Page 90 of IRL: In Real Life
“It is a little the same thing.” Nicole turned back to the stove. “Even with boys back then. Remember that little ninth-grade boy with the braids? Cute little thing. Used to call our house every night. Mama loved him. You stopped talking to him because he thought saying ‘you good?’ counted as a whole conversation.”
I groaned. “Oh, my God.”
“I’m lying?”
“No,” I muttered. “But you do not have to remember it that well.”
Micah often asked if I was good, but I knew it was a real question. Whether I was or not, the answer to it actually mattered to him.
She smiled. “Tal, you’ve never liked a man you had to drag along behind your own mind. Never. The minute he starts feeling like a project, an assignment, a little after-hours internship, you get tired.”
That sat there. Because she was not wrong.
I thought about the way Micah listened. The way he didn’t rush to fill silence with himself. The way he didn’t need a woman to drag depth out of him. The way his attention felt placed, not scattered.
That had gotten to me—probably more than I wanted to say out loud. And there was the other thing too. The thing I had not said to anybody.
He had left. When I didn’t ask him in, he had left.
No sulking. No pressure. No standing there at my door trying to talk me over my own hesitation. He’d wanted me, I knew that as surely as I knew my own name, but he had let me keep the line where I needed it. That kind of restraint did something dangerous to a woman who was used to men making their want her problem.
“I don’t know,” I said carefully.
Nicole looked at me like an older sister who knew when not to crowd something honest before it had fully stood up in the room.
Then she said, “You deserve ease too, Tal.”
That hit deeper than it should have for a Monday evening with butter noodles in the air and one child trying to color on the back of a utility bill.
I looked down at my phone again instead of answering her.
Micah had entered the day, and somehow the whole thing had felt a little easier for it, because wanting him had not come with depletion attached to it.
That was new enough to deserve respect.
My phone buzzed again.
Micah: Or I can just hear about it tomorrow. That works too.
I stared at the words, warmth moving low through me again, gentle this time.
Nicole saw the look on my face and made a low sound in her throat.
“Mmhmmmmn.”
“Please hush.”
“No.”
“I hate you.”
“You love me.”
“That too.”
I typed back.
That sounds better.
