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“Wylie, are you still there?”

“Yes. Bart, please come home. I think I have HIV,” Wylie said.

I didn’t know how to respond, and my stomach began bouncing like a trampoline. I could hear Wylie crying softly on the other end of the line. He sounded like a little boy crying because he’d suddenly been separated from his parents in a huge mall or park. I didn’t know what to do or say, so I whispered, “I’ll have to call you back.”

Happy Birthday, Yancey

Since it seemed like I wasn’t going to get Desmond into my bed, I would go to his. After a very tense meeting with Michel over my not doing the interview with LaVonya, I’d become upset when he said this might hurt my career. I called Desmond and invited myself to his apartment, and he didn’t object.

We were sitting on his sofa, getting ready to watch a movie, when my cell phone rang. I looked at the number and said, “I better get this. It might be Michel.”

“Or one of your boyfriends,” Desmond joked.

“Hello.”

“Yancey, this is Michel.”

“Are you still upset with me?”

“We need to schedule your interview with LaVonya,” Michel said.

“I still haven’t decided if I’m going to do it,” I said.

“This is free publicity. Yancey, you have to do it. The higher-ups are furious about your not wanting to do the interview. Mr. Hudson is talking about coming in from Los Angeles to talk some sense into you.”

“Like I told you earlier, I think LaVonya has an ulterior motive.”

“What?”

“I can’t talk about it right now,” I said as I looked over at Desmond to see if he was looking at or listening to me. He had moved over to his DVD and CD collection and was searching for something.

“Yancey, I need to give you some advice. Take it or leave it, but not doing this interview would be a very big mistake, and it might alter your relationship with Motown. People will start to consider you difficult to work with, and trust me, there’s a long list of difficult divas that are no longer in the business. You need to call me in the morning and set a time for this interview,” Michel said firmly.

“I’ll call you,” I said as I clicked off my phone. The nervousness I was feeling in my stomach must have moved to my face, because Desmond turned to me and asked, “Is everything all right?”

“It will be fine.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Desmond asked as he sat down next to me on the sofa.

When I looked into his eyes I decided that I was going to try something different. I was going to try the truth. The whole truth.

I began by telling Desmond about my dilemma with Motown and People magazine. I told him I had some secrets about my past I was sure LaVonya was going to ask me about, and how those secrets could end my career.

He took my hands and said, “We all have secrets. But you can’t let your past haunt your future.”

“Some of the things I have to say might change the way you feel about me,” I said softly.

“How could they? Is there something in your past that you’ve done to me? My family?”

“No.”

“Then how could it change the way I feel about you?”

“Let me ask you something. Why didn’t you make love to me when we were in South Beach?”

Desmond responded quickly, “Because it wasn’t time. I want to make love to the entire you. Your body. Your soul. I’m still learning that. Any man could look at you and love what he sees on the outside. I want something more.”

“What if I can’t give you that?”

“Then we both would lose a great deal,” Desmond said as he sweetly touched my face with the back of his hand.

I spent the next hour telling Desmond about my sordid past. I started out on the sofa with Desmond holding my hands, and then I got up and walked around the small living room as I recounted stories of how my grandmother used to beat me. I told him how my mother wasn’t interested in being a mother. I told him what I had done to Basil, and even Nicole.

I started talking and I couldn’t stop, and I felt cleansed. Like I was finally able to remove old photos from a scrap-book I was too afraid