Page 226 of Devil’s Disciples

That’s all I’ve got, she said with a smile.

The screen switched to a split screen. On the left, the man’s body was visible, but his head had been swapped with a large wad of hamburger. On the right, Abby held the microphone.

Does a man’s sperm have protein in it? she asked

A makeshift mouth opened in the hamburger-shaped head. It’s got tons of it.

How much of that stuff do you drink in a day?

The hamburger-headed gym rat lifted the plastic cup. Three of these.

How long does it take you to finish one? she asked.

He raised the cup to his hamburger head half a dozen times, and then lowered it. Gone in sixty seconds, gone in sixty seconds, gone in sixty seconds…

The screen switched back to the original one, with Abby sitting in front of the camera. Her eyebrows raised slowly, until they were at maximum height. After blinking repeatedly, she smiled.

No male sperm was consumed in the making of this video, no douchebags were harmed, and, with the exception of mine, no ‘thank you’s’ were spoken. I’ll see you next week, when we’ll discuss rush hour traffic on the five, the rising price of cauliflower rice, and the migration of the Monarchs.

She brushed her hair behind her ear, and then scratched the bottom of her nose with her index finger. She pointed at the screen. I’m uptown, I’m Abby, and I’m unfiltered.

The screen faded to black.

I turned off the phone, uncertain if I liked what I’d seen. I wondered why most of the men seemed overjoyed with the fact that I’d met the girl in the ridiculous video. I further wondered why all of them knew who she was.

“That’s her,” I said, searching each of the men’s faces as I spoke. “What’s the big deal?”

“She’s got twenty million followers,” Tito said.

I stared at him in disbelief. “Twenty million?”

He nodded. “Million. She makes about ten million a year off advertisements alone.”

My eyes went wide. “Dollars? Ten million dollars?”

“I can’t believe you don’t know who she is,” he said. “She’s been on Jimmy Kimmel, The View, The Tonight Show…Hell, I think she’s even met the president. How’d you meet her?”

I had no intention of telling the men about my diagnosis, at least not yet. “I had no idea who she was.” I pushed my phone into my pocked. “She just randomly asked me if I’d give her a ride on my motorcycle. We ended up in Borrego Springs hunting rattlesnakes.”

“Was rattlesnake hunting on her list?” Goose asked.

I looked at him in disbelief. “You know about her list?”

“She talks about it all the time,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “It was on there.”

Over the next few minutes, the men hit me with a barrage of questions, wondering if I was going to see her again and whether I fucked her before or after our trip to the desert.

The day I left the doctor’s office, I had plans on going to one meeting, and one meeting only. After meeting Abby, I considered going to another just to see her again. I now felt I had to attend a meeting.

Not because I needed therapy, or because thoughts of her caused me to smile.

I needed to prove that some gym rats do have a personality.

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Abby