Bring Down the Stars (Beautiful Hearts Duet #1)(21)

“I want you to expand your creativity. The object can be a person, of course. Or a dream. A goal. A physical item. The latest iPhone…”

A current of laughter rolled lightly through the class of sixty students.

“Dig deep, and leave nothing on the table,” he said. “Because in art, there are no limits. If you have only one takeaway from my class at the end of the year, let it be that poetry—the words by which we give shape to our thoughts—is as limitless as our thoughts themselves.”

The small auditorium rippled with enthusiasm.

“Mr. Turner,” Professor Ondiwuje called over the shuffling of students leaving after class. “Can I see you a moment?”

I shouldered my backpack and took the side stairs down to his desk. Trying to keep my cool. Michael Ondiwuje was quite possibly the only man on the planet I looked up to. He had won the William Carlos Williams Award for poetry at the age of twenty-four. A well-worn, dog-eared, highlighted and underlined copy of his collection, The Last Song of Africa, resided on my bookshelf.

The professor sat on the edge of his desk, rifling through some papers.

“I read the essay and the poem you submitted two weeks ago,” he said. “They were both very good. Excellent, even.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said, every cell in my body screaming, Holy shit. Michael Ondiwuje just said my work was excellent.

The professor raised his eyes from the papers to meet mine. Studying me. Taking me in. “English Lit is your minor, yes?” he finally asked.

“That’s right.”

“What do you plan to do with an Economics major?”

“I don’t know. Work on Wall Street.”

“That’s what you wish to do?”

“It would be better for my family situation,” I said slowly, “if I had a good job and steady income.”

He nodded. “I get that, but I can’t let talent like yours slink out the back of my class without saying something.”

I shifted my bag. “Okay.”

“When I read your work, I sense a young man with deep fires burning within and a cold wall around him.”

Professor O’s stare was relentless but I didn’t look away. My head moved in a faint nod.

“A guy with poetry in his blood,” the professor went on. “But he keeps his blood from spilling where anyone can see. He sits in the back. Doesn’t talk. All the while, words pile up inside. And to a mind and heart like his, all that emotion is hard to take. It’s too much. Dangerous. It hurts.” His eyes bored into mine. “Doesn’t it?”

No one had ever talked to me this way. As if he were trying to pry open my chest, and get at what I kept locked up. The words and thoughts I kept to myself. My instinct was to walk away. Or run. But a deep well of longing stirred inside me to stand in the presence of someone who had crafted a life out of writing. A reality I could reach out and touch too, if I wanted.

I shifted my bag again.

Professor O’s smile returned. “I see you, Mr. Turner. And I want to hear you. For this Object of Devotion assignment, give me your blood and guts and fire. Give me everything.”

“Everything?” I smiled nervously. “That’s all, huh?”

He touched a hand to my shoulder. “I know you have it in you.”





After classes, I went back to the apartment to drive my piece of shit car to the Panache Blanc bakery-café for my pre-race routine: carb-load with a big sandwich the night before.

My car was a fifteen-year-old silver Dodge Stratus I’d bought when I graduated high school with some of my tuition money. The Drakes had tried to buy me something better, but I’d refused. It was old, it took three tries to get it to turn over in summer, ten or more in winter, but it was mine.

At our apartment, it was parked next to Connor’s brand-new, chick magnet, eight-billion-horsepower Dodge Hellcat.

A Tale of Two Dodges, I thought, as I climbed into my old sedan and turned the key. After three tries and a belch of smoke, the engine came sputtering to life.

At the Panache Blanc, I sat at a corner table with a sprout and cucumber on wheat and a side of fruit, contemplating an empty notebook and the give-me-everything poem I was supposed to write in it.

Professor Ondiwuje had X-rayed my damn soul, missing nothing. He knew I wrote my feelings instead of speaking them. Speaking out loud felt like weakness. I’d loved my dad. I’d told him in my own voice, and screamed it after him as he drove away. He took that love and tossed it away like garbage. Never again would I let myself feel that naked and exposed. Not out loud, anyway. Writing was different.

It hurts, doesn’t it?

Too fucking much. Which meant I had plenty of blood, guts and fire to write about.

I put my pen to paper. Let’s do this, motherfucker…

Five minutes later, I had doodled an impressive Bruins logo.

I turned the page and let my mind wander. Lines about coppery red hair and eyes like gemstones started appearing on the page.

“Hell, no. We are not going there.”

I scribbled those out and tried again. My pen doodled and then a sentence emerged.

Her eyes were the season, personified…

I tore the page out and balled it up.

For the next hour, customers came and went around me. A slow, lazy weeknight. Edmond, the big Frenchman who sang opera and recited sonnets on the regular, wasn’t there, but Phil lounged over the counter, scrolling his phone.