Page 32 of The Sweetest Return

“You do not have to go Thursday.”

My stomach tightened before my mind could pretend not to understand.

“Camille would kill me.”

“She’d recover.”

“Eventually. I am not interested in finding out how long that takes.”

Daddy looked at me. “Is Camille the reason you’ve thought about staying home?”

The condo quieted.

Mama leaned against the island.

Bari managed to respect the silence for almost four seconds.

“Dre gonna be there.”

My body reacted before I did.

Mama turned toward my brother. “Bari.”

“What? That ain’t gossip. He goes to Crown every year.”

“I know.”

My voice sounded normal.

That annoyed me.

I had always been capable of sounding perfectly fine while my insides did something entirely different.

Bari caught it too.

“There go that voice.”

“What voice?”

“The one you use when you acting like you not bothered. Usually means you bothered as hell.”

“I am not bothered as hell.”

He stared at me.

“Okay,” he said.

That was worse than a joke.

Bari did not let me off easy unless he saw something that made him choose me over the laugh.

The night Dre and I ended, Camille had held me until I could breathe without crying long enough to leave the room. Afterward, I crossed campus looking for my brother. Bari was outside his quad with two of his line brothers, wearing a black T-shirt with old-gold detailing, jeans, and sneakers, walking a couple girls toward their cars. I didn’t call his name. I barely made it close enough before he spotted me.

He knew immediately.

He said something quick to his boys, came straight to me, and took me upstairs.

I stayed at his place the rest of the night. We played video games because I didn’t want to talk. He found black cherry ice cream because it was my favorite, handed me the carton, and ate something else because I refused to share. When I started crying again somewhere in the middle of a game, Bari put the controller down and pulled me into him.