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At the far end of the dining room, a woman in a black beaded gown sang on a low stage in front of a mirrored wall, with a piano player and a guy on upright bass behind her. When she eased into Luther Vandross’s version of “Superstar,” Cedric looked up.
“We were good together, though, weren’t we?”
“We were.” Nicole still couldn’t explain what had been missing. “You loved me so much, and I loved you too. I did. But . . . I don’t know. I just—”
“Loved,” he repeated quietly, with a humorless chuckle.
They sat there in silence for a while, but all around them, people kept on talking and eating like it was any other Saturday night. Then Cedric reached across the table, palm up, and Nicole hesitated before she put her hand in his.
“It’s really over, isn’t it?” He looked from their hands to her face, and she could see how much this hurt him, and how much he was hoping she’d tell him he was wrong.
At first, she couldn’t make herself say it. She blinked hard, and a tear got away from her anyway. “Yeah,” she finally managed. “It is.”
With a slow nod, Cedric loosened his fingers and let her go.
On the drive home, Nicole sat with her hands folded in her lap, watching the streetlights slide across the dashboard, while Cedric kept both hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road. Neither of them had said a word since Berman’s, and somewhere between the restaurant and downtown, the silence had started to feel angry instead of sad.
“Let me ask you something,” he said as they waited at a red light.
Saturday-night traffic had the street packed, with brake lights all the way up the block.
“Is this about the quarterback?”
Nicole’s stomach dropped. “No. This isn’t about Drew.”
“Then tell me there’s nothing going on between you two.”
Looking out the windshield, she said, “I like him. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I like him.”
“You really believe he cares about you?”
“I think he does.”
“You think he could ever love you the way I do?”
“I don’t know.”
Love wasn’t what she was asking of Drew. She just wanted . . . Hell, she didn’t know what she wanted from him, and for now, that was okay.
“You don’t know,” he repeated. “But you know you don’t want me?”
The light turned green, and a horn blared behind them before Nicole had to come up with an answer she didn’t have.
“That white boy doesn’t care about you, Nicole.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Neither do you. You don’t know a damn thing about him.”
“I know enough.”
“You know what he told you.” Cedric’s hands tightened around the wheel. “All he wants is to sleep with you so he can say he did. You’re an experiment to him. A fetish.” He glanced at her. “Baby, don’t you see that? Please tell me you’re not that naive.”
Nicole went still. Drew had told her himself that he’d never been with a Black woman, and she’d laughed about it, even teased him that one taste had him sprung. Until now, she’d never let herself wonder whether that was part of the reason he wanted her.
“It’s not like that.” The words came out less certain than she wanted.
Traffic bunched up ahead, and they rolled to another stop.
