"Now."

I hung up.

My heart beat like I had just finished a grueling run.

I was afraid.

I had left his number programmed in my cellular so whenever he called, DNA LOGAN popped up on my screen. Do Not Answer, Logan. I hadn't responded to Logan's calls, text messages, faxes, hadn't responded to any form of communication for almost a season. When I was done, I was done. Cold turkey if I had to. Up until the text message he had sent this morning, he'd stopped reaching out at least a month ago. Never expected to hear from him again. At least not this soon. Not like this. In my mind he had finally cut bait and moved on. Maybe because I had moved on a long time ago. I cursed. Here I go with this madness. I didn't want to deal with this insanity. I thought this part of my life was over. I thought I was free. But I was wrong. I had to go get my freedom. I had to fight for what I already owned.

As I drove through the storm I practiced what I was going to say, a preacher preparing her sermon. But I trembled as if I was a runaway, caught and imprisoned, going before the parole board.

My vocabulary was sufficient, my education superlative, but still I looked for the words that would make him understand that this was over. I wanted to tell him that if we continued, this relationship would become a caricature of a real relationship, and in the end he would hate me as I would hate him.

I wasn't a woman to him. I was something else to conquer. And once he conquered me I'd become ordinary in his eyes. And like the rest of the women he'd been involved with, I'd become superfluous.

As he had become superfluous to me.

I tried to understand me, why I did the things I did. I'd rushed into too many relationships, had promised loyalty because loyalty was expected, knowing that loyalty was not what I was capable of giving, not forever. Not since Hampton.

As far as I was concerned, man was the most disloyal creature on the planet.

I made it through the storm and went to that underground parking structure at Wal-Mart.

Logan's Range Rover pulled in right behind me, parked next to me on my driver's side. My heartbeat was in my throat. He was on his cellular; he motioned at his phone, then smiled at me. Veins rising in my neck, I smiled too, my smile being a frown turned upside down.

Again I took a deep breath.

I eased out of my car. I didn't check myself in the mirror, didn't arrange my hair, didn't wipe oil from my face, left myself the way I wanted to look for him, the opposite of pretty.

Two women passed by, women who were pushing overloaded Wal-Mart baskets, both were smoking and looked like creatures who loathed the sun and lived on caffeine, nicotine, and Krispy Kreme. They looked at me in my sweaty clothing, my ashen face, my wild hair, and gave me a frown that said they despised people who tanned well and looked like they lived on tofu and organic food.

Those women might outlive me. But in the end, my coffin will be easier to carry.

Logan got out of his Range Rover, hanging up his cellular as he came toward me.

The women in the Tri-State area looked at him and lost control. Women who were financially strained, women who needed supplemental income to make ends meet, they did their best to get next to him. He never had that power over me. I wasn't one of the women in the world who was desperate to be taken care of. I only needed pleasure. In the end, his sex had released liquid boredom inside the latex barrier between my thighs, his best stroke had made yoni yawn, close her dry lips, and fall into a deep slumber.

Logan could not please me the way I desired to be pleased. Logan could not fuck.

How do you tell a man he is sexually incompetent without making it seem as if you are attacking his ego? He claimed he could buy and sell the better parts of Memphis's Shelby County whenever he felt like it. He had a large home, expensive cars, tailored clothing, was more popular than Jerry Lawler. None of that impressed me. I grew up around oceans and Hollywood celebrities-the real celebrities-saw them walking through my home with their shoes off, saw them sipping beers and watching games in my den. I had my own money, so I had my own economic power, lacked desperation and need, and with financial in dependence came a new kind of clarity. I didn't have to settle for less than I deserved. I didn't need to tether myself to any man for financial reasons.

He came too close, touched my arm right above the elbow, and I felt the opposite of moist.

He touched me on my arm and I yanked away.

His smile lessened as his eyes widened.

I shook my head.

He thought that touch would reawaken some desire inside me, some desire for him that had never taken root. He didn't understand me. When I was no longer attracted to a man, when he was no longer fulfilling me, I couldn't imagine him in a sexual way. He saw that in my eyes. He saw that in my body language. I felt sorry that he was hurting, but there was no attraction, the thrill was gone.

He took a deep breath, nodded, his lips tight, vulgarities dancing in his eyes.

"Logan...look..."

"What did I do wrong?"

"Why are you here?"

"Are you seeing somebody else?"

"That's not the issue."

"Are you?"

"I'm not answering that."

"I drove down in this storm to see you."

"I didn't ask you to."

"Nia...I'm here."

"What do you want, Logan?"

"What did I do wrong?"

I took a hard breath. "Nothing. You didn't do anything wrong."

"I love you."

"Maybe that's the problem. I don't love you, Logan."

"Maybe not now. But do you think, maybe if we gave it some more time, do you think you could?"

"Waiting for me to love you would be like waiting on Santa Claus."

It looked like he was about to fall apart.

I felt the same way. This was mentally exhausting, took more energy than running a marathon.

A white teenager passed by, leaning to the side like he wanted to be pimp of the year, his car packed with his white friends, windows up, but his music so strong we could hear his black idols peppering the air with foul language, a duet that gave equal time to misogynistic and misandrist lyrics.

The genocidal music faded like some relationships never would.

I asked Logan, "Are we done?"

He rubbed his neck for a moment, then cleared his throat, said, "I left some stuff at your place back in Memphis."

"I know. They're at my town house."

"When can I come get my things?"

"We'll arrange something."

"Can I come now?"

"Not now. We'll...I have your address."

"So I'm here and I can't come by to pick it up?"

"No."

"You shacking up or something?"

Again I rubbed my temples. "Look, Logan, I can FedEx it all to you first thing in the morning."

"FedEx."

"Let's not make this any more painful than it needs to be. No need to drag this out."

He chuckled. "No need to drag this out. Is that right?"

"No more than it's already been dragged out."

He nodded. I did the same.

The things he had left at my place in Memphis, I had already put them in a ragged box. His name was written on that box in bold letters: LOGAN. I had already unmarked my territory. I had dragged that box with me when I moved, kept it in the garage, left the things he had left behind amongst things unwanted.

The rain eased up. It didn't stop. Just eased up.

Logan shifted. "You make it sound like I didn't mean a damned thing to you."

"We've come this far...we met by chance...had wonderful experiences together...for what it's worth, I would really like it if we could end this in a kind way...in a way that allowed us to be friends."

"Friends?"

"Yeah. Friends. Platonic friends. Without benefits." I took a sharp breath. "Let some time go by, when you're not so intense, and maybe we'll reconnect as platonic friends."

Wonderful experience. Losing benefits. I had to sound like an executive from a Fortune 500 company firing an incompetent employee in the mailroom.

He frowned at me like he wanted to fill me up with his ardent craving, the craving that had made him drive almost four hundred miles of two-lane highway from Memphis through Birmingham to Atlanta.

He said, "You've always been different."

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

"Always been sarcastic and difficult."

A long stretch of silence assaulted me. I wasn't being honest. I wasn't telling the truth. Not the truth that lived inside me. It remained veiled in sarcasm, was given indirectly by lack of phone calls and absence. I had avoided this moment, its cruelty. The truth was an ugly pimple on the face of a beautiful lie. I was tired of avoiding him, tired of mind-wrestling on a level that was beneath me, beneath all I strived to become, exhausted by this beautiful lie, now it was time to acknowledge the truth.

With a sigh preceding my words, I said, simply, "We're not equally yoked."

"Equally yoked?"

"We're not...you don't do it for me."

"Bullshit."

"I have submitted to my desires and had new experiences while I was with you."

"Submitted to your desires? What the hell does that mean?"

"To you it would mean that I was unfaithful to you."

That paused him.

He said, "You're telling me you cheated."

"I'm telling you that I followed my desires, let them lead me toward new experiences."

"How many times?"

"Twice."

"Twice...with the same guy?"

"No."

He gritted his teeth. "Two men."

"Yes."

"Two goddamn men."

"Yes."

"In my city."

"You don't own Memphis."

"I was born there."

"And I was a taxpaying citizen at the time."

People passed by us pushing baskets filled with provisions from Wal-Mart.

He asked, "Who?"