Chapter 2 #3
“I don’t know,” Talia said, her eyes still on me. “Maybe we been using it exactly right.”
That made me smile before I could help it.
Bryce looked delighted. Kendra looked interested. Devon looked like he wanted to sell tickets.
And just like that, the room narrowed.
Her perfume was closer now, warm against whatever she’d had in her glass, something smooth and expensive sitting right at her skin. I could hear the music, the laughter, Bryce still running his mouth, but her thumb shifted once against the side of my hand and everything else got pushed to the edge.
“You’re taliajanae,” I said.
One perfectly arched brow, the same reddish-brown shade as her hair, lifted.
“And you,” she said, letting her gaze move over me once before it came back up, “are afterfiveMicah.”
The way she looked at me should not have done what it did, but my body caught it before my pride could pretend otherwise.
“You noticed?”
Her mouth curved. “I notice a lot.”
“Mmmm.” I took a sip and let my eyes hold hers one beat longer than manners required. “That sounds dangerous.”
“Depends,” she said, “on who’s watching.”
Kendra made a little sound under her breath.
Devon muttered, “Aw, nigga,” into his glass.
I ignored both of them.
Bryce, clearly satisfied with the chaos he had introduced into the evening, drifted back toward another cluster.
Devon got pulled away by the couple he’d come in with.
Kendra stayed just long enough to make sure I understood her friend came with protection, standards, and a witness, then eased off too.
Good.
Now it was just me and Talia, standing close enough for whatever I had imagined about her to either fall apart or get worse.
“You gon’ tell me,” she said, glancing down into her glass before lifting those amber eyes back to mine, “why you look vaguely relieved?”
I laughed under my breath. She was quicker in person too.
“That obvious?”
“A little.”
I looked at her properly then. No point wasting the chance.
“Because,” I said, lowering my voice enough for the moment to tighten between us, “you actually look like yourself.”
She blinked once, then smiled slow.
“Damn,” she said. “That bad out here?”
“You have no idea.”
She laughed, and the sound got into me before I could guard against it.
It came from somewhere warm, low enough to stay between us, easy enough to make me want to be the reason for it again.
Then her shoulder dropped a little, her posture settling, the neckline of that dress framing soft light-brown skin at her throat and chest. I tightened my grip on the glass like that was going to help anything.
“I should be offended,” she said.
“You’re not.”
“No,” she admitted. “I’m not.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I know exactly what you mean.”
She’d seen enough too.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You met a few men whose whole personality looked better on the app.”
Talia smiled, slow and knowing. “A few?”
“That bad?”
She took a sip from her glass, eyes still on mine over the rim. “Let’s just say I’ve met enough polished representatives of themselves to last me through winter.”
That got a laugh out of me.
“Polished representatives,” I repeated. “That’s nasty.”
“It’s accurate.” She tipped her head. “Men get online, learn three therapy words, post two black-and-white selfies and a quote about healing, and now I’m supposed to believe they know how to love somebody.”
“Damn.”
“I’m lying?”
“No.” I shook my head. “You not lying.”
Her mouth curved again, and this time I caught the quick little bite of her bottom lip before she let it go, like she was pleased I’d kept up.
That got to me too.
Plenty women were fine. Talia had range, and she knew how to use it.
“What about you?” she asked. “What’s your version?”
“My version of what?”
“Disappointment.” Her tone stayed easy, but her eyes didn’t. “What made you look relieved when you realized my face matched my face?”
I laughed under my breath and looked down into my glass for a second, mostly to keep my body from telling on me in the middle of the room.
“You really want the honest answer?”
She tipped her head. “I usually do.”
Of course she did.
I took another sip. “Too many women online look one way and walk into the room as somebody else.”
“That’s real.”
“Too much editing. Too much curation. Too much performance.” I met her eyes again. “At some point, it stops feeling like you getting to know a woman and starts feeling like you got handed a campaign.”
That made her laugh again, low and warm.
“A campaign is nasty work,” she said.
“You know I’m right.”
“I do.” She shifted a little closer to the bar behind her, settling in without giving up the space between us. “Women do it too. Men just act like y’all don’t notice.”
“We notice.”
“No.” Her eyes smiled then, bright and animated in a way that made the room go a little dim around her. “Y’all notice beauty. Not all of y’all notice construction.”
I stared at her for half a beat too long.
That was a hell of a line.
And she knew it.
“You always talk like this?” I asked.
“Like what?”
“Like you got somewhere to put the thought before it come out.”
One brow lifted. “Is that your way of calling me smart?”
“It’s my way of saying most people talk too damn much and still don’t say anything.”
That earned me a real laugh, one that tipped her head back and showed me the slender line of her neck. When her eyes opened again, they were amused and keen enough to make me want to stand right there feeding her lines just to watch what she did with them.
“See?” she said. “That’s the problem now.”
“What is?”
“Everybody performing. Online. In person. On dates. At work. At brunch. At charity events.” She glanced around the room, then back at me. “Half these folks don’t know if they networking, dating, or auditioning.”
“You left out lying.”
Her mouth softened around a smile. “That too.”
I looked around with her this time.
A brother near the bar laughing too hard at his own joke. A woman in a white set giving one man her face and another man her eyes. Two niggas in expensive sneakers talking crypto like they had invented risk. A woman by the wall posing for a story she was pretending somebody else told her to make.
“See them?” Talia murmured, barely moving her mouth.
“Which one?”
“The one by the ficus.”
I followed her gaze. “Man in the tan jacket?”
“Mmmhmm.”
“He definitely say ‘tap in’ too much.”
She coughed out a laugh into her glass. “And thinks a rooftop is a personality.”
“That’s ugly.”
“That’s Pittsburgh.”
I looked toward another corner. “Shorty in white been giving three different men the same laugh for fifteen minutes.”
Talia’s eyes flashed. “The same laugh?”
“The exact same laugh.”
“Damn.” She shook her head. “You’re observant.”
“I told you.”
She looked back at me then, more amused than before. More open too.
Recognition settled between us alongside the attraction. The ease of meeting somebody who clocked the room the way you did. Who could move between humor and intelligence without straining for either one. Who didn’t need the conversation dumbed down or dressed up to hold it.
“You come to these things a lot?” I asked.
“Enough to know what they are.” She looked around once more, then back at me. “You?”
“Same.”
“And yet,” she said, narrowing her eyes just a little with amusement, “we never actually met.”
“According to you, that’s the internet done right.”
There was something about the way she looked at me when she liked an answer.
“You don’t agree?”
“I do. But I can’t deny the internet has brought some people together who needed to be.”
Our eyes held.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I think the internet gets a little too much credit most of the time. People start feeling familiar before they earn it.”
“True.”
“You can know somebody’s favorite bourbon, favorite pose, favorite quote about healing, and still have no idea how he carries silence.”
I went still enough inside to feel it.
That was another one.
Another line that made me want to know what she sounded like with even less room between us.
“And how do I carry silence?” I asked.
She looked at me then.
Really looked. At my mouth first. Then my eyes. Then back again. Like she was deciding how honest she wanted to be this early.
The room moved around us. Music, glassware, bodies, laughter. All of it drifted somewhere behind her.
Finally she said, “Like you know exactly what you’re holding back. Because what you have to say and give is only for the worthy.”
I smiled because I had to do something. She read me.
“You’re dangerous.”
“Mmm.” Her lips pressed together, then softened again. “Potentially.”
There it was again. That mouth. That little pause before she answered, like she actually let a thought settle before she handed it over.
It shouldn’t have been that rare.
It was.
The dress had me. The skin, too. Those eyes could have been a problem all by themselves.
But the substance was what kept pulling me closer.
The ease of it. The fact that talking to her didn’t feel like dragging somebody through their own self-presentation and hoping a real person fell out the bottom.
Talia was beautiful, bright, and fully in possession of her own mind.
That did more to me than I liked admitting.
“I’m serious,” she said, softer now. “Most people don’t know how to have a conversation that isn’t really just a monologue with eye contact. They don’t know how to give little pieces of themselves and see if the other person is careful enough to hold them.”
That one got me.
Because it was true, and because by then, I already knew exactly what she meant.
“That mind of yours,” I said.
Her mouth curved. “It’s something, huh?”
She laughed a little, but her eyes stayed on mine, waiting. Like she wanted to know if I could handle that part of her too.
I damn sure wanted to try.
I looked at her for a second and let the thought settle between us.
She didn’t rush to fill it.
She held the pause like she knew what to do with quiet. Held my eyes. Smiled with them before she smiled with her mouth.
Yeah. That did it.