Page 149 of IRL: In Real Life
. . .
By the timeI pulled up to Devon’s, I already knew I had left something wrong between me and Talia. I had texted her hours ago asking if she was in from the salon yet, and nothing had come back, which felt like an answer all by itself.
Talia usually had more music in her than silence. More curve. More dry humor tucked under a line, even when she was busy. Today felt flat in a way I couldn’t talk myself out of, and the longer I sat with it, the more certain I became that I had not imagined the shift.
I stayed in the Benz a few seconds longer than I needed to and checked the screen again.
Nothing.
Devon opened the front door before I made it all the way up the walk.
“There go the free labor.”
“You still too cheap to pay Best Buy?”
He stepped back laughing. “Why would I pay strangers when God gave me friends?”
“God need to take me back.”
That got a laugh out of Leisha from somewhere deeper in the house.
The TV was huge.
Too big for the wall.
Too big for Devon’s common sense.
Exactly the kind of purchase a man made after comparing five specs online and deciding competence would reveal itself later.
“Why’d you buy a damn movie theater?” I asked when I walked in.
“Because I’m grown,” Devon said.
“Because you’re foolish.”
Leisha came out of the kitchen wiping her hands on a towel, looked at the box, then at me, and shook her head. “He been pacing around that thing since noon like it was gone mount itself.”
“I had a vision,” Devon said.
“You had delusion,” she said, then looked at me. “Hey, Micah.”
“Hey.”
There was food somewhere in the house. Some soft little candle Leisha had lit. Music low. Her throw blanket folded over the arm of the couch like she actually lived there and not in that half-floating way some women occupied a man’s space before anybody said it out loud.
I noticed all of it because Devon noticed all of it too, even while pretending he didn’t.
He moved different with her.
Softer around the edges.
Quicker to listen.
Less performative in his own damn house.
Leisha asked if we wanted drinks before we started. Devon said, “Yeah, baby, if you don’t mind,” in a tone I had never heard him use with another human being in life.
I looked at him.
