Page 169 of Score
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 wasjustlike 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 saidour 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.”
