Page 55 of The Sweetest Return

Her fingers tightened around her glass, and the heat in her eyes stopped pretending.

“No,” she said quietly. “Not here.”

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.