Page 45 of IRL: In Real Life
I covered my face with one hand and laughed into it, the kind that loosened me all the way down into my ribs.
By the time we ate, talked, and let the room settle, the night had softened around me in a different way than it had before she came over. Less fevered. Less solitary. Still charged, but no longer only living in my body like a secret I had to manage alone.
Before she left, I packed the last piece of coconut cake back into the bag and pushed it toward her.
“You taking this. And tomorrow, you’re going to text me after that partner meeting.”
She looked at me. “I know.”
“No, I mean it. If he acts funny about that memo, we’re not letting you spiral in your office behind a closed door. You call me.”
Her expression softened, all the teasing gone for a second. “I will.”
“And if he tries to steal credit, I’ll come down there in a blazer and embarrass everybody.”
“You would too.”
“I absolutely would.”
She smiled, then hugged me longer than usual at the door.
“Don’t talk yourself out of a good thing before it gets a chance to be one,” she said.
I held onto her for one more second because she had given me her evening after a day that had clearly taken too much from her, and because that was what we did. We showed up with food, with warnings, with jokes, with truth, with whatever the other one needed before she knew how to ask for it.
Then I let her go.
“I won’t,” I said.
Or at least, for the first time in a long time, I wanted that to be true.
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.
