Page 23 of The Sweetest Return

I didn’t answer.

Another message came.

Malcolm: LMAOOOOOO

Nigga got on my nerves.

Pittsburgh grew larger beneath us.

For years, I had imagined seeing Imani again. A restaurant. The airport. An AWU game. Somebody’s wedding.

In every version, I was cool.

Of course.

Calm when it mattered. Hard to read when people wanted a reaction. Football had trained that into me early. Defenders talked. Fans screamed. Reporters asked sideways questions. Coaches tested patience. Giving people too much of my face meant giving them something to use.

With Imani, staying cool was supposed to save my heart.

She saw me. I saw her. Maybe she smiled. Maybe I didn’t. Maybe she noticed I was doing just fine without her.

My imagination had never bothered asking what my chest might do.

Now there was a real chance I could see her tomorrow, then again Friday night when my parents were there and AWU put an award in my hand for becoming some version of a man everybody thought deserved honoring.

The idea almost made me laugh.

Imani had known me before there was anything to honor.

Before eighty-eight million dollars.

Before the Forge.

Before scars.

Three days ago, I had ended things with a woman I cared about. A national sports network wanted to put me back in front of millions of people, and three profitable businesses were waiting when I landed.

None of it moved through me the way Malcolm’s text did.

I rubbed my hand over my jaw as the wheels dropped beneath us.

Eight years was enough time to understand why Imani had chosen herself. I was about to find out if it had been enough time to forgive how much that choice hurt me.

And maybe, if she actually showed up, whether I had the nerve to ask her to forgive me too.

CHAPTER TWO

Astupid blue highlighter brought Dre back to me.

I found it in one of the half-open boxes near the bookshelf, buried beneath old notebooks, folders, and things I had packed because throwing them away felt too final when I was leaving New York. The cap had bite marks along the edge, and the label was nearly rubbed clean from years of being tossed into bags and drawers.

I stood in my living room with a hammer in one hand and that highlighter in the other, and suddenly I was back at AWU.

Outside the student center between classes, sitting at one of the small tables near the breezeway because freshman-year Imani had convinced herself that corner would be quiet.

It was not.

Nothing near the student center stayed quiet for long. People cut through in waves. Somebody was always laughing too loudly, calling a name across the walkway, arguing about a professor, begging somebody to scan them into the dining hall, or pretending they had somewhere important to be while clearly waiting to be seen.