My whole life changed when Shelly said those three little words to me: “Cory, it’s over.”

We were in the throes of a discussion about how to keep our soon-to-be long-distance relationship alive and well when I left home to go to Atlanta for graduate school. At the time, getting a good job and making plenty of cash were my main concerns. I’d never been rich, but I wasn’t prepared to struggle due to bad decisions either. I believed wholeheartedly that an MBA from Georgia Tech in project management was sure to open a few doors for me in the future.

I’d done well in undergrad, but it wasn’t as if schools were beating down the doors to get me to choose them. I had attended Morgan State University, a small black school thirty miles from my home in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. It was no secret that the prominent graduate schools held that against you. Their unspoken mantra seemed to shout “Sure, you may have performed well against your peers, but that doesn’t mean that you can make it here with the privileged.” That’s why when I was accepted to grad school at Tech, I chose to go there instead of even thinking about applying to Temple, where Shelly was headed to work on her master’s.

The fact that I was leaving the D.C. area and heading down south meant that we wouldn’t be within driving distance, but I was convinced we could make it work. I knew it would be difficult missing her. Through my years at Morgan State it had always been easy to find me. If I wasn’t hanging out downtown in the clubs with Brendan and Nate, then it had been a safe bet that Shelly and I were together. Adjustments would have to be made. I’d assured her there would be long weekends and holidays for us to see one another. Hard as it is to believe now, I had had no idea that I was tearing Shelly’s heart apart in ways that I couldn’t have figured out at the time.

After she’d rocked my world with her statement, Shelly didn’t look me in the eyes. I was speechless, trying to figure out where she was coming from. She went on to say, “A boyfriend 750 miles away can’t meet my needs, Cory.”

Her words and attitude made her seem like a different person. During the three years we had been together she had never given me any drama other than an occasional lovers’ quarrel, and at first I expected this spat to be no different. But somehow Shelly had turned as cold as ice. I’d thought that I’d picked up on her fears, and maybe she was just feeling unsure of our being able to maintain the relationship over the long distance. When I questioned her about it she told me that she definitely had concerns, but not just about me remaining faithful. When I asked her what she’d meant by that, she flatly said, “When the cat is away the mouse will play.”

“So what are you saying?” I asked her apprehensively.

“C’mon, Cory. Do I need to spell it out for you? Be realistic. I…I…just don’t think we can expect to make it. There’ll be so many women down there.”

“And there’ll be so many men up in Philly.”

She’d stood up from the couch and said, “Yeah, that too.”

I lost my temper at that point. I remember saying some nasty things and hearing her cursing me back in a combination of English and Spanish. Shelly was Puerto Rican and always spoke in Spanish, her native tongue, when she got mad or emotional. She didn’t stop until I walked out her front door. Like any young couple we’d had a few major fights, but somehow we’d managed to make up each time. The only difference was that this time, in two days, she’d be leaving for Philly, and I was heading to Atlanta.

She didn’t ring my phone during those two days, and when I finally called her to apologize, her younger sister Nina made it a point to tell me that Shelly had gone out on a movie date to see He Got Game. If she was trying to make me jealous, it had worked.

It worked so well, in fact, that my mind began to race with doubts about whether or not I should have ever trusted her.

At that moment I cut her off from my love and me as far as I was concerned. I hung up and began packing for my trip and my life in Atlanta. I was leaving early. I knew she would probably be calling back later, but I wanted to make sure that it was too late. I called my boys, Brendan and Nate, to see if either of them wanted to ride with me on the ten-hour drive to Atlanta. They both were willing to roll down to keep me company but neither was ready, and my anger wouldn’t let me wait around.

It turned out to be better that I was alone. I’m not ashamed to admit that I shed a few tears on my ride down 85. I don’t know why I tortured myself by listening to all of that damned slow music. K-Ci and JoJo’s “All My Life,” Brian McKnight’s Anytime, and don’t get me started on R. Kelly. By the time I reached Charlotte my rage had given way to paranoia. I had envisioned R. Kelly going half on a baby with my girl simply because she reminded him of his jeep.

My shattered ego coupled with my confusion and suddenly everything was all starting to make sense. I reasoned that Shelly must have been cheating all along. That was why she hadn’t made a fuss about my decision to not go to school up North with her.

“That bitch.” I said that to myself over and over again with each stretch of passing highway. I made up my mind somewhere on that interstate that when I got to Atlanta I was going to be the one keeping it on the down low with someone else’s lady. Nate had always beaten the chicks to the punch with the trickery, and he had never endured half the problems with his women that most men faced in relationships. Instead of dealing with drama, he did dirty then cut things off before the women could do dirty back to him.

He’d told me that all women are capable of cheating, but not every woman is capable of loving you right. Which meant that you’re more likely to get a cheater than a good woman. With that in mind a brother had to look out for himself first. And I knew that if anyone knew women, it was Nate. He said that you had to think crazy like a woman if you wanted to survive the game. He did more than survive the game; he seemed to have mastered it. Brendan, on the other hand, had had major problems not getting steamrolled by every woman he dealt with. I was determined not to be like him.

As far as I was concerned, from that point on, Shelly had ruined it for the women crossing my path in the future. I hadn’t planned to become an all-out dog or anything, but I definitely wasn’t taking any more shit off women. Above all, I was looking out for number one.

Though it was hard getting over Shelly, the distance helped. The next two years went by quickly, and I barely remember everything or everyone that I did. Atlanta was the bomb. I finished school and landed a job in the sales and acquisitions department of Pavillion Satellite Corporation that started me off with $86,000 a year. I also made a few good friends in Atlanta, mostly buddies I played ball with at Run and Shoot and occasionally hit the clubs with. However, they could never replace my right and left arms. Nate and Brendan were an impossible act to follow. They kept my spirits up through any rough times. I never told them that thoughts of Shelly still haunted me, but I think they knew. It seemed as though they always knew just when to call or set up a trip down.

They came down to visit almost every other month, and when they did it was always a wild weekend. Nate would tell me that with all the honeys in Atlanta I should have been screwing more. Brendan was always letting me know that I had changed a lot. He would say that, although I seemed more mature, I didn’t seem to be as righteous as I once was. On one trip he stated that he couldn’t believe I hadn’t gotten into a serious relationship since Shelly and I had broken up.

What I had neglected to explain to him was that I was in a serious relationship. The only thing was that my girlfriend was married. She also happened to be one of my former professors at Georgia Tech and about ten years older than me. I kept that one to myself for a while.