My cell phone rang a third time.

Finally, I shook off the temptation. Andrea was only a distraction now. I had to remain focused on where I was going. So I let the phone ring, and when it stopped, I turned it off, and I forced myself not to look back?

“Excuse me, I hate to bother you, but aren’t you a model?”

I turned to my right and faced another attractive woman, dark brown, smooth skin, ponytail, tall, shapely, and still young. I could see where she was going to go before I even opened my mouth. She wanted to ask me about modeling, so I decided to run with my assumptions.

“Modeling is a business of people who choose you, or don’t choose you,” I told her. “You really have little control over it. All you can do is be as best prepared for it as you can.”

She looked at me confused. “O-kay. How did you know what I wanted to ask you?”

I said, “Easy, you look like you wanna be a model.”

She smiled and nodded. “Yeah, I do. But what about agency contacts? I mean, you have to get inside the game first, right? That’s what everybody tells me; I need representation.”

I went ahead and gave her Kim’s number in Chicago, and a few other agency contacts that I used. It would be all on her after that. If they liked her, they liked her, and if they didn’t, then it was back to the drawing board.

I said, “You also want to find a connected photographer to take great pictures of you. Ask them who they’ve worked with before, and what their honest opinions are of you.”

“Thank you,” she told me. “So, how do you like it?”

I didn’t feel like having another conversation about modeling and stuff, I just wanted to catch my plane to San Francisco. And I wasn’t interested in flirting with the young woman either.

I told her, “I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but I’m really just trying to focus on my trip.”

I explained it as nicely as I could, and the young woman responded accordingly.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Well, thanks for the information, and have a good flight.”

“Thank you,” I told her.

When I boarded the plane, first class, I sat in my window seat and took a deep breath. I began to feel like Michelle was fattening me up for the kill. She even planned to pick me up at the airport. I was hesitant about that part. I thought that maybe I would need time to digest everything after I had gotten off the plane. But it was already set, Michelle and Briana would be there at the luggage claim area to pick me up.

I had all kinds of nervous thoughts and illusions while on that plane ride from Atlanta, and I couldn’t seem to stop myself.

What if she’s extra big now and not as pretty as she used to be? She did say she was working out in the gym. Is she trying to work off extra pounds? I wondered. It had been four years since I had been with Michelle. A lot of things could change in four years. But I hadn’t been with Andrea for six years, and she was still great looking.