I joked, “What are you trying to do, outdress me?”

She chuckled. “That’s any day of the week.”

“Confident, are we?”

“You have to be. You’re not?”

Before I could answer her, she commented, “Nice car.”

I still hadn’t made up my mind where to take her. I did know that I wanted to get her away from the city.

“Have you ever eaten at Pappadeaux’s?” I asked her. Pappadeaux’s seafood restaurant was on the far east side of Atlanta, near Decatur.

“Papa who?”

I smiled. She hadn’t eaten there before. I don’t recall seeing a Pappadeaux’s up north anywhere.

“That’s where we’re going then,” I told her.

“Do they have good food, because I’m starving. The worst thing in the world is to be hungry with nasty food.”

“No, the worst thing in the world would be a hungry person with no food.”

“Well, you know what I mean.”

It appealed to me that I really didn’t know Nicole that well. I was just trying to make up for what I missed out on in Miami.

I slipped on the radio and Usher’s “Yeah” song came rushing out of the speakers.

Nicole immediately started shaking her head in disgust. “Don’t you ever get tired of hearing that song? If it’s not them, Lil John and The Eastside Boys, or Ciara, then Ludacris, the Ying Yang Twins, Trillville and Lil Scrappy.”

Sounded like she named them all.

“They’re all local stars in their hometown radio market. That’s how it should be. Didn’t they play Sisqo up in Baltimore when he was hot?”

“Yeah, and you see what happened to him, don’t you?” Poor Sisqo was never able to live that “Thong Song” down.

I said, “Well, that won’t happen to Usher. He has the right crossover audience and a solid album. That ‘Yeah’ song isn’t the only one they’re playing.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t like Usher,” she explained. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m just saying that that particular song has been worn into the hole.”

I couldn’t argue with that. I said, “ ‘Burn’ is getting pretty good air-play now as well.”

WE HAD A GREAT DINNER and conversation at Pappadeaux’s restaurant, and when it was time to pack up and leave, I still didn’t know where to take Nicole.

“So, where do we go from here?” she asked me.

We were still seated, and my pants immediately began to rise under the table. I had been teased for a couple of nights in a row with no sex. So I was ripe. I had learned a while ago in the dating game that if a girl shot hard at you, then you needed to shoot hard right back.

I chuckled with wicked thoughts in mind. I said, “You know that guys have fantasies just like women do, don’t you?”

She smiled at me. “And what kind of fantasy are you having?”

I waited a minute for a dramatic answer. “Car sex.”

“Car sex?” she repeated. “You never did that before?” She was frowning at me. I guess she was a car sex pro. Or at least she had enough experience with it to wonder why I hadn’t. I had in high school, but not the kind of car sex that I was thinking about.