Page 128 of IRL: In Real Life
It damn sure did.
And standing there in my foyer with his bag on the floor and the whole rest of Saturday behind us, I knew with a clarity that felt almost holy that whatever this had become, I no longer wanted to protect myself from it more than I wanted to live in it.
So when I took his hand and led him upstairs, there was no hesitation in me.
Only relief. Only want. Only the soft, undeniable truth that somewhere in the last few weeks, Micah Sutton had stoppedfeeling like a beautiful interruption and started feeling like part of my actual life.
And I was in love with him.
nineteen
. . .
By Sunday evening,the week had had Talia all through it.
I still went to work. Still took calls. Still reviewed numbers, signed what needed signing, and answered the same tired questions from people with too much money and not enough nerve. But underneath all of that, my days had started bending her way.
That part was getting harder to ignore.
When I pulled up to my parents’ house, my phone buzzed before I even cut the engine.
One of the women from the old version of me.
BT.
Before Talia.
The messages from women had thinned out over the last couple of weeks. That was what happened when a man stopped feeding the line. Folks could feel when your attention had picked a lane, even if you hadn’t made some big public speech about it. Still, every now and then, somebody peeked back in to see if the door was really closed.
This one was Candace.
We had “talked” for a minute months back, right up until I realized half the woman in her pictures was filters, angles, and creative identity choices. Never slept with her. Never even got close. But she had laid it on thick in my inbox before I figured out what time it was.
Her message sat under a screenshot of Talia’s Facebook story.
Candace: lol that your bourbon glass in her story?
I looked at the screen again.
Talia had posted one of those little casual clips she liked. Nothing obvious. Just a corner of my coffee table, Maxwell playing low, a glass of wine, and the edge of a heavy square Baccarat tumbler sitting in the frame like it paid rent there.
Mine.
Between the glass and the view out of the windows, anybody who had spent enough time watching my stories knew exactly where she was.
I wondered for half a second if Candace and Talia were already Facebook friends, but it wouldn’t have surprised me if they were. Pittsburgh was a big small town, especially if you were Black. Everybody knew somebody who knew your business before you had finished deciding whether it was business yet.
I smiled before I could help it.
Then something quieter moved under that smile. Not shame. Not regret. Just the first edge of discomfort I did not have a clean name for yet.
I liked the little signs that Talia was with me. Liked seeing her things in my space. Liked knowing she felt comfortable enough to post a piece of my world like she had a place inside it.
But I did not like everybody looking in.
That was the part I kept tripping over. I loved the feeling of Talia being mine, but maybe that was exactly why I wanted to keep people out of it. Not hide her. Never that. Just protect what was still becoming real from folks who only knew how to turn softness into something to watch.
I locked the phone without answering Candace and went inside.
