Proposing to Strangers - David Lagattuta Jr.

AJ is running out of options.

He is a queer artist in New Orleans, broke, exhausted, and tired of being told no. Apartment applications keep getting denied. Rent keeps climbing. Bills pile up faster than he can pay them, and every day starts to feel like a fight to stay afloat. In one moment of frustration, he jokes online that he may as well start proposing to strangers for financial stability.

Ben answers.

Practical, reserved, and almost annoyingly informed, Ben seems like the last person AJ would ever connect with. He believes in spreadsheets, careful planning, and keeping life under control. But Ben has his own crisis closing in. With his health insurance hanging by a thread and the cost of survival becoming harder to manage, he understands desperation more than AJ expects.

What starts as a joke quickly turns into something neither of them can ignore. A legal marriage could solve problems that neither of them can fix alone. Combined income could help them qualify for housing. Shared benefits could offer a kind of stability they have both been denied in different ways. So they make an agreement. No romance. No unrealistic expectations. No pretending this is anything more than a practical arrangement between two strangers trying to survive.

But some things become harder to control once real life gets involved.

As AJ and Ben begin building a home together, the distance they promised to keep starts to shrink. Small routines turn into comfort. Honesty turns into trust. What was supposed to be temporary begins to feel personal, and the lines between obligation, friendship, and something deeper begin to blur. Both men carry scars from the past, and both know what it feels like to live without real security. The closer they become, the more frightening it is to admit that this arrangement may be changing them in ways neither of them planned for.

Set against the heat, music, and restless beauty of New Orleans, Proposing to Strangers is a heartfelt contemporary LGBTQ+ romance about survival, vulnerability, and the unexpected ways love can grow between two people who never meant to fall for each other at all.