“If I’d seen you at McDonald’s I would have remembered.” He paused. “I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but you’re beautiful.”

I lowered my eyes, never feeling quite comfortable with being complimented for the way I looked. I had nothing to do with that — I carried the DNA of my parents.

Again he said, “I’m sorry. Did I say something wrong?”

“Oh, no. It’s fine. So what are you studying at Dillard?”

“Mass Communications.”

“Oh, you want to be a journalist?”

He paused for a moment before he said, “I want to be a pastor.”

It was shocking to hear from a man who’d traveled with turnt up friends to hang out in a hotel lobby in Charlotte, but I knew how to play poker. I kept my smile and nodded.

But then as we kept talking about Dillard and Xavier, about my hometown of DC and his of Houston, about how I hoped to pledge the pink and green while he wanted to make the Alpha line, I realized that we had so much in common.

“Hey, what’s up?”

Jeremy and I glanced up at the same time, taking a look at Dru, who held a plastic cup half-filled with some red liquid — like she was in a club.

“And who is this?” she said with nothing but flirtation in her tone.

Jeremy stood and introduced himself.

“Well, hello Jeremy,” Dru sang. “Are you over here doing naughty things to my friend?”

“Dru.” I sighed. “Please. We’re just talking. Jeremy is going to be a pastor.”

“Oh,” she said, her tone and stature changing. “Well...uh...God bless you.” She spun away from us, then sashayed toward another corner.

Jeremy and I watched Dru, then, he said, “I just wanna know, you got something against pastors?”

“No.” I shook my head. “Absolutely not. My father was a pastor.”

“Oh,” he said with a bit of joy in his voice. "Okay. I just didn’t know what you meant when you said that to your friend."

"I didn’t mean anything by it. She was being rude and I didn’t want you to think you even had to answer her question."

“So, you said your father was a pastor.”

"Yes."

Then as other college students mingled, drank, and partied around us, I told him how my father had been the Senior Pastor of Greater Faith, a large church in DC for almost fifteen years before he passed away a few days after my sixteenth birthday.

And he told me how his father had been a deacon at his hometown church. But his dad had passed away as well.

Another thing that, unfortunately, we had in common.

He asked, “Have you found a church home in New Orleans?”

“I’m embarrassed to say that I haven’t. Not that I’ve really looked.”

“Well, I attend a wonderful place. Pilgrim’s Rest. I was just appointed the youth pastor there.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“Listen, we probably won’t be back in time for Sunday service, but they have a great midweek service. I can pick you up and we could ride over together....”