At the vanity, I reached for perfume last. Initio Musk Therapy. Soft at first spray, then warmer once it met my skin, the almond cream, the oil, the heat at my pulse points. It smelled like money, skin, and a woman nobody was going to forget once she got close enough.
By the time I sat down to do my face, the room had changed around me.
My Bluetooth speaker on the dresser was playing low, something smooth and grown from the playlist I always reached for when I was getting myself together right. Sade, Amel Larrieux, a little Maxwell slipping in between. Music with silk in it. Music that didn’t rush me.
The lamps were on instead of the overhead light, warming the room up in all the right places. Outside my windows, the city was fading from gold into blue. My bare shoulders caught the mirror light every time I leaned closer. My gold hoops waited beside my bracelet and rings like the last pieces of a language I knew by heart.
There was something sacred in it.
Not the dress itself. Not the makeup.The care.
The quiet ritual of tending to myself with tenderness instead of urgency. Lotion. Oil. Liner. Gloss. The fact that even before a room saw me, I had already seen myself clearly.
That was the part men rarely understood.
The glam was never just for them. The silk was never just for them. This was devotion long before it was seduction.
My phone buzzed again, this time from the group.
A fresh post. Somebody asking who all was going tonight, as if that question ever meant only one thing.
The comments said otherwise.
I’ll be there.
Might slide through after dinner.
Only if the playlist was not trash this time.
Who else coming?
And underneath all of that, the second language. The one everybody understood.
Who pulling up?
Who’s looking good?
Who am I finally about to see in person?
Who might actually be worth the drive downtown and the heel on my foot?
I scrolled without needing to. A few names I knew. A few men I’d exchanged words with online. A few women I liked enough to hug in public. A couple of the usual peacocks already showing their ass under the flyer. Nothing there changed my pulse.
Not yet.
And still, when I opened Threads, then Twitter after that, moving through the same little digital ecosystem where everybody’s face got familiar long before their body did, I felt that faint, annoying edge of possibility again.
That world had layers.
Facebook gave you the polished version. Headshots. Wins. Panels. Community. Bios written like little mission statements.
Twitter gave you sharper cuts. Humor. Politics. Petty observations. The flavor of somebody’s mind when they forgot to package themselves too neatly.
Threads gave you the softer stuff. Food. Mood. Music. Little thoughts. The everyday residue between bigger performances.
By the time you met somebody in person, you usually already knew their face, their name, their opinions, what made them laugh, the kind of comments they left, whether they were vain or thoughtful or loud or trying too hard not to be.
You knew everything and next to nothing.
