Page 19 of The Sweetest Return

“We been holding onto what this was supposed to be longer than what it actually is.”

Aubrey reminded me that the last year had been terrible. Career-ending injury. Rehab. Three new businesses. No normal version of us to judge anything against.

“So we put in more effort,” she said.

I looked at her and realized the saddest part was that I didn’t want to.

Then Apex came up.

“What if I don’t take it?” I asked.

Aubrey looked genuinely confused.

“Why wouldn’t you?”

There it was.

She couldn’t imagine Andre Jones choosing not to be Andre Jones in public.

When I told her maybe I wanted the dealerships, the restaurant, working with Pops, and a life where nobody watched me eat dinner, she said, “You don’t really believe that’s all you’re going to do.”

The second the words left her mouth, I think we both understood.

Aubrey believed in me. She just believed in a version of me that needed an audience.

Then she did what she always did when she loved somebody.

She started offering to adjust.

She could come to New York. Turn down trips. Change her content schedule. Make whatever Apex became work around us.

A year earlier, I probably would’ve heard devotion.

That night, I heard the thing I had not understood when I was young.

Aubrey was moving pieces of herself before I had even asked, and for the first time, I could see what I might’ve expected Imani to become if she had followed me.

“No,” I told Aubrey. “I don’t want to be the one you slow down for. Not anymore.”

She cried after that. One tear slipped down her cheek before she wiped it away and asked if I was really done.

I was.

That did not mean she meant nothing. I knew I would miss the dimples, her laugh, the fashion lectures I pretended not to listen to, the way she could turn a Target run into an event because she made a new friend in every aisle.

I had loved her.

I just couldn’t stay and keep calling it honest.

The first sign had come before we said a word about breaking up.

I hadn’t invited her to Crown Weekend.

I told myself it was because I had meetings, panels, and the Friday gala. My parents were already coming because AWU was giving me the award, and adding another person to the logistics sounded like one more thing to manage.

Bullshit.

Aubrey would’ve made the weekend easier, not harder.