Page 172 of The Sweetest Return

“It better. Your other clothes were trying to kidnap me.”

He laughed and pulled out my chair.

Dinner was roast chicken with lemon-herb sauce, broccolini, whipped sweet potatoes, rice pilaf, and salad with pears, walnuts, and blue cheese. Beautiful food without acting too precious to be eaten.

“You always eat like this on Mondays?”

“When Tasha likes me.”

“And when she doesn’t?”

“Grilled chicken and judgment.”

“That sounds fair.”

“She been with me since my third year with the Forge. Says I used to eat like a twelve-year-old with direct deposit.”

I covered my mouth around a laugh. “Used to?”

“Watch yourself.”

We ate while the pregame show moved quietly on the television, and for the first time since I had opened Instagram Sunday morning, nothing inside me felt like it needed to run. The conversation did not fix everything between us, nor did either of us ask it to. We simply sat at his table and talked.

I told him more about Saint Aurelia, including the parts I did not package into presentations. I told him why taking what I had learned at Tiffany and YSL and using it for a Black luxury house felt personal in a way I had not expected. Saint Aurelia already knew how to make beautiful things. I wanted more Black women with money, taste, and the freedom to buy themselves whatever they wanted to know the house belonged in the same conversation as every European name they'd been taught to covet.

Dre listened. Really listened, asking questions that made it obvious he wasn't merely waiting for his turn to speak.

He told me about Sunday brunch at his parents’ house, Kayla asking where I was before anybody else found the nerve, Danielle being all up in the mix, and his father telling him to put legs under love.

“He said that?”

Dre’s mouth twitched. “In front of my mother, who immediately reminded him you are not a trophy.”

“I like your mother.”

“She likes you too much.”

“There is no such thing.”

“She still mad at me from 2018 on your behalf.”

My eyes dropped to my plate. His family had loved me once, and the knowledge sat somewhere tender enough that I didn't trust myself to poke at it.

Dre saw me grow quiet and gave me the grace of reaching for the sauce instead of an explanation.

The game started while we were still finishing dinner. The Forge were playing the Baltimore Sentinels, and somewhere between clearing plates and carrying wine into the living room, Dre mentioned that he had turned Apex down.

I stopped.

“You said no?”

“Yeah.”

“Just like that?”

“Wasn’t for me.”

I studied him as he settled into the couch.