Page 31 of Score
We haven’t been together that long, just three weeks, but it already feels so right with her. She skipped class the day before we left for Thanksgiving and we stayed in bed all day, reading, eating, and not caring about the crumbs in my sheets. Making love.
It’s only been two days, but I miss her so bad it’s like a dull knife lodged under my ribs.
“Hmmm.” Charlie narrows his eyes on the photo and digs into his corn pudding. “I hope y’all ain’t fornicating.”
“Every chance we get,” I say without missing a beat, holding his outraged stare defiantly.
“Monk,” Mama admonishes half-heartedly, fighting a grin. “Now, you know better.”
Mama’s not as uptight as she was when she was Hope’s first lady. She found another church, attends faithfully, and sits in a middle pew, blending in with everybody else. She sings in the choir first and third Sundays. The tension that used to exist between us because we didn’t see things the same way isn’t there anymore. She seems content to let me figure out what I believe for myself. The rest of my family, however…
“Don’t even try to abstain,” Charlie mutters.
“Ask your daddy about abstaining.” I toss a napkin over my plate and send Mama an apologetic glance. “Sorry for cussing at the table, but this self-righteous asshole—”
“Both of you.” Shrieva bounces a pleading look between Charlie and me. “Just stop!”
“He started it!” Charlie points a long, accusatory finger at me, but is interrupted by the cell phone ringing in his pocket. He pulls it out and frowns at the screen before answering. “Daddy, everything okay? You need me?”
His frown deepens, eyes slitted with irritation aimed at me. He extends the phone.
“Daddy wants to speak to you.”
I suck my teeth. “He can keep wanting because I—”
“Wright Bellamy,” Mama cuts in, her expression taking no excuses. “If you don’t talk to your daddy.”
I lock eyes with her, and the stern lines of her face soften.
“Please, Monk,” she says. “For me.”
“Shit,” I curse under my breath, and snatch the phone from my brother. “What you want?”
There was a time when I would not have dared speak to Pastor Wright Bellamy so disrespectfully. I didn’t believe all the things he preached, my innate skepticism making me doubt a lot of things I heard from the pulpit, but I believed he was who he said he was. With his lies, he became justanother fake-ass nigga, a snake oil hustler trying to get over, and I have treated him accordingly ever since.
“I heard you were home,” my father finally replies, his deep baritone much less changed than my opinion of him. “You’ve blocked my number, so figured I’d try to catch you while Charles was there with you.”
“My food’s getting cold,” I say, sharpening the edge in my voice. “So again I ask, what do you want?”
“Just wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving. I love you, son.”
That ice around my heart cracks a little because his approval was a habit it took me a long time to break. When I was growing up, he was always at the church, so when he came home, his attention felt like gold. It felt likeGod’s, but this man has ashy feet of clay. I never needed him to be perfect. Just to be what he said he was.
“Okay.” I sound bored, but I’m really just mad and ready to be done with these emotions and this conversation. “That all?”
“Um, yeah. Can I speak to your mother?”
“Hell naw.” I hang up and toss the phone back to Charlie. “I’m going for a walk.”
“Monk,” Mama calls, but I don’t stop.
“I’ll be back.” I close the door to her apartment and think about the big brick house she was so proud of, the one she made our home. Technically, that house is the parish, so it stayed with the pastor, even though Mama wouldn’t. In the short distance to the sidewalk, I draw in a lungful of fresh air. I always knew I wouldn’t follow in my father’s footsteps. Even before he cheated, the career I wanted was taking me down a path he didn’t understand or approve of. I never thought, though, that we’d be here.
I take out my phone and scroll to the pic of Verity I showed Charlie. Without thinking too long, I pull up her contact and dial.
“Hey.” She sounds the way she does when she wakes in the mornings or when she’s blissed out after making love. “Happy Thanksgiving.”
“Happy Thanksgiving,” I reply, a smile already quirking the corners of my mouth. “You napping?”
