Teaching Mr. Graham

    "So...not to interrupt this Titantic 'I'm the king of the world' moment you two have going on here," Kenya said, poking her head out of the balcony door, "but the third wheel thing is getting old. Do you have a phone I can use, and is there anywhere I can go for some prih-vacy?"

    Aubrey kept his arms around Tatiana and arched a look over his shoulder at Kenya. "Sure. There's a cordless phone in the office. To get to the office, you go through the living room and down the other hall. There's also a spare bedroom. Take your pick."

    Kenya disappeared almost immediately.

    "The same guy she met the night of the party?" Aubrey asked Tatiana.

    Tatiana nodded. "They've really hit it off. They're the cutest."

    "That's nice," he murmured, resting his chin on her shoulder.

    They stood quietly for a few moments. Tatiana's hands remained on top of Aubrey's. She traced her fingertips along the length of his fingers and said, "There's something I've been wondering."

    "And you've managed this long without asking me?"

    She laughed. "I've gotten to see you in teacher mode, but I haven't really gotten to see Aubrey the writer since the night of that party."

    "You see Aubrey the writer all the time," he protested.

    "No, I know, but..."

    "What? You want to watch me write something?" He laughed, as if the idea was funny to him.

    Her brows furrowed. "Yeah, actually," she replied, turning around in his arms. "I want to watch you write something. I want to see your process."

    "So, you want...to have a writing date?"

    "Stop making me feel weird about it," she mumbled.

    He laughed and loosened his arms around her. "All right, I'm sorry. I've had women request a lot of things from me, but that is quite new."

    She wrinkled her nose at the thought of other women and turned around in his arms.

    He reached up and touched the tip of her nose. "We have have a writing session, sure."

    Her expression brightened.

    He led her back into the bedroom and closed the balcony door, then left the bedroom and beckoned for her to follow. "I keep all of my writing shit in the office," he explained, walking down the hall and through the living room. At the far end of the living room, there was another hall with doors leading off of it. He didn't stop walking until he reached the end of this hall.

    Tatiana could barely make out the sound of Kenya's voice.

    Aubrey softly rapped his knuckles on the door.

    Kenya laughed loudly from inside the office, but the door remained firmly closed.

    Aubrey knocked again, then slowly eased the door open.

    "What am I wearing?" Kenya asked into the beige cordless phone she held in her hand. She stood with her back facing Aubrey and Tatiana. "Wouldn't you like to know?" She giggled into the phone and turned around. One hand held the phone, and the other was sliding beneath her top. Her eyes widened when she saw Aubrey and Tatiana.

    Aubrey took a few steps back.

    "Nigga, what do you want?" Kenya demanded, yanking her hand out of her top. "Haven't you ever heard of knocking?"

    "I did knock."

    "Then have you heard of knocking loudly? So someone can hear your ass? Did you need something, or were you both looking for a show?"

    "Calm down, Ken," Tatiana said. "We just came in here for his writing stuff."

    "What did you need?" Kenya asked Aubrey. "A pen? Some paper? This is the only room where you keep that shit? Seriously?"

    "First of all, calm down," Aubrey said, holding both of his hands up. "There's no need to be embarrassed. I've done a lot more than what you were just about to do. Second of all, I just need to get in here for a few minutes to get my shit. Then you can have the room all to yourself."

    Kenya stalked over to the far end of the room and uncovered the phone. She spoke into the receiver in low tones.

    Aubrey quickly moved around the room, gathering notebooks and pens. He unlocked the drawer to a chrome and glass desk, and removed an ancient-looking Blackberry phone from it. "All right, I'm ready," he told Tatiana, not bothering to look in Kenya's direction before leaving the room and closing the door behind him.

    Tatiana followed him into the living room and watched him sit on the couch before seating herself. She tucked a leg beneath her, buzzing with excitement. He was easily one of her favorite modern songwriters; she had a high respect for him that had only blossomed the night she'd gotten the chance to hear his poetry firsthand. She was eager to see how he came up with his ideas.

    He slanted a glance at her. "You look excited, but my process isn't anything special." When he said the word "process," it sounded a lot more like "proh-cess."

    That alone sent shivers down her spine that she tried in vain to ignore. "It might not seem special to you, but it'll probably seem special to me," she insisted.

    He chuckled and shrugged. "All right. I have to admit, I don't even know where to start."

    "Where do you usually start?" she asked curiously.

    "I rarely ever have to sit and think about an idea," he said, thoughtfully stroking his jaw. "Ideas usually just...present themselves to me. For instance, I'll be dating a girl. Something will happen and I just think to myself, 'Okay I need to write about that. That needs to be in a song somewhere.' My music, and my writing are all about expression. Expressing myself, my emotions, and what happens in my life the best way I know how. Lyrically."

    She nodded in understanding.

    "When I speak, sometimes I trip over myself," he explained. "I say something I don't mean, or I say something in a way that doesn't quite capture what I was really trying to say. But with lyrics, I have time to really just sit and think about what it is I want to say, and how I want to say it. I've gotten criticism for not being a battle rapper. I never really know where that comes from, because battle rapping was never really my come-up. I love battle rap and I respect it. I respect it like no other, because I know how hard it is to come up with lines on the fly like that. But, in essence, I am very much a writer. Writing is what I do, and writing is my craft. It's my strength."

    "So you never really just sit down and think of something to write?"

    "Do you?" he asked her, flipping the question back on her.

    "I have before," she said. "For me, ideas usually come to me too...but sometimes I'll just get the urge to write, even before I have an idea. Like something wants to get out of me, even though I don't know what that something is yet."

    "I've felt that before," he said, leaning forward and setting the notebooks and pens on the coffee table in front of them. He slid over a notebook to her.

    She leaned forward and opened the notebook, studying its empty pages. "You brought one out for me?"

    "You didn'tthink you were just going to be a spectator, did you?" he asked her,laughing. "No, no no, baby girl, we're in this together. I write, youwrite. I'm curious about your process, too."