“Hey Whitley. Deuce,” I said, offering a small smile. “You’ve both grown so much. I barely recognized you.”
Deuce grinned, that youthful energy cutting right through the heaviness of the moment. “I’m almost taller than Nel now. I think I can take him.”
Nel barked out a laugh, his stiff posture finally easing. “In your dreams kid. Sit down before I have to show you who the real athlete in this family is.”
The tension didn’t vanish but it shifted into something more breathable. As they settled into the nearby seats I felt Dex’s gaze from across the table. Our eyes met for just a second and the look on his face told me he knew exactly what this moment was costing me.
The waiters arrived with the first course and the room filled back up with noise and movement, but sitting there with my mother a few feet away and Dex’s eyes still finding mine across the candlelight, I felt like I was balanced on the edge of a cliff and I knew if I fell life as I knew it would be over.
Chapter sixteen
Depth
I couldn’t even enjoy the ceviche in front of me. The fresh lime and snapper might as well have been cardboard because I was so locked in on Nique across the table that I didn’t have an appetite. I wanted to be the one beside her as she faced her mother, but from the outside most people would think she was handling it just fine.
That was the problem. I wasn’t most people.
I read her body language like a map I’d been studying for years. Her shoulders were stiff, her smile was forced, and she kept nervously tucking her curls behind her ear, a sign she was overstimulated. She’d barely touched her plate, which was ared flag because ceviche was one of her favorites, and she was already hitting the bottom of her second piña colada in under thirty minutes.
I had to pull her out.
Stella was firing questions back to back, trying to compress a decade of silence into one dinner service. Nel was doing his best to run interference but every few minutes Stella would lean in looking to Nique for a response Nique clearly didn’t want to give.
“Yo, Nique,” I called across the table.
Beside me Amina tensed up. I didn’t care.
Nique looked over, a slight frown on her lips.I knew she was still fuming about Amina and my mother staking their claims on either side of me. Amina was smart about it too. She knew as long as she stayed glued to my mother I wouldn’t push her away in public. She was using that like a calculated shield and it was working, for now
“This ceviche might actually be better than that little Cuban spot we hit in Miami,” I said, catching Nique’s eye and holding it. “What you think?”
She hesitated, then picked up a plantain chip and loaded it with the citrus cured fish. She took a bite and for a split second the mask slipped, her face lighting up with something genuine.
“Dang, that is good,” she admitted, a real smile finally breaking through.
“Eww,” Amina chimed in, wrinkling her nose. “I don’t see how y’all eat raw seafood.”
Her remark got swallowed up by Stella, whose eyes had drifted down the table and landed on me for the first time all night.
“Dexter? Is that you?” Her face transformed instantly.
“Yes ma’am. How are you Ms. Simmons?”
“It’s Mrs. Becker now, but I’m doing well Dex. So good to see you.” She looked from me to Nique with something warmand proud in her expression. “You know I still keep y’all’s prom picture in my wallet.”
She dug into her Louis Vuitton bag and held up a small worn photograph a moment later.
I remembered that night perfectly. I’d been a nerdy Black kid at a predominantly white private school where none of the girls were checking for me. I’d told Nique everything and without a second thought she stepped up. She’d already gone to her own prom at Murphy with Prez but she called him up and told him she was going to be my date for the UMS-Wright prom too.
Prez hadn’t even tripped about it. Back then he didn’t see my nerdy ass as a threat. Nique moved through that ballroom like she’d been born to do it. She was the kind of woman who could fit in at a hood cookout or a black tie event and not miss a beat either way. She made that night something I’d never forget.
“Can I see that?” I asked.
Stella passed it down the line. It went from Nique to Kyson to Paris to Amina before landing in my hand. I looked at the seventeen year old girl in the photo and then at the woman sitting across from me. Back then she hadn’t filled out yet and her hair was relaxed. Now with her natural curls and those curves she was even more dangerous. She was aging like fine wine and she didn’t even seem to know it.
“Let me see Dex,” my mom said, reaching for it. Her face lit up the moment she looked down. “Oh, I have this photo on my fireplace!”
“You’re Dex’s mother?” Stella asked, leaning forward.