Christina smiled it off. She said, “I will. I’m just being a little lazy right now. And if I’m not working, I get to come to the party late and be nosy.”

They shared a laugh.

“All right, well, enjoy it. But I’m still working,” Maya told her.

Christina walked in behind Derrick and continued to observe him. He seemed to have three times the swagger of Ivan. Derrick willed the women to wonder about him as he walked by them on the dance floor. And he dared the guys to get upset about it.

He walked through the room, feeling it, with a Timbaland-produced Jay-Z classic blasting through the speakers:

“Jigga what…/Jigga who…”

Derrick felt as if the song were his own personal anthem for a minute. He looked over and saw Timbaland enjoying himself in a circle of pretty girls, and immediately searched for Nelly Furtado.

She must be in the VIP, chilling, he assumed. She can’t get out there on the dance floor like a guy can without needing bodyguards with her. But Timbaland’s big enough to get away with that shit.

Derrick found the VIP section and immediately spotted Nelly, Lucina, and his brother, all swaying to the music.

“Oh, my God, if he heads this way to go to the bathroom or anything, I’m just gonna reach out and grab him. He is so hot,” an attractive blonde stated to her girlfriend.

Derrick winced and wondered who she was talking about. He even asked the girl. “Are you talking about Timbaland?”

Money can hypnotize a girl that damn much? he mused. He didn’t see Timbaland having it like that no matter how many great records he produced.

The blonde frowned at him and shook her head. “Oh, no, I’m talking about…someone else.” She stopped and studied Derrick’s face and eyes in confusion. She asked him, “You’re not, like, related to, ah, Ivan David, are you?”

Her girlfriend was watching, waiting, and wondering herself.

Derrick told them, “That’s my little brother.”

The two girls looked at each other and lost it.

“Oh, my God, you look like him, I mean, with the eyes and everything.”

Her girlfriend asked him, “Can you get him to take a picture with us?”

Derrick studied both of them and wondered how far he could take it. First he looked to see if they had drinks in their hands. In his opinion, a drunk white girl was a down white girl, but a sober one he couldn’t count on. However, when he looked at their hands, he noticed that they did have drinks. So he smiled at them.

“Yeah, I’ll go see what he says. But don’t move, I’ll be right back. All right?”

“Okay.”

Derrick stopped and asked them, “Y’all need anything else to drink?”

The girls looked down at their glasses, filled mostly with ice. And they nodded to him.