Chapter 5 Verity
FIVE
Verity
When I told Monk I could eat, he probably expected that I would actually consume food, but my stomach is too fluttery.
I’m afraid he’ll notice my hands trembling if I try to pick up the club sandwich I barely remember ordering.
Maybe if I’d been prepared to see him tonight, my body wouldn’t be responding this way to being around him again.
I’d given up hope that we would just run into each other.
He told us he didn’t have many classes on campus and was doing a lot of studio work for credit, so I should have known seeing him around the yard was a long shot.
The one social media account I found for him was private.
I probably wouldn’t have mustered the nerve to reach out anyway.
Still, I’d been unable to stop myself from checking crowds for his tall figure.
Our one-night stand should have been straightforward. Instead it became this whisper in my ear, this haunting of touches and sensations. This dream I found myself revisiting night after night. An extraordinary thing that hovered over my mundane existence.
“You not hungry?” Monk asks, seated across from me, eating another chili fry.
Our booth near the back of the off-campus dive is small and set against the wall, tightening the space between us to nearly nonexistent. Even though the place is packed with other diners, it feels like there’s nowhere to look but at him.
“Maybe I ordered the wrong thing,” I say, eyeing his food. “You making them fries look good.”
“You’ve never had Top Dog’s famous chili fries?” Judging by his expression, I’ve missed a rite of passage. “I’ve been getting these since freshman year. This place has been here a long time, even back when my parents were on campus. Here, have one.”
He proffers the chili-drenched fry across the table. I lean forward and open my mouth to catch the chili before it drops, placing my hand under it so it won’t soil my clothes.
“Hmmm.” I groan at the taste of grease-drenched cheese, potato, and chili exploding on my tongue. “Holy shit, that’s good.”
“Told you.” He slides the tray of fries to the center of the table. “Help yourself. I won’t eat them all since I wanna live to see twenty-two.”
“You’re twenty-one?”
“Yeah, and you?”
“Same. Twenty-one.” I grimace and reach for another French fry. “I wish this were my last year of school, but hey, I’ll walk a year late. No big.”
I haven’t shared what happened at USC with anyone, not even Petra. I’m dogged enough by the past. I’m not inviting it into my present, not when I’m starting to find my feet again.
“And you’re a film major, you said?” Monk asks, taking a sip of his water.
“Actually, a double major. Film and African American studies.”
He pauses, a fry hovering at his mouth. “Damn, wow. Why?”
“I want to tell our stories.” The smile drops from my face and I toy with the silverware rolled into its paper blanket.
“I want to know Black history for myself because they’ll rewrite and erase it if we let them.
What we take for granted, they’ll take away.
Our legends get lost. I want to write my own fresh ideas, yes, but I also want to revive and find roots in the old ones—the ones who deserved a shout in this world, but barely got a whisper. ”
With Monk’s focus no longer split between me and the fries, his undivided attention, his eyes fixed on my mouth like that’s the only way he’ll hear them, is heady.
“That’s remarkable,” he says after a few seconds.
“I want to truly know who we’ve been and, through my writing, help shape how we imagine our future.
You were right when you said USC was best for film, but Finley, an HBCU, will be best for that, and I’m fine with that trade.
If we don’t know our history, thoroughly, they’ll distort it into some mystical past that erases our pain and our resilience and our achievement so they don’t have to deal with it.
So they don’t have to deal with us. I want to be a truth teller, for my stories to reflect what happened and what’s possible. ”
My pulse is racing, not just because I’m so viscerally attracted to Monk, but because the passion that drives me for storytelling has been stirred by our conversation.
The moments tick by in silence. He’s not eating and grinning or pretending there isn’t some wave passing between us.
Some recognition. It’s as solid and real as the table dividing us.
“Tell me about Petra,” he says, and the change of subject is so unexpected, so abrupt, I gape at him for several seconds. “You said the two of you broke up after…” He lifts his eyes to meet mine. “Did that night have anything to do with the breakup?”
“No.” I laugh at the expression on his face. “You almost look disappointed.”
“Maybe I am,” he admits, his lips quirking a little. “That was the hottest night of my life and the only place I got my dick wet was in your mouth.”
Mid-sip, I almost spew my water and glance around the crowded restaurant.
“Shit.” I wipe my lips with the back of my hand and let out a short laugh. “Should we ask management for a megaphone? Maybe someone around the block didn’t hear you putting our business in the street.”
“Sorry. I didn’t…” He chuckles, but has the decency to look slightly abashed. “What I should have said is that I’ve thought of that night a lot.”
Our gazes tangle across the table, and the air grows viscous with tension and attraction.
I’m not sure if it’s embarrassment setting my cheeks ablaze or if it’s the restraint required not to crawl across this table and straddle Monk’s lap.
This must be how lobsters feel being boiled alive.
We’ve been at a simmer since the moment we saw each other at the exhibit, burning so slowly that I’m just now noticing I’m doused in flame.
I want this so much. Want him again. Desire closes in on me so intensely, the walls must be sweating, narrowing the world down to the circumference of this booth.
“I’ve thought about that night, too,” I understate, struggling to keep my voice even. “It’s crossed my mind.”
“But that had nothing to do with the breakup?”
“I don’t know if that’s exactly true. We’re still friends, but she’s dating someone else now. Randi was at the party, but not sure if you met—”
“She had purple hair, if I’m thinking of the right girl.”
“How the hell do you remember that? Because, yeah, she had purple hair then. It’s already green.”
“I picked up on a vibe between her and Petra that was maybe more than…” He pauses, squints as if searching for the right word. “Platonic.”
“Bingo!” I don’t have to fake the light tone because I’m not bitter.
“Petra wanted something different, more of a polyamorous relationship with both me and Randi. And I just wasn’t feeling that.
I think we realized our relationship had run its course.
We still care for each other, though, and hang out sometimes. ”
“Cool.” He nods as if my response made things clear. “Besides being newly single, how’s the semester going?”
I relax some at the shift. I don’t mind discussing my relationship with Petra, but I’d rather talk about us, about tonight.
“It’s okay,” I sigh. “I have a huge project I’m not making much progress on. Writing an original screenplay.”
“Isn’t that kind of what you do?” His face settles into mild interest and amusement. “Write screenplays? Why is that hard?”
“So it’s never hard for you when you’re given an assignment for music?”
He hesitates and then shakes his head. “Music is the easiest thing I’ve ever done.
I’ve been composing music since middle school and playing my instruments at a really high level for almost as long.
I’m getting my degree because there are certain people who look for those things, but I think I could skip a lot of it and still be a world-class musician. ”
“Not cocky at all, huh?” I tease.
“I know what I was born to do,” he counters, not smiling, but not frowning, either. Just stating fact. “The rest is details. Do you feel that way about writing?”
He seems to be looking right through me, past the light conversation and the small talk to the truth of who I am. The force of it sends a tremor through my bones to my most secret core.
“I do,” I admit. “I’ve been telling stories all my life. I used to make them up and tell them to my imaginary friend.”
“You had an imaginary friend?” Humor lights his eyes and expression. “What was their name?”
“It was Carlotta.” I let out a little laugh. “My mom was worried there for a while.”
“Were you an only child?”
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
“Lucky guess. Not that it’s surefire or anything, but I would bet most kids with multiple siblings like me don’t make up more people. Not when the ones you already have hog the bathroom, steal your clothes, and make your life a living hell from middle school till you leave home.”
“Are you and your siblings close? You said a sister and a brother?”
A shade falls over his expression and his lips press together. “Not like we used to be.”
“What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“No, it’s fine. My father made a stupid mistake, cheated on my mom. My brother and sister chose to stay with him at his church, to forgive him. A lot of people forgave him.”
“But not you.” I put it out as a statement, because it’s obvious from the hard lines his face has fallen into that there is someone he hasn’t forgiven.
“He cheated on my mom,” Monk repeats, his tone neutral, but his eyes alive with indignation. “He was the pastor of this huge church where I grew up in Virginia, preaching purity and every shade of morality on Sundays, and fucking some young girl in our church as soon as he was out of the pulpit.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” I blink in mild shock and reach for his hand. I’m not sure why, but the deep betrayal I read in his demeanor makes it feel like someone died, and maybe his father is dead to him now.