“Like, really?” he mocked. “Like, super important?”
I scowled at him. “You’re a fucking asshole.”
“Pot. Kettle.”
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” I said dismissively. “This will never work.”
His eyes narrowed. “I don’t even know what this is.”
Rather than have us dance in this vicious circle any longer (and honestly, I was pressed for time as it was), I gave him the highlights as I remembered them from my conversation with Mike. The more I spoke, the more ridiculous the entire thing sounded and I swore that one day, I’d have my revenge against Mike for even involving me in something so stupid.
However, that didn’t stop me from milking it probably more than I should have. “And he threatened me,” I sighed.
“He what?” Darren asked, jaw clenching.
“Told me I’d never find work as a queen again unless I did this.” I stood near the balcony, hoping it looked like I was gazing into nothingness, contemplating a terrible future where I wasn’t a queen. “And if I did do this, regardless of the outcome, he’d pay my way for the Miss Gay America pageant.”
“So, naturally, you agreed.”
“Naturally. I’m a queen, Darren. It’s who I am.”
“Oh boy,” he said. “That didn’t sound dramatic at all.”
“Look, are you going to help me, or not?”
“Help you?” He laughed. “Do you realize how stupid this is? What are you, an eighties movie?”
“Don’t you think I know that?” I snapped at him. “But I can’t let this place close, Darren. I can’t. This bar helped to make me who I am. Vaguyna loved this place and she would be devastated to find out it was in danger of closing. And I would never be able to live with myself without knowing I did everything I could to keep this open. Now, if you’re not going to help me, then please see yourself out. I have a show tonight and I’m in the wrong headspace for it because your face is pissing me off.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t going to help,” he pointed out. “In fact, I haven’t really gotten a chance to say much of anything.”
God, he was the most frustrating man on the planet. “Then by all means, exalted one. Speak.”
“Did you ever stop to think that maybe if you’d just asked me, I would have said yes?”
I blinked at him. “What.”
“I don’t know what kind of an asshole you take me for—”
“A big one. A big asshole is what I take you for.”
“—but I know how much this place means to you.”
“And so you’re saying that if I’d just asked, you would have helped me.”
He shrugged.
“Okay,” I said, feeling relieved. “I can do that. Darren, I need your help.”
“No,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“That’s the way you should have gone,” he said, an annoying smirk on his face. “But you chose to go the path of most resistance like some cartoon villain. So no, I’m not going to do that.”
“Then what the hell are you still doing here?” I asked, curling my hands into fists to keep from reaching out and punching his uvula. It was a battle I almost lost because my inner black woman wanted to bring the pain.
He took a step toward me. “You thought it’d be a good idea to fake date me.” He took another step. “That you were somehow going to seduce me, take advantage of me being related to some jackass and the position of my employment.” Another step. “And then, once you got what you wanted you would just, what?” His voice rose and became an approximation of my own, light and airy and with a bit of a lisp, the jackass. “It’s not you, it’s me. I swear.” He took another step and dropped his voice back to its usual dark timbre. “That sound about right, Sandy?” He stopped right in front of me, his chest almost touching mine.