Page 93 of IRL: In Real Life
I ignored Bryce’s eyes under it. Didn’t like it, though. That was what I had to admit to myself.
Still, I was thick in my feelings, so I kept going.
Me: If I’m invited?
A few more eye emojis showed up from people who needed hobbies.
Then Talia answered.
Talia: You definitely are.
That sat in me all the way through the drive downtown because it felt like us. Like a thread still carrying over from last night. The dark. The truck. Her in my lap. My fingers in her. The way she had come apart on my hand and still gone inside her house without letting me follow. The way we had texted after, honest enough to say what we wanted and disciplined enough not to let the wanting make every decision for us.
That was still on me when I got to work.
By nine-twelve, one deal was already trying to die on my desk.
Not quietly either.
Marcus Ellison, the buyer on the East Liberty mixed-use acquisition, had decided the updated numbers suddenly made him “less comfortable with the exposure.” Peter Keane, seller’s counsel, was acting like deadlines were a form of oppression. Denise Palmer in credit wanted one more clarification before she blessed the final structure. And somewhere inside all of that, Marcus was on speaker in my office using the phrase “solution-oriented” while actively making the solution harder to reach.
That kind of thing usually woke me all the way up.
And it did.
Just not enough to keep Talia out of it.
I sat at the head of the small table in my office, jacket off, sleeves down, tie still where it belonged, and listened to Marcus talk himself in a circle while the skyline threw pale morninglight across the glass behind me. Molly stood just inside the door with a yellow legal pad and the expression of a woman already deciding which fires were worth my time and which ones needed to die before they reached me.
“Marcus, let me make sure I’m understanding you correctly,” I said when he finally stopped talking. “Yesterday you were comfortable closing at this leverage. This morning you’re not. Nothing about the property changed overnight. So what exactly am I solving?”
Silence.
Across from me, Devon dropped his gaze to hide a grin.
Marcus cleared his throat. “I’m just trying to make sure I’m protected.”
“You are protected,” I said. “What you’re asking for now is reassurance, and those are not the same product.”
Peter Keane jumped in after that, voice too smooth, too ready. “Well, if your client can’t perform, we may need to revisit whether today is realistic.”
I leaned back in my chair and looked at the phone on the table like I could see him through it.
“My client can perform,” I said. “The question is whether everybody else in this deal plans to stop improvising long enough to let him.”
Devon coughed into his fist.
Molly’s pen kept moving.
Usually, once the room needed that version of me, everything else fell away. I could lock in, cut through the noise, and make people stop hiding feelings inside numbers.
Today, even while the deal tried to fall apart in real time, some part of me was still carrying Talia. Her hand drifting over my thigh. The look in her eyes when she realized exactly how hard I was. The way she had taken my fingers in the dark, body shaking over me while I held back from everything I wanted.
“Micah.”
Devon’s voice pulled me back.
I looked up.
