Page 55 of From the Embers
Grinning like two fools, we held hands all the way to a small sushi joint downtown. Yelp called it “trendy and authentic,” and given how we were like eighty-five-year-olds eating before the sun had gone down, we were able to slip in before the dinner rush.
The reviews of Sushi Run had not been wrong. It was an incredible restaurant, and while I had never personally been to Japan, the raw squirming octopus tentacles on the sushi conveyor belt felt pretty damn authentic. I thought Bree was going to crawl under the bar each time they passed us. I laughed harder at that dinner, shielding her eyes every three minutes, than I had in years.
And the night was just getting started.
We hit a martini bar Bree seemed to love, and two cocktails later, we meandered to a brewery down the street. We talked. We laughed. We kissed anytime we wanted. My hand never left her thigh, and if I wasn’t touching her, she was touching me.
Like two thirty-something parents who hadn’t been out of the house for anything other than work in roughly a million years, we were total lightweights. By the time nine p.m. rolled around, we were already tipsy and utterly love drunk. Which was exactly how we ended up at a karaoke bar—and not a good one at that.
It was an interesting crowd. The long, wooden bar filled with middle-aged men sipping on Scotch and swapping literal and figurative war stories were a sharp contrast to the tables surrounding a makeshift stage filled with college kids playing “retro” board games like Connect Four and Battleship.
In her red-bottom heels, Bree marched right over to an empty high-top and claimed it while I grabbed drinks from the bar. Then, together, we endured the most horrific karaoke MC I’d ever been unfortunate enough to witness. The poor guy couldn’t get a singer on stage to save his life. He sang horribly. Seriously, he was like a-long-tailed-cat-in-a-room-of-rocking-chairs bad. The dude played—and I use that term loosely—a keyboard that I swear had to be missing a few keys. His jokes were even more horrible than his voice. To the point that I just felt bad for the guy. So I did what any professional musician would do in that situation…
“All right, all right. We finally have our first performer of the evening,” MC Kerry O’Key announced, damn near giddy to finally be let off the hook. “Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together and give it up for Bree Winters!”
I had never in my life been leveled with a glare harder or faster. And never in my life had I enjoyed it more.
“Right here!” I called out, waving my hand in the air.
“Eason,” she hissed. “Are you crazy? I’m not singing.”
“Come on. You wanted the Eason Maxwell experience. Well, this is it. Show me your chops.”
“I have no chops. I can’t even carry a tune enough to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to the kids. That is literally the only reason I keep you around.”
I laughed at her pink cheeks. “You don’t have to be good. It’s just supposed to be fun.”
“What gave you the idea that I’m fun?”
“You’re the best kind of fun. Because you’re my kind of fun.” I leaned in for a kiss, smiling against her mouth. “Come on. We’ll do it together.”
She let out a sigh and begrudgingly followed after me as I towed her to the stage. After flipping through the world’s oldest song book, nothing newer than 2005, I finally just asked if I could use the keyboard. MC Kerry probably would have let me borrow his soul as long as it meant he got a break.
Luckily, I’d been wrong and all the keys were intact, so I played a soft intro to nothing as I asked Bree, “So, what do you have in mind, beautiful?”
With trembling hands, she stood beside me, shifting her weight from side to side, nervous as all hell. “What’s the shortest song you know?”
Chuckling, I played all seven notes of “Shave and a Haircut” and peered up at her, ready for more heat from that gorgeous glower. She did not disappoint, but while I was thoroughly enjoying riling up my best friend, I remembered I was supposed to be impressing my date.
Lifting my arm in the air, I continued to play with my other hand and tipped my chin to my lap. “Just have a seat right here and hold the mic for me.” I almost felt guilty at her relief when she sank down across my thighs.
I did not, however, feel guilty when her cheeks turned red as I belted the opening note of Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On.”
I think people stopped talking when I started singing. They might have even looked up from their games or swiveled on their stools to get a better view. But on that stage, it was just the two of us.
