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“Costume advice. He’s doing Cher at the open mic next month—he can’t decide between two Bob Mackie looks. The black sequin gown or the Turn Back Time bodysuit.” Ricky held up the phone: two photos, side by side, of a young man in full drag. The gown was a cascade of black sequins, floor-length, architectural. The bodysuit was sheer ambition.

“The gown,” Chad said.

“Obviously, the gown. The bodysuit requires a confidence that takes years to develop. You have to earn that bodysuit.” Ricky typed a response, sent it, and set the phone down. “He’s good, though. Wilson. Zsa Zsa St. Clair—that’s his drag name. Natural stage presence. George lets him close the open mic most Fridays. He’s too young for most bar venues, so David’s is where he practices.”

The way Ricky said Zsa Zsa St. Clair—with a flourish, yes, because Ricky put a flourish on everything, but underneath it almost careful. Like handling someone else’s good china.

“Didn’t know you two talked,” Chad said. Neutral. Bartender-neutral.

“We talk. Sometimes. He comes in with the family. And the drag thing—he started asking me about makeup techniques a few months ago, and it just...” Ricky waved a hand. “Continued.”

“He’s what, nineteen?”

“Twenty. Yes, I’m aware of how old he is, Chad.”

“And you’re twenty-six.”

“Twenty-six and aging gracefully, thank you.” Ricky took a pointed sip of wine. “It’s not like that.”

“I didn’t say it was like anything.”

“Your eyebrows said it. They went up. I have witnesses.” He gestured at the empty room. “Ghost witnesses.”

“His dads come into the restaurant?”

“Yes. Demarco tips me. I can’t date someone whose father tips me. It would be weird. It would compromise the entire economic structure of the relationship.” Ricky delivered this with the authority of a man who’d thought about it.

Which meant he’d thought about it.

“Since when has weird stopped you?” Chad said.

He meant it lightly. A lob. Three years of patter—easy and weightless, part of the rhythm.

Ricky didn’t hit it back.

He was quiet for a moment, staring at his wineglass on the counter. When he spoke, the performance was gone. What was underneath was smaller. Younger. Very still.

“Since I started wanting something that might actually last.”

The kitchen went quiet except for the onions. Chad turned the flame down.

“Okay,” Chad said.

“Don’t make it a thing.”

“I’m not making it a thing.”

“You’re making a face.”

“I’m making pasta. There’s a difference.”

Ricky drained his wine with the decisiveness of someone closing a chapter and set the glass down. “Anyway. Enough about my hypothetical tragic love life. Let’s talk about yours. How’s your senator?”

“He’s not my senator.”

“You’ve slept with him. That makes him at least partially your senator. It’s in the Constitution. I checked.”

Chad added the garlic to the onions, listening to it hit the oil. He could feel Ricky watching him—Ricky, who read people almost as well as Chad did, who’d spent three years learning exactly how much silence to leave before Chad would fill it.