Page 51 of IRL: In Real Life
Not nerves exactly. I didn’t get nervous easily. No, I was just aware.
Aware that I had asked to see her and she had said yes. Aware that this wasn’t Thursday, wasn’t the date, wasn’t some polished little setup with reservation energy and expectation already built around it. This was me wanting a woman’s face-to-face presence badly enough to step out in the middle of a workday and say so.
That had a different feel to it.
And if I was telling the truth all the way, it had been a long time since I moved like this. Shit, I hadnevermoved like this. Let me keep it one hundred. At least with myself.
I had taken midday breaks before. Fuck breaks. Long lunches that had very little to do with food. Back when I was younger, earlier in banking, with more appetite than caution and not nearly enough to lose. Back then, I’d leave work for a body and call it a good use of my hour.
That was what stayed with me on the drive over.
The pull wasn’t only about wanting her, though I did. It was wanting to be near her again. To see her face shift when she caught a thought before handing it over. To hear her say the thing in person. To watch her mouth curve when she knew she was funny and didn’t mind me noticing.
That felt new enough to respect.
By the time I handed the valet my keys and crossed the hotel lobby, I already knew I’d done the right thing.
The place was polished in that way expensive hotels always were when they were trying to make corporate taste feel like hospitality. Warm stone. Brass. Low floral arrangements. Furniture too careful to be accidental. Too much beige, if I was being honest, which made me laugh the minute I saw it.
Of course she’d called it that.
The lobby bar sat just off the main entrance, half tucked behind a sculptural divider and pretending not to know it was where people came to either make deals or flirt under the cover of meetings.
She wasn’t at the host stand.
I saw her near the windows instead, posted at a small two-top with her laptop open, coffee off to one side, phone at her ear. One leg crossed over the other. Tablet beside the keyboard. Still working, even now. Still in the middle of her actual day.
Talia had on a sleeveless sand-colored knit and dark trousers that fit the way good decisions fit when a woman knew her own body. Gold at her ears. Hair neat. Mouth glossed. No dim room helping her this time.
Didn’t matter.
She was still it.
I slowed without meaning to.
There was something about seeing her like that, not arriving for me, not posed up in low light, just fully in herself and handling her business, that got to me in a place attraction by itself couldn’t reach. Plenty women were fine. Plenty women dressed well, smelled good, and knew how to keep a room looking their way.
This was different.
This was seeing what she did with herself when desire wasn’t the point.
I got close enough to hear the tail end of it.
“No, move the one-fifteen to two” she was saying, voice low and easy into the phone. “If Henderson still wants another round of revisions, they can survive forty-five more minutes.”
A pause.
Then her mouth curved.
“No, I’m not coming back up there just to tell him beige is not a strategy.” Another pause. “Tell Cindy to send me the updated deck when she gets it.”
“Okay. Text me if they start acting helpless.” A beat. “And go eat.”
That little smile was still on her face when she looked up and saw me.
The shift in her was immediate. Not dramatic. Just there. Recognition first. Then that mouth. Then her eyes.
Those pretty eyes.
