Page 88 of Shine For Me

That gets some laughs from my family. “You don’t like karaoke?” Bodhi asks. “I love it.”

“You love everything,” River says, reaching for another beer. His plans to take it easy today were abandoned at the first sight of his favorite craft beer on the chalkboard menu over the bar.

“But I especially love karaoke,” Bodhi says.

“It is most definitely not my thing,” June tells him. “And I would for sure not choose to do it with this group.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Rose asks, and June lets out a loud snort.

“Seriously?” she points at Eva. “You remember that she’s a multi-platinum recording artist, right? One of the most popular singers in the country?” June shakes her head, waving a hand around at the rest of us. “And all of you have some of the best music genes on the planet.”

“Not all of us,” Jasmine points out. “I can’t sing for shit.”

“Which is why she listens to terrible techno music,” River cuts in. “There’s nothing to sing along to.”

“I can’t sing either,” Leo offers. “And I don’t plan to.”

“You have to!” Rose says. “If we’re all singing so are you.”

“When did we decide we’re all singing?” June asks, sounding a little panicked. “Can’t we just finish our beers and go somewhere else?”

“But I love karaoke,” Everly pouts. “Please can we stay? Please?”

“Look away, June,” Leo warns. “Her puppy dog eyes are dangerous.”

He’s not joking. There’s a reason why Everly pretty much always gets what she wants. And June is not immune—she sighs and leans back in her chair in defeat. “Fine, we can stay. But I’mnotsinging.”

Everly doesn’t argue, but there’s a dangerous glint in her eye that does not bode well for June.

Naturally Everly is the first person on the stage, dragging Alex along with her for a duet of that flying carpet song from Aladdin. Rose goes up next, singing a sappy sweet rendition of an old Taylor Swift love song to Leo, just because she knows it will embarrass him. He rolls his eyes and scowls a lot, but when she comes back to the table he pulls her onto his lap and whispers something in her ear, leading me to believe he didn’t hate it quite as much as he claimed.

Groups from other tables sing for a few rounds. Some of them are awful, a few are good. I notice Everly keeps pushing full bottles of beer toward June whenever she runs low. When she catches me watching her, she just winks.

An hour later, Everly has sang three more songs, two on her own and one with Bodhi, who might just have the best voice out of all of us. River dedicates a love song to his “baby momma” and Jas heckles him loudly the entire time he’s singing. The whole table spends a lot of time trying to convince Eva to go up—she claims she doesn’t want to draw attention to herself.

But when a twenty-something in bright pink pleather pants and a sequined top gets up to absolutely butcher one of Eva’s own songs, she changes her mind. Sequined top girl is too drunk to realize the person who wrote the song she just sang is now on stage, but several people in the bar recognize her. I see a lot of cameras pointed in her direction while she croons out a kick ass version of an old Beyoncé song that has our entire table standing to cheer and stomp our feet.

By now June is pink-cheeked and laughing. “This is so fun,” she whispers to me. “Do you guys always have this much fun?”

“Not always, but pretty often.” I shrug. My family is cool.

June looks wistful for a moment. “That must be nice. Having friends.”

I stare at her, but she’s smiling again, letting out a loud wolf whistle when Will strides across the room to lift Eva from the stage at the end of her song.

Her words keep repeating over and over in my head. I know June doesn’t have a lot of close friends. There used to be a group of girls she would go out with, but they were pretty blatantly only using her to get into clubs and get their picture taken by paparazzi. I was happy when she stopped responding to their calls a year or so ago.

But I somehow never realized that she hadn’t really replaced them with anyone else. The more that I think about it, the only person I’ve really seen her hang out with in months has been…me. She said something back in North Carolina about me being her only close friend, but I figured she was exaggerating. I somehow never put it together just how alone she really was.

“I think it’s your turn,” Everly singsongs.

“Absolutely not,” June says

“Oh, come on! We all sang!”

“That is blatantly untrue,” June laughs. “Leo didn’t sing. Jasmine didn’t sing. Wyatt didn’t sing.”

Everly waves her hand dismissively. “None of them count.”