His Weakness, Her Liberation

'Round Midnight

After Michael left me crying in his foyer, I stayed in his house for a few days, not ready to deal with the reality that things between us could be over. After I stopped crying, I knew I had to do something to show him how much I wanted to be with him. I was going to throw caution to the wind and completely  open myself up to him. I decided I would throw a birthday/house warming party for him.

My birthday was a fiasco, so I wanted to make the first birthday of his we knew each other special, even if he was mad. I was shocked he'd decided to buy the house down here. Of course it would be convenient for the movie projects he completed in Georgia, but him asking me about buying the house (even though he'd already bought it), let me know he was serious about working on something with me. I held on to that as reassurance. There was no way if he was that serious about me, he could be done with me so quickly.

Planning his party was proving to be a lot more difficult than I imagined. I wanted his closest friends to fly down to Atlanta for the party. I got in touch with his assistant Lauren, who was a big help in getting his friends together and making sure everything was in place.

"Lauren, I can't thank you enough for helping me surprise Mike. I hope we can keep all this under wraps."

"I think we can, it's hard to surprise him, but I don't think he'll see this one coming."

"Ok, so you talked to Terrance, Sterling and Corey right? They're all confirmed?"

"Yep. They'll all be there."

Since Michael essentially told me to kick rocks, I thought it would be best to have Sterling convince Michael to spend his birthday in Atlanta. The plan was to tell Michael they would celebrate his birthday in some of the city's infamous strip clubs. Even though it was my idea, I was nervous about this whole thing--pulling off this surprise and dealing with his friends. I wanted to impress them because I knew how important they were to him and their opinion of me would carry considerable weight. So, I decided that I'd have Lauren communicate with them directly and I'd just meet them when they arrived in Atlanta. I honestly didn't even know if Michael told his friends about me, so it's possible all of this was kind of weird for them too.

I continued with our planning meeting. "So the caterer is squared away with the menu and Michael's new furniture will be here, right?"

"Yes, everything is on schedule. Relax girl," she replied.

"I know, I gotta chill. I just want everything to be on point."

"And it will be! Oh, one last thing, did you want to invite Alex?"

"Who's Alex? I've never heard Michael mention an Alex before."

"Really? Alex is one Mike's oldest friends. They've worked on a bunch of projects together. I can send an email invite if you want."

"Sure, why not? It'll just add to the surprise, I guess."

Things were coming together and I was starting to feel like we could actually pull this off.
---
"Hello?" I answered the phone with a raspy voice because it was after midnight and I'd been asleep for hours. When the phone rang and I saw the call came from a private number, I picked it up just knowing it was Michael, but when I answered the phone, I didn't recognize the voice that greeted me.

"Hi Janeé, how are you?"

"Who is this? It's too late to be playing on my phone."

"Man, I'm sorry. I forgot about the time difference. My bad." The person on the line still didn't identify himself.

"So who is this?"

"This is Sterling, well, everyone calls me Steelo. I'm Mike's best friend."

Why was he calling me?