“Seven ball. Right center pocket.”
He pushed the cue stick forward with a smooth strike, sending the maroon ball spinning across the worn green felt. It clanked against the five ball he’d sunk a few plays ago.
“Impressive,” Derrick Coleman said. His former classmate’s brow dipped as he frowned. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d have the time to perfect your technique, as busy as your schedule is.”
“I don’t. I haven’t played since we graduated,” Bryson said. He shrugged, trying to suppress his grin. “Maybe I’m just that good.” He quickly knocked the eight ball into the top left pocket, ending the game.
“No, I’m just that bad,” Derrick said, taking both his andBryson’s cue sticks and setting them in the rack. “My pool debt was almost as bad as my student loan debt.”
“So why did you choose to come here tonight?” Bryson asked. He clamped a hand on Derrick’s shoulder as they headed back to their table.
“I wanted to see if I could continue my losing streak from eight years ago,” Derrick answered. “Thanks for proving that I could. Success tastes sweet.”
“Happy I could help,” he said.
Derrick flipped him a middle finger and Bryson burst out laughing.
Short and boisterous, Derrick had always reminded him of Kevin Hart. The two of them had bonded over being the only two Black men in the program the year they started vet school at LSU. It would have been too much to ask that he and Derrick end up as lab partners. Instead, Bryson had been stuck with that asshole Cameron Broussard.
Derrick had surprised him tonight by driving in from Baton Rouge to hear him speak at the Louisiana Veterinary Medical Association’s quarterly meeting. Seeing a friendly, familiar face in the crowd had lessened the nerves that had popped up as he’d stepped onto the dais, but despite both Derrick and Doc being there to cheer him on, those nerves had pestered him for far longer than Bryson was used to.
He’d spoken before audiences ten times the size of the one he’d addressed tonight, but there was something about being in front of the home crowd that made tonight even more nerve-wracking. There had been people there who knew him before he becametheBryson Mitchell, DVM.
At this point in his career, he enjoyed a level of prestige that few in his profession could ever hope to attain, but he alsoknew that, to some, he would always be nothing more than a basketball jock who’d managed to claw his way out of the bayou and into veterinary school. Instead of allowing that to intimidate him, Bryson had used it as fuel.
He’d opened with his usual story of how fate led him to transferring in his final year of vet school from LSU to Tuskegee University, the only historically Black university with a school of veterinary medicine. And how that eventually led to him joining a team of scientists studying 3D-printing technology only weeks after finishing the university’s veterinary medical-surgical program.
Ten minutes into his presentation and he could tell by the crowd’s rapt expression that he had them. He didn’t let go of them until the very end. He still had a buzz flowing through his veins from the standing ovation he’d received at the conclusion of his talk.
Yet, there was one thing that continued to dampen his mood.
Bryson had spent his entire presentation searching for a specific face in the crowd, but it never materialized.
Was he surprised Evie never showed up? Not really.
But it still stung, particularly after so many at tonight’s chapter meeting noted how odd it was not to see her in attendance.Hewas the reason she hadn’t been there. He didn’t believe that excuse she’d given Doc for a moment. Her entire demeanor had changed when she discovered that he was tonight’s keynote speaker.
He massaged the corded muscles at the back of his head.
Their server was waiting for them when they returned to their table. Bryson added a water with lemon to Derrick’s order of fries and a beer from a local brewery.
As he settled into his seat, he tried to hold on to the lightheartedness he’d experienced while playing pool, but Bryson could already feel that brief feeling of joy slipping away. He just wasn’t up for it tonight, and not only because Evie had been a no-show at tonight’s chapter meeting.
He glanced around the packed sports bar and resisted the urge to look down at his watch to see if enough time had passed to make excuses and head out. He had hoped being back at one of his favorite hangouts from that summer he’d worked at The Sanctuary would put him in a better headspace, but the only thing being surrounded by this loud chatter did was remind him that this had never really been his scene.
Back when he was at The Sanctuary, he’d joined Derrick, Evie, and the handful of other volunteers who’d been in the program because he’d finally found a group of people who made him feel as if he belonged, but even then he’d preferred an evening at home with a Walter E. Mosley detective novel or watching Animal Planet.
Tonight, he just wanted his bed.
Hisbed. The one he’d left in his condo back in Five Points, not the lumpy one at the short-term rental he had here in New Orleans until he could find a place of his own.
The server returned with their drinks and a basket of fries, and Bryson shook off the urge to check airfare to Raleigh-Durham. He couldn’t let a horrible mattress and one bad night send him scrambling back to North Carolina so soon. He had yet to even see his parents who—surprise, surprise—were on yet another Caribbean cruise.
He was a Louisianian again. He had to accept everything that came with that.
“Hey, you okay?” Bryson looked up to find Derrick chomping on a French fry. “You can at least show some excitement over beating me at pool instead of making it look like another day at the office.”
“My workdays are a helluva lot more exciting than whipping your ass at pool,” Bryson said. He dodged the fry Derrick lobbed at him.
