Page 41 of IRL: In Real Life
“You still there?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
Her voice dipped a little. “You went quiet.”
“Just thinking about it.”
“Safe thoughts?”
“You want the truth?”
She laughed, and I smiled before I could help it because I liked that sound more every time I heard it.
“Get some sleep, Micah,” she said.
I didn’t want to let her go. I wanted more time. More Talia. But I knew this would go nowhere if I was too pressed this early on.
“You too, Talia.”
We hung up, and my place went still again, but it didn’t feel empty. I set my phone down and stood there a second with Kut Klose still low in the background and one truth sitting heavy in my chest: I wanted to see her again.
Not in messages, not on an app, not in some little story clip that gave my imagination too much room to work. I wanted her in front of me.
Maybe that should have felt too quick for one room, one day of texting, and one phone call, but maybe it wasn’t about the amount.
Maybe it was the fact that I already knew how easy she was to laugh with when nobody else was around, and that right there was where things started getting dangerous.
six
. . .
My house gotquiet after we hung up, but it wasn’t the same quiet I’d had before he called.
It had his laugh in it now.
The low one. The real one. The one that had slipped out when I asked if he was too good for Kool-Aid. The one that had made me lean my hip harder into the kitchen counter and smile into the dark like I’d lost some private little fight with myself and wasn’t even embarrassed enough to lie about it.
I stood there for a second with my phone still in my hand, my eyes moving over the half-rinsed glass in the sink, the lamp near the sofa, the robe loosening at my thigh, and the room around me somehow carrying not just the echo of me, but alittle of him too. That was new. Wanting a man was easy enough to recognize. Liking the sound of him in his own home settled deeper than that.
I could picture too much now. The condo. The city behind him. The low music. The easy way he laughed when something actually got him. The fact that he had Kut Klose playing in the background like a man with substance and taste and no need to announce either one.
That had gotten to me in a place lust alone didn’t reach. Not deeper, exactly. Just elsewhere.
I set the phone down on the island and pressed both palms to the cool marble.
“Okay,” I said softly, to myself. “You need to get a grip.”
The front door lock beeped.
I turned my head.
Then Kendra stepped in with a tote bag on one shoulder, a brown paper takeout sack in one hand, and the expression of a woman who already knew she had been right and intended to enjoy every minute of it.
Kendra was always put together, but in a different way than me. Where I leaned soft, glossy, and sensual, she came sharp. Tailored slacks, silk blouse, blazer cut close enough to remind people corporate did not have to mean boring, her hair swept back from a face pretty enough to disarm you if her mouth didn’t get there first. She looked like exactly what she was: a woman who could argue a contract into submission by day and still show up at my door after work with love only a true friend could give.
“You abuse access,” I said.
“I use community resources.” She shut the door behind her with her hip. “Also, if I have to drive all the way back to Westmoreland after spending nine hours at Hollis, Grant & Mercer pretending rich men understand contracts, I deserve one stop somewhere peaceful before I get on the Parkway.”
