Winning It All

by Tanya Chris

  Winning It All

  Copyright © 2019 by Tanya Chris (www.tanyachris.com)

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1 Carson

  Chapter 2 Seth

  Chapter 3 Carson

  Chapter 4 Seth

  Chapter 5 Carson

  Chapter 6 Seth

  More Free Stuff!

  Chapter 1 Carson

  “Carson...”

  Carson’s best friend, Seth, reached over and slapped his stomach as the woman on TV rotated a white plastic ball until the number printed on it faced right-side-up and forward.

  “Ow,” Carson complained. “Why are you hitting?”

  “The fifth number is eighteen,” the woman said in a cheerful voice devoid of any sign of actual human life.

  “No, seriously, Carson. Look at this.” Seth picked up one of the array of lottery tickets spread across his coffee table and held it out. Carson slid closer, bending his darker head down to meet Seth’s lighter one over the square slip of paper.

  Seth’s mouth moved as his eyes flickered between the ticket and the television. “Five, eight, twenty-four, fifty-nine, eighteen. All we need is—”

  “Thirty-six,” Carson said, picking up the thread of Seth’s excitement. One number, seven hundred million. “Come on, thirty-six.”

  “And the last numbers is...” The woman on TV did her trick with the twirling.

  “Get your hand out of the way,” Seth yelled at her.

  “Thirty-eight.”

  “Thirty-eight.” Carson slumped back against the couch. “Wait!” He lunged forward again. “What did we need?”

  “Thirty-six.” Seth dropped the ticket on the coffee table. “Seven hundred million, gone like that.”

  “More like a hundred bucks gone like that. The seven hundred million was never going to happen, but the hundred bucks we spent on these tickets? That was our money, and now it’s gone.” He’d known better than to throw his money away on a bunch of Colossal Cash tickets, but Seth had a way of talking him into all kinds of irrational situations. A hundred bucks wasn’t the most Seth had ever cost him.

  “We could still make our money back,” Seth said, gathering the remaining tickets into a pile. “There's gotta be some four-buck winners in here, at least.”

  “Shit. Never mind a four-buck winner.” In their disappointment over losing out on the jackpot, they’d missed the fact that something important had just happened. “We matched five numbers. Five. That’s gotta be worth more than four bucks.” Carson never played the lottery, so he had no idea how much more, but a quick Google search gave him the answer.

  “A million dollars,” Seth said, reading over his shoulder in an awe-tinged voice. “Oh my God, dude. We just won a million dollars.”

  They high-fived each other, the way two grown men celebrating a totally awesome achievement would, then gave up on being grown men and went full-emo, taking turns running around the living room with the ticket held high like an Olympic torch, fist-bumping, dapping, hugging. A million dollars. One. Million. Dollars.

  “We’re rich, baby.” Seth jumped on top of the sofa and did a victory dance that bordered on obscene. “Rich, I tell you. Rich.”

  Well. Not rich exactly. Carson sobered up as he did the math in his head. Split two ways, less taxes... “Let’s not get too excited. I figure we’ll clear, at best, two hundred and fifty thousand apiece.”

  “For real?” Seth looked at him like he was speaking Martian. “Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is mad money, dude.”

  Seth was going to end up on a future episode of I Won the Lottery and Lost Everything, Carson just knew it. “You can't live the high life on a couple hundred thousand,” he warned him. “Don’t get me wrong—the money’s going to make a nice nest egg, but it won’t change our lives.”

  “You’re such a killjoy.” Seth swatted him with the ticket, flapping it right across his face. “We're fucking rich. Please let me enjoy it for twenty minutes before you call your accountant.”

  Carson always got grief for being a killjoy or—as he preferred to call it—smart. Like how he’d moved back in with his parents after graduating from college. Seth had gotten an apartment right out of high school, which sounded all adult, but Seth had two obnoxious roommates who left their socks everywhere—seriously, everywhere—and spent half his paycheck on rent, while Carson lived with two very pleasant people who happened to be his parents and used his paycheck to pay down his student loans.

  So, yay independence and wild parties and all that, but there were other priorities in life besides having fun. And maybe Seth needed a place to bring his parade of hookups, but Carson led a different kind of life that way too. He’d dated the same girl through half of high school and most of college, and since they’d broken up...

  Well, suffice to say he’d only ever dated that one girl. He considered himself sexually fluid but picky, which was another thing Seth always gave him grief for. Seth was a player, never dating the same guy twice as far as Carson could tell. Sometimes Carson wasn’t sure why the two of them were even friends, but they always had been, all the way back to middle school before Seth had come out and Carson had gone away to college and their differences became more apparent.

  And it wasn’t as if they had nothing in common. They both had dreams—Carson to be a writer and Seth to be an actor. They just had different strategies for achieving those dreams. So he’d gone off and gotten a degree in English, which he was currently using to write online help modules because yeah, and Seth worked at a garage during the day and spent his nights in rehearsals for shows that paid in exposure.

  Neither strategy seemed to be working.

  “Could you smile?” Seth put his butt on the couch instead of his feet. “This is the coolest thing that’ll ever happen to us.”

  “God, I hope not.” He’d really like to achieve something more monumental in his life than lucking out on five-out-of-six ping pong balls. Seth flashed him an even more unimpressed look and Carson relented. “All right, it’s cool. Not the coolest, but, yeah. Cool.”

  “You just haven’t fully processed it yet. A million dollars, like that.” Seth snapped his fingers. “Unreal.”

  True, it was a lot to take in. He examined the ticket again, just to be sure. Five, eight, twenty-four, eighteen, fifty-nine. The numbers hadn’t changed, and the ticket hadn’t melted. The ink was still black, the paper still white, and he hadn’t woken up to find himself in the twin bed of his boyhood bedroom. They’d just won a million dollars. Less tax and split two ways and blah-blah. All that was true, but what was also true? They’d just won a million dollars.

  “We should celebrate,” Seth said. “Go out and have a major dinner. No expense spared.” He was effervescent in his happiness, glowing the way he did at curtain call on opening nights, so bright it almost hurt Carson to look at him, with his sandy hair tousled and sweaty and his cheeks flushed.

  Carson knew exactly which day he’d started thinking of Seth as his best friend. It’d been eighth grade, and Seth had reached across the cafeteria table and swapped an apple for his banana without even asking, because they made the same trade every day. But he was less sure about when he’d started thinking of Seth as his crush—when he’d started noticing that an excited Seth was a sexy Seth. Which was how Seth had talked him into spending a hundred dollars on lottery tickets in the first place. A sexy Seth was a convincing Seth.

  Carson knew better than to let his feelings turn into actions, though. Seth liked men, yes, but he liked all of them—one after another. If Carson ever told him h
ow he felt, what would he get out of it? A single night of sex wasn’t worth the loss of his best friend.

  “You got room on your credit card for a no-expense-spared dinner?” he teased.

  “No.” Seth flashed the crooked smile that made Carson’s heart melt. “But I’m going to. You can spot me, right?”

  “I guess you’re good for it,” he agreed. “But before we go anywhere—” He snapped a picture of the winning ticket. It paid to be careful.

  “SO, WHAT ARE YOU GOING to do with your half of the money?” Seth asked.

  They were back in his apartment, trapped in his bedroom. One of Seth’s roommates had come home while they were out, and this unexpected windfall was too big and too new to share with a guy Seth referred to as “the less toxic one.”

  Seth’s room wasn’t big enough for much more than a bed, so that was where they were, leaned up against the wall with a pizza box between them, drinking Jack Daniels out of coffee cups because there hadn’t been any clean glassware.

  It wasn’t exactly the glamourous feast they’d been planning when they left the building, but walking away from the ticket had been too unsettling. What if there was a fire while they were out? Seth thought they should bring the ticket with them, but Carson had pointed out that they could get mugged. Or drunk. It wouldn't be the first time Seth had lost his wallet.

  So they buried the ticket between Seth’s mattress and box spring, where it was probably picking up several STIs—whenever Carson ended up on Seth’s bed, he spent a lot of time trying not to think about what else had happened on that bed—then triple checked the locks and left the apartment without it.

  They weren’t more than a mile down the road, rattling along in Carson’s hand-me-down Audi, before they changed their minds and turned around. It felt like the ticket was calling to them. It felt like everyone would be able to guess their secret. It felt like they had “lottery winner” emblazoned on their foreheads in black Sharpie and like Seth’s bedroom door had “Enter here to steal a million dollars” carved across it in inch-high letters.

  So instead of the luxe feast they’d planned, they swung by a liquor store for a bottle and went back to Seth’s place to call in a pizza delivery. This was better—just the two of them and their ticket, snugly buried beneath their butts where no one could touch it.

  Carson swallowed the mouthful of pizza he’d been chewing on and answered Seth’s question. “First, I’ll pay off my student loans. Then I’ll probably invest what’s left.”

  “You're honestly the most boring twenty-three year old guy on the planet. You know that, right?”

  “What are you going to do? Buy a Maserati? Swim with the sharks?”

  “Get better headshots,” Seth responded immediately. “The ones I’ve got now are amateurish. I'm embarrassed to hand them out.”

  It was true. Seth's headshots didn't do justice to his beautiful green eyes or the charismatic force of his wicked smile. New photos would be a good use of the money.

  “That counts as an investment,” he told Seth approvingly.

  Seth beamed. “Maybe I’ll take some acting classes. That's how you make the right contacts. Hey.” Seth snapped his fingers. “I could—”

  “Could what?”

  “You said this wasn't life-changing money, but maybe it is. I'll never make it as an actor living in Springfield. I’ve got to move to New York or LA, somewhere where there’s an actual industry, and really put some time into auditioning. I could totally do that now.” Seth glanced over at him, as if asking for his approval again. “You probably think that’s a bad idea.”

  “Actually, it’s a great idea. Move to the city, give it your best shot. If you don't make it, at least you’ll have tried.”

  “Yeah.” A frown crossed Seth’s face as he tossed the crust he’d been gnawing on into the box.

  “Hey.” Carson reached over and ruffled his hair, messing up all the product Seth had insisted on putting in it before they could leave the house. “Of course you’ll make it. It's a tough business, but you're a tough guy. You should totally go to New York. I'll miss you, though.”

  He had missed Seth while he’d been away at college, but he’d been busy then, with a girlfriend. Now that he’d moved back to Springfield, Seth was about ninety percent of his social life, which only proved Seth’s point about how boring he was.

  “So come with me,” Seth said. “You've got a dream, too.”

  “I can write anywhere.”

  “You could, but you don’t. When’s the last time you wrote anything?”

  “I write all day.”

  Prior to contacting customer support, please ensure you’ve completed the following troubleshooting steps. His current job was by no means his dream job, but it was a job, and they were hard to come by. On the other hand, Seth was right—the most creative piece of fiction he’d written in the last year was an apology for some fucked-up thing a customer service rep had posted on Twitter using the corporate account.

  “I suppose I could take some time off, give it a try.”

  “Try in New York. You can rub elbows with editors and agents. I can audition and take acting classes. We'll get a place together, save money. You know how much you like saving money.” Seth’s trademark grin was irresistible.

  “Maybe,” Carson said, trying to resist anyway. New York was an expensive place to live for someone who just needed a laptop and some time to focus.

  “How long do you figure the money would last?”

  “Four years? Maybe five if we shared expenses and were careful. No stretch limos or rhinestone tuxedos.” He had an idea how Seth’s tastes would run, given the funding.

  “Five years is plenty. At least one of us is gonna be famous by then.”

  Carson had to smile at the enthusiasm, as overly-optimistic as it was. Seth had talent, and so did he—at least in his opinion—but it took more than talent to become a famous actor or a best-selling author. It took luck. And they’d probably already used up all the luck they were entitled to.

  “So suppose one of us gets famous,” he said. “What happens to the other one?”

  Seth moved the pizza box out of the way and slid closer, demanding Carson’s complete attention. “We make a deal. Whatever happens to one of us, happens to both of us. We share everything, fifty-fifty. When I sign my first movie deal, half that money is yours.”

  “Oh, so you’re the one getting famous?” He pushed at Seth’s shoulder, trying to get him to move away again. Seth smelled too good, all warm and excited, and his proximity was getting Carson excited too, but not about moving to New York.

  “It’s an example.” Seth ignored Carson’s attempt to push him back, wedging himself in even closer so their thighs touched. “If you get famous first, you have to support me. Warning: I don’t come cheap.”

  The Seth currently sitting next to Carson, dressed in basketball shorts and a t-shirt that had stopped being solid several launderings ago, looked like he came pretty cheap, but Carson had no trouble imagining a different Seth—one with money to spend and a lot of attention. He’d be reckless, cocky, and probably hotter than Carson could stand.

  “So I'm invested in your career, and you're invested in mine?” He mulled the idea over. Living in New York. Living with Seth. Making a serious stab at a writing career. He might end up losing it all—money, Seth, his dreams. But maybe...

  “Come on, Carson,” Seth wheedled. “We double our chances of success. Say we’ve got a deal.”

  Oh, what the hell. You didn’t win a million dollars every day. He reached across his body to take Seth’s hand for a brotherly shake. “We’ve got a deal.”

  Chapter 2 Seth

  Seth caught the nervous movement of Carson’s hands out of the corner of his eye. Carson had strong hands, as if writing bulked them up, and they were normally calm, confident in repose, but at the moment they were shredding the label off the bottle of beer he was hunched over. His elbows were on the bar, surrounding the beer like he was afra
id someone might take it from him, and his long legs were curled around the bar stool as if it might fly away.

  Something was bugging him. Seth recognized the symptoms well enough. He’d just never been the thing bugging him before. Well, not like this. Not like where Carson couldn’t talk to him about it.

  Over the last few days, their normally easy banter had devolved into silence and suspicious glances. The ticket was burning a hole in their pockets. Not literally, because they'd agreed it was safer under his mattress than out on the street, but it would be a relief to be rid of the thing. He wasn't sure why they kept postponing their trip down to lottery headquarters, but it had something to do with fear.

  “Come on,” he said, “whatever the fuck you're thinking, just say it.”

  Carson made a big production of shrugging and grimacing, but finally he opened his mouth and used words. “If we’re going to do this thing, maybe we ought to write up a contract. Give us both some protection.”

  “You don't trust me?”

  “I trust the Seth I've known since middle school. I don't know if I trust Seth-the-Movie-Star who's got a cocaine habit and a ninety-three pound model as a girlfriend.”

  “What would I be doing with a girlfriend?”

  “Money changes people, Seth.”

  “It’s not going to turn me straight, and it’s not going to turn me into an asshole either. You really think I’d stiff you?”

  “If you’re signing a contract for millions of bucks, what are the chances you’ll voluntarily turn half of it over to me?”

  “A hundred percent.” Because that was the deal. And even if it wasn’t, he’d want to share his good fortune with his bestie.

  Hollywood wouldn’t mean much if he had to leave Carson behind. The guy could be a major wet blanket, but he was also the only thing keeping Seth from accidentally killing himself half the time. Between the two of them, they struck a perfect balance. New York was going to be a hoot. If he could just get Carson to stop worrying about it and actually do it.