Page 4
“Meaning hot,” he said, like the answer should’ve been obvious. “What did you think I meant?”
“Black.”
“That too,” he said with a shrug. “Wouldn’t be a problem for me. We don’t discriminate.”
There was a lot she could’ve said to that. She didn’t. He might’ve meant well, but he couldn’t speak for his whole fraternity.
When they reached her car, she didn’t rush to unlock it. “This is me,” she said, leaning against the door.
“Nice ride,” he said. He looked at her champagne-colored BMW convertible for maybe half a second before he was looking at her again.
“Thanks.” She shook her keys in her hand. “Guess I’ll see you around.”
“You should give me your number.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” She knew better than to give a guy like Drew her number.
“Why not?”
“I’m sort of seeing someone.”
“Sort of?”
“My ex. We’re sort of in the process of getting back together.”
“Sounds . . . promising,” he said dryly.
“Yeah, well . . .”
“I’ll see you Saturday night at the party, Nicole.” He started walking backward without looking away. “Then we’ll talk more about you giving me your number.”
She bit back a smile. “I never said I was coming.”
“But you never said you weren’t.”
“I guess you’ll have to wait and see, won’t you?”
“You’re worth the wait. So I guess I will.” He called out the address as he went.
She got into her car, watched him head back inside the mall, and tried her damnedest not to sit there grinning like a fool.
Chapter Two
On the way home from the mall, Nicole swung through her favorite burger spot and picked up dinner for her and Bailey.
Home was a three-bedroom Craftsman they rented in a quiet neighborhood not far from campus. It had been redone top to bottom, with a deep front porch and those thick tapered columns, and the original hardwood floors had been sanded and refinished until they shined. Out back there was a built-in deck and enough grass to make her real glad neither of them had to mow it.
The upstairs third bedroom was Nicole’s studio. She’d covered the floors with canvas drop cloths, set her easel near the windows, and filled a long worktable with tubes of oil paint, jars of brushes, palette knives, rags, and everything else she used to have to lug back and forth to the student art lab.
Painting had been part of her life for as long as she could remember, but nobody had ever treated it like more than a hobby she happened to be good at—well, except maybe her dad. The rest of her family thought it was nice, the kind of thing you bragged about to company and maybe hung on a wall—not something a sensible person built her life around.
Drayton had put her and Bailey together in the dorms their freshman year, and somewhere along the way, Bailey had become her best friend. Apparently, a Black girl and a white girl being best friends was still interesting enough to make people look twice.
By summer, both of them were more than ready to trade campus housing for a place of their own.
The house was beautiful, but it wasn’t cheap. Bailey had come all the way from San Francisco to study prenursing on a full academic scholarship, but the scholarship covered tuition, not rent. Her mom had raised her by herself on a schoolteacher’s salary, so Bailey knew exactly how far a dollar could stretch, and half the rent on a place like this wasn’t happening.
Bailey had wanted to argue when Nicole offered to pay seventy percent, but the numbers didn’t lie. Even thirty percent was going to leave Bailey pinching pennies. The way Nicole figured it, the split was fair. She had the bigger bedroom with the better view and her own bathroom, plus the studio. And if it also let her help Bailey without it feeling like help, well, nobody had to say that part out loud.
