Page 30 of Grown

Korey’s mouth hangs open, eyes wide, sweeping over me.

“Wow. You are... so beautiful.”

The blushing hurts my cheeks as the room spins and he cracks a bashful smile.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just that... I mean, you’re mad gorgeous! Them eyes... every time you look at me, I forget myself.”

I lace my fingers together.

“Um, thanks.”

No one has ever called me beautiful. Pretty, sure. But beautiful... that word transcends.

Next, Korey is all business. We go over vocal warm-ups, how to sing in the booth, how to use the mic and headsets, and how music is recorded. Every passing minute feels unreal. Like at any moment I’m going to wake up from this dream and go back to facing my overcrowded home.

There’s a light knock at the door before it swings open. A fair-skinned woman with long dark hair combed with a side part walks in, her eyes down.

“Her mother will be here in forty-five minutes.”

“Thanks, Jess,” he says, with an approving nod.

Jessica’s almond-shaped eyes flicker up to mine, before she leaves as quick as she had come.

“Aight, since you love the classics so much, thinking we sing some oldies tunes together,” Korey says from behind an audio board. “You know, like we did in Jersey.”

“Can we do that same song?”

He grins. “Aight, Bright Eyes. Whatever you want.”

I bite my lip until I can’t hold it in any longer.

“You know I know that song, right?” I burst, voice cracking.

He cocks his head to the side. “Huh?”

I sing, “Turn around, bright eyes.”

Korey cackles. That smile... how have I lived so long without it?

“Oh, word! Look at you, knowing even the white-folkclassics!” He muses to himself for a moment. “My grandma loved white-folk music.”

“Mine did too,” I gush. We have even more in common.

Korey leans back in his chair. “Yo, real talk, if I could have my way, I’d do like a whole cover album of all the great white hits. But... that’ll never happen. They’d never let me sing that shit.”

“They?”

“My label.”

“Oh. Right, sorry,” I mumble. “But this is your space. Thought you could do what you want here.”

Korey has a pensiveness about him that I wouldn’t expect from such a superstar. There’s so much warmth in his eyes under those long lashes.

“Yo, you right,” he says. “Man, I don’t know, Enchanted, there’s something about you. You just... different. Real mature.”

He sits behind the keyboard, plays a few notes and sings.

I giggle and join him.