Grip
“BRISTOL!” The barista calls out, scanning the crowd for the person who ordered the grande white chocolate mocha. I get it every day at this coffee shop within walking distance of NYU’s campus, and the drink has become my own inside joke for my relationship with Bristol.
Plus, that shit’s the bomb.
“Uh, mine.” I step around several other customers waiting for their orders.
Yeah, I miss Bristol so much, I give her name to the barista for my coffee. If that makes me a pussy, I don’t care. I don’t need caffeine. My heart is already galloping in my chest. After two weeks, she’s finally joining me at our place in New York.
“Damn, Grip,” says a low-timbered voice from behind me.
I turn to meet a pair of laughing eyes behind dark-rimmed glasses.
“I knew you were trying to be all incognegro in my class,” Dr. Israel Hammond continues, “but I didn’t know you resorted to using girls’ names to keep your identity a secret.”
Shock and nerves lock up my words for a second. Is this how my fans feel when they meet me? I’ve been in Dr. Hammond’s class for over a week and haven’t mustered up the nerve to approach him. It’s like being star-struck, but smarter—more like mind-struck, because this guy’s a genius.
“Professor Hammond.”
“Call me Iz,” he insists. With his close-cropped hair, Malcolm X T-shirt, elbow-patched blazer, and shell toe Adidas, he’s a study in contrasts, all these cool pieces that don’t quite fit but make sense as a whole. “And technically I’m not a professor. It’s just for this semester. Then it’s back to writing and running my organization.”
After the success of Virus, he started an organization focused on the issues of criminal justice reform his book raised.
“Okay, Iz.” I clear my throat and hope I sound like a grown man, not a fangirl. “I didn’t even know you knew I was in your class.”
“I’ve known since before the first day.” He gestures to the corner with two leather armchairs. “Wanna sit?”
I settle into the seat and consider the man I crossed the country to study with. He’s not your typical academic. Once you get past the glasses, he’s more lumberjack than scholar. He’s probably a good six five in socks with hulking shoulders and huge hands. If I didn’t know he was faculty, albeit temporary, I’d assume he was a baller.
“The administration actually notified me that you’d be in my class before the semester even started,” he says, taking a sip of his coffee.
“Why would they do that?” Irritation scrunches my face. As hard as I’ve been trying to be normal and like everyone else, the administration singled me out.
“Having someone famous in your class could be disruptive.” He shrugs those massive shoulders. “If half the students will be lining up for autographs or throwing their panties across the class, I’d like a heads-up.”
A smirk works its way through my irritation.
“Thank God there’s been nothing like that,” I say. “I don’t think most people know I’m even there.”
“Well you sitting at the back with that hat pulled down low isn’t much of a disguise, but I guess it’s working for you.”
“It also helps that your class is huge.”
“Yeah. I had no idea there would be such a response.”
“Are you kidding?” I k
now I’m gaping, but I can’t check it. “Your book is . . . life-changing. This is my first semester on campus. I’ve been an online student for the last year and a half, and I relocated from LA for the semester just for this class.”
He’s a stone-faced man, but surprise ripples across his rugged features.
“I had no idea.” His eyes drop to his drink and then lift to narrow on my face. “Why would you do that?”
I hesitate, self-conscious in the presence of someone who has become a hero of sorts to me—not the Superman, Marvel comic kind of hero, but the kind whose superpower is reason and whose kryptonite is ignorance.
“I read Virus on my first world tour over the summer, and it articulated so many things I had either never considered, or knew but never put into words,” I say. “I didn’t set out to sell a million records. I wanted to be successful, of course, but fame is seductive. It has this way of making you forget who the real person is behind all the hype, and the bigger I get, the less I want this distance between who I am in public and who I am in private. If anything, I want people to know the things I really believe in and stand for.”
I pause to look at him frankly.