Chapter 13
thirteen
. . .
“If you smile at that phone one more time in my kitchen and don’t tell me what’s going on, I’m putting you out.”
I looked up from the counter and found Nicole standing at the stove with one hand on her hip and a wooden spoon pointed at me like she had legal authority.
“I’m cutting strawberries,” I said.
“You’re daydreaming over strawberries.”
“That’s dramatic.”
“You’ve smiled at the same message three times.”
I looked back down at the cutting board, at the neat little pile of sliced fruit I had apparently been hovering over instead of finishing, and pressed my lips together to keep from laughing.
Nicole made a sound under her breath.
“Exactly.”
That was my sister. Older by three years, nosey by birthright, and somehow able to run a whole house while clocking every emotion I thought I had hidden behind my face.
She had our father’s build in a softer, womanlier way.
Tall, long-limbed, lighter brown like him, with his easy smile and the same habit of looking at you like she had already read the first draft of your lie.
In the face, we looked more like sisters if you knew what to look for. The Vaughn mouth. Mama’s cheekbones. The same expressions when we were irritated, though Nicole’s annoyance tended to arrive with more patience and a grocery list attached.
She had been married to Jalen Parker for almost ten years now, long enough for people to stop asking how married life was and start assuming she had it all handled because the house was pretty, the children were loved, and nobody was posting sad quotes at midnight.
Jalen was a good man. An operations manager for a logistics company, steady and funny in that dry way that snuck up on people.
He loved my sister, loved their twins, and called our father “sir” even after Daddy told him to stop.
Their marriage was solid.
It was also life.
Jalen’s people were in Maryland, which meant when Nicole needed another set of hands, another grandmother nearby, another auntie to take the kids for an afternoon so she could sit still and hear herself think, that help came with mileage and planning.
Some holidays, she packed Nia and Noah into the car and took them down there because marriage meant sharing roots, even when your own family lived close enough to smell what Mama had on the grill.
She never complained exactly. Nicole was not built for whining.
But sometimes I heard it in the pause before she said, “It’s fine.
” Sometimes I saw it in the way she watched Mama and Daddy moving around each other, all those years of habit and help, and then glanced at her phone to see if Jalen was still stuck at work or on the way back from running the twins somewhere.
Today, I sat with Nicole in her mostly quiet kitchen, a pot on the stove, and apparently too much room to be fascinated by my business.
Monday had gone by like that, threaded through with Micah in ways that would not leave me alone.
I had not slept worth a damn. The little sleep I did get came in scraps, broken up by too much memory and not enough relief. I woke with my body still carrying the ghost of his fingers like it had not gotten the message that the night was over and I had a job to go to.
That truck had stayed with me all day.
Because I had been ready.
Still was.
Ready to give in and let that man take me wherever the night wanted to go. Only Micah, with all that maddening patience and sense, had held the line for both of us, which was noble and sexy and inconvenient as hell.
Work helped some, but not enough.
Meetings. Budgets. A sponsorship check-in that could have been an email.
Zaria catching me staring at my phone once and pretending not to.
Mariah catching me doing it a second time and very much not pretending.
Somewhere in there, I changed my lipstick after lunch for no reason anybody respectable could defend.
Micah had been with me all day too.
Sweet, yes. But risky.
Early that afternoon, while I sat at my desk in one of my fitted dresses and tried to act like my body had not spent half the morning replaying a man’s fingers inside me, he texted:
Micah: You always go without a bra under those dresses?
I stared at it so long Zaria had to say my name twice.
Then I typed back:
Me: You want me to?
His answer came fast enough to make my thighs press together under the desk.
Micah: There’s no need to wear anything under your clothes with me. I’ll take care of that.
I had to keep my face still in an office full of people while heat moved through me so hard I almost lost the thread of whatever budget line I’d been pretending to review.
My nude Gianvito Rossi pumps were crossed under my desk, and for one brief, shameful second I really did think about shutting my office door, putting both heels up on the edge of that desk, and fingering myself to the thought of him taking care of every bare part of me just like he said.
Only Zaria and a run of work interruptions saved me from acting like I had lost all home training before three o’clock.
Later, closer to five, he sent another one.
Micah: Walked around on hard most of the day behind you.
I laughed into my hand, then typed back before I could think too hard about dignity.
Me: So the women at your job got to see all that dick you slanging?
He reacted with a laughing emoji, then answered:
Micah: Hardly. Literally. I stayed at my desk after my morning meeting which is well enough since I need to catch up on some shit I’ve been delaying since my head is in the clouds, messing around with you.
That one got me worse than the dirty talk.
Because yes, the sex in it was hot. Yes, the image of him hard at his desk somewhere downtown had done something low and mean to me. But the sweetness sitting under it? The ease? The fact that I had gotten into his day the same way he had gotten into mine?
I sent back two little heart-faced emojis before I could stop myself.
He left a laughing reaction on them almost immediately, then sent:
Micah: dangerous, Talia.
And that was when Nicole’s voice cut right through the middle of my foolishness.
“So what did he say?”
I dried my hands and reached for my phone again before I could make myself act more dignified than I felt.
Micah: You survive Monday?
That one had come in twenty minutes ago.
Simple.
Still, I’d already read it enough times to know what it did to me.
“I hate your face right now,” Nicole said.
I looked up. “Why?”
“Because you got that look.”
“What look?”
“The one where your mouth gets soft like you’re trying not to let the rest of you join it.”
I laughed and leaned back against the counter. “You say things in a very annoying way.”
“I say true things in an efficient way.”
“Same arrogance. Different delivery.”
That got a laugh out of her.
I typed back before she could keep circling.
Me: Barely. Monday had opinions.
His reply came while I was still looking at the screen.
Micah: Need me to fight it for you?
That should have felt light.
It didn’t.
It felt like exactly the kind of line a woman could get used to if she wasn’t careful. Like a man stepping toward her in the middle of an ordinary day and asking where he might make it easier.
Nicole caught my face changing and pointed the spoon at me again.
“That. That right there. You are gone.”
“I’m right here slicing fruit for your ungrateful children.”
“My children are not ungrateful. They are observant.” She looked toward Nia. “Baby, how Auntie Tal been acting since she got here?”
Nia looked up from her coloring and blinked at me with serious little-girl eyes. “She keep smiling.”
Nicole spread her hands. “Witness.”
I turned toward Nia, scandalized. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”
Nia thought about that. “Can I still have cookies?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m on everybody side.”
Nicole laughed so hard she had to grab the stove handle.
“See?” I said. “Extortion.”
“That’s your niece.”
“That’s a future negotiator.”
Noah chose that moment to walk into the kitchen holding one block and half a cracker.
“Auntie Tal.”
“Yes, baby?”
“Look.”
He held the block up like he had invented architecture.
I bent to his level immediately. “That is very impressive.”
Nicole smiled into the pot without looking at me. “You are so easy for them.”
I rubbed Noah’s head lightly and straightened. “In small doses.”
That was the truth of it.
I loved them fiercely. Immediately. In that auntie way that made me reach for extra snacks at Target and remember shoe sizes and keep children’s Tylenol in my bag just because.
But I also loved giving them back at the end of the evening and driving home to my own quiet with music playing and nobody climbing me like furniture.
I thought about that while I reached for the plates and Nicole started dishing pasta into bowls, the kind with butter and parmesan and a little garlic because Monday had no business asking more of anybody than comfort.
“You know what I think it is?” Nicole said.
“That you enjoy hearing yourself talk?”
“No.” She slid a bowl toward me. “I think you like him because he doesn’t feel like work.”
That stopped me.
Nicole caught it, of course.
“There it is,” she said softly.
I set the bowl down and leaned against the island. “That is not why I like him.”
She lifted one shoulder. “Maybe not all the way. But it’s part of it.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but she was already shaking her head.
“No, listen. You’ve been like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like you don’t know how to leave nothing alone till you understand every part of it.
” She pointed the spoon at me. “When you were thirteen and got that science fair kit for Christmas, every other kid poured the stuff in the little tubes and called it a day. You had the dining room table looking like a tiny lab for two weeks because the instructions wasn’t enough. You needed to know why it worked.”
I laughed in spite of myself. “That is not the same thing.” Besides, if you’re going to do something—do it right.