Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 145746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
If this love is our song, it’s the deep cut of human emotions. Not that thing everyone thinks they know, assumes about what it is to be committed, but the lovingly worn groove of how it feels to stay. To stick when it would be so easy to slip. I have to believe it’s rare because if everyone had this, the world would be better. We would care more. We would lend more grace. So I’m convinced this—what we have—happens once in a lifetime… if you’re lucky.
Later after we’ve eaten ourselves into food comas, and the kids break out Taboo and video games, I look around, ready to taunt my girl into playing a hand of cards. I walk from room to room, but don’t spot her anywhere.
“You seen Verity?” I ask Shrieva, who is in the den with a sleeping Kelsey on her lap.
“She was in the kitchen helping Mama clean.” Shrieva gives me a shrewd look. “You better keep that one.”
Brows lifted, I lean my shoulder against the doorjamb. “No make an honest woman out of her or chastising us for shacking up?”
“We all find our way.” Shrieva pats Kelsey’s little back and twists her lips ruefully. “I always knew you wouldn’t be settling down at Hope to direct the choir or nothing like that. It was clear you had a different path. A great one, but different. I think it took all of us some time to understand, but we’re proud of you. And, yes, you do whatever you gotta do to keep Verity.”
“I used to think she was the worst thing that ever happened to me,” I say, the memory of years without her making my chest ache. “But she’s the best.”
“And considering you just won an Oscar for Dessi Blue,” Shrieva chuckles, “and are one statue away from an EGOT, that’s saying something.”
Our film racked up lots of nominations during awards season. Though we didn’t win the Oscar for Best Picture, the accolades were overwhelming, and the name Dessi Blue was on everyone’s lips.
As it always should have been. As she deserved.
People make a big deal of the EGOT, which, for the record, I hope to ultimately achieve, but being with Verity these last two years has made me realize how much more she means to me than all the acclaim.
“I’mma go find my girl,” I tell Shrieva, stepping farther into the room to kiss her cheek and Kelsey’s sweat-damp hair. “Love you.”
“Love you, big brother.”
In the kitchen, my parents sit at the table playing Connect Four, like they did when we were growing up. Their easy laughter and camaraderie after so many years of awkward animosity is one of the miracles my father used to preach was still possible.
“Hey, baby,” Mama says, glancing up from the grid of colored disks. “Looking for Verity?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say, eyeing the brownies Shrieva baked.
“Out on the porch,” Daddy says. “Glad you didn’t get in your own way and mess that up.”
I chuckle and plate two of the brownies. “Followed the signs, I guess.”
He winks and turns his attention back to Mama and the game. “Your move.”
I slip onto the back porch and find Verity seated in the swing, pushing it back and forth with one leg, the other folded under her.
“Hey.” I sit beside her and lift the brownies over my head. “You wanna…”
I don’t have to complete the thought. Verity shifts so that she’s lying against me, her head pressed to my chest. I reach around and settle the plate of brownies on her stomach.
“Feels good out here,” she muses, eyes closing so her lashes splay across her cheeks.
“Cooler inside.” I break off a piece of the brownie and nudge her lips open. She takes it, but captures the tip of my finger between her teeth, biting and then sucking. When her eyes flick up to meet mine, they’re alive with laughter and lust and love.
I bend until my lips are at her ear. “Don’t be starting nothing you can’t finish out here on my mama’s porch.”
Her laugh rolls out deep and husky, vibrating through me. We don’t speak for a few minutes, and the silence is fine, filled with the music of a night in the country. Crickets complaining and cicadas singing in the distance. We know each other so well—nearly half our lives soon—that there is an ease between us, allowing us to retreat into our own thoughts, but still be with one another.
“I’ve been thinking,” she says after a few more minutes.
“Sounds dangerous,” I reply, like I always do when she is about to present some idea of hers.
“It is.” Her pretty mouth sets into a flat line. “Very dangerous, for me at least.”
“What’s up?” I ask, rubbing the smooth skin of her arm.
“What if…” She stops, closes her eyes. “What if I wanted to have a baby?”