“Is that what it is?”

Danni was trying to walk me right into something. This wasn’t a young white girl anymore. Danni was a seasoned mixed chick, who had been spoiled for her entire life.

I grinned. “It’s only a good time when you really do care about the person. Everything else is just practice.”

She started laughing and said, “You are so full of shit. So I need to go out here and do me some more practicing then.”

“You don’t need practice.”

“Didn’t you just say that’s what it is?”

“For the people who need it, yeah.”

“So you don’t need it anymore?”

She was still trying to stump me.

I asked her, “Do you think I need practice, Danyel?”

She hesitated before she laughed again. “I think you’ve had enough practice.”

When she finished her sentence, my cell phone buzzed a second time. I looked down at the screen and read Corey’s number, but I wasn’t going to answer that. I had already made up my mind. I wasn’t hanging out with him.

I went back to my call with Danni and teased her. “Do you really think you can hold me down?”

She said, “I know I can. Matter of fact, do you need me to fly out there right now? I can be there by midnight. You could leave a key for me at the front desk. And I could fly to Detroit in the morning.”

I hadn’t even thought of that. Detroit was an hour flight from Chicago. Then again, did I want Danni being that close to my business? I mean, I enjoyed her, I really did. But…

“Un huh, I’m fucking up your game, right?” she assumed. “You don’t wanna bring no other bitch to the beach.”

I had done it before with Andrea, and with a few other women. So that was no big deal to me. I just needed more time to myself to figure out where I wanted to be. Ironically, being with a new woman was almost like being by yourself, because there were no realistic ties that could be assumed on a simple date or a one-night stand. However, Danni and I had moved past the simple date and the one-night stand. I had to figure out for myself what the next step was going to be before she succeeded in pushing that next step on me.

She said, “I’m not even packed yet for that kind of shit, so pull your drawers out your ass and chill. I won’t blow your groove tonight. Go ahead and have your fun. I mean, practice.”

I said, “Look, Danni, I’m not having any of that tonight. Now I will have room service, because I’m hungry, but after that, I’m gonna order a movie on TV and go to bed. You got that?”

I was coming down on her kind of hard, but that’s just how it came out. She took it all in stride though.

She said, “Okay, if you say so. I guess I have to take your word on it.”