Page 9 of The Sweetest Return

Dre went still.

I pressed my hand to my chest because saying it hurt there.

“Like somebody knew before us. Before any of this. Him for you. You for him. That’s what being with you feels like sometimes.”

His eyes held mine.

“And I don’t understand why loving you that much doesn’t make me want your life to decide mine.”

There it was, the truth I had been trying to name all night.

For several seconds, Dre only looked at me.

Then he said, “Maybe loving me ain’t supposed to decide yours.”

My throat tightened.

“Then what happens to us?”

“I don’t know.”

“I need you to know.”

“I’m twenty-two, Mani.” A tired laugh left him. “I don’t know shit.”

I laughed through my tears because he sounded so irritated by his own honesty.

Dre rubbed both hands over his close-cut hair.

“I know I love you. I know I want you. And I know I’m not about to ask you to turn down Tiffany so you can sit around waiting to see what team picks me.”

The pain came fast even though that was exactly what I had been arguing for.

“You sound so ready to let me go.”

His head lifted.

“I’m not.”

“You just said⁠—”

“I said I’m not asking you to shrink your life for mine. That ain’t the same thing.”

My tears came harder because I heard him then. Heard the hurt under the restraint. The anger too. Not because I had gotten the offer, but because I had come to him with my decision halfway made and still wanted him to somehow make me feel chosen without asking me to choose him over myself.

“I want you with me,” he said, stepping closer. “I want you at my games. I want to come home and find all your expensive shit taking over my bathroom. I want Sunday dinners when we can get home for them. I want you stealing my hoodies and acting like I forgot where they went.” His mouth twitched for half a second before the sadness returned. “I want all of that, Mani.”

“Then ask me.”

His face fell.

“No.”

I stared at him.

“How the fuck am I supposed to ask you to become exactly what you standing here telling me you scared of becoming?”

That shut me up.