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“Hey, I was hoping I’d get a moment to talk to you alone,” he said in that Mississippi-tinged baritone of his. My eyes were affixed to his broad chest. He wore a black t-shirt with the wordsWake Up!printed on it in bold white lettering. His cologne invaded my nose much like his presence had invaded my thoughts since I’d arrived. If he was waiting for me to speak, we’d be standing there until the end of time as every word in my vocabulary escaped me.
“I...I wanted to say I’m sorry about how I handled things between us.”
My eyes crawled up past his neck to his face, his unfairly handsome face, stubble, eyepatch, and all. “How you handled things…which time?”
“Everytime. I was just...I’m sorry.”
I shrugged. “No worries. I mishandled things between us, too, and honestly, I don’t even think about that stuff. It was a long time ago. We’re good.”
He stared down at me, his gaze so intense that I felt an overwhelming desire to run from him. Sharing this now thin air with him was suffocating me. “Okay. Good. It’s good to see you, Brooklyn.”
“It’s good to see you, too.” Then I stepped around him and fixed my face as I rejoined the party.
CHAPTER10
BROOKLYN
THIRTEEN YEARS EARLIER—ROMEY UNIVERSITY-HOMECOMING WEEK…
“I’m so tired of eating burgers,” Sharla whined, slumping against the back of her seat.
Across from her and diagonal to where I sat in the booth, Nadia lifted her head from where it’d been buried in a textbook. She was taking twenty-one hours of coursework that semester as a part of her newall work and no playpersona that was brought on by the loss of her boyfriend during our sophomore year, so it was rare to see her at all, let alone share a meal with her. “I’d invite you to my mom’s, but you know she’s vegan,” she offered.
“But the food is always so good,” I said.
“And that’s the damn truth,” Nadia countered.
Better than my mom, but she ain’t hard to beat,I thought.
“I don’t understand why you live on campus, Nadia. Your mom is so cool,” Sharla said.
“She is, but I’m tryna be independent,” Nadia explained. “Plus, housing is free with my scholarship and I have so much going on here on campus, and you know my course load is insane this semester. I’d be here all the time anyway.”
“True. You do stay busy, but so do I,” Sharla said.
“Yep, my twooverachieving academically inclined friends. Meanwhile, I got virtually nothing going on.” I shrugged and popped a potato chip in my mouth.
“You’re here on a band scholarship and they are making you earn every penny!” Nadia reminded me. She damn sure wasn’t lying. They worked me like there was no tomorrow, but at least I was in good shape for attracting a rich husband.
A phone rang, and it was quickly discovered that it was Sharla’s. I watched as she checked the screen of her Razr and quickly opened the phone to answer it. “Vann?!” She shrieked.
Silence, and then she started looking around the cafeteria, lifting from her seat a little. “You’re here?” she trilled. “I don’t see you...where?”
Another glance around the huge space half filled with brown faces and she was out of her seat, trotting toward the salad bar. She leaped into a guy’s arms, giggling the whole time. My eyes left the scene and traveled across the table to Nadia. “Vann?” I inquired. “Isn’t that her brother’s name?”
“Yeah,” Nadia affirmed. “Wonder what he’s doing here?”
I shrugged in response, but it seemed we were about to find out as Sharla made her way back to our booth with the guy who was presumably her brother in tow. Once they’d made it to the table, she wrapped an arm around him, leaning into him as she said, “Nadia, Brooklyn, this is my big brother, Vann London. Vann, these are my friends!”
We all exchanged greetings, and I tried hard not to stare at this man. And I mean he was a fully grown man complete with a beard and mustache. He was lighter skinned than Sharla, who wasn’t exactly dark skinned herself. His hooded, crescent-shaped eyes were a startling shade of gray, so light they almost appeared silver. He was tall, at least six-two, and wide and fine as hell with jet black hair that hung in waves to his shoulders. So yeah, the whole trying not to stare thing didn’t work and I found myself forcing my eyes to focus on the cold fries in the tray before me.
I heard a chair scrape across the floor and looked up to see that Vann was sitting at the end of our table, smiling rather than making Nadia move her backpack and sliding in the booth beside her. My god, his smile was beautiful. Full lips, white teeth, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he gave his attention to his sister.
“What are you doing here? Where’ve you been staying? What’ve you been doing? Did you go see Mama?” Sharla interrogated him.
Chuckling, he replied, “Flew in from Cancun. Been working at a bar, and you know I ain’t stepped foot in Guilty, Mississippi. And, I’m here to see you, of course.”
“You’re here for homecoming like the rest of the old folks, aren’t you?” Sharla challenged. Turning to address the rest of the table, including me, she continued, “Remember I told y’all Vann is old. Like geriatric.”
