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folded the bill, face flaming all the way to his ears, which made the whole group whoop again. The man was tall enough that he barely had to leave his seat to reach Lucky’s platform. He looked Lucky up and down, considering. Damn. Lucky was pretty much immune to heated glances at this point in his career, but something about the amount of sheer wonder in the man’s expression made Lucky’s insides all flippy.
    Then with surprisingly deft fingers, the guy tucked the bill in the top of Lucky’s boot. His shoe. Not that he was the first to tip that way, but damn. Lucky didn’t miss a beat, but he did give what he hoped was a playful frown.
    â€œOoooh. You insulted the stripper.”
    â€œThat so doesn’t count!”
    â€œWuss!”
    The group had no shortage of complaints as Mr. Adorkable took his seat again. A skinny Adam Lambert clone reached for a shot and Lucky knew what was coming even before he held it out with a five.
    â€œTip the dancer for me, M. Please.”
    â€œY’all are trashed.” M’s voice had a hint of country this time. What was interesting too was that this was the voice of a confident man, someone used to being in charge of shit. And yet M was so clearly out of his depth in the club—wrong clothes, practically squirming at the requests of his friends, and no apparent interest in joining them on the road to drunk-and-silly-ville.
    â€œAnd you’re way too sober.” The punk guy had the sort of grin that made all the boys want to line up and sin. “Shot or tip? Come on, man.”
    The others chorused their encouragement for M to pick one or the other.
    â€œFine.” M grabbed the money. Oh, this was interesting. He clearly wasn’t going to drink, but he also seemed loath to just tell his friends to keep their liquor to themselves. Lucky’s uncle Benny was working his twelve steps hard—again, and part of Lucky wanted to tell M’s friends to stuff the peer pressure.
    He gave M his most welcoming, nonthreatening smile and held the waistband of his briefs open a smidge. “See, told you I don’t bite,” he said as the guy slid the money in.
    The guy muttered some words, far too softly for Lucky to hear over the music, but after working in enough clubs, he was damn good at reading lips. He could swear the guy said, “Not what I’m afraid of.”
    Which could be interpreted a dozen ways, not all of them a come-on, and the puzzle gave Lucky something to cogitate on as the music transitioned to the next song. M was back in his seat, but his eyes hadn’t left Lucky.
    You watching? Watch this. And Lucky busted out some pole moves using the vertical support of the rail. He worked that Nicki Minaj beat hard. His best shit, really, and he wasn’t sure why he felt the need to impress the obviously flustered M. And really, really wasn’t sure why in the hell he was hoping the friends kept feeding M their tips for him.

Chapter Two

    â€œThe soon-to-be-released Cold Sunrise is Michelin Moses’s second country album, and what a triumph it is. Like his first album, Cold Sunrise speaks directly to small-town America and especially to its young people, with songs of longing and yearning. Moses’s ability to tell a story in song is unparalleled, and it’s no surprise that the first single off the album, ‘Graduation Day,’ is burning up the charts . . .”
    â€”Country Corner Review

    M ichelin hated dares. When he was growing up, Michelin’s cousins had figured out that he couldn’t back down from a dare, and thus he’d end up flinging himself out of haylofts, off bluffs over the river, and one particularly harsh winter, off the back shed into a snowdrift, all despite his intractable fear of heights. The go-go dancer was every bit as intimidating as a sheer cliff face and potentially just as deadly, but the guys had figured out the magic words to make Michelin do their