Something changed in her expression. Not much. Enough.
“Lined up how?” she asked.
“The face matched the mouth. The mouth matched the mind. The woman sitting across from me matched the one I’d seen on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.” I shrugged one shoulder. “That’s rarer than it should be.”
“Damn,” she said, more like she was taking inventory than accusing me of anything. “We’re connected in a lot of places.”
“I noticed last week,” I said. “When I wanted to see more of you.”
Her eyes widened a little before pleasure softened them.
“But you know how these apps work,” I added. “You follow somebody in one place, and suddenly every other one decides y’all must be family.”
She looked down at her drink and smiled into it, and for a second, the candlelight moved over her mouth in a way that made the rest of the restaurant blur behind it.
When she glanced back up, she was softer around the eyes.
“That’s what I liked about you too,” she said, bringing the conversation back around. “No switch-up.”
We talked a little longer after that. Real things. Little things. The way our families are. What tired us out. What made us feel looked after in ways that had nothing to do with money. By the time we left the restaurant, I knew how much she hated being disappointed after finally allowing someone in.
Up at Grandview, the city opened beneath us in layers.
Downtown glittered across the river, bridges lit in long gold lines, headlights moving through the streets like sparks that had somewhere to be. The Monongahela caught pieces of light and broke them apart. The stadiums sat off in the distance, the Incline tracks cut dark against the hill, and from up there, Pittsburgh looked softer than it had any right to. All that steel, water, brick, traffic, history, and stubborn beauty laid out beneath the night like the city had decided to let us see its good side.
We stood at the railing for a minute without rushing to fill the quiet.
Talia knew how to let a moment breathe. I liked that more every time I found out another way she could do it.
“You know what I think?” she said finally.
“What?”
She turned toward me, one hip against the railing, hair catching a little in the breeze. “I think you know exactly how to make a woman feel like she’s got room to exhale, and that probably gets you in more trouble than whatever slick shit you say after.”
I laughed under my breath. “That what you think?”
“I do.”
“You saying I’m safe?”
Her eyes lifted to mine. Thinking and feeling at the same time.
“I’m saying that’s where women get fooled,” she said. “By men who feel steady.”
I stepped closer, not crowding her, just close enough to make the distance honest.
“And you?” I asked. “You trying to act like you don’t know what that does to a man?”
Her gaze stayed on mine.
“No,” she said. “I think I know exactly what it does.”
I touched the side of her neck, my thumb just under her ear, and her breath changed immediately.
Mine did too.
For a second, I just stood there with my hand on her, feeling the soft warmth of her skin and the quick little pulse beneath my thumb. She looked at me like she knew I was caught between sense and want, like she could see the fight in me and wasn’t sure yet which side she wanted to win.
