Page 77 of IRL: In Real Life
By the time dinner settled and the second round of drinks had gone low in our glasses, the conversation had changed texture.
She told me about the years after college when she got so used to being capable that asking for help started feeling unnatural, even when she was tired. She didn’t make a speech of it. Didn’t dress it up. Just said it plain in that grown way people did when they had already done the work of surviving themselves and no longer needed applause for it.
I told her banking had made me more careful than cold, even if from the outside those things sometimes wore the same face. That I’d learned early people liked confidence right up until it came with limits. That success made some people admire youand other people start testing how much they could take from you without ever naming it that way.
Talia listened the way she did everything. Fully. No fake empathy. No waiting just to jump in and talk.
When she answered, it was quiet.
“That makes sense,” she said. “You don’t move like a man who likes being casually handled.”
I looked at her over my glass. Candlelight kept catching in her eyes, making the amber in them look deeper than it had any right to. Her lips glistened every time she took a sip of her drink. When she smiled after, her teeth flashed so bright it did something low and stupid to me.
“And you do?” I asked.
Her mouth curved, but there wasn’t much humor in it.
“No. I want something far from casual, if I want anything at all. I want what’s real.”
I held her eyes.
That answer moved through me slower than lust and got deeper.
The waitress came by then, and we let the room breathe around us for a minute. I cut into the last of my salmon while Talia listened to me talk about Ciara, Ari, and how my mother still acted like every Sunday dinner was state business.
She dragged one finger through a smear of sauce at the edge of her plate, absentminded, eyes on me like she was taking in every word. Then she lifted that finger to her mouth and sucked it clean without breaking the thread of the conversation, like the move had cost her no thought at all.
It damn near cost me mine.
The impact landed straight to my dick, and I had to look back down at my plate like the salmon had suddenly become fascinating.
Talia, completely unaware of the damage she had just done, laughed softly. “Mothers really do think if the food right, everybody’s life can’t be too far off track.”
“Your mother definitely gave that impression,” I said, proud of myself for sounding normal.
“She meant every word too.” Talia picked up her glass again. “That’s the thing about my mother. She’s not dramatic. She just says the one sentence that gets all the way under your skin and leaves it there to do its work.”
I smiled. “That where you get it from?”
Her laugh came low and pretty. “Maybe.”
She sat back a little then, the neckline of that dress giving me a view I had been trying to handle like a gentleman and failing. “What about you?” she asked. “What did you think about me before you actually met me?”
I looked at her.
“You really want that answer?”
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
“All of it.”
I ran my thumb once along the side of my glass. “I thought you were fine first. No point lying. But a lot of women are fine. That wasn’t what kept me looking.”
She kept still.
“It was the way you said things. You didn’t sound thirsty for attention. Didn’t sound like you were trying to be the smartest person online either. You just sounded like yourself.” I let my eyes move over her face once before settling again. “And then when I met you in person, the whole thing lined up. That was what got me.”
