Chapter 20
twenty
. . .
On Tuesday morning, I was already irritated before coffee.
That was information I did not appreciate learning about myself.
Kendra’s text came through while I was still in bed, one hand tucked under the pillow and the other pressed low against my stomach like I could negotiate with my uterus through pressure.
Kendra: You up?
I frowned at the screen.
Me: Unfortunately.
Kendra: Don’t get mad. Just go look at Candace’s page.
That sat wrong immediately.
Candace and I weren’t close. More like acquaintances.
She had come to one of my events a while back, and after that, we had traded the usual little social media niceties.
A comment here. A story reaction there. Nothing with meat on it.
Lately, I had noticed her looking at my stories more often, but I had not thought enough of it to care.
Women looked at stories.
That was life.
Still, Kendra never said don’t get mad unless she already knew I was going to have a reason.
I opened Facebook and found the post.
Candace had thrown up one of those vague little statuses people posted when they wanted the right folks to know exactly who they were talking about without having to say a name and risk somebody checking them.
Funny how some men think they slick. Fucking on bitches in private and still trying to look like the good nigga in public. Banker boys be the worst.
I stared at the screen—then stared a little harder.
Who knew Candace was so damn ghetto?
The post should have rolled off me. It was ugly.
Beneath me. And, more importantly, it was obvious old-fucking-news behavior.
Whatever she thought she was doing, the thing between Micah and me was already real enough that one bitter little post from a woman he used to entertain should not have gotten under my skin the way it did.
And yet.
Jealousy moved through me anyway, ugly and hot, before pride could make it pretty.
Because I knew what she meant.
Knew who she meant.
And I knew she wanted other people to know it too.
That was the part that made my stomach tighten.
Not because I thought Micah belonged to her in any way that mattered now.
Not because I doubted what he had been showing me.
But because there was something uniquely nasty about a woman trying to drag you into a story she had not earned the right to tell, especially before nine in the morning when my coffee had not even had the decency to exist yet.
Kendra texted again before I could decide whether to throw my phone or laugh.
Kendra: I knew it was about him.
Kendra: Don’t make up a problem if it’s not one, but you need to ask.
That part was fair.
I swung my legs out of bed and sat there for a second in my sleep shirt with my hair wrapped and my mouth already tight.
The worst part was, I didn’t actually think Micah was out here doing anything current.
My intuition had been too settled with him for too long to let me leap that far.
But old mess had a way of staining a morning anyway, especially when another woman decided to drag her hurt into the open like it was everybody’s business.
I needed to speak with him, and texting wasn’t going to do it.
I hit FaceTime instead.
He answered on the fourth ring, and the second his face came up on my screen, I could tell he was at work already. White shirt. Tie on. Office light. That composed banker face he wore before nine-thirty when people were already trying him.
Then he saw my face and his whole expression changed.
“What happened?”
His concern softened me a little against my will.
I angled the phone. “You tell me.”
He frowned. “Talia.”
“Look at your little friend, Candace Johnson’s, post.”
His eyes changed, but he stayed quiet as he reached for his tablet and looked.
Then Micah went still in that way he did when something had gotten under his skin fast and hard, but he was refusing to let it show.
“Are you serious?” he said.
“So it is about you.”
His jaw tightened.
“That shit is old,” he said immediately. “Old as hell. And there was never anything real there.”
I looked at him carefully, because I wanted to hear how he said the truth.
Micah exhaled once through his nose and leaned back in his chair like he needed the extra inch of space not to say something reckless before breakfast.
“She was somebody I talked to for a minute,” he said.
The answer came out controlled. Too controlled. Like he had a client on the other side of the glass and did not want his voice carrying through the office.
“Talia, hold on.”
He stood, crossed out of frame, and I heard his office door close with a soft click.
When he came back, his tie was still straight, his face was still calm, but something in his eyes had changed. Less banker. More man.
“Now,” he said, settling back into his chair. “Let me say this how I need to say it. I ain’t never been with Candace. We talked for a minute. That’s it. Never kicked it. Never got serious. Never got close like that.”
That helped.
Only a little.
“She wanted to,” he added.
I bet she did.
“But I got weird vibes from her, and I left it alone. Stopped hitting her up. Stopped responding. It was so long ago, I don’t even know what the hell she thinks she has to be mad about.”
The heat in me hadn’t fully gone anywhere yet. Jealousy was ugly like that. It could hear reassurance and still want to throw one plate before it sat down.
“She sounds bitter,” I said.
“She is bitter.” His eyes stayed on mine through the screen. “And she’s also irrelevant.”
I studied his face another second.
“Talia.”
“What?”
“There is no secret woman.” His voice lowered then, not softer exactly, just more direct.
“Not from now. Not recently. Not while I’ve been dealing with you.
Candace is old noise. I never gave her no dick, never gave her no claim, and I damn sure never gave her anything that should have her feeling comfortable posting about me. ”
That landed somewhere lower than my pride wanted it to.
I looked away from the phone for a second, out toward my bedroom window where the light was still pale and innocent enough to pretend women weren’t out here posting their hurt before coffee.
“Okay,” I said.
He watched me for a beat. “You don’t sound okay.”
“I’m getting there.”
That got the smallest shift out of his mouth. Not quite a smile. More like he appreciated that I wasn’t doing that thing people did when they pretended not to feel what they had plainly just felt.
“You can ask me directly when something like this comes up,” he said. “Don’t sit with it.”
That was both fair and annoyingly wise.
“I know.”
His office phone lit up on the desk beside him at the same time his laptop chimed.
He glanced over, then back at me, already irritated.
“I’ve got a meeting in two minutes,” he said. “But we’re not leaving this here.”
That part warmed me.
Even through the leftover sting.
“I know,” I said.
His eyes searched my face one more time, like he was trying to make sure I really did know and hadn’t just defaulted into politeness because the man had on a tie and a schedule.
Then he said, “She’s old news. You’re not.”
Before I could answer it properly, he looked off-screen and muttered, “Give me one minute,” to whoever had knocked.
His eyes came back to mine. “I gotta go. But I’m not done with this.”
I nodded once. “Go to your meeting.”
His face softened just a little at that.
“Calling you later.”
“Okay.”
Then the screen went black.
I sat there on the edge of my bed with the phone still in my hand and my hair still wrapped, the ugly little remains of jealousy cooling into something I could finally look at straight.
I got up and carried my phone into the kitchen, set it on the counter, and started coffee with more force than necessary.
The house was quiet except for the soft hiss of the machine and the little sounds of morning gathering itself around me.
My nerves still felt touched off, but not enough to drag me into foolishness if I had any say in it.
And that was when my mother’s voice came back to me.
Don’t start suffering imaginary tragedies before anything has even gone wrong. Let the thing be what it is while it’s being kind to you.
I leaned my hip against the counter and closed my eyes for a second.
Candace was bitterness in public. Micah was a man at work, irritated, direct, and very clear about where he stood.
And me?
I was standing in my kitchen trying not to let one jealous woman pull me backward into old instincts I had already been trying to outgrow.
So I let myself breathe.
Let myself remember what had actually been true between me and Micah lately.
His consistency. His attention. The way he had answered instead of dodging.
The way his first concern when he saw my face had not been protecting himself.
It had been figuring out what had hurt me, what I needed from him, and how to make sure I understood exactly what had happened.
He had stopped what he was doing in the middle of his workday to give me the truth before my mind could turn somebody else’s mess into evidence against him.
That mattered.
More than Candace’s little raggedy post ever could.
By the time my coffee was ready, the sharpest edge of it had passed. Not all the way, because I wasn’t a saint, but enough for me to see the situation for what it was instead of what an old fear might have tried to dress it up as.
I picked up my mug and my phone, looked once more at Candace’s post, and then blocked her.
There.
Be ghetto by your damn self.
Then I went to get dressed for work feeling steadier than I had fifteen minutes earlier, still a little unsettled, still a little warm under the skin, but not spiraling. And maybe that was all I needed to do for now.