Around four in the morning on day four, Dionne waits for Dominic to deliver the newspaper. The moment she hears it drop, she opens her apartment door and tells him her offer for the road trip still stands.

Too agitated to sleep, Dionne meticulously cleans her apartment, tends to her vacationing neighbors’ plants, and does laundry. Worried that Kareem has told her best friend, Farrah, about her HIV scare, Dionne calls and leaves a manic message on Farrah’s answering machine, telling her everything is fine. She claims she has a ten-thousand-dollar budget from Essence for a work trip to find “beauties off the beaten path” (106). Later, Dominic arrives in a cherry-red Mercedes-Benz, which surprises Dionne. As he loads her excessive luggage, she hesitates, suddenly questioning the safety of getting in a car with a man she hardly knows. However, she is swayed by his pained, vulnerable expression and her reasoning that he is not dangerous—he went to jail for drugs, not murder.

Once on the road, Dionne adds two more names, Todd and Sean, to her list of past lovers. Dominic reveals he quit his delivery job to take the trip.