I went to her, and this time, and when I kissed her, there was no clock in the back of my head telling me I would have to leave soon.
Chapter 17
NOVA
Crystal didn’t knock.She never did. She leaned into my doorway with an envelope already in her hand, like she had been waiting for the right moment to appear and had decided this was it.
“My husband can’t go,” she said, setting it on the corner of my desk as if it already belonged to me.
I glanced at it, then back up at her. “To what?”
“A Sneaker Ball,” she said, easing further into the room. “Celebrity one. Some football player is hosting it, which apparently means it’s a whole situation. Black tie, but everyone’s in sneakers. People care about both, from what I’ve been told.”
That got my attention.
“You’re giving a ticket to me?” I asked, reaching for the envelope now, feeling the weight of it before I even opened it.
She gave me a look that suggested I was already behind. “Two tickets for Saturday night. It’s a fully catered affair, there’s a celebrity DJ people are excited about, and something involving a sneaker archive installation that felt like it had your name on it.”
“Where did this come from?” I asked, turning it over in my hands.
“My husband’s colleague’s cousin,” she said, already halfway out of the doorway. “Which means it’s real enough.”
“That’s not how verification works.”
“It is where I’m from,” she said, and disappeared before I could follow up.
I opened the envelope once she was gone. Inside were, in fact, two tickets. I closed it again and sat there for a moment, the day now shifting slightly around me. My mother would have known exactly what to do with something like this. Not just what to wear, but how to arrive. How to leave an impression without ever appearing to try.
I picked up my phone before I could overthink it and stepped into the break room, closing the door behind me. The quiet in there gave me just enough space to feel the decision settle before I acted on it.
Deion picked up on the second ring.
“Hey,” he said, like I had caught him in the middle of something he didn’t mind setting aside. “You happened to catch me between classes. What’s up?”
“Don’t think too hard,” I said, leaning back against the counter, the envelope still in my hand. There was a brief pause on his end.
“That depends on what you’re about to ask.”
“I have two tickets to something on Saturday,” I said. “And I need you to say yes before you start making sense of it.”
The quiet stretched in a way that told me he was considering it fully instead of reacting to how I framed it.
“That’s not how I operate,” he said finally.
“I know,” I said. “I’m asking you to try something different this one time.”
Another pause, softer now.
“What kind of something?”
“It’s a Sneaker Ball,” I said, letting it come out in one thought instead of breaking it apart. “Black tie, but everybody shows up in their best sneakers. Athletes basically coming to show up and show out.”
“All right,” he said.
I smiled, pushing off the counter, already knowing he would. “You didn’t even ask where.”
“I’ll find out when we get there,” he said, easy.
