for Taylor.”
“So did you.”
“I’m scared of her.”
“As you should be.”
Taylor snapped her fingers without looking back. “Both of you, please. Compliment each other later.”
My face warmed.
Dre leaned closer as we followed her. “See?”
“Do not start.”
His mouth curved. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I respect Taylor too much for that.”
I laughed before I could stop myself.
The photographer began arranging people near the banner.
Featured alumni, committee members, old friends, football alumni, business owners, campus favorites, the ones everybody still called by nicknames nobody outside AWU understood.
Somebody behind us argued about whether he graduated in 2017 or 2018 with enough conviction to make me worry about AWU’s records department.
Two women near the front hugged, stepped back, screamed over each other’s shoes, then hugged again like they had not been standing three feet apart the whole time.
Taylor lifted her clipboard. “Imani, little to your left.”
I shifted backward, and my heel caught a dip in the grass.
Dre’s hand closed around my waist before I could correct myself.
My body knew who had me before I looked. His grip stopped my momentum without yanking me, one broad palm warm against my side through the thin fabric. It should have been nothing. A quick catch. A reflex. The kind of touch anybody could explain away in public.
My body did not care about the explanation.
My nipples tightened against my top, and my pussy gave one slow, embarrassing pulse, swelling with attention like his hand had landed somewhere far less innocent.
My breath tried to change.
I refused to let it embarrass me in front of God, alumni, and Taylor’s clipboard.
“You good?” he asked.
“Yes.”
My voice sounded normal. I considered that an accomplishment.
I looked down at his hand, then at him. Dre followed my gaze, but he did not move it immediately.
Memory came with the contact. Those hands fixing things around my first apartment because he never understood why my roommates and I were willing to live with a cabinet hinge hanging loose. Grease across his knuckles after working on the Hellcat. His palms on my hips.