Page 131 of IRL: In Real Life
When I looked up, Mama was still watching me.
Ciara leaned back in her chair, smug as hell.
Pops shook his head and went back toward the den. “Boy finally got got.”
Ari looked up from her markers. “Uncle Micah got what?”
“Nothing,” I said.
Ciara grinned. “A girlfriend.”
I opened my mouth.
And then I closed it, because the correction did not come.
How could it?
The kitchen went quiet in that quick, dangerous way family rooms did when everybody heard the same thing and decided to see who would be brave enough to touch it first.
Ciara bit the inside of her cheek.
Mama reached for plates like she hadn’t heard a thing, which told me she had heard everything.
Pops appeared in the doorway with his reading glasses low on his nose and the game still loud behind him. “Well?”
I looked down at my neice. “Why would you ask me that?”
She shrugged. “You keep smiling.”
That got me too.
I laughed once and scrubbed a hand over my jaw. “Finish your picture.”
She went right back to coloring like she hadn’t just thrown a grenade under the table.
Pops looked at me for one more second, then made a sound like he had learned plenty and did not need to ask another question yet.
“Mmhmm,” he said, and went back toward the den.
Dinner moved on after that in the usual layers. Mama wanting the clean version of work. Ciara talking about school and somebody’s ignorant mama. My niece demanding hot sauce just because the adults had some. Pops adding commentary from the den like the rest of us had asked for color analysis on the game and the conversation.
Through all of it, my phone stayed warm beside my plate.
Talia posted again while I was halfway through my second piece of cornbread.
“Micah.”
I looked up.
Mama had stopped moving.
“What?”
“You smile like that at spreadsheets too?”
Ciara laughed so hard she had to grab the counter.
From the den, Pops called, “What he smiling at now?”
