“Wrap the sheets around you and get down,” he whispered, pouring with sweat.

“Get down? For what?”

“Please, baby, if she catches us together she’s gonna take all my credit cards. I’ll be ruined!”

“Don’t call me baby.”

“All right. Just get down. She can see inside from the street.”

“Damon, I cannot believe this is happening.”

“Shhh!”

“I’m not gonna shhh.”

“You better shhh. She’s crazy, she might shoot you!”

“Why would she shoot me? She should shoot you.”

“She ain’t gon’ shoot me.”

“Why not?”

“I’m her booty call. A good booty call is hard to find.”

“Obviously.”

“Shhhh!”

“Damon!!!!”

So there I was, crawling around the apartment wrapped in a wet sheet while Jodeci played and some crazy woman screamed and walked around the brownstone peering into the windows determined to get a glance. We crawled around for the next half hour like snipers were surrounding us. Finally, the yelling ceased. She was gone.

“Whew! That was close,” he said. “You think the water in the Jacuzzi is still hot?”

Not willing to justify the lunacy of his question with a response, I quickly put on my clothes, thinking to myself, Wow. Could he be that stupid? Actually the bigger question was could I be that stupid. Our non-stop flight had abruptly made a crash landing. In doing so, I had learned a valuable lesson: once a frequent flying layover, always a frequent flying layover. One down, and four more to go.

Chapter 8

2:57 A.M. EST
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7TH

17 DAYS, 17 HOURS, 3 MINUTES TO “E-DAY”

At my hotel, I showered, picked up the phone, and ordered one big mug of hot chocolate, a warm slice of carrot cake, and three extra pillows. The hot chocolate was to erase the taste of Damon, the carrot cake was to fill my now empty feeling inside, and the three pillows were because I never trust the hotel’s first set.

I began flipping through the On-Demand channels searching for an escape. Preferably a romantic movie. Not that I’m masochistic, but I always found that the best way to escape thoughts of your own failed romance is to lose yourself in someone else’s successful one.

Flipping through the action-adventure films, the comedies, and the more than one hundred adult channels, finally I landed on a Meg Ryan movie. She was my favorite. Watching her movies always gave me hope. No matter what the obstacles were, no matter how great the opposition, no matter how ridiculous the lengths to which she had to go, by the end of the movie Meg always ended up with her man. Whether it was Billy Crystal, Kevin Kline, or Tom Hanks, they always walked off into the sunset hand-in-hand, blissfully in love. I could relate to Meg.