Epilogue 1 Monk #2
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?”
My whole body stills, the only sounds the distant laughter of my family playing games, the summer song of cicadas and our own shallow breaths.
I carefully chew the rest of my brownie and swallow before speaking.
“What if?” I ask simply, leaving the ball in her court, even though my heart starts full-on galloping in my chest. It’s not something I would ever have pressured her for.
When I say she’s enough for me, I mean it, but the thought of a child we make together—a little girl or boy who loves music or art or books or whatever, but is this braided strand of Verity and me—I can’t suppress the thrill the possibility ignites.
“I was looking at all the kids today,” she says softly. “Actually, it seems like everywhere I go lately, I’ve been looking at kids, and wondering…”
“Wondering?” I prompt, holding my breath.
“What if we have a baby and they’re like me?” she asks, her voice wavering. “Like my dad?”
I breathe in deep and wish I could take that fear from her.
“I’d love it if he or she was just like you.” I press a kiss into the crown of her head, the soft curls tickling my lips.
“You know what I mean, Monk.” She sits up and turns, tears in her eyes, but also a desire I’m not sure she has ever fully acknowledged to herself. Definitely not to me. “What if our kid has bipolar?”
“You said all you need to say, when you said our kid. We’d love them. Accept them. Help them. Who better to guide a child through that than you, who’s navigated the condition so beautifully.”
“‘Beautifully,’” she snorts.
“Beautifully,” I insist. I nudge her to stand and then sit back down on my lap so I can tuck her head into the curve of my neck and shoulder. “If our baby was born with a disability, a birth defect, you’d love them unconditionally and do everything you could to support them.”
“Of course.” She makes an impatient sound like that’s self-evident. “It’s not about loving them. It’s hard, Monk. Sometimes it’s so hard to just be in this world and it can be such a volatile existence. Do I do that to someone else knowing the risks?”
“If your parents hadn’t had you, if you didn’t exist, my life would be duller, less full, a shadow of what it is with you in it.”
“If I didn’t exist, you’d find someone else.”
“The fact that I don’t even want to consider life without you tells me God didn’t make a mistake.”
“Oh, so you feeling religious,” she teases, glancing up to catch my eye, “being in your mama’s house?”
“I always interrogate my beliefs,” I answer seriously. “I think some of us spend our whole time on earth figuring that shit out, but I do believe there is a God and I believe He sent us to each other. If you are the only good thing He ever did in my life, it’s enough for me to believe.”
Tears gather at the corners of her eyes and then fall, a cascade of emotion coming off her in waves.
“But be sure, Vee.” I swipe my thumb over the tears.
“Please don’t do this because you think I need it.
Would I love it? Yeah. Like I would love to grab that Tony Award and complete my EGOT, but would my life as an artist, as a musician, be any less meaningful if it never happens?
No. I’m doing what I was put on Earth to do, and I’m with the person I was put here to love. ”
“I know that. I believe that, but I think…” She bites into the pillowy softness of her bottom lip. “I’d have to talk to my doctors.”
“Of course,” I say, not allowing the hope to take over my face.
“And I’d want to talk to my therapist, and we’d have to monitor my hormones and be super-vigilant about my moods.”
“For sure.” I nod and lift my brows, like we’re not having a conversation I never thought was even a possibility. “Super-vigilant.”
“But I think I’d like to try,” she says, searching my eyes. “Would you want that?”
I tuck her head back into the crook of my neck so she won’t see the tears I can’t seem to hold back. If she changes her mind, I don’t want her to think I’d be crushed or to regret bringing this up.
“Yeah, Vee. I’d want that with you.”
She tips her head back and watches me for a moment, dragging her knuckle through the tears cresting at the corners of my eyes. She smiles and blinks away tears of her own.
“So wanna try?”
“If that’s what you want,” I manage, struggling to suppress the geyser of emotion trying to force its way to the surface.
“You’re what I want,” she whispers, leaning up to kiss me.
“As long as it’s with you,” I agree, kissing her and tasting our mingled tears on her lips. “Everything with you.”