“Not even one who just moved here?” he asked me. I started walking again, slowly. I had the feeling that he would watch me go all the way to my apartment anyway, so I might as well just hurry up and get there. I had to make sure not to open the door too wide. For all I knew, he was a hype trying to case me and my apartment. We didn’t have much, but I knew any desperate thug could find ways to capitalize on the older model television, VCR, and stereo sitting in our living room. Not to mention my mother’s records and all my cassette tapes.

“Hell no!” I shouted. “You wanna be friendly with me then we can go out, out of the building.”

“Where you wanna go?”

I just smirked at him and rolled my eyes. I had never been asked on a date, but I damned sure knew the way to go about it wasn’t by me having to tell him he had to take me on one.

“Anywhere,” I said, and then just walked away. “I don’t need you to walk me to my door.”

“Yeah, I guess I gotta come pick you up at your door when we go on our date,” he said.

I just laughed and kept walking. I guess he had some pride, because he stopped in his tracks.

“Like on Friday, I can just come back and we can go out somewhere,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah …,” I muttered under my breath. Promises, promises. He obviously didn’t know who he was talking to. I wasn’t about to get all excited just because somebody I didn’t even know claimed he was going to take me somewhere. He was probably lying, just wanted to promise me some bullshit to see if I would go with him right now and end up fucking him in his boy’s bed.

“See you later,” I called back.

“A’ight,” he said. “Friday night.”

And just as I had predicted, he was still standing in the middle of the hallway when I reached my apartment door. He was waiting for me, watching me from behind. Like he really liked me, and wanted to see all of me that he could, even my backside slipping into my apartment. I should have been excited, speechless that I was finally getting the attention that I wanted. But that’s not what it felt like at all. I couldn’t get excited about Friday at seven because I knew how I would feel if I opened the door that night and he wasn’t standing there. I pulled my keys out and put them in the lock so that he wouldn’t have a second to respond to what I was about to tell him. And I gave him a look to let him know he shouldn’t even think of coming over to change my mind.