Page 132 of IRL: In Real Life
“Nothing,” I said.
Ciara pointed her spoon at me. “A woman.”
Ari looked up again, serious as church. “The girlfriend?”
Ciara lost it.
I looked at my niece. “Why are you still in grown people’s business?”
She shrugged and kept coloring. “You keep smiling.”
That got me all over again.
Truth was, they weren’t wrong.
Most nights that week had belonged to some version of me and Talia. Her place. My condo. Movies we half watched. Takeout containers on counters. Her heels by my door. My shirt on her body. Her bonnet on my pillow. Coffee in the morning. Her laughing at me over board games, then climbing into my lap like arguing had only been foreplay with extra steps.
The sex would have been enough to hook a weaker man.
But that wasn’t the part keeping me off balance anymore.
It was the ease after.
The way she fit into the rest of my life. The way I wanted her around when nobody was performing. The way a whole week had started arranging itself around when I might see her next, and I didn’t feel burdened by that at all.
That was the part that had me sitting at my parents’ table with my sister reading me for sport and no real defense to offer.
Because what was I supposed to say?
That Talia had gotten under my skin?
That my condo felt different after she left?
That I had started noticing which side of the bed she preferred, how she liked her coffee, how quiet she got when she was tired, and how much I liked being the man close enough to catch it?
No.
So I ate my cornbread and let Ciara enjoy herself.
Then my phone buzzed again.
Private this time.
Talia: That wasn’t cheating. That was strategy and male delusion.
Me: You still mad?
Talia: I’m still unconvinced you should be trusted with vowels.
Talia posted againwhile I was halfway through my second piece of cornbread.
Some people really think one home-cooked breakfast can erase a crime.
I almost choked.
I liked the post.
Then wrote:
