I sat up. “What’s up? Please, do not hold back on my account. I’ll cry with happiness if you have an answer.”
“Why don’t you just lease your second room to Victoria?”
I blinked. “Huh?”
“You have a whole room you can’t afford, and you have a friend with a bunch of money who’s desperate for a place.”
“Bu—” I shook my head. “Oh my god, Nikki, I can’t do that. Her? As a roommate? While I’m over here moaning like a slut into a microphone or playing a game live with an audience-controlled vibrator up my pussy?”
“I guess she doesn’t know what you do, then.”
“Oh, god, no. I was all in profesh mode, you know? They didn’t even know I was gay. Victoria has no clue.”
“Well… she only needed it for a few months, right? How long do you have to get through before you can leave your lease?”
“I… I mean, just a few months. I guess. Oh my god, there’s no way. There’s, like, three surfaces tops in this apartment thatI haven’t come on. I cannot have sleek, polished, professional Victoria Jameson sitting on the couch where I’ve squirted.”
“You cleaned it up, right?”
“I mean, physicallyyesbut emotionally, that never comes out!”
“Didn’t you soundproof the fuck out of that studio?”
“I mean, yeah,” I mumbled, feeling my face burn. I guess objectively, it made sense. Victoria would have a place to stay, and I’d make rent. Wasn’t that the most important thing in the world?
But still. She’d be keeping her vegetables in the same fridge where I’d kept a glass dildo.
“It would only be for a few months,” Nikki said.
“Oh, my god, Nikki. Am I really supposed to start pretending to be a good, straightlaced… straight… woman?”
“You did it before…”
“At work. And then I went home!”
“Same deal with your studio. I’m not telling you what to do, just… it seems like the obvious solution.”
God,whydid she have to beright?This wouldn’t be half as bad if she weren’t. I groaned, slumping back into the bed, and at length, I said, “I’ll never be able to look her in the eye.”
“You won’t have to, once you’ve gotten your studio in nowheresville.”
It wassoridiculous. But I couldn’t deny that I already felt massively lighter thinking about it—that rent would be covered, that I’d make it out of this lease and into a place where finally, after the stress of this last year and a half trying to get solvent, finally, I’d be steady.
“I’m not going to be able to make a sexy Christmas video this year,” I sighed.
“Maybe record it early.”
“Maybe. I’m going to go masturbate on the couch while I still can.”
“Do you want me to keep you company this time?”
“Eh… sure. Otherwise I’ll spiral again.”
Chapter 2
Victoria
Well, that was that. I tried my best, did everything right, and my life was in shambles for it. I sat at my little table by the window, enjoying a cup of coffee and the rain, and by enjoying I meant, rather, clutching the coffee cup so firmly I thought either the cup or my fingers would break, counting each raindrop so I didn’t lose my mind, which, decidedly, may have been less healthy than the regular definition of “enjoying a cup of coffee and the rain.”
