Chapter 4 #2
Monarch Row was the kind of place where a person could hide behind pretty language if they didn’t have real instincts, and I had learned a long time ago to separate those two things.
Anybody could talk about audience, brand story, alignment, and cultural resonance.
Fewer people could walk into a room, read the power in it correctly, and build something that actually held once real people got their hands on it.
That part, I could do.
That part paid me.
And if I was being honest, it had probably sharpened me in my personal life too. Years of sponsorship decks, partnership meetings, and rooms full of polished people had made me hard to fool. I knew when presentation was doing too much labor for the truth.
Which was maybe why Micah had gotten under my skin the way he had.
Because he hadn’t.
He had just stood there and let himself be exactly as appealing as he actually was.
Around one, I stepped out to grab lunch and pick up a blazer I’d left at the dry cleaner earlier in the week.
Downtown was alive in that midday way that felt less romantic than evening and somehow more honest. Office workers with badges still hanging from their necks.
Delivery bikes cutting between lanes. Women in heels carrying salads they’d be hungry again after three.
Men on calls speaking too loudly into the air like volume could make them more important.
I had just locked my car and started toward the cleaners when a cherry red sedan slowed in the lane beside me.
I ignored it automatically at first. Pittsburgh did not reward unnecessary eye contact.
Then a woman’s voice called out, bright and delighted.
“Sis!”
I turned.
A brown-skinned woman in big sunglasses leaned halfway out the passenger window, grinning at me like she knew me, though I was pretty sure she didn’t.
“You are gorgeous,” she said, one hand over her chest. “And that ass and that walk? Please.”
The driver laughed.
I stopped in spite of myself and laughed too, one hand flying to my chest.
“Thank you,” I called back.
“No, I’m serious,” she said. “Had to say it. Carry on, beautiful.”
I shook my head, smiling now, and lifted a hand before she rolled off into traffic, still laughing between themselves.
That little moment stayed with me all the way to the dry cleaner.
I didn’t need the compliment, but it felt good to be seen like that. Clocked and celebrated by another Black woman for no reason except she felt like telling the truth out loud.
By the time I stepped back outside with my blazer draped over one arm and lunch in the other, my phone buzzed.
I looked down expecting Kendra.
It was Micah.
An Instagram DM, sitting right beneath the story reply from the night before.
Micah: Hope work’s not wasting your good clothes today.
I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.
Then looked around like the city itself might have seen that land where it did.
He sounded entirely too easy in the middle of a Tuesday.
My thumb hovered before I answered.
Me: Too late. I’ve already had to save two people from bad branding and one from a tragic email.
His reply came before I reached the corner.
Micah: Damn. You do community service too?
I laughed out loud, low and helpless enough that a man walking past looked over and smiled like he’d accidentally caught a good part of somebody else’s day.
I typed back without overthinking it.
Me: I’m carrying the city on my back, clearly.
Three dots appeared.
Then…
Micah: That sounds stressful.
That did something small and warm to me.
I looked up at the light changing over the intersection, then back down at his name glowing in my hand. The city moved around me. Lunch crowd. Car horns. Sun on glass. Somebody dragging a rolling suitcase over bad concrete.
And there I was, standing in the middle of all of it, smiling at Instagram like the kind of woman I usually promised myself I had grown out of being.
“Hmmmm,” I murmured, mostly to myself.
Then I put the phone away, adjusted the blazer over my arm, and kept walking.
By the time I got back upstairs, I had my face under control again.
Mostly.
Mariah looked up the second I came through the glass doors and narrowed her eyes with the kind of focus usually reserved for suspicious expense reports and men who thought “per my last email” could substitute for a real apology.
“Why you smiling like that?”
I kept walking. “Why you in my business before I’ve even put my things down?”
“Because your face changed in the elevator,” she said, swiveling in her chair to follow me. “That’s my department.”
I set my lunch on the edge of my desk, draped the blazer over the back of my chair, and gave her the look she earned.
Mariah leaned back, unbothered. “Was it the same man from the mixer?”
“You ask questions like you get paid for them.”
“No, I ask them like I care about standards.”
I sat down, woke my screen, and pulled the sponsorship deck back up like the right combination of fonts and budget numbers might save me from myself.
It did not.
My phone buzzed beside the keyboard.
I looked at it immediately, which was my first mistake.
Micah: You disappeared after that last message.
I stared at the screen for a second, then set the phone facedown.
Mariah, still half turned in her chair outside my glass wall, caught enough of my face to grin.
“Oh, wow.”
“Please leave me alone.”
“Absolutely not. That was a face.”
“It was not a face.”
“It was a face that said, ‘This man is beginning to interfere with normal operations.’”
I hated that I laughed.
Mariah pointed at me through the glass like she’d just won litigation. “Exactly.”
I picked the phone back up.
Me: I have a job. Some of us do community service before lunch and return to the office after.
His reply came while I was still pretending to review a vendor estimate.
Micah: So this is what you do? Save the city by day and leave men on read by appointment?
A smile pulled at my mouth.
He was annoying in a way I could work with.
Me: Depends on the man.
Three dots.
Then…
Micah: That sounds like I still got a chance.
I set the phone down again and tried, for a full four minutes, to be a serious woman with a serious calendar and a realistic relationship to deadlines.
Then the screen lit.
Micah: Or maybe I’m reading you wrong.
I pressed my lips together to keep from smiling and failed anyway.
A soft knock hit the glass.
Mariah stood there with one brow raised, coffee in hand, enjoying herself far too much.
“You are obsessed with me.”
“No,” she said, leaning one shoulder against the doorframe when I waved her in. “I’m obsessed with movement. Yours is funny right now.”
I ignored her, and instead, I picked up my phone and typed.
Me: What exactly are you doing right now besides interfering with a woman’s workflow?
This time, the pause lasted long enough for my imagination to get disrespectful.
Not fully. Just in flashes.
That blue shirt from the mixer. The watch. That quiet little curve of his mouth when he liked where a conversation was going. Probably sitting at a desk looking expensive and far too composed while he typed something that would ruin my concentration again.
The message came through.
Micah: Trying to see if you’re as good at 1:47 on a Tuesday as you were in that dress last night.
My thighs pressed together under the desk before I could stop them.
Mariah was still standing in the doorway watching me.
I cut my eyes at her. “Say one thing and I’ll report you to HR.”
“You smiling like your lower back hurt and your day got better at the same time. I don’t even have to.”
I turned back to my phone because prison was too good for some people.
Me: That sounds rehearsed.
Micah: No. If I rehearsed it, it would’ve been better.
That made me laugh, low and helpless enough that Mariah pushed fully into the room and dropped into one of the guest chairs like she had every intention of staying.
Me: I appreciate a man with self-awareness.
Micah: I know a few things.
The next message came right after.
Micah: I know you looked at me like you were still deciding whether I was worth the trouble.
Then another.
Micah: And I know I’d rather keep having that conversation somewhere with less audience.