Page 17 of IRL: In Real Life
She looked at me then.
Really looked. At my mouth first. Then my eyes. Then back again. Like she was deciding how honest she wanted to be this early.
The room moved around us. Music, glassware, bodies, laughter. All of it drifted somewhere behind her.
Finally she said, “Like you know exactly what you’re holding back. Because what you have to say and give is only for the worthy.”
I smiled because I had to do something. She read me.
“You’re dangerous.”
“Mmm.” Her lips pressed together, then softened again. “Potentially.”
There it was again. That mouth. That little pause before she answered, like she actually let a thought settle before she handed it over.
It shouldn’t have been that rare.
It was.
The dress had me. The skin, too. Those eyes could have been a problem all by themselves. But the substance was what kept pulling me closer. The ease of it. The fact that talking to her didn’t feel like dragging somebody through their own self-presentation and hoping a real person fell out the bottom.
Talia was beautiful, bright, and fully in possession of her own mind.
That did more to me than I liked admitting.
“I’m serious,” she said, softer now. “Most people don’t know how to have a conversation that isn’t really just a monologue with eye contact. They don’t know how to give little pieces of themselves and see if the other person is careful enough to hold them.”
That one got me.
Because it was true, and because by then, I already knew exactly what she meant.
“That mind of yours,” I said.
Her mouth curved. “It’s something, huh?”
She laughed a little, but her eyes stayed on mine, waiting. Like she wanted to know if I could handle that part of her too.
I damn sure wanted to try.
I looked at her for a second and let the thought settle between us.
She didn’t rush to fill it.
She held the pause like she knew what to do with quiet. Held my eyes. Smiled with them before she smiled with her mouth.
Yeah. That did it.
A couple of people passed behind her in a cluster, and my hand went to the small of her back before I thought better of it, just enough to guide her an inch closer and out of their way.
She paused.
I felt it.
A small alertness moved through her body and into my palm, the kind that happened when a touch stopped being theoretical. Her dress was smooth beneath my hand, the fabric giving me almost nothing and her body giving me enough. Heat came through anyway. So did the shape of her, soft and warm and close enough to make my mind start reaching ahead of itself.
Her eyes lifted to mine.
There it was again.
