Page 34 of Their Pup to Tame

“They also spend entirely too much time licking their own assholes, so I’d rather not take advice from one.”

“That’s rude. No wonder cats don’t like you.”

“Just those cats.”

“If you say so, but if you go to the shelter and all the cats turn their backs on you and stick their tails in the air, we’ll know what the truth is.”

“I’ll just have to show up carrying catnip.”

“Wouldn’t that be considered enticement?”

“Yup.”

“So what made you decide to go to New York City?”

“I was already in the industry. Mom and I had been running back and forth for years, since we only lived forty-five minutes outside of it. The job offers were steadily pouring in with no sign of stopping, so why choose anything else? The pace out here is way more suitable to my liking, but nothing beats a New York subway for people watching and the chance to develop new characters.”

“I bet. I can’t imagine what it’s like for the bike messengers there after what I’ve seen the ones here go through,” he said. “I once went shot for shot in a game ofI bet my job is more dangerous than your jobwith a bike messenger, and I’m ashamed to say I lost when we got to thenever have I everpart. Some of the patrons might get a bit rowdy and far too lit some nights, but I’ve never had to dodge a car door with a bus right next to me.”

“Some of those assholes see the bikes coming and still open their doors,” I said. “At least they did in New York. I haven’t heard of that happening here.”

“Some people are just dicks.”

When our food arrived, I watched his face light up when he saw the size of the steak, and sure enough, when I offered him a piece of my garlic bread, he readily accepted the rest of it after the first taste.

“This doesn’t taste like any mac and cheese I’ve ever had before,” he said as he dug into the one with chunks of brisket mixed in. “Not that it’s saying much, since aside from my grandmother, the rest of us make ours from a box.”

“How does she make hers?”

“In a giant pan she pulls out of the oven,” he explained. “That’s the only part I ever see, since anyone who hasn’t experienced menopause is banned from her kitchen.”

“You’re welcome in mine,” I replied. “I bake my mac and cheese too and am fond of adding bits to it to make it special. Wait until I make wings for you guys. I always serve them with a jalapeno-popper mac and cheese with crumbly bacon bits folded in.”

“I’m glad there’s food in front of me or you’d be making me hungry right now,” he said in between bites.

“Since you asked what I wanted, can I be real for a moment?” Phoenix asked.

“Please do.”

“You guys are amazing,” he said. “I feel like I can relax when I’m with you. I love that we designed our characters to work so well together on game night. We didn’t even have to talk about it to get things to work out that way for us. The drag show was an absolute blast. I can’t believe you got up there and did a lip-sync with the drag queen encore.”

“That must have been after the last Tropical Thunder,” I admitted, rubbing the back of my neck as my cheeks heated up because I didn’t remember that part as clearly as he seemed to.

“Yeah, it was just after the bartender holleredLast Call,” he explained. “But he’d already cut you off by then, so you decided to go up on stage and join the final songs instead. I’ve got pictures. I shared them with Aspen, since you guys were up there singing with your arms around one another.”

“And I haven’t seen them yet because…”

“We got busy, and I forgot about them,” he said, but he pulled his phone out after the next bite of steak, and suddenly my message box was flooded with over a dozen different images of me and Aspen, as well as the other drag queens. Someone had draped a boa around my neck, and I was using someone else’s silver platform boot for a microphone. Clearly a good time was being had by all, and I was grateful to him for capturing it since I’d forgotten all about that shoe. Particularly, how I’d gotten hold of it in the first place.

“What I’m getting at it is that it’s cool the way we have things right now. We don’t have to make anything official we can just keep chilling the way we’ve been and see what happens. We haven’t known each other that long, ya know, and there’s, well, I don’t care that you guys are a dozen years older than me, I’m good with that. But we’re from different worlds, and mine’s ugly. I don’t want the bullshit I deal with touching your lives or affecting how we feel about one another. And before you ask, I’m not gonna quit, either, though I have been thinking about some changes we need to make at the door because it’s never been this volatile around the club before.”

“Any recent changes that might shed some light onto what flipped the switch on things?”

“Yeah, one or two, but that’s all I’m gonna say about it. It’s family business.”

“In time, I hope you’ll be willing to let me and Aspen become your family too.”

“I promise to try, but you have to promise something too.”