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)
I tangle my fingers in the curls at her nape and kiss her as deeply as I dare on the sidewalk, given her aversion to PDA.
“Then I think,” I say between kisses, “we should get you fed.”
In the middle of the night, I wake to an empty bed and run my arm in the space where Verity should be. Groggily, I reach for my phone on the nightstand.
“Three o’clock?” I groan, put the phone down, and throw the covers back. My clothes are on the floor where I dropped them. We shed those as soon as we hit my room and were practically making love before we reached the bed. Four months and so far not once have I been bored or tired, or able to get enough of Verity. Not sure I ever will.
“Yo, Vee?” I call, grabbing a pair of sweatpants from the floor, not bothering with briefs. “You out there, babe?”
She stays at my place more than she does her dorm and typically doesn’t leave until she has class in the morning. The rustle of papers from the front room offers some reassurance.
“Baby, what the hell you doing?” I ask, rubbing my eyes and leaning against the bedroom doorjamb.
Verity glances up from her spot on my living room floor, surrounded by sheets of paper.
“Something finally clicked with this script for my project.” She sits back on her heels, her eyes darting across the pages laid out like some kind of disassembled treasure map. “I think I figured out how to approach it. I was starting in the wrong place of the story. That’s why I was having a hard time.”
“Mmmm.” I walk forward and glance down at the papers fanning out around her, a mix of handwritten snippets of scenes and dialogue. A grocery store receipt is wedged between the pages of Nikki Giovanni’s The Women and the Men.
I pick up the book and flip to the page Verity marked, Giovanni’s “Kidnap Poem.” “You incorporating this into your screenplay?”
“Maybe.” Verity shifts some of the pages on the floor, and I catch sight of a few cards with illustrations.
“I didn’t know you could draw,” I say, grabbing one of the cards. “You’re pretty good.”
“I’m aight in a pinch.” She takes the card back with a smile and places it into a neat stack. “My father was the artist in our family.”
She so rarely speaks of her parents, I want to probe, but every time I’ve tried, she shut down or changed the subject.
“You have any of his art?” I risk asking.
“Not much. He sketched some stuff in a notebook that was at my aunt’s house. That was one of the few things we didn’t lose in the fire.”
“Wow.” I sit on the floor cross-legged beside her. “That’s intense. I can’t imagine losing everything. I’m so sorry, babe.”
She nods, eyes sober, and grabs my hands. “If your place caught fire and you could only save one thing, what would it be?”
I stare at her blankly for a few seconds, unsure of how to respond.
“It’s kind of like Sidney’s question in Brown Sugar,” she goes on.
“Not that movie again,” I groan. “We’ve watched it like a dozen times.”
“You love it as much as I do.”
“No one loves that movie as much as you do.”
“Anyway, you know how Sid always asks everyone she interviews when did you fall in love with hip-hop?” She shrugs. “What would you save in a fire is kind of my question.”
Considering everything she lost in a fire, this isn’t theoretical to her and I should take it seriously.
“Shit.” I blow out a long breath “That’s tough.”
“I’ll make it easier. Top five. You can save five things.”
“Huh.” I lean back and press the heels of my hands to the floor behind me. “My grandfather’s old Fender. He left it to me when he died, and it’s practically a member of our family.”
“Okay.” She smiles and tilts her head, an indulgent look in her eyes. “What else?”
“My Songs in the Key of Life on wax. That album proved Stevie descended from Zeus or something.”
“I’m aware what Stevie Wonder means to you,” she says wryly. “You did change my ringtone to ‘My Cherie Amour.’”
I lean forward and kiss her nose. “I thought it was fitting.”
“Whatever.” She presses a finger into my forehead to push me back. “That’s two. Three more, and will everything be music?”
“Nah.” I rack my brain for a nonmusic item I’d save in a fire. “There’s this picture. My mom made us take one of those dumb family photos for Christmas postcards or something.”
I glance down at my hands and swallow. “It was a few weeks before the shit hit the fan and all the stuff my dad was doing came out. It’s the last time I remember us feeling like a family, so… I guess I’d save that.”