The Velvet Bet

So here's how I ended up standing in a storage unit at six in the evening, surrounded by forty boxes of my old life, holding a beer that cost less than the fancy coffee I used to buy every morning.

My name is Harper, I'm forty-four years old, and until three weeks ago I'd spent twenty years as a banker in a city I hated. Well, I didn't hate it exactly. I hated the way it had stopped surprising me. Every day the same suit, the same elevator, the same numbers on the same screen. Then one Tuesday I drove past a sign for a town two hours away, a town I'd never even heard of, and something in my chest just said go. So I went. Quit my job, rented a little house, and called my best friend Tyrone to tell him I'd lost my mind.

He told me to come crash with him while I got settled. Which is how I ended up here, in his storage unit on the dusty edge of town, unpacking boxes of spreadsheets and old ties in the fading light.

"Harper! You alive in there?" Tyrone's voice floated in from the driveway. "You've been quiet for an hour and that scares me!"

"I'm fine!" I called back. "Just finding tax returns from 2011. You want these or should I burn them?"

"Burn them. Come out here, the light's better and I brought beers."

I climbed over a box of winter coats and stepped out into the evening. The sun was going down orange behind the pawn shop across the road, and Tyrone was sitting on the tailgate of his truck, forty-five years old and still the best-looking person I knew, flipping through a flyer.

"What's that?" I asked, taking the beer he held out.

"The Drag Showdown." He held the flyer up like it was a winning lottery ticket. "Annual contest, downtown at the Blue Room, next Saturday night. I've competed six times and placed second four times, which is honestly criminal."

"Second four times? Who keeps beating you?"

"Different people, that's the insult of it. Anyway, this year they're doing a new thing. A duo category."

I laughed so hard I almost dropped my beer. "Tyrone, no. Whatever you're about to ask me, no."

"I haven't asked anything yet."

"You've got the face. I know that face. That's the face you made in college when you talked me into taking that economics final for the study group."

"Okay, first, you volunteered for that. Second, listen." He scooted closer on the tailgate. "You just blew up your whole life. You quit a job you were great at because you were bored out of your skull. You need a hobby, Harper. You need something that makes your pulse go up that isn't a quarterly report."

"Drag is not a hobby, it's a calling. You've been doing it since you were twenty-two. I've never once in my life..."

"Exactly. Never once. That's why you should try it. Fresh start, remember? New town, new you?" He grinned at me, and God, that grin has gotten me into trouble since we were twenty-one and pulling all-nighters in the library.

"Even if I said yes, which I'm not saying, I'd embarrass you. I can't walk in heels. I can't sing. I'd trip on a gown and take out a whole row of paying customers."

"So we'll do something funny. Comedy duo. You don't have to be good, you just have to be brave." He hopped off the tailgate. "And I have the perfect gown for you."

"Wait, you already have a gown for me? How long have you been planning this?"

"Since you called me three weeks ago. Come on."

* * *

He disappeared into the storage unit and came back carrying a garment bag, unzipping it right there in the driveway. And I'll be honest with whoever reads this, my breath actually caught.

It was a long velvet gown, deep wine red, with rhinestone straps that caught the last of the sunlight and threw little sparks. The fabric looked so soft I wanted to touch it immediately. I did touch it, actually, before I could stop myself.

"Oh," was all I managed.

"That's what I thought you'd say." Tyrone was watching me with a look I couldn't quite read. "I made it two years ago. Never performed in it. I don't know why, it just never felt right for one of my numbers. It's been sitting in that wardrobe box waiting."

"Waiting for what?"

"I don't know. Something. Try it on?"

My hands were weirdly eager taking that bag from him. We dragged a cracked mirror out of the unit, propped it against a box of old records, and I stepped behind the coat rack to change while Tyrone politely studied the flyer.

Pulling that gown on was... I don't have a good word for it. The velvet slid over me like water. It fit, which startled me, though Tyrone just shrugged and said he'd guessed my measurements years ago from holiday hugs. I stepped out in my socks and looked in the mirror, and the man looking back at me was still me, but softer somehow. Newer.

"Harper." Tyrone's voice had gone quiet. "Turn around. Slowly."

I did, my fingers trembling a little as I adjusted the hem. When I glanced up I caught him watching me in the mirror, not the gown, me, and something in his face I'd never let myself think about before.

"Well?" I asked, because my mouth needed to do something.

"You're going to make me cry, that's how good you look." He laughed, but it came out rough. "Okay. Come here. We're doing your face, because the gown alone is only half the magic."

I sat on an overturned crate while he dug into a tackle box full of makeup. The storage unit smelled like dust and old cardboard and, faintly, the sweet powder he dusted across my face first. His fingers were warm against my jaw, tilting my chin this way and that, and every brush of his knuckles against my skin sent a little jolt down my spine that I kept pretending was the cold beer.

"Hold still," he murmured, working on my brow. "You're scrunching."

"Sorry. It's strange, someone touching my face.