Chapter 4 Monk
FOUR
Monk
November
“We need you here, man.”
“Yeah, I know.” I press the phone to my ear and glance up the street before crossing.
If I’m lucky, I can make it through this call without getting run over.
“I told you I’ll be there by ten. I got this thing on campus for my Af-Am art class.
I have to go see this sculpture exhibit, get credit, and I’m out. ”
“You taking art, nigga?” Mazey, the producer I’m playing for in tonight’s session, sounds amused.
“Shut up.” I chuckle and pull my coat collar up around my ears against the autumn chill. “It’s the last elective I need for graduation.”
“Well, thanks for stepping in at the last minute on this session. I been wanting to get you on a project for a minute.”
“’Preciate it.” I enter Finley’s fine arts building and follow signs for the exhibit hall. “Look, I’m here. I gotta go.”
“Don’t be late. This studio time burning through all my coins.”
“Ten o’clock. See you then.”
After we disconnect, I rub my hands together to generate some warmth. My mother’s voice in my head from when I was a kid makes me smile.
Out in the cold with no hat and no gloves.
The smile dies as more recent memories intrude. Mama staring at the photo album filled with past holidays. When we were still a family and my father hadn’t…
“Shit.” I curl my hands into fists and shove them into my pockets. All I seem to have for my father are curses these days. He ruined our lives and kept going, a bulldozer rolling over dandelions without a second thought. The fact that he seems happier than ever, while my mom…
I breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth to tamp down the fury threatening to choke me.
He won’t ruin my life with his selfishness.
In a few months, I’ll graduate with my bachelor’s in music and go straight to New York for my master’s at Juilliard.
No looking back to the small town outside of Richmond, Virginia, where I grew up.
The only thing left there for me is my mother, and I’ll get her out as soon as I can.
If she’ll let me. She still loves the community that sprouted up around the church she and my father spent two decades building.
My siblings… well, they’ve made their own choices and can stay there with them.
I enter the exhibit hall and spot my professor.
Nearly as tall as I am, Dr. Sonya Garrison is a dark-skinned woman who wears her hair slicked back in an elegant knot.
I’m sure she’s well into her fifties, but she’s still lissome and trim, with smooth, flawless skin.
Always impeccably dressed, tonight she wears a close-fitting ribbed turtleneck and wide-legged slacks—winter white, head to toe.
She looks like a queen and the newly renovated fine arts building is her domain.
Dr. Garrison personally oversaw the much-needed modernization, making this building Finley’s new crown jewel.
“Mr. Bellamy,” she says, her smile widening when she sees me. “Glad you decided to join us.”
“Didn’t leave me much choice, did you?” I tease.
This elective is a waste of my time, but Dr. Garrison is one of Finley’s finest. If I were an art major, I’m sure I’d appreciate what a qualified and excellent instructor she is, but I’m not, so this “arts outing,” as she called it, stands between me and the thousand bucks I’ll earn for tonight’s studio session.
“You’re young, gifted, and Black.” She chuckles, unfazed by my frankness. “You can never have too much culture.”
“If you say so.” I fake a scowl and peer over her shoulder to inspect the pad in her hand. “Just make sure you check me off your little list, Dr. G. I better get credit for coming to this shi—um… show… this art show on a Friday night.”
“It’s a limited-time exhibit by Chap Brody, one of the most famous Black sculptors in the world.” When my expression remains unimpressed, she drawls, “There’s food inside.”
“Now see, you shoulda led with that.” My grin is as playful as her scowl is harmless. “You burying the lead.”
“Boy, go look at some art. Music isn’t everything.”
I stop and frown at her, genuinely offended because music absolutely is every-fucking-thing. At least to me and she knows it.
“Music is not the only thing,” she amends, giving me a light tap upside the head like one of my aunties would do. “Get in there and don’t eat all the canapés.”
Chuckling, I kiss her cheek before she can stop me.
“Inappropriate, Mr. Bellamy,” she says, eyes narrowed, but brimming with laughter.
Offering Dr. Garrison a farewell salute, I make my way through the French doors leading to the exhibit.
The faculty and staff at Finley College are one of the main things that drew me here.
I had scholarship offers from all over, but my choice was about more than my education.
Not only did I respect Finley’s music department, but I needed the smaller setting and the community I knew existed here.
After all the shit that went down with my parents, I could have easily gotten lost. It was my mom who encouraged me to consider her alma mater because it was a place where I wouldn’t get lost, but might instead find myself.
I’m headed to New York, to Juilliard, when I graduate, but you can’t beat an HBCU.
I needed this place, these people to ground me, before I soar.
As promised, there is a loaded buffet and I sample a little of everything on offer. I greet a few classmates, most of them wearing the same rueful expression I probably am. Who voluntarily chooses to attend a sculpture exhibit on a Friday night?
And then I spot her across the room, standing in front of a sculpture cast in copper that has her full attention, like there’s no one else in the exhibit hall.
“Verity?”
Her name cannons from my mouth before I have time to debate or analyze if I want to see her.
Who the hell am I kidding? Of course I want to see her. I’ve wanted to see her since I left Petra’s apartment a few weeks ago.
She turns her head sharply, shock stamped on the face that is even prettier than I remembered.
“Monk? What are you doing here?”
“My professor made me do it,” I say, taking another step closer so I can breathe in her fresh scent with just a hint of something citrusy beneath.
“You have Dr. Garrison, too?”
“Yeah.” I frown because there’s no way I could have overlooked the woman whose memory has been torturing me sitting in a room of only twenty students. “When’s your class?”
“Eight o’clock, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.”
“Oh, hell no. That’s some freshman shit. What you doing up that early for a class?”
“Well, by the time I transferred in, all the lazy spots were gone.”
“I got your lazy.” I laugh. “It’s in bed with me when you drag your ass to class while it’s still dark outside, three mornings a week.”
We both seem to hear “in bed with me” at the same time because the smiles die on our faces.
I give up on trying to act natural, on trying not to stare.
Her textured curls are gathered on top. Tendrils float around her cheeks and wisps cling to the elegant line of her neck.
I think her sweater is cashmere. It’s black and stops just shy of her belly button.
Reminds me of the one she wore that night.
A small tantalizing strip of brown skin shows just above the waistband of her slim-fitting leather skirt, also black and paired with short black boots. And black square-framed glasses.
“I didn’t know you wore glasses,” I say, grappling for something to hold on to in this conversation because seeing her again, being this close to her, is going to my head.
“Only when I want to see.” She grins and pushes them up her nose with one finger. “Usually contacts.”
“Nothing to see here,” I say, looking around the exhibit hall. “To be honest, I’m dipping as soon as I can sneak past Dr. G.”
“Wow, and to think I had you mistaken for a man of culture. A real renaissance dude.”
“Just because I play a few instruments doesn’t mean I want to spend my Friday night in a room full of statues.”
“‘A room full of statues’ seems pretty reductive for some of the finest sculptures of this century,” she says dryly. “But okay.”
I fold my arms over my chest and lift one brow. “What’s so fascinating in here?”
Her gaze drifts to a piece against the wall with LED lights suspended overhead.
“That one.” She nods to it and approaches the sculpture that has caught and held her attention. It’s the copper piece, an abstract interpretation of fire. Each lick of flame has a life of its own, separate from the conflagration and yet somehow consumed by it.
I lean forward to read the small plaque beneath the sculpture.
“Flame.” I slide her a wry smile. “Clever title. How’d they come up with that?”
I expect a quick rejoinder, but her attention is riveted by the piece and her eyes never stray from it.
“Huh?” she asks after another few seconds, tearing her focus away from the sculpture. “What’d you say?”
“I was making a joke.” I wave my hand, dismissing my own bullshit. “A bad one. Never mind. You really like this piece, huh?”
“I don’t know if like is the right word.” She bites her bottom lip and turns her attention back to the sculpture. “But it elicits a strong response from me.”
I could tell her she elicits a strong response from me, but I’ll try not to be the asshole who breaks up a happy home.
“So how’s Petra?” I ask, ripping off the Band-Aid.
“Oh. She’s… she’s good.” Verity pushes her glasses up to the top of her head so they nest in the curls and rubs the hem of her cropped sweater between restless fingers.
“She’s fine. We aren’t… well, we’re not together anymore.
We broke up not too long after the night… well, after that night. Two weeks ago.”
I go completely still, my body absorbing the new, vital information before my mind has time to catch up.
“We’re still friends,” Verity rushes on. “Matter of fact, we probably hang out more now than when we were dating.”
When we were dating.
Were. As in no longer.
As in… she’s free. Maybe?
“Are you seeing anyone?” I demand, my tone tight because if I’ve missed my window and she’s already dating somebody else, I’ll be pissed the fuck off.
Her brows arch over the dark, watchful eyes that study me with nearly the same intensity she had given Flame.
“No,” she replies, her gaze locked with mine. “Single. You?”
I laugh. “I barely have time to floss, much less maintain a relationship.”
“I see.” She nods, smoothing the already smooth line of her legs in the leather pencil skirt.
Hell. That’s not what you say to a girl you want to ask out.
“What I meant was…” I falter and shake my head. “Fuck it. You wanna get something to eat?”
I hold my breath. In the time since that night, I’ve thought of her often. I’m not on campus much this semester, so the chances of running into her were slim. Seeing her tonight feels like fate. It feels like a gift—one I’m grabbing with both hands.
Her face lights with a smile that is as open as she was to me that night. So open, so beautiful and unrestrained even when she belonged to someone else. Her gaze drifts back to the sculpture, copper glazed in flame, one more time before replying.
“I could eat.”
“Cool, cool.” I keep my tone casual, at odds with the bass drum thumping in my chest. “I gotta be at the studio in two hours, so we’ll have to be quick.”
“What about Top Dog? It’s not far and they’re always fast.”
“Great. Now we just gotta sneak past Dr. G to get outta here.”
We’re on our way out, but her steps slow at the Flame sculpture again. I stand beside her, contemplating it. Even with my limited knowledge, I can appreciate that it’s a really cool piece, but Verity watches it like it’s alive.
“Do you know the artist?” I ask, still trying to determine what’s so riveting about it.
“Chap Brody? Not personally, no. It just reminds me of something.” She shakes her head like she’s coming out of a daze. “We better go if you don’t have much time.”