Page 30 of The Sweetest Return

Purple-and-gold banners had already started going up around campus, hotel rates had become disrespectful, and every group chat with AWU alumni in it had turned into a countdown.

It should have felt like an easy return.

I had missed AWU in the way a person missed a place that had raised one version of her. The campus had given me friends, confidence, terrible dining hall food, good parties, hard lessons, and the first real taste of being somewhere with Black excellence folded into the brick. Crown Weekend was reunion and ritual. Yard music, vendors, old pictures recreated in new clothes, people screaming across crowds because they saw somebody they had not seen in years but still called family.

I wanted that part.

I wanted the future waiting on the other side of it too. Saint Aurelia. Pittsburgh. My own place. A title that challenged me. A city I understood differently now that I was returning to it as a woman with options instead of a girl trying to prove she deserved some.

But Crown Weekend had never been only Crown Weekend for me.

Bari did not say Dre’s name yet.

He did not need to.

My phone vibrated on the island.

Seeing Damien’s name made me tired before I read anything, which was unfair but honest.

I left it where it was.

Bari noticed. “New York?”

“Yes.”

“The finance dude?”

“He has a name.”

“Damien,” Mama supplied.

Bari nodded. “Right. Mr. Dinner Reservation.”

I laughed before I could stop myself. “What is wrong with dinner reservations?”

“Nothing. I make them too. I’m just saying that man looked like he asked permission before he ordered tap water.”

Daddy lowered his face to hide his smile.

“I raised y’all better than this,” Mama said.

Bari pointed at me. “She laughed first.”

I picked up the phone before Damien’s name could light up again.

Damien: Hope the unpacking isn’t too bad. I know you asked for space. Just checking in.

Damien had never betrayed me, embarrassed me, or treated me badly. He was handsome, successful, attentive, and considerate. He remembered flowers, reservations, important dates, and the exact Bordeaux I liked with dinner. His suits fit correctly. His manners never needed adjusting. Our friends understood us together.

He made sense in photographs.

On paper too.

The problem lived everywhere paper could not reach.

The truth was, part of what drew me to Damien had been how safe everything felt. We met through friends at a dinner in Manhattan. He asked for my number before dessert, called when he said he would, and planned our first date without making me wonder whether there would be one. I liked knowing where I stood with him.

By then, I had already learned what it felt like to love somebody so deeply that losing him changed me. Dre had understood parts of me before I finished explaining them. He could make an ordinary night feel like something simply because he was there. He made me laugh when I was mad, challenged me when I needed it, and never once treated my ambition like something I would eventually grow out of. Losing all of that had hurt enough that I spent years making sure no man ever held quite that much of me again.