Michelle started laughing. She said, “If that’s what you want, then that’s what I’ll do. You just make sure you stay consistent.”

I said, “Can you stay consistent with me?”

“I can’t ask you to do something I won’t do. So I’ll make sure that it’s my job, and it’s my pleasure,” she told me. She said, “I understand now what guys need in a relationship. I need it, too. And…I’m not…I’m not gonna deny it anymore.”

Boy, my two heads were jumping for joy! She said she would make it her job and her pleasure, consistently to give me what I need. I liked the sound of that a lot. But then, talk was cheap. Still, if I remembered anything about Michelle Deveraux, she was dedicated to her job, and she was always even-tempered. But I called her bluff anyway.

“Yeah, well, seeing is believing.”

She said, “Okay. We’ll see tomorrow night then. So don’t let your daughter tire you out. Save some of your energy.”

You believe that? I could see Michelle loosening up her tight draw-strings already. So the more I was around her, the more I would get her to open up.

I HUNG UP THE PHONE and didn’t know what to feel, really. I mean, this woman calls me up out of the blue, talking about she has a daughter that she wants me to see. I’m pissed off about it. Then I fly out there to see the daughter, and find out that she’s a happier, prettier me. Then her mother tells me she’s been holding out for four years to break all the rules with her daughter’s daddy.

You gots to be kidding me! And the mother is finer than she was when I first met her, plus she has her life in order.

I smiled in my hotel bed from ear to ear.

“You lucky motherfucker!” I told myself. I hadn’t felt that giddy to be sucked in by a girl in years. Then I thought about how everyone else would respond to it:

“She did what?”

“For how long?”

“Get the hell out of here!”

“And what did you say?”

“And you trust this girl after that?”

“Man, is you crazy!”

“Are you serious, man?”

Long pause.

“Shit, man…you just lost your damn mind!”

And I wouldn’t even give a damn. Nobody helped me to make the decisions I made to get involved with all the women I was involved with in the first place.

Like my mother said, I was thirty-three years old, and I needed to get the hell off the streets and stop knocking on doors. Well, Michelle was offering me a good home. And unless she did something unexpected and outrageous, I was planning on taking her offer…for keeps.

Epilogue

AFTER THE LIFESTYLE I was living, Michelle and Briana couldn’t have come at a better time. They had me thinking about marriage and more kids, and smiling about it. Of course, I took the paternity test first, and there were no surprises there. The doctor confirmed what we already knew. I was the father. So I got all involved and ready for the meetings and greetings on Michelle’s side of the family and mine. I didn’t want to look like some deadbeat, MIA dad, like my own father.