Page 21 of Verse Two
She retrieved my phone and kept her eyes on the screen as she typed, but she couldn’t hide the red in her cheeks if she tried. Once she was done, she handed me the phone.
“There,” she said softly.
“’Preciate that.” Now that that was handled, I finally took in everything laid out around us.
“You ’bout to do an art project or some shit?”
She rolled her eyes. “We’reabout to do a project. We talked about getting back to what we love, and since we’re stuck in this hotel, I thought we could spend some time making our visions clear.So. . .”
She removed herself from my lap and reached over to grab the stack of small posters.
“I got everything we need to make vision boards. If you want to.”
I glanced at everything she had set up before focusing on her face again. Her bright eyes and hiked brows told me she was excited about this. Her teeth biting the hell out of her bottom lip told me she was nervous about how I would respond to it. That was funny to me because it meant that she was still unclear on just how much she meant to me.
Making Dy happy became my top priority the moment I heard her voice again at the airport. If cutting pictures out of a magazine would make her smile, then the choice was easy.
Leaning over, I kissed her lips softly.
“Sounds like a plan, Doll.”
“This shit feels like school,” I said, flipping through the pages of the sports magazine I had picked up from the pile.
We had been working in a comfortable silence for about ten minutes, but I had spent most of that time staring at my woman. She was locked in on this vision board shit, and I was locked in on her. I’d much rather spend my time watching her complete her board, but I knew she wanted me to participate. I was trying, but this really wasn’t my shit.
She glanced up at me and smiled. “You loved school, though. You were the one helping Marc and me write out papers the same night you would write your own.”
She flipped another page in her magazine as I responded.
“Nah, that’s different. Writing makes sense. It comes easy. Cutting out pictures of beaches and Bentleys and tryna force another meaning on ’em ain’t my kind of art, Doll.”
Dy flipped another page and scanned it for a moment before she smiled and began cutting it out. She had been doing that for the last ten minutes, and I loved seeing her face light up when she found something she wanted to use.
“It’s not about beaches or Bentleys, Brick.”
It took real effort not to kiss her lips. “Nah?” I questioned.
She shook her head. “Nope. It’s about intention. Your vision has nothing to do with cars or vacations right now. You said youwanted the words you put out there to mean something again. You want to own your voice, right?”
Once she was done cutting, she handed it to me, and I read it silently.
Create the life you want, or settle for the one they give you.
I couldn’t lie. I liked this one. Chuckling, I glanced at her. “Aight, that’s hard.”
She smiled brightly.
“Exactly. You don’t have to force a meaning on a random picture. When you come across one that means something to you, cut it out. Just keep flipping until you do.”
“Aight. I’m keepin’ this, though,” I said, holding up the quote she had handed me.
“It’s for you,” she said, still smiling. “And put down that magazine and get something different. Your vision has nothing to do with sports.”
I laughed. “I guess you got a point,” I said, putting the magazine down and picking up the glue. I secured the quote to my poster before she grabbed a different magazine and flipped through it.
Dy played music from her phone, and I was feeling her playlist.
We worked silently for a while, and I kept her advice in mind as I went through the magazines.
