After I hung up with TaShay I was back on my own time. Leisure was really afforded to the wealthy. I wasn’t filthy rich by any means, but I was comfortable. So I took my time to relax and enjoy my place, nice and boring—the way I liked it. There was no reason to feel guilty about that. I had a good life.

Turned Out

IHAD A PRETTY EVEN WEEK, hanging out with Danni, returning phone calls to Victoria and Judi, and setting up travel plans to visit my mother in Indiana for a few days. Then the end of the week came with Rachel calling me back to remind me of her visit to Atlanta that weekend. She hadn’t called me all week, so I had basically forgotten about it. But then on late Thursday night, I get this phone call from her.

“I’ll be getting into Atlanta tomorrow at four-thirty PM. I’m staying at the Marriott Marquis downtown.”

“The Marriott Marquis?” I asked her.

“Yeah, I have a friend who works there who hooked me up with a discount for the weekend.”

How many friends in different cities did she have?

I said, “Okay.”

She asked me. “You wouldn’t have time to pick me up at the airport, would you?”

All of a sudden, I began to wish I was out of town on another photo shoot somewhere. There were times when my schedule was a lot more packed than others, and other times when my schedule was open. I was pretty much open, which gave me a whole lot of free time on my hands. Danni was still flying in and out, but she would still be home in Atlanta that weekend.

I told Rachel, “Let’s just keep it simple and have you catch a taxi like you normally would. Since you haven’t called me all this week, I hadn’t set up time to see you yet, especially as early as tomorrow afternoon.”

“Well, I got real busy this week at work so I could leave early on Friday, but I had already told you that I was coming.”

She actually told me there was a possibility that she would come; we had never confirmed anything.

Anyway, it was too late for the back-and-forth confusions, so I told her, “We’ll work it out. I know where you are and I know your number.”

“Okay now, don’t bullshit me again,” she warned me.

I ended the phone call with Rachel and immediately thought about ways of becoming absent from Danni that weekend. She had become comfortable in my presence. I guess that’s what happens when you give a woman what she wants.

“Now, I’ll need to go over there and spend time with her tonight to smooth things over for the weekend,” I advised myself.

However, when I called her up, Danni wasn’t in the mood for having company.

“I don’t feel like that tonight,” she told me.

I said, “We don’t have to do anything, I just figured I’d relax with you.”