Page 71 of IRL: In Real Life
But it was true enough, because my attention had already committed somewhere, and I wasn’t the kind of man who needed to keep a line warm just to reassure himself he still could.
Tish:
By the time I finished the workout, showered again, and made coffee in my own kitchen, the condo felt more like mine again. Sun coming through the windows. Countertop cold under my palm. Quiet settling in the way I needed it to.
I stood there in gray sweats and a white tank, coffee in hand, and let myself replay the night one more time without fighting it.
Then I set the coffee down and reached for my phone. Because now there was the other part.
The next move.
I wasn’t interested in dragging this out through more little stolen windows and half-hours. Not after the Velvet Room. Not after that kiss. Not after the way she fit against me like we had already skipped past some of the usual awkwardness and gotten to the part where two grown people knew they liked each other and needed the room to find out how much.
Me: Last night wasn’t enough.
Then I added:
Now I need time with you I don’t have to cut short.
When do I get that?
I read it once, then sent it before I could soften anything into something less honest.
ten
. . .
By early afternoon,the city had gone warm and unhurried in that way summer Sundays did, when the weekend had started tipping toward the week and nobody was quite ready to let it go.
I was stretched across the couch in a worn-down little house dress with a book open in one hand and exactly three pages of it actually read.
Trying to act normal after a man had kissed you into next week was its own kind of foolishness.
Normal still happened. Coffee got made. Kendra called and demanded details. Music played low through the house. I folded towels, wiped down the kitchen counter, watered the plant inthe corner that had been threatening to embarrass me for weeks, and moved through all the small, necessary things that made a Sunday feel like mine.
But Micah stayed under all of it.
He showed up in the quiet spaces between songs. In the memory of his hand at my waist while I shook out a towel. In the low ease of Donell Jones drifting from my speakers, making me think about his voice, his condo, the way he sounded at home when nobody was asking him to perform. Every time I shifted on the couch, some part of my body remembered his mouth and answered like we were still in that booth.
So when my phone lit up, my body reacted before I even looked.
A little pull low in my stomach.
A little heat.
A treacherous little pulse between my thighs.
Micah: Last night wasn’t enough.
Now I need time with you I don’t have to cut short.
When do I get that?
Last night hadn’t been enough.
That was the part I kept trying not to hold too openly, even alone in my own house. The kiss had stayed with me. So had his hands, his mouth, the weight of him beside me in that booth, the way I had gone to sleep still feeling him and woken up wanting more.
Not just more heat.
