Page 94 of Before I Let Go

So room service for dinner?” I ask Yasmen, poking my head into the bedroom.

In the last few hours since our meeting, we’ve both been chilling in our own corners. She’s lying on her side, one pillow beneath her head and one between her knees. The braids splay out around her, rippling over her shoulders and down her back. She’s changed clothes since our lunch meeting and scrubbed her face free of makeup. In her sweatpants and Aggie pride T-shirt, socked feet tucked under her, she could be that college girl I fell for practically on sight.

“Yes, please.” She rolls onto her back, staring up at the ceiling and groaning. “I don’t care if you bring the food to me in a trough, as long as I don’t have to leave this room.”

I walk in and sit on the edge of the bed, handing her the room service menu. “The steak looks good.”

“Already had steak. I’m trying not to eat red meat more than once a week. I may have to make an exception because you know I’m trash for a good mushroom sauce.”

“Still medium-rare?”

“Yup.”

“All right. Well, lemme get this order in.”

While we wait for the food to arrive, I change clothes, too, putting on sweatpants and one of my Morehouse hoodies. When I leave the bathroom and reenter the bedroom, Yasmen sits propped up against the pillows.

“I’d love for the kids to have the kind of college experience we did,” she says wistfully.

“An HBCU?”

“I’d settle for anything with Day at this point. She keeps saying she doesn’t need college at all. Kassim will probably end up at MIT or Harvard or somewhere.”

“You may be the only mom I know who sounds disappointed that her son will most likely attend an Ivy League school.”

She rolls her eyes, allowing a small smile. “You know what I mean.”

Her phone rings on the bed beside her.

“Speaking of our amazing children,” she drawls, picking up the phone. “It’s them. FaceTime.”

I sit down beside her, leaning back on the pillows and smiling at the screen when their faces pop up.

“Mom!” Kassim says. “Dad, hey!”

“Hey, son,” I say. “What you been up to today?”

“Maddenwith Jamal.” His face lights up. “But guess what Grandma did?”

“There’s no telling.” Yasmen laughs. “Made you clean out your closet? Scrubbed your shower with a toothbrush?”

“Yeah, like she always does,” he says, practically bouncing in his eagerness to spill it. “But she cooked chitterlings again.”

Yasmen wrinkles her nose. “She smelled up my whole house?”

“No!” Kassim’s smile grows impossibly wider. “She cleaned them with bleach before she cooked them and you can’t smell ’em at all.”

I share a quick panicked look with Yasmen. “Don’t eat that.”

“I tasted a little.” Kassim grimaces. “It wasn’t that bad.”

Deja pokes her head into the shot. “But then I reminded him she cleans them so much because chitterlings are literally full of sh—”

“Deja Marie,” I warn. I know she curses, but it would be great if my ten-year-old didn’t follow suit quite yet.

“Well, they are.” She grins, flitting a glance from me to her mother. “Where are you guys?”

“In Charlotte,” Yasmen answers. “You know that. We’ll be home tomorrow.”

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