Page 15 of IRL: In Real Life
“You really want the honest answer?”
She tipped her head. “I usually do.”
Of course she did.
I took another sip. “Too many women online look one way and walk into the room as somebody else.”
“That’s real.”
“Too much editing. Too much curation. Too much performance.” I met her eyes again. “At some point, it stops feeling like you getting to know a woman and starts feeling like you got handed a campaign.”
That made her laugh again, low and warm.
“A campaign is nasty work,” she said.
“You know I’m right.”
“I do.” She shifted a little closer to the bar behind her, settling in without giving up the space between us. “Women do it too. Men just act like y’all don’t notice.”
“We notice.”
“No.” Her eyes smiled then, bright and animated in a way that made the room go a little dim around her. “Y’all notice beauty. Not all of y’all notice construction.”
I stared at her for half a beat too long.
That was a hell of a line.
And she knew it.
“You always talk like this?” I asked.
“Like what?”
“Like you got somewhere to put the thought before it come out.”
One brow lifted. “Is that your way of calling me smart?”
“It’s my way of saying most people talk too damn much and still don’t say anything.”
That earned me a real laugh, one that tipped her head back and showed me the slender line of her neck. When her eyes opened again, they were amused and keen enough to make me want to stand right there feeding her lines just to watch what she did with them.
“See?” she said. “That’s the problem now.”
“What is?”
“Everybody performing. Online. In person. On dates. At work. At brunch. At charity events.” She glanced around theroom, then back at me. “Half these folks don’t know if they networking, dating, or auditioning.”
“You left out lying.”
Her mouth softened around a smile. “That too.”
I looked around with her this time.
A brother near the bar laughing too hard at his own joke. A woman in a white set giving one man her face and another man her eyes. Two niggas in expensive sneakers talking crypto like they had invented risk. A woman by the wall posing for a story she was pretending somebody else told her to make.
“See them?” Talia murmured, barely moving her mouth.
“Which one?”
