Chapter 6 #2
I didn’t answer that, mostly because she had already left by the time I thought of one.
I slept better. Not perfectly. But better.
By morning, the first thing I thought about wasn’t his hand at my back or the black dress or even the date.
It was his laugh, and that surprised me.
I lay there for a second with the sheets twisted around my legs and stared up at the ceiling while the room came into focus. Cream walls. Framed art. The little drift of morning light warming the edge of the curtains.
His laugh. Then the music.
Then the way he’d admitted that texting didn’t cut it, like he’d been reaching for something more real without dressing it up in more meaning than it deserved. That did something to me too.
Maybe because it matched what I had been feeling without knowing I wanted a man to say it first.
I got up slower than usual, tied my robe around me, and moved through the house without rushing. Coffee. Shower. Moisturizer. Clothes. The rituals of being a woman with a life still expecting to be lived.
By the time I left the townhouse, I was in a sand-colored sleeveless knit, dark trousers that fit exactly how I liked, and gold hoops small enough to feel deliberate. My bag rode my shoulder. My mouth was glossed. My day was already in motion.
Monarch Row was only my first stop.
That was the difference today.
Instead of getting buried in my office all morning, I had a site walk-through at The Bellwether Hotel for the rooftop summer series we were building in partnership with Burton Creative.
Monarch Row had been brought in to curate the experience, the sponsor integration, and the overall feel of the thing before anybody started printing invitations and calling beige luxury.
A beverage sponsor was circling. Burton Creative wanted the event to feel social, polished, and camera-ready. The hotel wanted the look to feel upscale without washing the life out of it. The sponsor wanted visibility without looking thirsty.
Which meant, in other words, I was needed.
By the time I stepped onto the floor, Zaria was already outside my office with her tablet in hand and a face that said somebody had said something foolish before nine-thirty.
“Tell me.”
She fell into step beside me as I unlocked the glass door.
“The hotel rep sent three mood boards, all of them too pale, and the sponsor contact keeps using the phrase ‘elevated urban sophistication’ like it doesn’t sound like fear.”
I closed my eyes for one second. “Amazing.”
“I thought so.”
I dropped my bag beside the guest chair and took the tablet from her.
Mariah looked up from the open workspace as I crossed back out a minute later. “Where you off to?”
“Saving culture,” I said.
Zaria’s mouth twitched.
Mariah grinned. “Bring it back alive.”
The drive to The Bellwether gave me more city than I’d had time to really look at in days.
Construction. Coffee lines. School buses.
Women moving fast in heels. Men posted outside storefronts pretending not to watch anything while clearly watching everything.
Pittsburgh never fully gave itself up at once.
It kept some part tucked behind brick, bridge, and weather.
The hotel rooftop sat high enough to give the skyline a little ego. Glass railing. Good light. Enough square footage to make bad design especially offensive.
The rep was waiting for us in a blazer too thin for the wind with a smile that said she had already used the word curated three times today.
I let her talk.
Then I walked the space.
That was the real part of my job. Not the deck.
Not the polished language. The feeling of a room.
Where people would pause. Where they’d drift.
Where the DJ should go. What the bar needed to look like so people photographed it without it looking desperate.
Where Black people actually wanted to stand when they were dressed and outside and deciding whether a space had enough life in it to deserve them.
Burton Creative could produce a beautiful night. They had the network, the vendors, the photographer, the kind of name people liked seeing attached to an invitation. But Monarch Row was there to make sure the experience did not become another expensive room with no pulse.
By the time I turned back to the rep, I had it.
“No more pale boards,” I said. “This is not a bridal shower, and nobody’s trying to sip rosé inside a beige apology.”
Zaria coughed into her hand.
The rep blinked.
I smiled, so she was confused about whether I had cut her or pulled her into an embrace.
“What you want is warmth. Depth. Texture. Gold, yes, but not too much of it. Rich woods. Darker florals. Better lighting at the bar. And for the love of God, no generic acrylic signage with fake-script font pretending to be luxury.”
The rep looked down at her notes. “Okay.”
“And if the sponsor wants urban sophistication,” I said, “tell them to stop acting scared of color and let the room have some blood in it.”
That got a laugh out of Zaria before she could stop it.
The rep looked startled, then amused despite herself. “You have strong opinions.”
“I have useful ones.”
Afterward, Zaria and I grabbed coffee downstairs instead of heading straight back.
She handed me my cup and shook her head. “The beige apology line was disrespectful.”
“It was accurate.”
“It was funny.”
“That too.”
She smiled and took a sip. “You were right, though. The boards looked like nobody wanted Black people to have a good time without apologizing for it.”
I looked at her over the rim of my cup. “Exactly.”
I had been fighting some version of that since I graduated from August Wilson University and started interning at the August Wilson Center.
That was where I learned how often people wanted Blackness with the edges filed off.
A little mood. A little style. A little language they could dress up and sell back to us.
Enough flavor to feel current. Not enough truth to make anybody in a boardroom uncomfortable.
They wanted the look without the weight of what made it real.
I had no patience for that kind of work.
That was another reason I liked Zaria. She learned fast.
She glanced at her watch, then at me. “You ready to head back?”
“In a minute.” I looked toward the bar area just off the lobby, half tucked behind one of those sculptural dividers hotels loved when they wanted you to feel like you’d discovered privacy on your own.
“I’m going to sit down and knock out these notes while it’s still fresh.
Why don’t you Uber back to the office under the expense card? ”
Zaria nodded. “I’m going to grab food before I head back. You want anything?”
“No. I’ll live.”
“That sounds false.”
“It’s a little false.”
She smiled. “Text me when you’re on your way back.”
I held up two fingers in a lazy salute and took my coffee toward a small table near the bar with my laptop tucked under my arm.
The lobby had thinned some since we first came down.
A couple checking in. Somebody in a blazer tapping through emails with a vodka soda too early in the day to mean anything good.
Low music. Hotel air trying hard to smell expensive.
I set my coffee down, pulled my tablet in front of me, and tried to make myself care about follow-up notes while the rooftop was still sitting in my head in warm tones and bad decisions.
I got through exactly one useful sentence before my phone buzzed beside the keyboard.
Just one message.
Micah: How’s your day, Ms. Community Service?
I smiled at the screen before I could stop myself.
Me. Saving a rooftop from becoming a beige apology. You?
His answer came quick.
Micah: Now I need the full story.
I laughed under my breath and looked around like anybody in the lobby might somehow know how into this man I was.
I lowered my eyes back to the screen and typed:
No, you need to trust that I’m doing the Lord’s work and leave it there.
The dots came up.
Disappeared.
Came back.
You can’t say beige apology and think I’m letting that stay in text. Tell me in person. When are you done?
Micah was direct in a way that kept slipping under my skin. Not pushy. Just there in what he wanted, like he saw no point in dressing it up when the truth would do the job better.
And if I was being honest, I liked that more than was probably useful.
I should have made him sit with it longer. Should have looked back at my laptop, answered one more email, let him wonder a little.
Instead I stared at the screen with my coffee going cooler beside me and felt that same low pull I was starting to recognize for what it was. Not chaos. Not confusion. Not the kind of chemistry that made a woman feel like she was losing herself.
This felt different.
Like a man stepping into the middle of my day and making it more interesting without asking me to become less myself in exchange.
That was what made him dangerous. It was not because he disrupted me—no—it was because he fit.
My fingers moved before my pride could get fully involved.
Me: You are very demanding for a man still under review.
His answer came right back.
Micah: I’m serious. Fifteen minutes. This doesn’t count as Thursday.
I bit my lip, and looked up from the phone then, out toward the lobby windows, at the city moving beyond the glass in bright midday pieces.
I had work. Notes. A laptop open in front of me. A full day already in motion.
And still, some part of me had gone warm at the idea of seeing his face before dinner existed to frame it, before a reservation and dim lighting and a proper date gave us permission to be anything but exactly what we were.
A woman at a hotel bar. A man leaving work to come look at her.
Two grown people acting like they did not know what kind of current lived under that.