frowning at Natalie.
“You always have a lot of work to do. So does everyone else. But you know what’s good for that big ol’ creative brain knocking around in your head? Some downtime. Come to karaoke, sing “Islands in the Stream” with me, have a few drinks, and give your moneymakers a break.” She wiggled her hands in the air.
Everett looked at Natalie, at his puppet supplies, and at Natalie again.
“Come on. Spend the evening with your best friend and also her girlfriend and two of their friends.”
“Wait. I’m not the third wheel this time? I’m the fifth wheel?”
Natalie tilted her head. “I prefer to think of you as a spare tire.”
“Oh, my God,” Everett muttered.
“What? Spare tires are important! If you get a flat, you’re gonna wish you had one!”
“You know what? Fine,” Everett said, letting the paper in his hand fall to the floor as he stood up. “Let’s go. But only because I want to completely dominate karaoke and not because I care about your friendship at all.”
“I’ll take it!” Natalie said, grinning.
“Can’t believe this,” Everett said, sliding his wallet in his back pocket. “A spare tire.”
“You know, my bad for caring about your mental health,” Natalie said as she walked out the door. “Sorry I’m a good friend.”
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