Comped!

Chapter 1

Green eyes blinked beneath glittery mascara for a full thirty seconds.

Fists were balled and planted firmly on ample hips.

Ruby lips pursed.

The crowd laughed in anticipation of the public molestation they were about to witness.

I shifted in my seat, finally beginning to understand that sitting in the front row at a drag show had been one of the worst decisions of my adult life, which was saying something for a man who had once personally co-signed a loan for his cousin’s food truck.

“I asked,” the queen repeated, stabbing one ridiculously tall stiletto into the lip of the stage so the whole structure groaned, “What does a man do for a livin’ when he comes to a charity drag show dressed like he’s here to inspect my ductwork.”

Her name, the announcer had said, was Ineeda Phalis.

She was a mountain of a woman, standing six-foot-four before the heels and a clean head taller in them.

She’d somehow poured herself into a floor-length gown the shade of a road-crew safety cone, sequined from clavicle to ankle so that every movement sent light skittering across the ceiling like a disco ball having a nervous breakdown.

Her wig, a platinum bouffant tall enough to qualify as a fire hazard, was lacquered into a shape that defied the laws of physics, and her eyelashes arrived a full second before the rest of her face did.

In contrast, I wore a dark blue polo shirt with my company logo stitched over my heart.

As she blinked lashes that practically reached the back row of seats, I said nothing. I had found over the years that saying nothing usually made things stop.

My silence did not make things stop.

What it did, however, was make Finn laugh hard enough that I thought an oxygen mask might drop from the ceiling.

“He’s not answerin’ me,” Ineeda told the crowd with wounded astonishment. She pooched lower lip. “I asked the pretty man a question, and he’s lookin’ at me like I’m a buildin’ inspector come to condemn his soul.”

The crowd howled.

“Sir… Darling… Sugar plum… We’re all friends here. Talk to the pretty lady. What is it you do?”

“He’s a contractor,” Finn called out, throwing me to the wolves with visible relish.

“I can see that, sugar. He’s wearin’ it like a bad confession.” Ineeda leaned closer, squinting at the stitched logo. “‘Delgado Construction.’ Honey, you came to a drag show in your work shirt? That’s not an outfit; it’s an alibi.”

Finn snorted beside me. His face had gone redder than his hair.

Ineeda didn’t flinch, her dagger-like nails shooting out to motion for all to see. “Stand up, contractor man. Let the room see what a complete absence of personal fashion does to a man’s aura.”

“I’m not standing up,” I said, somewhere between a growl and a whimper.

“He’s not standin’ up, people!” Ineeda reeled back, fan fluttering against her sequined chest. “He’s the only man in the state of Florida who came to a drag show to be left alone.

Baby Doll, that’s like goin’ to a buffet and orderin’ a glass of water .

. . or comin’ to the beach in a turtleneck .

. . I mean, unless you’re uncut and wavin’ it around, what’s the point of a turtleneck? Why are you even here?”

A laugh cut through all the others as one guy gasped for air, “Turtleneck!”

“My friend made me,” I muttered.

This was a tactical error. I'd just handed the hostess a thread to pull.

“Your friend made you?” Ineeda’s eyes slid to Finn, who was practically vibrating. “And who is this, then. The friend? The instigator? The man laughin’ so hard he’s about to soil my good chair?”

“That’d be me,” Finn said, raising his beer like he’d been waiting all night to be called on.

His Irish lilt rolled out thick and delighted, four years in the States having done nothing to wear it down.

“Finn O’Brien, guilty as charged, ma’am.

I dragged him here by the collar. Somebody had to.

He’s never taken a holiday in his life, not one in all the years I’ve known the man. ”

“Years and no holiday?” Ineeda pressed the back of her hand to her forehead like a Victorian about to faint.

“Not one, and barely a date!” Finn went on, gesturing at me with his bottle. “And for the record, he sat himself right down in the front row of his own free will. I told him there were seats in the back, but he said the front had a better view.”

“A better view,” someone in the crowd squealed.

I turned and stared at my best friend. “You didn’t tell me there were seats in the back.”

“I absolutely did.”

“You steered me here.”

“I’d never.”

Finn had the wide, clear eyes of a man who very much would, and very much had, and was enjoying the harvest enormously.

Ineeda watched the two of us with the dawning joy of a woman who had just realized the night’s best material was sitting in row one and had come pre-assembled.

“Oh, this is good. This is a love story. No, hush, I can see it from up here.” She leveled the fan at Finn.

“Look at him. He’s lit up like a chapel at Christmas, watchin’ you get taken apart.

He didn’t bring you here for the charity, baby.

He brought you for the show. And the show is you, Sugar Cakes. ”

“Oh, no, miss!” Finn offered, unprompted, because he had clearly decided to hand the woman every single thing she could want. “We tried datin’ once. It lasted about as long as a pint does in this place. So now I just mind him.”

“You mind him?” Ineeda repeated, savoring each word, as she steepled her fingers, eternal nails clicking.

“Somebody has to. He went to Atlanta once for a vacation. There was a pool filled with boys. He never got in.”

“He didn’t get in the pool!” Ineeda clutched at her sequins as though she’d taken a bullet.

“Sir, that might be the saddest thing I’ve heard, and once I opened the show with a number about my third divorce.

No. No. No. I won’t have it. Not on my stage.

Not on a Thursday.” She drew herself up to her full, towering height, light bouncing off her sequins in every direction, and addressed the room like a general declaring war.

“We are goin’ to fix this man if it’s the last thing this charity does. Somebody bring me my raffle tickets.”

I turned slowly back to Finn and hissed, “What did you do?”

“Nothin’.” He suddenly became deeply, suspiciously absorbed in the label of his beer.

“Finnigan.”

“It’s for charity,” he said, in the exact tone that told me I was going to find out about what he’d done in approximately ninety seconds.

The truth was that I hadn’t wanted to come at all. I’d had a permit office that had been ignoring me for nine business days, a drywall subcontractor who had flaked on the Hargrove job twice, and a phone full of messages I could just as easily have ignored from my own couch.

I had said no.

In fact, I’d said no four separate times, each one firmer than the last.

Finn had simply kept turning up at my door with the patient inevitability of afternoon summer storms until I put on the cleanest shirt I owned, which was a work shirt, and let myself be walked eight blocks to a bar off the main strip in Ybor where a hand-glittered banner over the stage read, “SISTERS OF PERPETUAL FABULOSITY—CHARITY NIGHT.”

He steered us straight to the front, swearing the whole way they were the only seats left, and settled in beside me with the shit-eatingest grin ever to cross lips.

Now, I understood.

The front row meant I was the show.

Finn had known that walking through the door.

He’d set me up.

“You bought raffle tickets?” I asked, resignation overtaking every other emotion in my voice.

“I bought us raffle tickets,” he replied, dangling a strip of pink perforated paper.

“You bought me tickets, you mean. This is part of your evil master plan, isn't it?”

“I bought us tickets. You’ll thank me for it, because the grand prize is genuinely mad.

” He drew another folded strip of tickets from his pocket, gone soft at the creases from handling, and laid it on the table between us like a man setting down a winning hand he didn’t yet know he held.

“It’s a week at an all-inclusive resort—flights and the lot.

Some travel company donated the whole thing as a promotion. It’s worth more than my car.”

“Everything’s worth more than your car,” I said.

“That’s not the point and you know it.” He jabbed a finger at me, still flushed and glowing from the last five minutes of my suffering.

“The point is, for twenty dollars to the youth center, there’s a chance you’ll get sent somewhere with a beach and be made to lie on it.

If you don’t win, I’ve still had the best night of my life watching a queen dice you into pieces.

I come out ahead no matter how it lands. ”

On stage, Ineeda had produced a fishbowl from somewhere within the architecture of her gown and now was hoisting it high. A second queen, smaller and meaner-looking, introduced only as Sister Mary Frequent Flyer, worked the back of the room for last-minute sales.

The crowd settled into a giddy collective hum.

“I’m not going to win,” I said.

“'course you’re not. There’s over two hundred people in here, and the universe has never once done you a kindness.

” Finn leaned back with his beer, content as a cat in a window.

“But put your phone away and let the lady pull the ticket. You’ve gone and relaxed by accident. I’d hate to startle it out of you.”

I glanced at the phone in my hand. There were three voicemails and eleven texts. I sighed and turned it face-down on the table. It was such a small thing, but I felt Finn notice it. To his lasting credit, he didn’t crow, just let something warm cross his face before he buried it in his bottle.

“There he is,” he murmured, to no one.

“Don’t.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

On stage, Ineeda Phalis plunged one bejeweled hand into the fishbowl, swirled it with the slow ceremony of a woman who understood that the suspense was the whole point, and drew out a single ticket.

“All right, my loves, settle down, settle. We’ve given away all the spa packages and dildos.

Now it’s time for the big one . . . and I know how you all love your big ones!

” She held the tiny paper at arm’s length and squinted at it past the fringe of her lashes.

“This is the week-in-paradise, somebody-donated-a-truly-irresponsible-amount-of-money, change-your-miserable-little-life prize. And the winnin’ number is. Four. Seven. Two. Six. One.”

Beside me, Finn went very still.

Freakishly still.

Still in a way Finn could never reproduce.

Then he seized my wrist.

Then he flipped the strip of tickets over on the table.

Then he stared at it.

His whole face came apart into something disbelieving and joyful all at once.

“Mark.”

“What?”

“Mark.” His voice climbed an entire octave. “What number is on that ticket?”