Chapter 21
twenty-one
. . .
By Friday evening, the worst part of Tuesday had dulled, but it had not disappeared.
Just lost enough of its sting that I could hold it without flinching every five seconds.
Candace’s post had come and gone the way ugly little public things often did. Kendra, of course, had gone digging through the comments like she’d been hired by a network, but most people were saying the same broad, tired thing.
Niggas always moving dirty.
A few laughing emojis. A couple women swearing they knew exactly the type. Nobody naming Micah directly and nobody really having enough to do much with it.
It should have made me feel fully better.
It didn’t.
Not because I thought Candace mattered now. She didn’t. She was old noise in a loud package. But old noise could still reach for new things if it caught them tender.
Micah had done his part.
That mattered.
He’d come by later that day without fanfare, let himself into my kitchen with a bag from the drugstore and that look on his face that said he was here to take care of something, not argue it into submission.
Tea. Chocolate. Pain relievers I already had and was still touched he thought to bring anyway.
A heating pad because my cramps had decided to arrive with theatrical timing and no home training.
He’d tucked me into the corner of my couch, wrapped the throw around my legs, warmed the kettle himself, and sat there holding me while I leaned into him and tried not to feel silly for how much his steadiness got to me.
“There’s nobody else,” he’d said, voice low and plain, one hand moving slow over my shin under the blanket. “No secret woman. No old flame still breathing. No current mess. Nothing.”
I believed him and still felt bruised, which was an altogether ruder thing for a heart to do than I thought I deserved.
By Thursday, I had stopped actively pressing at it.
Mostly.
That was progress.
I stood in front of my mirror in a black halter dress that fit close through my waist and hips and made my legs look like I had paid extra for them.
My pixie was laid close and glossy, auburn and bronze catching softly when I turned my head.
Gold hoops. Bangles. Body oil worked into my skin until it looked kissed by light.
Ruby Woo on my lips. Perfume that stayed close until a man had done enough to deserve it.
I wasn’t dressing for a first impression. Micah already knew what I looked like. Already knew what my body felt like.
Already knew what my mouth sounded like when it forgot to behave.
Now I was dressing for a man who had gotten used to all that and still looked at me like it kept surprising him.
That did something to a woman.
My phone buzzed on the vanity.
Micah: I’ll be there in five, baby.
My mouth curved before I could stop it.
Me: You sound like you’ve missed me.
His answer came quick.
Micah: Always.
The night air had a little late-summer softness to it when I stepped outside. Not cool. Just forgiving enough to make bare shoulders feel intentional.
Micah was already at the curb, one forearm thrown over the steering wheel, low top neat, fade sharp, diamond stud catching the streetlight when he looked up and saw me coming.
He got out before I reached the car.
“Damn,” he said softly.
I smiled because honestly, a woman could get spoiled if a man did that every time he saw her.
“That’s all?”
“That’s what survived.”
He took my hand, turned me once like he had a private right to inspect the work, then pulled me in close enough to kiss the corner of my mouth before opening the door.
The place he took me sat high enough over Downtown to make the city feel almost arranged for us. Not rooftop exactly, but all windows and low amber light and the kind of room that made people sit a little nearer each other because the atmosphere had already decided intimacy was the point.
We got drinks first. A lemon drop for me. Bourbon for him.
The first half hour went easy, like it always did now. Work stories. A stupid post from The Link Up that had both of us rolling our eyes. A little teasing. A little real talking tucked under it.
He told me one of his cousins had already asked if he was bringing “his little internet friend” to the next family thing, and I laughed so hard I almost spilled my drink.
“I’m your internet friend? Ouch.”
“That’s family for you. Blame Ciara. She’s the one thinking she knows everything and spreading it.”
I thought about my own family for a moment.
“Nicole would be the same way if she wasn’t always busy with Jalen and the kids. Even now, I’m hoping she can do Labor Day with us, but she said all those years of spending more holidays with our side have her trying to create balance.” I lifted one shoulder. “Whatever that means.”
There was no sadness in my voice.
Or I hoped there wasn’t.
The truth was, Nicole was happy and well cared for. We just missed her during the holidays.
Micah watched me quietly. “Damn.”
“Yeah, so I have to catch her in between the in-betweens. But I suppose I get it. Marriage is a partnership.”
“It is, but it doesn’t mean you don’t miss the ones caught up in one.”
“That too.”
I shook my head and looked out over the city for a second, then back at him.
“Speaking of Labor Day,” I said carefully, “you have any plans?”
His eyes lifted.
“Depends.”
“On?”
“Who’s asking?”
I cut my eyes at him over the rim of my glass. “I am.”
He sat back in his chair and looked at me fully. “What you got in mind?”
“My parents are doing the usual,” I said. “Food. Deck. My father pretending he’s not showing off at the grill. My mother being the one who brings it all together. Family. Noise.” I glanced down at my drink, then back up. “You can come, if you want.”
The second the words were out, I felt how much they meant.
It wasn’t just food.
Not to me.
It was my people. My world.
The place I went when I needed noise and softness and the kind of belonging that predated all the versions of myself I had built for everybody else.
Micah understood that too. I could see it in the way his face lost some of its teasing.
“You serious?” he asked.
“Why would I say it if I wasn’t?”
That made his mouth shift.
“I’d love to meet your family.”
We ordered food after that. Shared truffle fries because he acted like he wasn’t hungry until mine came and suddenly my plate was public property. He kept one hand low at the back of my chair or brushing my bare knee under the table just often enough to stay in my body.
I liked that too much, which was exactly where the night was sitting when I heard his name and looked up to see Bryce and his scraggly locs coming toward us with that same easy smile he always wore, like every room was already open to him if he stepped into it with enough confidence.
“Well, damn,” he said. “The Link Up really be outside.”
Micah laughed and clasped his hand. “What’s good?”
Bryce, and the locs he should go on and cut off looked at me next. “Talia.”
“Bryce.”
His eyes moved between us, quick and knowing, then his mouth curved. “Good to see y’all off the timeline.”
Just a simple little opening, the kind that came easy when two people had already been half-noticed online and finally stood in front of somebody together in real life.
But because of Tuesday, because of Candace and the way one messy woman had already managed to put a scratch on something I cared about, because Micah had already shown me once how careful he could get when the outside started looking too hard, I felt myself brace before he even answered.
Micah smiled easy.
“Yeah,” he said. “We just came out for a drink.”
That was it.
Bryce kept talking, and the conversation moved on like nothing had happened. Another mixer coming up. Somebody from The Link Up getting engaged. Some rooftop event next month I already knew I wasn’t attending if the flyer copy was as corny as he made it sound.
I smiled when I needed to, answered when the moment called for it, even laughed once.
But under all of that, Micah’s words worked at me.
We just came out for a drink.
He hadn’t lied. It’s true that we did.
The words were small enough to pass as nothing, polite enough to sound harmless, but I felt the distance in them immediately. Felt how neatly they matched the carefulness from before.
Tuesday it had been she ain’t nobody to worry about.
Tonight it was this.
By the time Bryce moved on, I still wore a smile; I just didn’t feel it anymore.
Micah looked back at me and touched the inside of my knee under the table like nothing had shifted.
Maybe for him, nothing had.
“You good?” he asked.
I reached for my drink before answering. “Yeah.”
And that was true enough on the surface to stand, because the ugly part was, I didn’t even know what I had expected him to say.
We had not sat down and formally named this.
Whatever this was.
We had not announced anything to each other or the world, and we had not used titles big enough to make other people behave accordingly.
But still.
Candace had already gotten loud in public, and even though Micah had held me on my couch and promised there was no one else, the bruise from that had not fully faded.
Ten minutes earlier, I had invited him into my family’s space, into the noise and warmth and history of my parents’ house.
We had been spending almost every night together.
He knew the intimate parts of me now, the way I sounded when I came on his dick, the way I looked the next morning in one of his shirts, the quiet pieces of me that didn’t make it to the timeline.
So when the moment opened in public, I felt the absence harder.
I didn’t need a spectacle. Bryce didn’t matter. I just wanted Micah not to shrink us down to two people out for drinks when I had already started making room for him in places that mattered.
That was the part sitting wrong in me.