Chapter 5
five
. . .
By the time I left the bank Tuesday evening, downtown had gone blue at the edges and my phone felt heavier than it should have in my pocket.
Talia and I had texted enough after lunch to do real damage.
Thursday was set. Mercy House. Seven-thirty.
She had told me not to say anything out of pocket when I saw her.
I hadn’t promised. That had stayed with me all afternoon, right alongside the little mm she kept dropping like she didn’t know what it did to a man once he had heard her real voice in a room.
The rest of the day had gone the way work usually went when I forced it to.
Numbers. Meetings. Deadlines. A client call that should’ve been an email.
One deal summary that needed reworking because a business owner kept confusing optimism with evidence.
None of it hard enough to fail at. None of it strong enough to push her out of my head.
That was irritating.
By five-thirty, I had answered enough, signed enough, revised enough, and told myself enough lies about focus.
The floor had thinned out. Jackets disappeared.
Elevator dings came closer together. Somebody near reception laughed with that tired little freedom people found only when the workday was finally loosening its grip.
I shut down my laptop, slid it into my tote, and looked once through the glass wall of my office at the city catching itself in twilight.
Thursday was set. That should have made things easier.
It did not.
Because now there was something waiting on me, and I was too grown to pretend that didn’t change a man’s whole day.
Devon appeared in my doorway without knocking, one shoulder against the frame, tie loose, expression already annoying.
“You leaving, or are you about to sit here staring at the skyline like a nigga in a luxury cologne ad?”
I looked at him. “You got a woman.”
“And still found time to check on you.” He pushed off the frame and stepped inside. “You text her?”
I should have denied it.
Instead, I zipped my bag and said, “Mind your own business.”
That made him bark a laugh. “Oh, it’s bad.”
“It’s not bad.”
“You saying that too fast.” He crossed his arms. “That’s the one from the mixer?”
I stood. “Devon.”
He held up both hands. “Aight. Aight. But you do look different.”
“Different how?”
He shrugged. “Less aggravated at the world.”
“That sounds made up.”
“I’m in a relationship as you keep reminding me. I know what a man look like when he got a little interest in his bloodstream.”
I grabbed my jacket off the chair and slipped it on. “You real poetic when you need to be in somebody else’s business.”
“And you real dry when somebody clock you.”
I shook my head, but I was smiling despite myself, which only made him worse.
“See?” he said. “Exactly.”
“I’m leaving.”
“Good. Go home. Eat something. Put on some old R&B and stop acting surprised you like a woman.”
That got a laugh out of me in spite of my better judgment.
“You are very irritating.”
“I’m also right.”
He was still grinning when I walked out.
Outside, the city met me in stages. Glass.
Headlights. Warm restaurant windows. The evening crowd moving with more life in it than the morning one ever did.
I got in the Benz and sat there for a second before starting it, one hand on the wheel, the other resting near the phone in the console like I had lost some private argument with myself and was waiting to see how bad the damage was.
No new message from Talia.
I started my Benz and pulled out of the garage into traffic that moved just slow enough to make a man think too much.
On the drive home, I told myself to leave the thread alone.
That had become a habit quickly, which was its own problem.
I didn’t need to reread what she said. I knew it already. The rhythm of it. The little intelligence tucked into the lines. The way she could flirt and still sound like a woman with something real behind the face she brought to a room.
That was the thing. The app had gone from being a place where I read her to a place where I remembered her.
There was a difference.
I stopped to get some gas, so by the time I got to my condo, the sky had gone deeper and the city lights had taken over.
I let myself in, dropped my keys in the black tray by the door, and stood there for a second with my jacket still on, the room opening around me in low lamp light and evening quiet.
My place usually settled me the minute I got inside.
Dark wood. Leather. Glass. Art I’d bought on purpose. Music that lived in the walls when I wanted it to. A kitchen I actually used. Sheets worth touching. The kind of space that said a man lived there intentionally and had no interest in apologizing for comfort.
Tonight it almost worked.
Almost.
I shrugged out of the jacket, hung it over the back of a chair, and walked to the kitchen more from habit than hunger.
The fridge offered salmon, leftover rice, asparagus, and a container of something I had every intention of throwing away tomorrow and not tonight.
I stood there holding the door open, staring into it like the answer to something might’ve been hiding behind the lemon vinaigrette.
It wasn’t.
I was reaching for the salmon when my phone rang.
I smiled before I answered, which was already a bad sign.
“What.”
“You always answer the phone like somebody interrupted a hostage negotiation?”
Ciara and I were more than a few years apart, but closer than most people ever got. That was my ace, my alibi, and the keeper of enough of my business to bury me twice if she ever got bored.
I put her on speaker and set the phone on the counter while I slid the plate into the microwave. “What you want?”
“See? That. That attitude. Mama said call your brother and make sure he remember Sunday exists.”
I laughed under my breath. “Mama can call me.”
“No. Because she wants me to ease into it before she starts asking if you coming alone and whether she should make enough mac and cheese for sadness.”
The microwave hummed softly.
“Tell her yes,” I said. “And she can save the dramatics for church.”
“Mmm. That sounds like a man who got something to do.”
I rolled my eyes even though she couldn’t see it. “You called me.”
“And now I’m glad I did.” I heard her moving around on the other end, cabinet doors opening, a television turned low, then her daughter, Ari, my niece, somewhere in the background.
“Who you talking to?” the little voice asked.
“Your uncle,” Ciara said.
“Uncle Micah!” Ari yelled. “You still don’t got no wife?”
I leaned back against the counter and laughed, full and real this time.
Ciara cackled. “Kids just be telling the truth.”
“Tell her mind her business.”
“Tell him I said that is my business,” Ari yelled back, and I had to put a hand over my mouth because I was laughing too hard to answer right.
Ciara got herself together first. Barely.
“So,” she said. “Since the children have spoken for the family, would you like to explain this suspiciously decent mood?”
The microwave beeped. I took the plate out and carried it to the island. “I’m eating.”
“That was not an answer.”
“It was enough.”
“It never is.”
I sat on one of the stools and took a bite. “What’s going on with you?”
“Oh, no. Don’t try to redirect. I know your tricks.” A pause. Then, in a lower tone, “Who is she?”
I smiled down at the plate.
That was all Ciara needed.
“Oh, my God.”
“There is no oh, my God.”
“There absolutely is. You smiling in silence. That is the loudest thing you do.”
I stabbed a piece of asparagus with my fork. “You are deeply invested in a life you do not pay for.”
“I’m your sister. It’s literally my calling.”
I let her talk for a while after that, mostly because I liked hearing her.
Family had a way of pulling me back into something human when the rest of life started getting too polished.
She updated me on Mama’s latest hosting ambitions, Pop’s new recliner chair he ordered without mama knowing, Ari’s school drama, some cousin I hadn’t seen in months who had apparently started selling luxury candles with names like Intentional and Soft Life No.
3. By the time we got off the phone, half my food was gone and the condo felt less like a place I had come back to and more like somewhere I was actually in.
I cleaned up, rinsed the plate, wiped down the counter, and left the kitchen lights low.
Then I put music on.
Kut Klose.
“I Like.”
Low enough to live in the room instead of taking it over.
I poured a drink I didn’t need and took it toward the windows, city glittering back at me in broken lines. Somewhere out there, Talia was in her own place doing whatever a woman like her did on a Tuesday night after agreeing to let a man take her to dinner.
That thought sat in me longer than it should have.
A woman like her.
What did that even mean?
It meant I could picture her too easily.
Bare feet on hardwood. Gold hoops off. Hair still laid close.
Maybe standing at a kitchen counter reheating something because grown people got tired and still had to eat.
Maybe with music on. Maybe not. Maybe quiet because she actually liked quiet and didn’t need the television lying to her in the background.
That was the trouble now. The details had started arriving. Not fantasy exactly. Something more dangerous than that.
Possibility.
I drank, looked out at the city, and tried not to reach for the phone.
Tried being the important part, because the truth was, texting had started feeling thin. I got how necessary it was to keep an open channel of communication, and having a full-blown phone conversation wouldn’t always work.
But maybe I was getting older in a way I could admit without making a joke out of it.
Maybe I missed when people had to do a little more than react and type.
When you had to pick up the phone and hear a real voice.
Hear the little pauses. The breathing. The laugh before the response.
The way a person carried silence when nobody was helping them with emojis and timing.