“I miss you. I wish you would just move here already.” I moaned into the phone. Lacey and I had been friends since we were four years old. We became best friends at seven and we sailed through high school and college together, joined at the hip. It was only after college ended that things went awry. I moved away to the city to pursue my lifelong dream of being an actress, and Lacey moved back home to write a book. Or rather I should say the book. The book was going to be a blockbuster. It was going to be so fabulous that every literary agent and publisher would be dying to get their hands on it. Then Lacey would become rich and famous and take care of us until we found husbands. The other plan was for me to star in a blockbuster movie alongside Bradley Cooper and become rich and famous and take care of her. So far, neither of our plans was working. Her book had ten pages and my acting career was non-existent, aside from the roles I played for ‘Candy Canes Birthday Grams’. Candy Canes was actually run by a man named Bob Johnson and he was about as sketchy as you would expect a fifty-five-year-old man with a big beard and a closet full of wife-beaters to be. I’d taken the job because I’d been desperate to make some money, but some of the assignments I’d been given recently seemed shadier and shadier. However, this one was pushing the limit the most. What would it mean to give a lap dance to a stranger? Granted, it was a joke, but would it make me some sort of cheap hussy?

“What are you going to do, Eliza?” Lacey asked me eagerly and I knew that she loved my dilemma.

“You got the photo I sent you, right? Bob gave it to me to show me the client wasn’t some sketchy guy.”

“Yes, he’s hot. Super hot.” Lacey laughed. “You should go for it. I mean, how lucky are you to get paid two hundred dollars to meet him?”

“I’m doing more than meeting him. I’m pretending to be his new secretary, and then I have to give him a lap dance in his office. Then his coworkers will burst into the room and say, ‘Surprise!’” I explained to Lacey. “I just don’t know if I’m going down some sort of slippery slope if I agree to this job.”

“Do it!” She giggled. “What’s the worst thing that can happen?”

“You’re a bad influence, Lacey.” I sat up and shook my head at the phone. We both knew what was the worst thing that could happen. It had already happened to me. But then that had been the past and this was now. And this was a very different situation. Maybe this was what I needed to get me back into the dating game and feeling more relaxed.

“That’s why you love me,” she said and I could picture her light brown eyes crinkling at the corners as she giggled.

“If I take the job, will you come visit? I can use the two hundred to pay for your ticket,” I said and ignored the stirring in my stomach that said that I should put the $200 in the bank.

“That sounds like a deal to me,” she agreed. “I can’t wait.”

“Neither can I,” I said softly as I looked at Scott’s photo, but I wasn’t talking about her visit.

***

“So what you going to do, Liz?” Bob’s eyebrows furrowed as he gazed at me with eager eyes. He was trying so hard to act as if he didn’t care if I said yes or no, but I knew that all he could think about was the money that he was potentially going to pocket. I figured he was getting 50% of whatever was being offered, which was dreadfully unfair, but what could I say or do? Not much, really.

“I’m not sure,” I said casually, though I was pretty sure I was going to take the job. I was hoping that by faking nonchalance, Bob would panic and offer me more money. At least that’s what the self-help book that I’d been reading had said to do when you wanted your boss to give you a raise: make them think that they were going to lose you (this only worked if you were a valued employee, which I hoped I was).

“You’re going to make two hundred dollars.” Bob’s squinty eyes were almost popping out of his face. I stifled a giggle as I saw the panic cross his face.

“Yeah, but two hundred isn’t much. Not worth losing my dignity over.” I was lying about the first part. Two hundred dollars was a lot to me, but I wasn’t going to let Bob keep $200 as well, not when I was the one pretending to be a stripper and having to shake my lady bits. I wasn’t going to be acting like a stripper for $200, not even if the guy looked like Scott Taylor.

“I thought you said you needed to make every extra penny that you could?” Bob looked at me suspiciously. I knew by the way his eyes narrowed that he was wondering if I was lying.

“I do, but I’m not so desperate that I’m willing to let all my standards go.”

“Three hundred, then,” he said with an annoyed expression.

“You’ve got a deal,” I said quickly, forgetting my qualms in a heartbeat. Three hundred would help to buy Lacey a plane ticket to come and visit me and would pay off all my monthly bills. I’d almost feel like I was rich, not having to worry about if my electricity was going to get cut off before payday. I knew I always had the option of getting a proper job, a 9-5 that would pay the bills slightly better, but I knew that a 9-5 would never give me the option to go to acting auditions, and without the auditions I’d never make it as an actress.

“What about two fifty,” Bob said and I shook my head at him, wondering if he’d lost brain cells in the bill cans stacked in his office.

“You already offered three hundred and I accepted,” I said adamantly. “And I want the cash before the job or I’m not doing it.”