When I called, he picked up on the second ring, listened, laughed once under his breath, and told me he had the perfect menu.
That was all I needed.
Then I texted her.
Be ready at 7:30. Dress comfortable. I’m taking you back to my place for dinner.
Her answer came back with one little smirk in emoji form.
Talia:
I laughed and left a reaction on it.
That tiny response did more to me than it should have.
It sat low in my body through the rest of the workday, right alongside the memory of her in that truck, the sound she made when she came on my fingers, and the quiet way she had looked at me after, like she knew exactly how close we had come to letting the whole night tip over.
By five-thirty, I was back at the condo, showered, dressed, and moving through the place getting it ready for her.
Not in some trying-too-hard way.
Just the kind of small, deliberate things a man did when a woman mattered enough for him to want the room right before she stepped into it.
The candles were already burning.
Ciara had brought them over a few months back, talking shit about how my place always smelled too crisp, too orderly, too much like expensive hand soap and discipline.
“Your condo smell like a man who drinks water and minds his business,” she’d said, dropping the box on my counter. “Not like a man who ever plans on getting a woman comfortable in here.”
The one I lit tonight was Harlem Candle Company’s Speakeasy. Dark rum, tobacco leaf, vanilla, a little warmth under the smoke.
Better.
The playlist had been coming together since the week I met Talia, though I had not admitted that to myself at first. One song turned into three, then ten, then a whole quiet set built around what felt like her.
Raheem DeVaughn. Joe. Amel Larrieux. D’Angelo. A little Floetry. A little Janet for softness and edge.
Grown ass music. Late-night music.
The kind that knew how to stay in the background until the room needed it to do more.
When Raheem’s “Never Never Land” slid into the queue, I thought about her laugh going low in her throat, about the way she looked when she was listening for real, like music had to get past her mind before it earned the rest of her.
That song had yearning in it.
Promise too.
It sounded like the space between where we had been and where I wanted the night to go.
I had changed the sheets too.
That part mattered.
Fresh white cotton. The better duvet turned down. Extra pillows. In the bathroom, I left what she might need without making it feel like I had stocked a guest suite for some woman I barely knew. A new toothbrush still in the box. Fresh washcloth. Bath sheet folded on the shelf. Gentle Dove soap at the sink and in the shower.
Little things.
Necessary things.
