Page 66 of The Sweetest Return

Tonight, I had an award to accept, a room to survive, and a woman in that room who had already reminded me what it felt like to want too much and still have enough sense to wait.

Mostly.

I grabbed my room key and headed for the elevator.

I was ready to see her again.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Black elegance needed no help, but The Nocturne knew how to frame it.

AWU had held some version of this night inside The Nocturne for decades, long enough for alumni to tell stories about their parents dancing beneath these lights before any of us had student IDs.

The ballroom glowed with dark wood, brass light, white linen, and flowers arranged low enough not to interrupt anybody’s view of anybody’s diamonds. Music moved beneath the conversation, soft and expensive, while AWU alumni filled the room in tuxedos, gowns, silk, velvet, perfume, and the kind of confidence that made people stand taller before they even realized they were doing it.

For a moment, I stood just inside the entrance and let myself take it in.

This was what I had missed.

More than the school, the parties, the old friends, or the excuse to dress like somebody had personally offended my closet.

This.

Black people returning to a place that had poured into them, carrying proof of what they had built since they left.

The old-school alumni in tuxedos greeted each other like royalty. Younger alumni posed near the step-and-repeat because nobody had dressed like this for the camera not to be involved. Professors, donors, and former campus legends moved through the same space as classmates I remembered eating wings with in the student center at midnight. Everybody grown now. Everybody pretending their feet didn’t hurt.

Somebody near the bar laughed too loudly. A woman in a gold gown crossed the room with a glass in her hand and the kind of walk that said the gown had been chosen for the walk specifically. An older man in a purple dinner jacket kissed his wife’s cheek before pulling out her chair.

The Nocturne held all of it beautifully.

“I love this,” Noelle said beside me.

Her voice was softer than Camille’s would have been, but no less reverent. Noelle wore deep plum tonight, her curls pinned up, warm-brown skin glowing beneath the chandelier light. She looked sweet until you knew her long enough to understand sweet was not the same as tame.

Camille, in bronze silk that made her look like she’d been poured into it, her layered cut falling past her shoulders and framing a face that had never successfully hidden a single judgmental thought, was already watching the room like she was appraising square footage, exits, lies, and men.

“Of course you do,” Camille said. “This room is gorgeous, everybody smells good, and I’ve already seen three people I can sell these houses to.”

“You are exhausting.”

“I am employed.”

Noelle laughed.

We barely made it past the entrance before the room started reaching for us.

A woman from my business program called my name. One of the gala committee members waved from across the room.

Dr. Yates touched my arm, looked me over, and said, “Saint Aurelia. I see you finally learned to trust your own eye.”

Rude. Accurate. Very her.

I hugged her, gave quick updates, received three compliments on my gown, and made it almost ten feet before Camille’s steps faltered for half a second.

Malcolm Reed stood near the bar with Tee and two men I vaguely remembered from AWU football, black tuxedo jacket open, one hand around a glass, his grin already aimed in our direction.

I saw it.