Everett fought a smile as he followed her out the door. He could still feel work calling him, but he willed himself to let it go for a few hours. Natalie was right—a mental break was good. After all, didn’t people always get their best ideas in the shower? Maybe he’d crack the code to this new puppet when he was onstage. Stranger things had happened.
He sighed as he locked the door. He really hoped tonight was bearable.
22
Teddy hadn’t been to a bar for quite a while, and when she had, it had been with Richard’s friends, who tended not to go to the sorts of places with karaoke. They went to bars with a lot of leather, jazzy music, expensive cocktails, and air that still hung heavy with cigarette smoke from thirty years ago.
This bar was . . . not that.
Ahead of her, Kirsten and Eleanor jostled their way to the bar, glancing over their shoulders to make sure she was still following.
Eleanor had a conversation with the bartender that Teddy couldn’t hear; then Eleanor turned around. “Okay, I ordered us drinks,” she said.
“What did you get us?” Teddy asked apprehensively.
“Oh, you’ll see.” She wiggled her eyebrows.
A moment later, the bartender slid three tall glasses across the bar and they each grabbed one.
Teddy took a sip and coughed. “Eleanor, what is in this?”
“Whenever we come here, we ask the bartender to pour whatever they want into a glass and stick an umbrella in it. We call it the Mysterious Umbrella.”
Kirsten took a large gulp. “Different every time . . . yet always delicious.”
“Not sure that’s the word I’d use,” Teddy mumbled, but took another sip to be polite (to whom, she wasn’t sure).
“Let’s go look at the songbook!” Eleanor cried. At the moment, a middle-aged man was onstage gripping the microphone with both hands and warbling along to Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights,” which seemed like a bizarre choice to Teddy, but then again, what did she know? She was a karaoke virgin.
Kirsten followed her glance and said, “That’s Brian. He always does that song. No idea why, but it really brings the house down.”
Teddy looked around as she took another sip and realized that Kirsten was right. People were swaying back and forth, some with their eyes closed as they mouthed the words, some waving their phones like lighters.
“Hmmm,” Teddy said, nodding along. She felt her body begin to sway to the music, without her permission. Perhaps the Mysterious Umbrella was working. She adjusted the dress Kirsten and Eleanor had insisted she wear. It actually belonged to Kirsten, so it was a bit short and skintight . . . and also fire-engine red, a color Teddy categorically did not wear. But the girls had been insistent that she looked hot, and so she’d worn it (although she’d compromised by wearing black tights underneath because, after all, it was about thirty-five degrees).
They found themselves in front of the songbook, and Eleanor flipped through it quickly, as if she knew what she was looking for.
“Found it!” she said.
Teddy and Kirsten leaned over her shoulder to see her finger pointing at the words “BENATAR, PAT: ‘WE BELONG.’”
Kirsten made a noise of appreciation. “A classic.”
“I don’t know that song,” Teddy said, starting to feel the panic grow in her stomach, overriding the calming effects of the Mysterious Umbrella.
Eleanor tilted her head. “Well, first of all, everyone knows this song. Even if you think you don’t know it, it’s embedded in your bones.”
“We’re all born with knowledge of this song,” Kirsten agreed.
“Not me!” Teddy said, her voice precariously close to a shriek.
“But most important, we’re all going to be up there together,” Eleanor said. “Also, they put the words on the screen. You can’t get that lost.”
“Don’t underestimate me,” Teddy mumbled, struggling to find the straw with her mouth. “I think I might be drunk.”
Eleanor smiled serenely. “It’s a fast-acting drink.”
Kirsten got them each another drink as they waited for their turn to sing.
“Is this one . . . stronger?” Teddy asked, wrinkling her nose.
Eleanor took a sip. “The magic of the Mysterious Umbrella is that it’s never the same drink twice.”
A lanky guy was dancing onstage to INXS’s “Need You Tonight.” “I love this song!” Teddy said, despite the fact that she’d thought of the song maybe once in the past twenty years. “Or . . . wait. I’m just drunk.”
“It’s an amazing song, and you’re getting blitzed,” Kirsten said. “Those facts are not mutually exclusive.”
“We’re up!” Eleanor said, and Teddy glided behind her to the stage. Somehow she wasn’t holding her drink anymore as the three of them crowded around a microphone. She felt her frazzled nerves for a moment, but then Kirsten squeezed her hand, the opening notes started, and . . . the girls were right. She did know this song. She knew these words deep in her bones, and she didn’t have to look at the screen to know what she should sing next (which was good, because the words were very blurry; someone should get that screen checked). The music poured out of her, she and Kirsten and Eleanor were harmonizing like they were a girl group that did only Pat Benatar covers, and the crowd was feeding their energy right back to them. They did belong to the light! And the thunder! She and Eleanor and Kirsten belonged together, damn it!
Teddy found herself pointing to Wuthering Heights Brian, who was standing right in front of the stage and belting along. He pointed back at her. They were best friends now. She heard his voice inside her; she saw his face everywhere, et cetera.
She looked at Eleanor and Kirsten, and they smiled back at her. They all put their arms around one another and she leaned her head on Eleanor’s shoulder. The girls had been right—this was fun. Teddy felt so grateful to be snuggled in between them now, to be with her favorite people in the entire world, to feel so warm and welcome and light. She didn’t even care that she was wearing a bright, bold dress that practically demanded people look at her. She wasn’t worried about how her voice sounded, or how she looked, or whether her eyeliner was on her cheeks. Everything was perfect.
She let her eyes roam over the crowd, at everyone out enjoying their nights with their own best friends, at the mix of people in the room, when her eyes snagged on someone.
The rumpled brown hair. The big hand gripping a glass. The brown eyes that were . . . that, oh God, were staring directly at her.
Everett St. James was in this bar, and he was watching her sing a Pat Benatar song.