Page 91 of The Sweetest Return

“You saying they need to update?”

She shook her head. “I’m saying some things are good the way they are.”

I looked at her.

She heard it after she said it and narrowed her eyes.

“Do not.”

“I ain’t say nothing.”

“You were about to.”

“You still know my face?”

“Unfortunately.”

I laughed.

For a little while, we sat with old R&B playing low overhead and dishes clattering somewhere behind the counter. There had been plenty of silence between us over the weekend, but this one didn’t feel like something either of us needed to escape.

Then she looked at me.

“You meant what you said tonight?”

I didn’t need to ask which part.

“Every word.”

Her gaze dropped briefly to the table. “That was a beautiful speech.”

“Thank you.”

“I didn’t know you remembered those questions I used to ask you.”

“I remembered.”

“You didn’t always answer them.”

“No,” I said. “I didn’t.”

Her eyes came back to mine.

There was the opening. The kind I used to let pass because saying too much felt like handing somebody a weapon. At twenty-two, I had loved her with my whole chest and still let pride stand between my mouth and the one thing she needed to hear.

I was not twenty-two anymore.

“You once told me you thought God made me for you and you for me,” I said.

Her breath changed.

“Dre.”

“I carried that longer than I ever told you.”

Her fingers stilled against her napkin.

“When you got Tiffany and started talking about New York, I didn’t know where to put that. All I could think was, how could God make you for me and still let your life pull you somewhere I couldn’t reach?”