She stepped back off the elevator without speaking and headed toward the the restaurant area with me.

I reached out my hand to her and said, “My name is Terrance.”

She looked at me and smiled. “You model?”

I was surprised by it. “Yeah, you’ve seen some of my work?”

I was always flattered by the folks who noticed me. I pretty much did the work and kept it moving. Not to say I didn’t know what I was doing as a model, I just didn’t sweat it too hard. I liked the perks that modeling afforded me though.

She said, “I thought you looked familiar. I think I saw you in Complex before. My boyfriend reads that a lot.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I’ve been in Complex a few times. It’s one of the few places where a brother can get a decent fashion spread. But I sure wish Code was still around. Most of the new men’s mags are about nothing but cars, ass, and tits. Excuse my candor,” I told her. Hypocritically, I was up late thinking about ass myself.

“Oh, don’t worry about that, I’ve heard much worse than that,” the woman told me. She said, “And my name is Rachel.”

“Well, I’m pleased to meet you, Rachel.”

We walked over to the hotel restaurant and sat in a comfortable booth, facing each other.

“So, what’s on your mind at four o’clock in the morning that keeps you up late in your nightclothes?” I asked her.

She said, “I was gonna ask you the same thing.”

“So we’re both crazy then,” I stated with a chuckle. I tried to keep it real but light at the same time.

Rachel didn’t take offense to it. She said, “Life is crazy, and we’re just trapped in it.”

“So where is your boyfriend, back out on the town or up in the room?”

I didn’t really want to be caught with her while a jealous boyfriend was running around. So I planned to keep things harmless.

She said, “His ass is back home in Cleveland. He was supposed to meet me down here and he didn’t come. I knew I should have come down here with my girlfriends.”

I said, “So you don’t live together or anything?” Rachel looked at least thirty. Shacking up had become the norm for most couples. Seems like most people who still lived alone were single, including me. I had offers to shack up, and came extremely close a few times, but I didn’t take the plunge.

Rachel said, “We tried that but it didn’t work out. He liked to run the damn streets too much, and had me up worrying about him all night.”

I said, “But when he’s not expected to come home every night, you’re not as concerned about it and your mind is more at ease.”

“Exactly.”

I knew the deal like the back of my hand. It was one of the main things I knew about myself. If I wanted to hang, then I was going to hang, and no woman waiting up for me was going to stop me. So it was no sense in me putting any woman through that torture.