She sucked in a breath. The significance of this moment was not lost on her. She reached down and lifted Waffles onto the bench beside her. He immediately rested his head in her lap.
“Okay,” Evie said. “Why did you leave?”
He tapped his fingers against his lips.
“There were several reasons,” he started. “I was approached by the surgical program at Tuskegee just as the summer was ending. I found out later that it was Doc who first contacted them. One of his college roommates was running the program at that time. Once they extended the offer, I couldn’t turn it down.”
“That explains why you left LSU,” she said. “It doesn’t explain why you leftme.”
“I know.” He ran both hands down his face.
The server chose that moment to return to their table.
“Can I clear any of this for you?” he asked.
“Yes, thank you,” Evie said. “Can I get another coffee?”
“Of course. You too, sir?”
Bryson shook his head. “No thanks. I’m good.” He waited until the server had walked away before continuing. “I already alluded to why I thought things would never work between us,” he said. “It started that afternoon when I brought you home and saw the house you lived in.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Bryson.”
“To you,” he said. “But it made everything crystal clear to me. All I could see was this house that was so big everyone in my small hometown could probably fit inside of it. I sat in the driveway for several minutes after you went inside. I couldn’t stop staring at that house. And the longer I stared, the more I came to realize that I would never fit into your world, Ev.”
“So you decided to end things without asking me howIfelt about how and where you fit into my world?”
“I already knew what you would say,” Bryson said. “You would have said that you didn’t see a problem with it.”
“Because there was no problem.”
He shook his head. “You don’t understand. How you saw things back then is not how the rest of the people in your life would have seen them. Your parents would have never stood for you being with a guy like me.”
“A standout student at one of the top veterinary schools in the South?”
“Who got there on a basketball scholarship,” he said. “And you were already dating a standout student enrolled in that same veterinary program. The difference was that Cameron came from a wealthy family, while I came from a poor town on the bayou with parents who had to scrape together every penny just to provide what people in your world took for granted.”
“For your information, my father would have loved you,” she said. “He came from beginnings that were even more humble than yours. The fact that you’d come so far—he would have eaten that shit up.”
“It’s how I felt,” he said. “I didn’t say it was fair, but it is what it is.”
“I hate when people say ‘It is what it is,’ as if there’s no other way for things to be. It’s a lazy excuse.”
“I won’t argue with you, Ev. I told you before, I was messed up back then,” he said. He paused for a moment, then said, “I almost reached out to you after I left. About a month after I got to Tuskegee.” He blew out a tired breath. “But then I found out that you and Cameron were back together. It just confirmed what I’d already known.”
“And what’s that, Bryson?”
“That you were meant to be in a relationship with someone like him. Someone with a background similar to yours, who could have brunch at the country club without eating his salad with the wrong fork—I know a salad fork these days, by the way. I learned a lot over these past eight years.”
Evie closed her eyes tight. An ache had formed in her throat; it made it difficult to swallow.
“I spent years wondering why you left the way you did, and now that I know, I honestly wish I didn’t,” Evie said. “It’s such a waste, Bryson. You made a decision for both of us. Did it ever occur to you that I should be the one to decide the kind of guy I want to be in a relationship with?”
“I don’t know what else to tell you, Ev.”
“Well, I asked,” Evie said. She’d been afraid she wouldn’t like the answer but never expected it would piss her off to the degree it had. It would have taken a simple conversation to put his worries to rest; all he’d had to do was come to her. Instead, he’d ghosted her.
The server returned with her coffee and the check.
