Page 144

Nicole’s whole face lit up. “Ms. Carter. Hi!”

“Girl, look at you.” The woman hugged her, notepad and all. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”

Nicole turned to Drew. “Ms. Carter wrote the Jet story about my family last summer.”

“Two whole days in that house,” Ms. Carter said, “and I still think about your grandmother’s peach cobbler. By the time I left, I was trying to figure out how to get myself adopted. And this one had paintings up on her bedroom walls that I still tell people about. I asked her right then what in the world she was doing in premed. Now, don’t get me wrong, we need all the Black doctors we can get. But this girl can paint.” She tapped the press badge. “I’m with a paper in Dallas now. They sent me to cover tonight.”

“I switched majors,” Nicole said, and Drew could hear how proud she was. “I’m in the art program now.”

“I knew it.” Ms. Carter pointed her pen at her. “Didn’t I tell you?” It was a hell of a lot better than Nicole’s mother had taken it back home in January, which, from what Nicole said, had been mostly a long silence followed by a lot of questions about her plans.

“And you must be the reason we’re all here.” Ms. Carter shook Drew’s hand. She had a firm grip and a warm smile, and she looked back and forth between the two of them like they’d just made her whole night. “Congratulations. Best quarterback in the whole country. That’s not nothing.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Ma’am.” She laughed and put a hand to her chest. “Lord, I’m not that old.” She looked at Nicole. “But he’s got manners.”

“He has some,” Nicole said, and Ms. Carter cracked up.

“How long have you two been together?”

Nicole glanced up at him. Drew squeezed her hand and let her answer. “Since October,” she said.

“Well, I’m happy for you, baby. I mean that.” Ms. Carter turned and waved somebody over. “James. Come get a picture of these two before they sit down.”

The flash went off before Drew even knew which way to look. The photographer took two more, nodded at Ms. Carter, and moved on to the next table, and she patted Nicole’s arm, told her to tell her mother hello, and went after him with her notepad.

Drew looked down at Nicole. She was still watching Ms. Carter go. She knew exactly what that picture was. So did Drew. That hadn’t been some kid from the school paper taking it, and a picture of Melvin Wright’s daughter holding hands with a white quarterback at a fancy dinner in Texas wasn’t going to stay in Texas. People who’d never watched a down of college football were going to see it. Every team he’d sat across from in Mobile was going to see it. His mother was going to see it too, and she was just going to have to deal with it.

Later, at the table, while some man at the podium talked about Davey O’Brien for twenty straight minutes, he leaned over to her.

“So I guess everybody knows now.”

“Guess they do.”

“You good with that?”

“Baby, I’ve been good with that.” She picked up his hand under the table and laced their fingers together and set them on her thigh. “Are you?”

“Shit, I would’ve paid the guy to take a few more.”

When they called his name, she was the first one on her feet.

Valentine’s Day fell on a Wednesday, so they had theirs on Saturday.

Nicole flew to Miami Friday after her last class, and Drew picked her up at the airport in the old Ford Escort MJ had borrowed for him. It smelled like a pine tree air freshener and it didn’t have air conditioning, and she couldn’t have cared less, because he was the one behind the wheel.

He’d planned the whole day himself.

First was the art museum on Miami Beach, a little white building with a garden out front. He paid for both tickets and she let him, because when she’d told him on the phone that they didn’t have to spend a lot, that takeout and his couch would make her perfectly happy, he’d told her not to worry about it. She knew money was tight until the draft. She also knew better than to bring it up twice. He walked through every room with her. He didn’t know anything about any of it, and he said so, but he asked her about everything. Why that one was so dark. Why that guy painted the same woman fifteen times. What she’d change if it were hers. She talked until she was hoarse, and he never once looked at his watch.

After that, he took her to dinner at a Cuban place he’d found where the plates were enormous and cost almost nothing. Then, when it got dark, he drove them to an old movie theater in Coral Gables with a marquee that still had light bulbs around it.

IMITATION OF LIFE, it said. ONE NIGHT ONLY.

Nicole stopped dead on the sidewalk.

“You said you liked the old ones,” Drew said. He had his hands in his pockets, and he looked a little nervous. “The older the better, right? I looked in the paper for weeks. This was the only one.”