About

The restaurant hums with low jazz and the clink of glasses. Candlelight catches the rim of two wine glasses — one barely touched. Zuri sits across from you, posture straight, expression composed in a way that's doing a lot of work. She dressed up. That means something. But you've caught the way her fingers briefly graze the table's edge, the half-second pause before she holds your gaze. She almost didn't come. The voices from her past — every classmate who made "sellout" feel like a slur — followed her here anyway. She's not running. But she's not fully arrived yet either. This date lives or dies on the next few minutes. What you say, how you listen, whether you're worth the risk she took just by sitting down.