Chapter 2 #2
I parked, checked myself once in the rearview, and got out.
The evening had settled warm over the city.
Men in button-downs and expensive sneakers.
Women in dresses, tailored sets, banging heels, slick ponytails with baby hairs, curls, locs, perfume moving past in rich little waves.
You could always tell when a room had drawn Black professionals who cared what they looked like.
The whole air changed. Not stiff. Just intentional.
Everybody there for community, maybe, but also to be seen, and to get a good look.
I stepped inside and the music reached me first, a low, pulsing rhythm that seemed to live in the walls. Then came the glow of amber light washing over glassware, brown skin, easy laughter, and conversations rising and breaking in little pockets around the room.
The bar was already lined two deep.
Devon was near the entrance talking to a couple I half knew from the group. He looked up when he saw me and lifted a brow like a man taking credit for somebody else’s decision-making.
“You made it.”
“Against my better judgment.”
“That’s usually when your life improves.”
I shook hands, nodded at the couple, accepted a clap on the shoulder from a dude I recognized from three different panel photos and one disastrous thread about homeownership, then let my gaze move.
This was the part I never admitted I still enjoyed, no matter how tired I claimed to be of all of this.
The room before it settled into itself. The first scan. The quiet little thrill of possibility moving through the air before anybody said the wrong thing.
Faces I knew from profile pictures floated into recognition one by one.
Some matched. Some almost did. Some didn’t enough for me to waste a full thought on the disappointment.
A woman from Threads waved. Somebody else from Facebook smiled too hard.
Two women I’d seen under the same event flyer looked over together, then away when I didn’t hold it.
Typical.
I took the old fashioned Devon handed me and turned slightly toward the bar, letting my eyes move over the room without searching too hard for anything in particular.
That was when I saw her.
At first, it was only her profile. One hand lifted while she laughed at something the woman beside her said.
Gold at her ears. A pixie cut catching auburn every time she moved beneath the light.
A black dress fitted where it needed to be, skimming her body like it knew better than to beg for attention and still collected every bit of mine.
Pale, bright nails curved around the stem of her glass.
Then she turned.
The first thing that hit me was relief.
She looked like herself.
In a world where half the people you met online showed up carrying a completely different face into real life, Talia Vaughn looked exactly like the woman I’d seen in pictures and somehow more alive than all of them.
Same face. Same mouth. Same observant light in her eyes that made her comments feel like they came with a raised brow.
Talia Vaughn.
I knew the face. Of course I did.
The first time I really noticed her had been under some thread about dating, delusion, and Black professionals embarrassing themselves in public.
Half the comments were predictable. Too polished.
Too loud. Too eager to sound right. Then Talia dropped in with one dry little line that cut through all of it, and I remember thinking two things at once: she was fine, and she had actual sense.
After that, I started noticing her more.
The half-smile in pictures where she looked like somebody had caught her between thoughts.
The humor that landed better on Twitter than it ever did in the Facebook group, probably because she didn’t have to soften the edges over there.
The way she could say something light and still leave a little sting in it when the conversation deserved one.
On Threads, she had the kind of presence that made people feel like they knew her. A few soft pictures. A few funny observations. Enough opinion to remind you she had a mind of her own, but never enough access to make you think she was careless with herself.
I kept my distance anyway.
I had already learned what screens could do for a person. Beauty online didn’t mean much by itself anymore, and chemistry in comments damn sure wasn’t enough to trust.
None of that had prepared me for her body in motion.
Or the way her face changed when she laughed in real life.
Or how obvious it was that everything about her had been chosen with intention, from the dress to the angle of her earrings to the way she stood there with one hip settled like she knew her body, liked her body, and had no need to convince anybody else to agree.
She was fine in a way that didn’t ask permission.
I took a sip from my glass because my body had already started responding, a low pull of awareness moving through me before I could talk it down.
I was too grown to be standing in the middle of a crowded room acting like attraction had never found me before, but Talia Vaughn had my attention in a way that made stillness feel like effort.
Devon followed my line of sight and let out a low sound.
“Oh.”
I didn’t look at him. I should have, just to keep from making it obvious, but my eyes stayed where they were.
“Oh?” I asked.
“That’s what we on tonight?”
“We not on anything.”
“Sure.”
He dragged the word out like he already knew I was lying.
And maybe I was.
Because even then, before she ever looked my way, before I knew if her voice in person would match the one I’d given her in my head, before I knew if she’d be warm, cool, amused, or entirely unimpressed by me, my body had already leaned in her direction.
That was the first sign.
I wanted her to be real.
Talia turned slightly toward the room, scanning the way people did when they knew enough faces to expect one of them to claim their attention sooner or later. Her friend said something, and Talia’s mouth curved again, easy and bright enough to pull my gaze lower before I could stop it.
Hips.
And more than enough ass to make a man briefly forget every self-improvement podcast he’d ever suffered through.
I looked away on principle, and because I was still raised right, even if my thoughts were already acting like they had been raised somewhere else entirely.
“That her from the group?” Devon asked, because he knew damn well.
Somebody near the bar called Talia’s name, and she turned that way first. Then her eyes slid past one shoulder, over another, and landed on me and stayed there.
The recognition was immediate, quiet, and somehow heavier because she didn’t rush past it. She knew my face, at least. Knew enough to let her gaze hold mine for a second that made the room feel like it had shifted around us.
That was the strange thing about knowing someone online. Familiarity could arrive before touch, before voice, before any proof that the chemistry you imagined had somewhere real to go.
For one second, neither of us moved.
Then Bryce Nash appeared out of nowhere with his host smile on, the same one he’d been using all night to pull people into handshakes, introductions, and conversations they might have avoided if left to themselves.
“Micah,” Bryce called, already waving me over. “Come here for a second.”
“See, this is why I don’t trust y’all,” he said, clapping me once on the back before steering me toward her side of the room, his neck-length dreads falling into his face. “You mean to tell me y’all be in the same comments and never met for real?”
Talia watched us come over, her mouth already curved like she had heard enough to know Bryce was about to do the most.
“Apparently not,” she said, low and easy.
Bryce looked between us with theatrical disgust. “This city too small for this.” He turned toward her friend. “Kendra, I’m borrowing your girl for two seconds.”
Kendra gave me a quick once-over. Dark mocha skin, long dark hair over her shoulders, pretty in that striking, put-together way that let you know she probably missed very little and forgave even less.
The kind of friend a man respected immediately because getting past her by accident was not going to happen.
But Talia had most of my attention.
Up close, she was badder than her pictures could have prepared me for. Better skin. Better mouth too, soft and full and glossed in a way that put kissing her in my head before I could even pretend to be sensible.
But it was her eyes that really got me.
Online, I had noticed the color and half-assumed the camera was helping, because filters had earned that kind of suspicion. In person, there was no mistaking them. Amber, clear, and steady enough to make me feel like she was seeing more than I had planned on showing.
That look made me want to do something foolish. Say too much too soon. Step closer than the room allowed. Let my voice drop into a place too intimate for a first conversation with Bryce standing right there, pleased with himself for making this happen.
I didn’t do any of that.
I stood there with my drink in my hand and enough sense in my body to keep still, even with her perfume making that harder than it needed to be.
It sat close to her skin, expensive and warm, the kind of scent that didn’t announce itself across a room but made a man curious once he got near enough to catch it.
She was fine as fuck up close, in every way a screen could never be trusted to explain.
“Micah,” she said, like she knew exactly what had happened from across the room.
“Talia.”
Her hand was cool from the glass when I took it, soft and smaller than mine, her rings pressing lightly against my fingers. It should have been a quick handshake. Simple. Polite. The kind of thing people did when someone forced an introduction at a mixer.
Neither one of us let go right away.
Bryce looked entirely too pleased with himself. “I don’t know how this took so long. We officially failed at the internet.”