Everett slumped down, defeated. “I need another mai tai.”
“‘Need’ is perhaps not the right term, but I’m driving tonight, so whatever,” Lillian said. “Go get your mai tai on.”
On his way to the bar, Everett stopped to flip through the songbook and signed himself up to sing, vaguely registering the beginning notes of Pat Benatar’s “We Belong.” He sang along under his breath as he waited for his drink, then nodded his thanks to the bartender as he slipped a few dollars into the tip jar.
He found Natalie, Lillian, Tanya, and Meaghan at their table and sat down, singing, “Weeeeee belong!” in a falsetto.
“Wouldn’t have pegged you for a Benatar fan,” Lillian said.
Natalie shook her head. “I absolutely would have. Hey, check out these girls. They’re all cute.”
Everett looked at the stage, at the three women singing into one microphone. They were all cute. One of them had long hair and bangs and glasses; another one had short hair, although when he tried to make out more personal features their faces kind of blended together.
But then he looked at the girl in the middle. She was pointing at a man in the crowd, giving the song the reverence it deserved. She closed her eyes, as if the song’s lyrics were really moving her, as if she, too, belonged to the sound of the words she’d fallen under. She had on a bright red dress, like she was a traffic light telling him to stop and pay attention.
“I love this song,” Everett said, staring directly at the girl.
“Oh!” said Natalie, taking the situation in. She waved a hand in front of Everett’s face, and he didn’t blink. “Here we go. Which girl are you into?”
“Is that a breakup bob?” Everett asked, pointing to the girl in the middle.
Natalie and Lillian looked at each other. “How do you know about breakup bobs?” Lillian asked.
“My friend in the computer told me,” Everett muttered, keeping his eyes on the stage. He took another sip of his drink. “Do you think that haircut means she’s single?”
Natalie rubbed her hands together gleefully. “Hell yes. All right, Ev. You’re gonna talk to this girl.”
Everett shrugged. “Okay.”
He liked to say he wasn’t the type of man who approached random women in bars, but the truth was, he wasn’t the type of man who was often in bars, nor was he the type of man who really had to approach women. At the risk of sounding arrogant, women usually approached him—that was one of the nice things about being a semipublic local figure. And anyway, it felt weird to be the one initiating conversations with strange women. It seemed like that was a one-way ticket to being the subject of message board threads with titles like “Children’s Show Creep Slides into Women’s DMs.”
But Everett never had a problem talking to anyone, whether it was a puppet or a cute girl. He was willing to accept a brush-off with cheerful acceptance, so there was nothing to lose. And right now he had the courage of two and a half mai tais under his belt.
“Love the confidence, Ev,” Lillian said, slapping him on the shoulder.
Just then the girl’s eyes met Everett’s, and they locked in place. He felt, for a moment, like there was some sort of force field between them, some sort of magnetic pull or mystical attraction or Pat Benatar–sanctioned connection.
As he watched her, her eyes widened and she suddenly slid out from under her friends’ arms, then ran off the stage. Her friends looked at each other; then the blond one said, “Give it up for Pat Benatar, everybody!” and then they, too, left the stage.
“Huh,” said Natalie. “Well, that was weird.”
“Am I wrong,” Tanya asked, “or did she take one look at you and then run offstage?”
Everett nodded. “That appears to be what happened.”
A woman onstage started belting out Adele’s “Someone like You,” and the mood was considerably dimmer than it had been during “We Belong.”
Everett looked at his mai tai. “I don’t think this is working anymore.”
“It’s this bummer of a song.” Natalie sighed. “Like, don’t pick an iconic vocalist’s slow jam, you know? You’ll never live up to the challenge and nobody wants to hear this downer while they’re drinking.”
“Oh!” Everett said. “I forgot to tell you. I signed up to sing a Prince song. A slow one!”
The women all turned to look at him.
“Truly, every time I think you couldn’t be weirder, you blow through all