“So what’s next on your menu?” Kim asked me.

“I fly to L.A. in two weeks. So I have another nice break period until then.”

“Yeah, Paula told me about that last night. And you know her niece has the hots for you.”

I chuckled. “What’s up with that?” I asked. “That girl knows I can’t deal with her.”

“Well, she wants what she wants,” Kim joked.

I smiled to myself and thought, Yeah, so does everybody.

She said, “From what I hear, TaShay likes flirting with older men.”

“Yeah, well, is that all she does with them?”

Kim laughed. “I seriously doubt it, but I guess it would depend on how often she’s able to get out on her own. I believe Paula has a pretty tight leash on her.”

“What about when she turns twenty-one, twenty-two?” I questioned.

“When she’s all the way grown, she’s all the way grown, just like any other woman. But what about your white girl, Victoria? Did you find out what you needed to with her? By the way, she looked good last night. Did you tell her to wear the same color you were wearing?”

“Absolutely not,” I answered. “In fact, that put me on guard for a minute, thinking other people would believe that. So I tried to stay away from her.”

Kim laughed hard at that. “It was just a wild coincidence, huh?”

“That’s all it was,” I assured her.

“And who was the other girl hounding you in the orange dress?”

Obviously, Kim hadn’t let anything get by her, and she was letting me know as much.

“Actually, I just met that girl in Miami a few weeks ago, right before you called me about this event. So she found out her friends were going to the same banquet, and she got all excited about it. But I told her I would be on the busy side before she showed up. I mean, you can’t please everybody.”

“I see,” Kim quipped.

Was she getting at something with that? I wanted to leave it alone, but I couldn’t.

“Are you sure you don’t have any hard feelings about me saying no?”

She took another breath. “Terrance, I told you, we don’t have to go there or ever talk about that again. It’s over with.”

I wanted to believe her and move on, so I decided to let it go. It was the best thing for both of us.

WHEN I HUNG UP the phone with Kim, I wondered how long I would wait before I called Andrea. But since I didn’t want the subject on my mind any longer, I figured calling her immediately would be the best thing.

I stood up from my black La-Z-Boy chair, stretched my muscles, walked around my spacious living room, and sat back down to make this all-important phone call to my old fling in Chicago.

I dialed her number on my office phone and took a breath to get right into it. The phone rang twice, and as soon as she picked up the line on the third ring, she told me, “Terrance, whoever gave you my number is getting fired immediately.”