Obviously, they had a conversation in reference to me.

TaShay looked in my face and said, “Terrance, are you gonna invite us to stay with you for a minute?”

I started the car with the intention of driving back to my hotel. I had left my cell phone in the room on purpose to keep myself away from too many bothersome distractions. But at that moment, I began to wonder when or if TaShay’s aunt or mother would call her on her cell phone about her whereabouts. She was still only nineteen.

I asked her, “How long can you stay out?”

“Um, I’m over Tan’s house tonight,” she answered with a chuckle.

Tan heard that and fell out laughing from the backseat.

“You ain’t over my damn house.”

I said, “In other words, you two are just out on the town for the night.”

“Basically,” Tan answered.

TaShay reached over and squeezed my right thigh. “We just need to lay down for a couple of hours, that’s all.”

Tan was silent for a change.

I nodded my head, thinking everything over as I began to drive. What could I say? If I really didn’t feel comfortable with things, I guess I could get them their own room. But how would TaShay respond to that? I could see that she wanted to tempt me.

I said, “I’ll see if I can get an extra room there for you guys to crash in, and you can leave in the morning.”

Tan responded, “What? You don’t want us in your room? That’s a first. Guys usually try to break their arms off to get to us, and fail at it. But she wanted this. She had me drive all the way to L.A. for it, and this is how you treat her?”

Tan was running her drunken mouth all over the place. But TaShay got silent. She removed her hand from my thigh and looked away from me.

“Okay,” she mumbled.

Damn! I thought to myself. Here we go again. She wants something that I don’t want.

I went back and forth about the idea for the entire drive to the hotel, and Tan was still busy running her mouth.

“If he don’t want it, he don’t want it,” she commented. “You can’t force a man to take what he don’t want.”

“Would you shut up?” TaShay finally snapped at her. We were pulling up to the parking lot of the hotel.

Tan shouted, “Girl, don’t fuckin’ get mad at me because he don’t wanna do shit! It ain’t my damn fault!”

I had no idea the city of San Diego could raise such an unruly girl. The next thing I knew, they were ready to get in each other’s faces inside the car. I rushed to park in an open space as quickly as possible so I could get them out of the car and separate then.

I grabbed TaShay as soon as we all jumped out.

“She’s been acting like an asshole all night,” she shouted about her friend.