“Just for a second, Terrance,” Corey persisted.

I took a breath and looked to Victoria. “Wait for me over at the elevators.” I didn’t want her just standing there.

“Okay,” she responded with a nod.

Corey grinned as soon as I faced him. “That’s a good-looking white girl, man. Where you find her, at the cancer event?”

I couldn’t remember if I had even told him the purpose of the event, but I felt as if I didn’t want him to know anything at that point. He was really irritating me.

I cut to the chase and asked him, “So what’s going on, man?”

He got excited. “Hey, did you bump into Andrea over there?”

I answered, “Yeah, but she didn’t have much to say to me. But look, man, I’ll tell you all of that over the phone. I gots to go.”

I just started walking away from him. I had no more to say to the brother.

He noticed my urgency to leave and shook his head with a smile.

“I see. I guess I’ll just see you around, man. Call me.”

When I made it back over to Victoria at the elevators, she asked me, “What was that about?”

I shook it off and said, “I don’t know. That guy…”

I didn’t know what else to say about him. He seemed to be getting more peculiar by the minute, like he wanted an attachment to me of his own.

As soon as we stepped onto the arriving elevator, Victoria asked me, “Is he gay?”

At first I just laughed about it. I hadn’t thought about that, but…I began to grimace in all seriousness. “Why would you say that?” I asked her.

She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know, it’s just the way he looked at you or whatever.”

I was so busy trying to get away from him that I wasn’t really paying attention to it. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to spend too much time on that. I was with the preferred sex, and I wanted to get my mind back into it.

I said, “Well, if he is, then that’s his problem,” and I tugged her slightly into me. “Now where were we?” I asked her.

Victoria wrapped her arms around my waist and squeezed me. She chuckled and said, “You were telling me about all the bad things you were gonna make me do.”

I corrected her and said, “No, that’s all of the bad things that you want to do. Because I’m not gonna make you do anything that you won’t allow.

“I want a woman to want me as much as I want her,” I told her. “Sometimes I want them to want me more.”

I was putting it on her strong. I didn’t want her changing her mind all of a sudden, although I doubted that she would. It was nearly showtime.

Victoria told me, “I do want you,” as soon as the elevator arrived at my floor.

“We’ll see.”

We stepped off the elevator and approached my suite. When I opened the door, my cell phone went off. I had the phone on vibrate and had ignored it for the majority of the night. However, Victoria heard the buzz of the vibration mode and smiled at me.