Chapter 1 #3
My Bluetooth speaker on the dresser was playing low, something smooth and grown from the playlist I always reached for when I was getting myself together right. Sade, Amel Larrieux, a little Maxwell slipping in between. Music with silk in it. Music that didn’t rush me.
The lamps were on instead of the overhead light, warming the room up in all the right places.
Outside my windows, the city was fading from gold into blue.
My bare shoulders caught the mirror light every time I leaned closer.
My gold hoops waited beside my bracelet and rings like the last pieces of a language I knew by heart.
There was something sacred in it.
Not the dress itself. Not the makeup. The care.
The quiet ritual of tending to myself with tenderness instead of urgency. Lotion. Oil. Liner. Gloss. The fact that even before a room saw me, I had already seen myself clearly.
That was the part men rarely understood.
The glam was never just for them. The silk was never just for them. This was devotion long before it was seduction.
My phone buzzed again, this time from the group.
A fresh post. Somebody asking who all was going tonight, as if that question ever meant only one thing.
The comments said otherwise.
I’ll be there.
Might slide through after dinner.
Only if the playlist was not trash this time.
Who else coming?
And underneath all of that, the second language. The one everybody understood.
Who pulling up?
Who’s looking good?
Who am I finally about to see in person?
Who might actually be worth the drive downtown and the heel on my foot?
I scrolled without needing to. A few names I knew. A few men I’d exchanged words with online. A few women I liked enough to hug in public. A couple of the usual peacocks already showing their ass under the flyer. Nothing there changed my pulse.
Not yet.
And still, when I opened Threads, then Twitter after that, moving through the same little digital ecosystem where everybody’s face got familiar long before their body did, I felt that faint, annoying edge of possibility again.
That world had layers.
Facebook gave you the polished version. Headshots. Wins. Panels. Community. Bios written like little mission statements.
Twitter gave you sharper cuts. Humor. Politics. Petty observations. The flavor of somebody’s mind when they forgot to package themselves too neatly.
Threads gave you the softer stuff. Food. Mood. Music. Little thoughts. The everyday residue between bigger performances.
By the time you met somebody in person, you usually already knew their face, their name, their opinions, what made them laugh, the kind of comments they left, whether they were vain or thoughtful or loud or trying too hard not to be.
You knew everything and next to nothing.
That was the whole trap.
You could know a man’s politics and still not know how he looked at a woman up close.
You could know the range of his opinions and still not know what his cologne did when he leaned in.
You could know his jokes and still not know whether his energy in person matched the life he had been curating online.
That mismatch had become the whole problem.
I set the phone down and reached for my liner.
By the time I finished my face, slipped into the dress, fastened my bracelet, slid my hoops into my ears, and stacked my rings on my fingers, it was a little after seven.
I stepped into my heels last.
I looked like a woman somebody should take seriously and touch carefully. That was enough for me.
Kendra called right on cue as I grabbed my clutch.
“Tell me you dressed.”
“I’m dressed.”
“Tell me you look good.”
“Kendra…I always look good.”
She laughed low. “I know that’s right.”
I moved through the downstairs, cutting lights off one by one but leaving the one near the foyer lit. “You doing the absolute most.”
“No, I’m doing what friends are supposed to do when one of them starts acting like a beautiful recluse with trust issues.”
“I do not have trust issues.”
“You have pattern recognition.”
“That sounds better.”
“I know.” I could hear traffic behind her, trap music low in her car. “You leaving now?”
“About to.”
“Good. And don’t get down there acting fake shy. I’m not saying marry nobody. I’m saying come outside and let life look at you.”
I paused with my hand on the doorknob.
For a second, the house went still around me. The city beyond my windows was sliding into night. Somewhere downtown, a room full of familiar strangers was gathering under low light, good liquor, expensive perfume, and all the little hopes people pretended not to bring with them.
I adjusted my grip on my clutch and locked the door behind me.
“I’m just going for a drink,” I said.
Kendra laughed like she knew better. Maybe she did.
I took the elevator down, stepped into the garage, and crossed to my Lexus with the kind of calm I’d spent years cultivating. The engine turned over smoothly. Destiny’s Child started bumping. My hands settled on the wheel, lavender against leather.
As I pulled out into the evening, I told myself I was heading toward a room. Not a moment. Not a man. Not anything with the power to shift me. Just a room.
Still, somewhere under the silk of my dress and the gloss on my mouth, something hopeful opened anyway.