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radar at this event."
    Gabrielle cut her eyes to Babe's attention-getting art-deco leather pants. "Funny you should notice."
    Babe grinned. "Touché." She tilted her head to the right. "I guess that makes three of us."
    Gabrielle followed Babe's gaze to see a stunning Lara animatedly chatting up Sophia Mills, Dean Paul's mother. On further inspection, she noticed that Lara was tottering in her Armani heels. "How many drinks has she had?"
    "Not enough," Babe said wryly. "She dated him for two years."
    Since their college-drama meltdown, Gabrielle and Babe had been forced into a cautious civility by way of frequent encounters. Even if Gabrielle turned up at something random, like the opening for the revamped Jimmy Choo store on Madison Avenue, Babe was likely to be there, working the room for 212's night beat. There had been no choice but to get over the past and behave like sophisticated women. They often talked of meeting for drinks to properly catch up, but an actual planned date, as with so many of those anemic social promises, never materialized. It was the same scenario with Lara. Gabrielle saw her semi-regularly, but only as the hip-hop-star slot filler at one of the Regrets Only extravaganzas, where all of Lara's focus was concentrated on a smooth-running event. Could guests access the bar? Were VIPs caught in a logjam at the door?
    Listening to Babe's smart-ass commentary and seeing Lara drowning her distress in champagne, it all of a sudden struck Gabrielle how much she missed them. There was nothing like deep, emotional, and uproarious female companionship. And she knew. Because, since college, she had been living without it . . .
    Nobody knew what had happened the night Dean Paul broke up with her. Gabrielle preferred it that way. The incident was between her, God, and the bigoted lowlifes who had opened up her eyes to how evil the world could be.
    Leaving Brown University had been easy. The campus had come to signify so many endings. Her friendship with Lara and Babe. Her relationship with Dean Paul. Her innocence about race in America. So it was time to find a place where she could find some beginnings.
    Enter New York. Relocating there had been a no-brainer. Her tenure at WBRU, the campus radio station, all but secured her a job in the music business. The industry was chockablock full of Brown alumni, from artists to behind-the-scenes executives.
    Gabrielle signed on with MTV as an assistant to the senior vice president of music and talent. It meant long hours, a crappy little cubicle, and an insulting salary, but she soaked up everything available to her. Still, as early as the first day, she knew that working behind the curtain would not satisfy her. Gabrielle wanted to be center stage.
    She had been scouting potential new acts for Everything But the Deal, a pilot series in development about musicians who were talented, polished, and ready for the big time—but not yet signed to a major label. One night her search took her to Vibeology, an eclectic urban club known among the city's music insiders as the place to go to discover new black artists. Gabrielle had assumed that open mike night would mean acoustic sets from people who saw themselves as the next Pharrell Williams.
    But it had been something else entirely. No music. Only words. Fiery, passionate, provocative words. Poets had taken the mike and spoken their truth, wowing the crowd and inspiring Gabrielle. It was as if the world had opened up and shown her a pathway to emotional sanctuary. Deep down, she knew that this underground black poetry renaissance was her ticket. She had no interest in listening passively when she could be reciting actively. Her words. There was a reason why she had been filling notebooks and journals with her most intimate thoughts. This was it. Since the worst night of her life, it had been her private therapy. Now it could be her public training ground. She never worried about exposing herself emotionally, because that was the