Page 101 of IRL: In Real Life
“You are insufferable.”
“You’ll live.”
The second course came after that, and this one was worse in the best way. Filet, sliced and blushing at the center, garlic-herb butter glossing the top. Truffle whipped potatoes. Charred broccolini with lemon and shaved parmesan. Nothing on the plate looked fussy, but everything tasted like somebody had been in the kitchen loving on it.
The room darkened by degrees while we ate. The city outside sharpened. The candles did more work. His face softened underthat light, less business, less edge, more of the man he kept tucked behind his composure.
We talked through all of it.
Not in that first-date way where people kept trying to prove something. We had done enough circling by now to leave a lot of that behind. We talked about our people. About work. About what had surprised us about each other. About how ridiculous it was that a person could start as a profile picture and some comments in the same digital orbit and end up here.
“At your table with a chef in your kitchen?” I said.
He smiled around his wineglass. “That dramatic to you?”
“A little.”
“You don’t like it?”
I looked around once more. The candles. The flowers. The city. The warm scent of dinner still hanging in the air.
Then I looked back at him.
“I like it too much.”
Something deepened in his face. Not surprise. Not triumph. Just that quiet little shift he got when something mattered to him and he was trying not to overplay it.
Chef Elijah brought dessert last. Vanilla bean panna cotta with macerated berries and one little shard of almond lace laid against it like an ornament. Light enough for the kind of evening this was becoming. Pretty enough to make a woman smile.
We only ate a little of it.
Not because it wasn’t good, but because by then I was too aware of Micah’s eyes on me every time I lifted my spoon, every time I licked a little sweetness from my lip, every time the silence between us stretched a second too long and did not feel empty.
Chef Elijah gathered the last of the dishes after that and gave me a knowing little nod that was respectful enough not to embarrass me.
“Goodnight, Ms. Vaughn.”
“Goodnight,” I said.
Micah walked him to the door and came back into the room looking like the whole condo had changed now that we were finally alone in it.
For a second, neither of us said anything.
The music had shifted somewhere softer. The candles burned lower. The city outside kept minding its business while everything inside that room narrowed.
I picked up my spoon for one last bite of dessert just to have something to do with my hands.
Micah reached over, took the bowl from me gently, and set it aside.
“You done?”
“Probably.”
He gathered the dishes and carried them into the kitchen.
I followed because leaving him in there alone felt impossible all of a sudden.
By the time I got there, he was setting the plates in the sink, running water lightly over the spoons, moving with that same calm, efficient ease he seemed to bring to everything.
