Page 4 of Prime Time Romance

I smile awkwardly through twenty minutes of kitchen hangout while the group talks about work people I’ve never met until everyone but Lainey and Zoe heads to the bathroom to double-check their makeup before it’s time to head out.

“I’m so happy you could come, Brynn.” Zoe bops completely off time with the Rihanna track blasting from the stereo in Lainey’s living room. “This party is so last minute. I was worried we would have to wait forever in line somewhere, so when Lainey said she had a hookup at Devil’s, I was like, Yes! Get her over here! I absolutely love that place.”

I pause mid-sip as my brain turns over her words a second time.

Lainey tosses an arm around my shoulder, pulling our heads together. “It shouldn’t be a problem, right, babe? You said your brother used to be, like, the manager.”

All of a sudden, I understand my role tonight.

They want to go to The Devil’s Playground.

It’s the bar where my younger brother used to work. He moved in with me after Matt and I separated because I needed a second income to pay my mortgage. When my brother moved out to Vancouver six months ago, he offered his room to a new bartender named Josh, who has been my roommate ever since. I casually mentioned this story last week at brunch. Lainey seemed disproportionately interested in this tidbit of information, and now I understand why.

“Yeah, it shouldn’t be a problem,” I tell Zoe, acting as if this was the plan all along.

I fully acknowledge that Lainey is using me for my hookup. But I tell myself that awareness of this fact makes me slightly less pathetic. At least she calls, right?

There’s no need to text Josh to get us into the bar. I pull out my phone and text the bouncer directly. His name is Little Chuck. I let him feel me up at my brother’s birthday party two years ago when I was a newly minted divorcée. It was a dark time, but it earned me a “Call me anytime you need a favor.”

Little Chuck texts back almost immediately. It’s a simple No worries. Just come up to the front when you get here. These girls are hot, right?

I don’t respond and instead hold up my phone to the semicircle of eager twentysomethings who have now emerged from the bathroom.

“I got us on the guest list.”

The girls raise their glasses for a round of wooing and toasting.

My shoes feel like they’re made of razor blades, and I can practically hear the Carson’s Cove theme song calling to me from my couch. I turn to Lainey, who is now double-fisting drinks, sipping from two separate penis straws, and tell her, “Actually, I think I might skip the bar and head home.”

She shakes her head. “You’re fine.” She presses a cup of prosecco to my lips. “This will help. And you have to come. What happens if they don’t let us in?”

I open my mouth to tell her, You can just text me if there’s a problem, but I’m cut off by someone shouting, “Uber’s here,” and then I’m swept up into a flurry of activity as Lainey’s crew locate their purses and make last-minute bathroom stops.

We leave the apartment in a single herd of stilettos and tube dresses, take the elevator down, and head out to the awaiting Honda Odyssey.

The prosecco does nothing but make me slightly queasy as our Uber flirts dangerously with a string of yellow stoplights all the way down Richmond Street until the driver pulls up to a darkened back alley beside a nondescript redbrick building right in the middle of Toronto’s entertainment district.

I wait on the sidewalk, shifting my weight from heel to heel, trying my best to ignore my feet as the rest of Lainey’s crew pour out of the van.

“I swear to god, I can never find this place during the week,” Lainey says as we all link arms and walk the dark stretch between the sidewalk and the club’s front door. “It’s like it magically appears on the weekends.”

Although she has downed a half bottle of prosecco, she does make a point.

There’s nothing that marks the entrance to the Devil’s Playground as a Friday-night hot spot other than the long line of twentysomethings vaping outside, decked out in crop tops and vegan leather.

We skip to the front, where Little Chuck gives me a nod and a “S’up” as we approach the door. He’s easily six feet tall and built like a linebacker.

I hold up my phone and say, “Thanks for this,” referring to our text exchange. But he’s too preoccupied with Lainey’s proudly displayed cleavage to notice.

Chuck waves us inside through the VIP line, which skips the twenty-dollar cover charge. I follow the girls through a long, dark, narrow hall out into the main bar area and am reminded why I never willingly come to this place. A Top 40 track booms through a speaker system so loud that I can feel the thumping in my chest. The lighting is dimmed in an effort to make everyone seem sexier. There is only one bar. It’s made of white Plexiglas and is backlit, which gives it this new-age space-station feel. It runs the length of the entire wall, giving the six bartenders behind it ample room to work.

I watch them for a moment.

Their all-black uniforms stand out against the white bar top. Seeing them all working side by side, it’s hard not to notice that they’re all unfairly attractive. I’m starting to imagine how an interview to work here might go when one of the bartenders looks up and our eyes catch.

It’s my roommate, Josh. The low light has turned his usually brown hair almost black, and his uniform T-shirt highlights his broad chest and toned arms. His stubble is a little longer than usual, as if he’s left it an extra day. The effect has turned his normally boyish face into something else entirely.

I almost forgot how attractive he is.