I had gotten over Andrea, or so I had told myself. But Corey bringing her up like that had taken me aback. I wondered what she was up to myself.

Our waiter arrived with my drink just in time to wet my whistle. I waited for him to clear the area before I spoke. I had forgotten that Corey was around me when I first met Andrea. She was from Champaign, Illinois, about an hour out from “Chi-town.” I was from the same Midwest area, out of Gary, Indiana.

I chose my words carefully.

“She, ah, decided to deal with someone else.”

I took a swig of my drink.

Corey nodded and said, “J. Walker, the stockbroker, who thinks he’s in the movie Wall Street.”

It was all humorous to him, but I would rather not hear about either one of them.

“Hey, man, I don’t wanna go there right now. I haven’t been around her in years.”

“Well, don’t sweat that. She don’t look like she used to, man.”

Why did I care? Like I said, I didn’t want to hear about her. But Corey had me curious.

“What do you mean by that?”

“You know he stopped her from modeling.”

I had figured that much on my own.

“Yeah, I know. It was getting old fast anyway.”

“And I heard she had a miscarriage with his child,” he told me.

It was another bomb dropped on my head. Why the hell was Corey bending my ear with that shit? Had someone sent him to do it? What the hell was the deal?

“Why is this important to me, man?”

I was expressing my frustration with the whole history of it. But how was Corey to know what I felt? I didn’t know how deeply Andrea and Jayson Walker had cut me. I had simply moved on from it. Or so I thought.

Our waiter swung past the table again.

“Are you two ready to order?”

I still hadn’t looked at the menu.

“Hey, man, just give me whatever today’s special is,” I told him.

I wanted to go back to relaxing. I had enough on my mind already.

“Well, we have two specials this evening. We have a chicken dish…”

What the fuck? I didn’t want to hear any of that shit. Just bring me out a hot fucking plate of food, I felt like telling him.

Danni arrived just in time to preserve my cool.

She slithered up beside me in our booth, wearing a sky blue silk dress with a funky pair of tall white leather boots.

“That chicken sounds good,” she told our waiter. “I’ll have one of those.”

He looked at her with disdain before he eyed me for my response.

“Is she with you?”

Danni beat me to the punch.

“Who else do you think I’m with? I’m sitting next to him, ain’t I?”

She must have just gotten a big new contract. Good modeling jobs made a lot of us act foolish, and downright ugly.