Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Black elegance needed no help, but The Nocturne knew how to frame it.
AWU had held some version of this night inside The Nocturne for decades, long enough for alumni to tell stories about their parents dancing beneath these lights before any of us had student IDs.
The ballroom glowed with dark wood, brass light, white linen, and flowers arranged low enough not to interrupt anybody’s view of anybody’s diamonds.
Music moved beneath the conversation, soft and expensive, while AWU alumni filled the room in tuxedos, gowns, silk, velvet, perfume, and the kind of confidence that made people stand taller before they even realized they were doing it.
For a moment, I stood just inside the entrance and let myself take it in.
This was what I had missed.
More than the school, the parties, the old friends, or the excuse to dress like somebody had personally offended my closet.
This.
Black people returning to a place that had poured into them, carrying proof of what they had built since they left.
The old-school alumni in tuxedos greeted each other like royalty.
Younger alumni posed near the step-and-repeat because nobody had dressed like this for the camera not to be involved.
Professors, donors, and former campus legends moved through the same space as classmates I remembered eating wings with in the student center at midnight.
Everybody grown now. Everybody pretending their feet didn’t hurt.
Somebody near the bar laughed too loudly. A woman in a gold gown crossed the room with a glass in her hand and the kind of walk that said the gown had been chosen for the walk specifically. An older man in a purple dinner jacket kissed his wife’s cheek before pulling out her chair.
The Nocturne held all of it beautifully.
“I love this,” Noelle said beside me.
Her voice was softer than Camille’s would have been, but no less reverent. Noelle wore deep plum tonight, her curls pinned up, warm-brown skin glowing beneath the chandelier light. She looked sweet until you knew her long enough to understand sweet was not the same as tame.
Camille, in bronze silk that made her look like she’d been poured into it, her layered cut falling past her shoulders and framing a face that had never successfully hidden a single judgmental thought, was already watching the room like she was appraising square footage, exits, lies, and men.
“Of course you do,” Camille said. “This room is gorgeous, everybody smells good, and I’ve already seen three people I can sell these houses to.”
“You are exhausting.”
“I am employed.”
Noelle laughed.
We barely made it past the entrance before the room started reaching for us.
A woman from my business program called my name. One of the gala committee members waved from across the room.
Dr. Yates touched my arm, looked me over, and said, “Saint Aurelia. I see you finally learned to trust your own eye.”
Rude. Accurate. Very her.
I hugged her, gave quick updates, received three compliments on my gown, and made it almost ten feet before Camille’s steps faltered for half a second.
Malcolm Reed stood near the bar with Tee and two men I vaguely remembered from AWU football, black tuxedo jacket open, one hand around a glass, his grin already aimed in our direction.
I saw it.
Noelle saw it.
Camille pretended neither one of us had eyes.
“I see someone I need to avoid,” she said.
I looked from her to Malcolm. “That does not look like avoidance.”
“It is strategic.”
“Walking toward him?”
“I didn’t say the strategy was good.”
Malcolm lifted his glass slightly, and Camille rolled her eyes with such precision that I almost applauded.
“I’ll be back,” she said.
“No one asked.”
“I felt your curiosity.”
“You felt your guilt.”
She pointed at me without turning around. “Enjoy your evening.”
Then she moved toward Malcolm like she was going to war in designer heels.
Noelle leaned closer. “How long do we give them?”
“Before arguing or flirting?”
“Yes.”
“Two minutes.”
“That seems generous.”
“It’s a gala.”
Noelle smiled, then her eyes widened as she spotted someone near the far side of the room. “Oh! That’s Dr. Waverly. I need to say hi. She wrote one of my recommendation letters.”
“Go.”
“You sure?”
“I’m fine.”
She gave me a quick squeeze before disappearing into the crowd.
And then, for the first time since walking in, I stood alone and aware.
The music beneath the conversation. The silk gliding over my hips when I shifted. The perfume warming at my throat and wrists. The possibility that Andre Jones was somewhere in this hotel, either already here or on his way.
I had not seen him yet.
That was probably for the best.
My body had been doing enough foolishness since Thursday night without new material.
The black Saint Laurent silk gown was one of the few pieces from my YSL years I had loved enough to buy instead of borrow.
It fell simply from the front, skimming my body instead of strangling it, then dropped low across my back in a way that made turning around feel like an announcement.
Brown and gold warmed my eyes. Gloss sat on my mouth. Delina touched my wrists, throat, behind my ears, and lightly between my breasts because apparently I had decided subtlety was a suggestion other women could follow.
I looked good.
I knew it.
And I hated how much some part of me wanted Dre to know it too.
“Imani, baby.”
My chest tightened before I turned.
Rochelle Jones stood a few feet away in deep-purple silk that wrapped softly over her curves and made her dark-brown skin glow beneath the lights.
Her hair was shorter than I remembered, swept away from her face in soft waves threaded with silver near the temples.
Diamonds rested at her ears and throat, elegant but not timid, and her smile still carried that same warmth that used to greet me after games, Sunday dinners, and random visits when Dre decided feeding me was somehow part of being his girlfriend.
“Oh my goodness,” I whispered.
She opened her arms, and I went into them before I had time to decide whether I should.
Her hug felt the same.
That surprised me enough to sting.
For years, this woman had been part of my life in a way that had nothing to do with politeness.
She had called me when Dre was being stubborn, sent food back to campus with us, remembered exams, birthdays, interviews.
She had loved me because I loved her son, but somewhere along the way, she had loved me for myself too.
Losing Dre had meant losing her.
I hadn’t let myself think much about that.
Mrs. Jones pulled back and held my arms, her gaze moving over me with open affection. “Look at you.”
I smiled. “Look at you.”
“Don’t start lying to me this early in the evening.”
“I would never.”
“That is why I always liked you.”
Her palm touched my cheek, and the affection in the gesture brought that same ache back beneath my ribs.
“David,” she called over her shoulder, “look who finally came home.”
Mr. Jones turned from the man he’d been speaking to, and his whole face opened.
He was still tall, still broad, still built like work had shaped him before comfort ever got the chance.
His close-cut hair had gone mostly silver at the sides, and his beard carried more gray than black now, but his skin was the same deep brown as Dre’s, his eyes just as direct.
There were men who stood in expensive rooms and looked like the room had made them.
Mr. Jones looked like he could build the room, pay for it, and tell you exactly which contractor had tried to overcharge him for the lights.
“Well,” he said, moving toward me. “Look who decided to come home.”
I laughed as he pulled me into a hug. “Hi, Mr. Jones.”
“Still calling me that after all these years?”
“You survived it before.”
“Barely.”
He stepped back and shook his head at me. “You look good, baby girl.”
“Thank you.”
I meant that softly, because hearing him call me that almost took my knees out from under me.
Mrs. Jones looked past me. “Where are your friends?”
“Camille is…” I glanced toward the bar where Malcolm was leaning slightly closer than necessary while Camille looked irritated enough to be interested. “Occupied.”
Mr. Jones followed my gaze. “That boy still bothering that girl?”
I nearly laughed. “It appears mutual.”
“Mmhmm.”
“And Noelle saw one of her old professors.”
“Good,” Mrs. Jones said, tucking her hand through my arm. “Then you’re sitting with us.”
“Oh, I don’t want to intrude.”
“Imani.”
There was enough mother in the way she said my name to stop the sentence immediately.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“That’s better.”
Their table sat close to the stage, one of several reserved for honorees and their guests.
Most of the seats were already filled by people who turned with welcoming smiles when Mrs. Jones guided me toward them.
I recognized Dre’s sister Danielle immediately, though she was grown now in a way that made time feel personally disrespectful.
She had her mom’s eyes and her dad’s mouth, her hair cut into a sleek bob that brushed her jaw, and she hugged me hard enough to make me remember the teenager who used to sit between my knees and ask me to braid her hair because she didn’t trust Dre with beauty-related tasks.
A few family friends greeted me too. An auntie whose name returned right before panic could set in. A cousin I remembered vaguely from cookouts. Familiar faces attached to a life I had once assumed I would keep knowing.
There was only one empty chair.
It sat between Mrs. Jones and the place card marked Andre Jones.
Of course it did.
I looked at the chair, then at Mrs. Jones. “I can find another seat.”
“You found one.”
“This is Dre’s table.”
Mrs. Jones’s brows lifted. “It is also mine.”
Mr. Jones pulled the chair out. “Sit down, Imani.”
The two of them had always been a terrible team when they agreed on something.
I sat.