I didn’t do any of that.
I stood there with my drink in my hand and enough sense in my body to keep still, even with her perfume making that harder than it needed to be. It sat close to her skin, expensive and warm, the kind of scent that didn’t announce itself across a room but made a man curious once he got near enough to catch it.
She was fine as fuck up close, in every way a screen could never be trusted to explain.
“Micah,” she said, like she knew exactly what had happened from across the room.
“Talia.”
Her hand was cool from the glass when I took it, soft and smaller than mine, her rings pressing lightly against my fingers. It should have been a quick handshake. Simple. Polite. The kind of thing people did when someone forced an introduction at a mixer.
Neither one of us let go right away.
Bryce looked entirely too pleased with himself. “I don’t know how this took so long. We officially failed at the internet.”
“I don’t know,” Talia said, her eyes still on me. “Maybe we been using it exactly right.”
That made me smile before I could help it.
Bryce looked delighted. Kendra looked interested. Devon looked like he wanted to sell tickets.
And just like that, the room narrowed.
Her perfume was closer now, warm against whatever she’d had in her glass, something smooth and expensive sitting right at her skin. I could hear the music, the laughter, Bryce still running his mouth, but her thumb shifted once against the side of my hand and everything else got pushed to the edge.
“You’re taliajanae,” I said.
One perfectly arched brow, the same reddish-brown shade as her hair, lifted.
“And you,” she said, letting her gaze move over me once before it came back up, “are afterfiveMicah.”
The way she looked at me should not have done what it did, but my body caught it before my pride could pretend otherwise.
“You noticed?”
Her mouth curved. “I notice a lot.”
“Mmmm.” I took a sip and let my eyes hold hers one beat longer than manners required. “That sounds dangerous.”
“Depends,” she said, “on who’s watching.”
Kendra made a little sound under her breath.
Devon muttered, “Aw, nigga,” into his glass.
I ignored both of them.
Bryce, clearly satisfied with the chaos he had introduced into the evening, drifted back toward another cluster. Devon got pulled away by the couple he’d come in with. Kendra stayed just long enough to make sure I understood her friend came with protection, standards, and a witness, then eased off too.
Good.
Now it was just me and Talia, standing close enough for whatever I had imagined about her to either fall apart or get worse.
“You gon’ tell me,” she said, glancing down into her glass before lifting those amber eyes back to mine, “why you look vaguely relieved?”
I laughed under my breath. She was quicker in person too.
“That obvious?”