Page 60 of IRL: In Real Life
My mother finally looked over, one brow lifting in slow interest. “Oh,” she said. “So now we have mystery.”
“There is no mystery,” I said, reaching for the phone before either of them could carry on too far into my business.
It was not a text.
It was a Threads notification from @afterfiveMicah
I opened it and my mouth curved before I could stop it.
Texting gets real weak once the call gets easy and she knows Kut Klose off two notes.
Now that was specific.
No, he had not named me. No, nobody else reading it would think anything had happened worth a second look. But I knew.
Because who else was he talking to about calls and Kut Klose?
“What?” my mother asked.
“Nothing.”
“Mmm,” she said, which in my family meantthat’s a lie, but I’ll let you keep it.
I looked at the post one more second, warmth already moving low in my body. Because he was right, and that was the issue. The phone had started losing. The texts were good. The calls were better. But once a man had let me hear the real sound of his laugh, his quiet, the room around him, the screen started feeling a little weak for what this was becoming.
I typed before I could think too hard about it.
That’s what happens when she’s not unmoved either.
That was all.
Just enough to sit there in public and mean something private.
“You gone put the tea out there or stand here smiling at your phone till it get warm?” my mother asked.
I blinked. “I’m moving.”
My father gave me a look that said he saw too much and intended to enjoy every second of it.
I ignored him, grabbed the pitcher and the stack of plastic cups, and pushed through the screen door into the backyard.
Penn Hills backyards had room to breathe, and my parents’ was no exception. Folding tables ran along the patio under cheap tablecloths held down at the corners with bowls and soda bottles. Lawn chairs were scattered everywhere. A cooler sat open near the grill. Somebody had already torn through half the hot dog buns. Kids kept cutting across the grass with sparklers they had been told three times not to touch yet, and one of my uncles stood over the grill like the ribs and burgers required his full spiritual supervision.
Smoke from the charcoal drifted low through the yard, mixing with the smell of barbecue sauce, baked chicken, hot links, and the sweet beans cooling in foil pans on the serving table. Potato salad. Deviled eggs. Corn wrapped in foil. Watermelon already split open in a metal tray. The music had shifted into Maze, and all around me there was that particular Fourth of July cookout noise Black families made when nobody was in a hurry to go anywhere.
I had dressed for exactly that. Summer. Family. Heat. A little attention if it found me.
The sleeveless denim dress fit the way it was supposed to, close through my waist and ass, the hem falling high on my thick thighs, silver studs catching little bits of light whenever I moved. My platform sandals gave me height without asking too much of me. Gold sat warm against my skin at my throat, my ears, my wrists, with the diamond bracelet and the extra little studs in mysecond and third piercings throwing back just enough light to matter.
By the time I set the tea down, the yard had already turned into what family cookouts always became. Too much food. Too many opinions. Everybody half in a conversation with the person beside them and the person three seats down at the same time. Uncle Raymond was already deep in an argument nobody had asked him to start. Aunt Denise kept correcting people’s plate choices like she owned the menu. Shay was on her second cup of sweet tea and her first joke that should have stayed in her mouth.
My mother moved through all of it with that particular authority women had when the food was good and the yard knew it.
I had just started reaching for the tongs when my phone buzzed in my hand.
A text.
Micah: You knew exactly what you was doing with that comment.
