“Girl, I can’t wait until you’re famous.”

This came from Derek, who I asked to be my wingman when I met up with Max tonight. I was already regretting that decision because he was in complete and total lust with Max. From the moment he laid eyes on him in the coffeehouse yesterday, he wouldn’t stop going on and on about how gorgeous and sexy Max was; how perfect his hair was, and of all things, how straight Max’s teeth were. Like who the hell noticed someone’s teeth like that? It was super creepy. But not as creepy and gross as how Derek started strategizing how a power bottom like himself would go to town on Max’s ass. It was very confusing and very, very detailed and way too much information than I ever needed to know about Derek’s sex life, thank you very much.

The subway rides here to Chelsea from Queens were full of commentary from Derek about how he was going to seduce Max. And I quote, “That hot piece of ass won’t know what him.”

I had tried to convince him how straight Max was, but he wasn’t having any of it. Oh well, I’d let him crash and burn now if that’s how he wanted to play it.

We were walking up West Eighteenth Street, nearing one of the ends of The High Line when I turned to Derek, who was dressed like he was auditioning to be a stand-in for The Village People. “Derek, is there a reason why you’re wearing leather pants?”

He grinned wickedly as he glanced down at himself. “Why? You don’t like them?”

“Eh, they’re okay, I guess.”

“Sweetie, darling, did you know that ninety-nine percent of women don’t like it when men wear leather pants?”

“Is that true?” I asked.

Without missing a beat, he answered, “It’s totally true. Which works out perfectly, since one hundred percent of men who wear leather pants don’t like women.”

I was still laughing as we approached The Red Room a few minutes later. From the outside, the place itself was nothing to write home about. It was a simple, non-descript red brick building with a big industrial door in the front. I assumed it was the front, because there was no sign that told us that it was truly The Red Room. But there was a line of people waiting to get inside, so it had to be the place.

You could hear a low bass line pumping a distinct house music type beat from the inside. It pulsed and pulsed the closer we got to the door. To the point that I could feel the beat through my platform sneakers as we stood in front of the bouncer. This was where Derek usually came in handy and worked his magic. How he knew the right people at the right place and at the right time all over this city was fascinating. And scary, sometimes. But the man got the job done, because within seconds, he would always get us behind any velvet rope. This time though, I wouldn’t need to rely on Derek. Thanks to Max, which I couldn’t believe I was even thinking of thanking him for anything; he took care of adding me to the elusive guest list.

“Daphne Rodriguez and guest,” the bouncer announced. He looked up at me and then down my body slowly with a smile that made me want to take a scalding hot shower. “I guess that’s you, right?”

“Yeah, that’s me, thanks.”

“And I’m her plus one,” Derek added cheerfully.

The bouncer was still checking me out when he unclipped the velvet-linked rope from the stand and lifted it. His smile was on the verge of serial killer creepy while Derek and I crossed the threshold. We heard some whining from a couple of the people waiting in the line to get in. And I barely gave a shit that they were still waiting while I got to go inside. I had been there and done that enough times that it didn’t faze me anymore. People were going to assume you knew someone or that you blew someone to get to the front of the line and inside a club, bar, wherever. And I found that no matter how many times I tried to explain myself, it fell on deaf ears. So, I preferred to be completely indifferent to the haters. Because haters were, in fact, going to hate no matter what.

The door slammed shut behind us, and we were assaulted with a blast of cold air in the tiny hallway that led to the actual club. Black light and neon spray painted sayings on the walls jumped out at us as we walked a short corridor before it opened up to a larger room. Out of habit, I adjusted the high ponytail on the top of my head and then looked down at myself to see if I had picked the right outfit.

What I had heard of the club’s dress code was that it fell somewhere in the middle but leaned a little more to the underdressed side. As I looked around at the clientele, it seemed that there were mostly casually dressed people with a sprinkle of underdressed here and there. So my high waisted stonewashed circa-early nineties tight jeans, cut off white halter-top, and platform black sneakers worked out perfectly tonight. The jury was still out on Derek’s leather pants, though.

“For a Sunday night, this place is rigoddamndiculously packed.”

“Maybe there’s some special deejay spinning tonight or something we don’t know about,” I offered as a possible reason.

But Derek was right. This club was super crowded. The dance floor looked like it barely could fit another person. And the bar to the left of where we were standing looked like it was two people deep already from this angle. I was kicking myself mentally for not having heard of this place before Max because it would have made a great segment on my YouTube channel.

“You came.”

This was shouted at my back by what I recognized instantly as Max’s voice.

“He’ll be coming too,” Derek whispered in my ear before we turned around. He elbowed me out of the way and offered up his hand to Max. “Hi there, handsome. I’m Derek. It’s so good to finally meet you in person. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“All good things, I hope?” Max asked him with a mischievous smile on his face. He was staring straight at me while he took Derek’s hand in his and gave it a good shake.

“Not a one,” Derek answered. “And I’m totally okay with that.”

“Good to know,” Max told him. Still focused on me, he added, “I can’t believe you showed up.”

To be honest, I really couldn’t believe I showed up too. And if weren’t for Derek, I wouldn’t be here at all tonight. He wasn’t having the word “no” come from me on this one at all. When Max left the coffeehouse yesterday, Derek stormed back into the room and demanded to know every bit of our conversation. When I detailed the reason for Max’s visit…along with the obscene amount of money that I could potentially be making if I took the job, he basically called me an idiot if I didn’t jump all over it.

Was it a lot of money? Yes, soooo much more money than I currently made with both jobs. But I was a firm believer that money wasn’t going to solve all of my problems. Would it solve the majority of them? Absolutely. But I was okay with continuing on doing what I was doing now. Because if I took this job with Max and it didn’t work out for whatever reason, I’d be stuck with no job, no money, and a whole lot of bills to pay. Max, on the other hand, would still be rich. As of right now, I had all of my money problems under semi-control. Albeit I had barely any freaking time to myself, but still. It’s like that saying about the devil you don’t know or the devil you know is better…I wasn’t sure exactly which. But all of this felt very much like I should know which was better, sooner than later too.

“So how do you want to do this?” I asked him. I felt off and uncomfortable. And I kind of wanted to knock that stupid smile off of his face that made him look even more handsome than he already was. Dumb jerk.

“How about we follow my lead?” He looked behind him towards the bar. “Adam is my co-segment producer and cameraman. I told you about him, right?” I wouldn’t have time to answer because he just kept right on talking. “Anyway, we have some shots already scoped out and ready to go.”

Max turned on his heel and I assumed that meant we should follow.

“You can bounce quarters off that ass,” Derek whisper-shouted to me.

This of course forced me to stare at Max’s ass. Which, yes, you could probably bounce quarters off of it since it was pretty nice. But an ass was an ass, was an ass. Any other ass would smell as sweet…or not, probably.

“Would you settle down already?” I caught Derek taking one last peek at Max’s backside. Giving him some serious side-eye, I told him, “One more time and I’m sending you home, young man.”

He laughed and playfully smacked my arm. “Oh relax, you old fuddy-duddy, I’m just having some fun.”

We reached Adam who, for all intents and purposes, looked like he couldn’t care less if he was in the most hopping club in the entire world. The guy looked like he would rather be watching paint dry than be here…or anywhere else for that matter. He was at least a head and shoulders above everyone else in the place, so the annoyed-with-the-world-look on his face really stuck out like a sore thumb. His longish blonde hair was covered mostly with a backwards baseball hat, and his clothes made me think he belonged on a beach somewhere trying to catch some waves rather than in a nightclub in the heart of Chelsea.

“Nice to meet you, Adam,” I said with a smile.

He responded with a tiny nod of his head. Then to Max, he asked, “Are we ready to roll?”

“Yeah, yeah, let me get Daphne up to speed really quick while you go and get the shot ready.”

With that, Adam picked up a couple of big black bags he had by his feet. He started to carefully pull the straps of the bags over his head so that he could carry them to wherever Max had previously told him we would be filming. While he was doing that, I nudged Derek. “Hey, why don’t you go with him so Max and I can get ready?”

“Oh, sure, no problem.” Derek answered. He turned his attention to Adam, who was already starting to move like the world’s slowest snail. “Wait up, Johnny Utah, I’m coming with you.”

Once they were out of earshot, Max noted, “That’s an interesting combination. Hopefully Derek doesn’t hit on him, too. Then again, Adam is already doing his best impression of sleepwalking, so he probably wouldn’t notice anyway.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.”

“About what?”

“About Derek and…you know.”

Max was biting his lower lip trying not to laugh. I didn’t want to come right out and acknowledge how blatant Derek’s technique was, so I kept motioning with my hands in the air like I was trying to fan myself.

“Do you mean the way he was trying to hit on me?” he asked with a smirk.

“Yes, thank you, that was exactly what I meant.”

Running a hand through one side of his perfectly coiffed, brown, semi-fuck-boy hair, Max looked over to where Adam and Derek were prepping the equipment. I followed his gaze as he said, “I get hit on all the time, sweetheart. One more person to add to that list doesn’t bother me at all. So need to apologize.”

“Oh my God, do you even hear yourself?” I asked, disgusted with the level of arrogance he said all of that with. “Seriously, how conceited are you?”

He chuckled. “I’m not conceited. I’m confident. There’s a difference.”

“Whatever. Maybe you should eat some make-up so you can be pretty on the inside, too, because your attitude is atrocious.”

“This coming from the person who I’m offering the opportunity of a lifetime to. How pleasant of you.”

I paused and bit my tongue for a second. He was right. Technically, I hadn’t accepted the job yet. But I had made the trek from Queens to Chelsea on a random Sunday night because I was seriously considering it. Why was he so…I don’t know…so Max-like all the goddamn time?

“Sorry,” I gritted out between clenched teeth.

“You don’t have to like me, I’m not a Facebook status.”

“I know. And I still don’t like you, but—”

“Good, I don’t like you either, so here’s what we’re going to do.”

“I was in the middle of talking, Max. That’s just being rude and—”

“As I was saying, we’re going to go over there,” he said and pointed to where Adam and Derek were but kept his eyes focused like laser beams on me. “We’re going to film a segment. I’m going to do all the talking and you’re going to stand there and look pretty until I tell you to talk. Okay? Okay. Glad we got that all figured out.”

My blood pressure skyrocketed to outer limits level because I was so upset. Not only had he cut me off twice like he didn’t have any manners whatsoever, but he was expecting me to stand there and “look pretty” while he talked throughout the segment we were about to film. I wanted to ruin his fuck-boy haircut with my bare hands after I choked him and left him for dead in the middle of nowhere.

“You know what? I’m done. This was a nice experiment while it lasted all of,” I glanced at my wrist at the old school Swatch for effect. “I don’t know ten, fifteen minutes. But I’m so over you and your…bullshit!”

I took one step in the direction of where Derek was when Max stood right in front of me to block my progress. The big jerk.

“Move, Max. I don’t want to have to kick you in the nuts, but I will.”

“There you go again, talking about my balls. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you wanted me to show them to you.”

He had the nerve to say this with the biggest and stupidest smile I’d ever seen on his equally stupid face. Max had no idea how much he was poking the sleeping bear in me.

“Move.”

I could barely even say that to him. But I managed to spit it out, as I was becoming even more upset just thinking about how long it was going to take Derek and I to get back home. Ugh, I was so done with tonight…and with Max.

“Daphne, wait a second.” He reached up to put his hands on me somewhere. And the look of death he must have noticed in my eyes was enough to stop him in his tracks. Instead, he shoved his hands in his pants pockets. He still looked like he wanted to laugh, too, which was only pissing me off more by the second. “Sorry, I—,”

“You’re an asshole. Yes, I know.” I made a move to my right to try and side step him, but he followed me just as quickly. “Max, please I just want to go home. This was a bad idea.”

“No, listen. I’m really sorry,” he whisper shouted at me. “Please don’t go.”

The constant beat of house music had died down and then the crowd followed suite. I had been in clubs and bars so often that silence was always more jarring to me. And as Max was trying his best to look sheepish while he waited for my answer, the deejay began to talk to the crowd. I paid it little to no attention because Max, and his sorry self, was stealing the show. The crowd cheered in response to whatever the deejay had said. And I was thinking if I should just give up and go home, or give in to Max.

“Fine, I’ll stay.” The worry in his face eased a bit. But the tension I could feel all over my body from the stress of this potential partnership—if you could call it that—was starting to weigh on me already.

I wasn’t comfortable with how he was running the show, but I also couldn’t balk that easily. He held the keys to the kingdom. I thought of my brother, and how easily I would be able to pay for whatever was left of his tuition after any scholarships he would hopefully be offered, his books, his room and board…all of it, if I just bit my tongue a little while longer. Then I thought of my abuela and how I could help a lot more with her medical expenses that kept piling up, her prescriptions, her everything. So, really, the answer was an easy one: I would keep on putting up with Max and his bullshit for as long as I had to. Or until one of us killed the other. And if tonight was any indication that could happen a lot sooner than later.

House music started blasting again from the sound system all around us. Max must have picked up on how anxious I was feeling because he had the sense to not open his stupid mouth again. Instead, he gave me a tight smile and turned on his heel to start walking towards Adam and Derek. And as I followed closely behind him, I was pretty sure I had just made a deal with the devil.