I let out a sigh. “I was joking. I don’t know what’s left to do.”
She tapped her fingers on her lap restlessly before saying, “There is a way you can make money. A lot of money.”
“Stripping?” I asked with a raised eyebrow. I wasn’t sure if I was even joking anymore. I doubted I could even make enough to actually pay off his debt if I tried it.
God, what the fuck did Ethan get us into?
And why was I, once again, forced to be the problem-solver? My lips trembled at the thought.
“No, but there is something.”
I watched her stand and move to what I assumed was her bedroom. A long minute went by—I contemplated getting up and leaving at least a hundred times—before finally she came back, holding a white envelope in her hand.
I didn’t know what it contained, but it looked fancy from the cursive inscription on the outside.
She handed it to me, and when I didn’t do more than look at it, she let out a small sigh, grabbed it from my hand to open it and handed the thick paper that was inside to me.
It was an invitation of some sort. “What the hell is this?”
“I still have a few connections from back home, and a few weeks ago, when I went out to see an old girlfriend of mine, she gave me this.”
I looked at her questioningly, and she smiled a little, though it didn’t look like a happy one.
“Someone—I don’t know who, and we won’t find out—is hosting an…uh, audition of sorts.”
“What kind of audition?” I asked warily.
She shrugged. “That’s the thing. We don’t know. You don’t get to find out what it’s for unless they pick you.”
“They pick you?”
“It pays 150K.”
I sat up a little straighter and set my teacup down for fear that I might drop it and ruin the… brown carpet they had in the apartment.
“And you’re thinking of going?”
“Yeah. I don’t know what I want to do with my life, but I know it’s not going to be with Liam. He was just the push I needed to get out of my parents’ grasp, and though I’m grateful for his friendship, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life working as a grocery store clerk and not making anything of myself. And I refuse to go back to my parents to ask for help.”
I frowned a little at that. “Aren’t you dating Liam?”
She startled a little. “What? Why do you think that?”
“I assumed because….” I trailed off with a shake of my head. That wasn’t my business.
“He’s my friend. And no, we’re not dating. I’m not his type, so…” she shrugged. I nodded, because I didn’t know what to say.
“So, you’re going to do this?”
“I think so. If anything, I could always say no if what they wanted me to do was more than I thought I could handle. That is, if I got picked, you know.”
“What are the requirements?” I asked.
“Nothing much. You just need to have dark hair, preferably brown, and brown eyes. Average build and height. And you need to be between the ages of twenty-one and thirty. That’s all.”
“That’s all? Why do they need you to look a certain way?”
It sounded sketchy as hell, and if I didn’t know any better, I would think they were looking for porn actresses. But that couldn’t be right—I doubted they paid any unknown actresses that much to start.