Chapter 40
CHAPTER FORTY
CHARLIE
“Hey, Charlie!” Winter said at Radiant’s coatroom, beaming at me when I walked in for my meeting with Michelle. She had pulled her brown hair into a high ponytail. “Didn’t expect to see you here today.”
I clenched my jaw. Damn it, I knew I shouldn’t have come here alone.
But I hadn’t wanted to disrupt Athena. I really wanted to make this partnership work because, no matter what Athena said, she deserved it. Athena deserved everything that I could give her and more.
Instead of answering Winter, I placed my coat down on the counter and headed right for Michelle’s office in the back hallway with my bag. Winter called after me to make small talk, but I had no drive for small talk with anyone anymore.
Radiant was quiet today, albeit it was early.
Once I made it to Michelle’s office, I knocked twice and waited in the hallway. There was some shuffling happening within the room, which sounded like things being knocked over and heels clacking against the ground.
“One sec!” Michelle called.
A moment later, the door opened, and Michelle peered at me, her hair a wild mess and red lipstick—which wasn’t her usual color—on her neck. She slipped into the hallway and smoothed out her wrinkled dress.
“Just finishing up in here,” Michelle said, wiping some red lipstick off the corner of her lip. “You’re here early. Why don’t I meet you at the bar in five minutes?”
The door opened behind Michelle, and a pretty woman with dark brown hair and bright red lips scurried out of the room, throwing a wink toward Michelle and running down the hall while trying to tug on her clothes.
When she disappeared, I opened my mouth to say something quirky to Michelle, only for the door to open again. This time, another woman with bright pink lipstick slipped out the door while fastening her bra.
My lips curled into a smirk. “Damn, okay, Michelle.”
Michelle rolled her eyes. “What?”
“How many more do you have in there?”
“Oh, shush it, you,” she said, playfully pushing me away. “I’ll see you in five.”
After chuckling, I headed back toward the main area, passed Winter, who giggled and waved while I ignored her, and grabbed a drink at the bar from Abdul. I swished it in my mouth and drank some down.
“You see your dad since the other night?” Abdul asked.
“No, thank God,” I mumbled. “But I have to see him this weekend.”
My stomach twisted into knots, and I stared emptily at the whiskey in my glass. After swirling it around, I took a sip and placed it down on the bar in front of me. The party was Saturday night, and I had to see those stupid fuckers.
“No offense,” he said, “but he’s kind of a dick.”
“Tell me about it.”
Five minutes later, Michelle bounced to the bar with her makeup freshened up and her hair back to normal, as if what I had caught her doing never happened. She slipped onto a stool next to me. “So, what’d you want to talk about? Business, you said?”
“I’ve been working on a virtual reality experience for sex workers, porn stars, and people in the industry,” I said, opening up my laptop bag and tugging out the small equipment to show her, if she requested it.
“A VR experience?” she hummed. “Sounds fun. So, basically, immersive VR porn.”
I half shrugged. “Kinda. You already have an established brand, and a partnership will benefit both of us. Your users receive a new experience, and you can find new and interested members of your company. And I can get this off the ground.”
“Stop being so formal with me,” she said. “Business is personal. Always.”
“Sorry,” I said, scratching the back of my head and opening the laptop.
Michelle followed my gaze to my screen, then to the small pieces of equipment in my hands. She called for Abdul to get her favorite drink and leaned forward. “How’s Athena feel about this?”
“She’s known what it is for a while,” I said. “She’s fine with it.”
Besides, it wasn’t like I was going out and fucking women, and neither was she. While I’d still worked in porn, I had hired a few developers to code the project, and I had tested it. It was really, really, really close to becoming fully immersive too.
Not just wearing a bulky headset.
“All right, well, I want to try it,” Michelle said. “Where’s the headset?”
I placed the small equipment in her hands.
“What’s this?” Michelle asked.
“VR,” I said. “You attach the dots to your temple.”
“Who created it?”
“I did.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” she said, placing the dots on her temple. They stuck to her skin, and I loaded the experience on the computer. “Usually, it’s a huge headset or glasses. Nothing so … slim and sleek.”
“Close your eyes,” I said.
She sat back in the seat and closed her eyes for a handful of minutes, and then she tugged the dots off her temples and looked at me through wide eyes. “Charlie, this is the best VR that I’ve used.”
I offered a smile. “Thanks.”
“I’m serious,” she said, handing me the equipment. “Why are you just using this for porn? You could sell this hardware and software for ten billion dollars to any big company trying to break into the space.”
“It’s important to me that they allow not-safe-for-work content,” I said. “If I sell it to a big company, they’ll most likely ban it from any type of adult content. All these companies and banks have a problem with it.”
“Who created it?” she asked. “Did you hire someone?”
“Well, sorta,” I said. “I created the hardware and the connection to the brain.”
“You really created this yourself?” she asked.
“The hardware, yes. But I had the porn experience developed by software engineers.”
“Yeah, but you created the VR … I can’t even call this a headset. You created this?”
It was almost as if she didn’t believe it.
“If you really want a partnership, I would love to partner with you,” she said, pausing.
“But it’d be wrong of me not to push you to launch this yourself.
Sure, we can work together to offer this at Radiant and on my site, but you need to get this out to VR gaming companies.
You need to find a price point that can be affordable for everyone without breaking the bank.
You want to get this in every house in the world. Not just people looking for porn.”
“You think so?”
“One hundred percent. Steven has more contacts than me in this space,” she said. “You should talk to him.”
My lips curled into a smile. “Thank you.”
“But”—she grabbed my shoulder—“I still want you to add this product and the software that you created onto my website. If it’s fair to you, we can do a fifty-fifty split in royalties for every unit sold. Sound like a deal?”
She held out her hand, and I shook it.
“Deal.”