“I’ll give you a kiss if you sing me a little song.”
“As soon as we get back home, you’ll give me a lot more than a kiss, even if I don’t sing,” Alex laughed.
He probably wasn’t wrong.
We stared at each other for a few seconds, and just as I was about to tell him it was okay if he didn’t want to, he sighed. “Okay, fine. But don’t be harsh.”
He swallowed, raised his head, and opened his mouth.
It took a few seconds before his voice filled the room. The emptiness of the place gave it a soft reverb. He was shy and held back the strength he could reach with a little practice, but his voice wasn’t as ugly as he made it out to be. On the contrary. It made me question whether I should really be the one to sing his songs. With a voice like this, he could easily do it himself.
The words and melody he sang were new to me. It was a ballad about a man’s hopes for a woman’s future. The chorus hit me hard:
“All you deserved / more than I could afford.”
So many of his songs seemed to be love songs, but when you read between the lines, there was so much more. They were full of hurt, yet still hopeful about the future. Words I could never have written. Melodies I could never have come up with.
As he repeated the chorus, his voice gradually quieted, though he didn’t stop.
I put on an encouraging smile, and only then did I realize I had started humming along again without noticing.
When he reached the chorus again, I joined in as the catchy line was still stuck in my head.
“All you…”I sang with him.
Alex faltered on the next note. Our eyes locked. I nodded toward him and quieted my voice because I didn’t want to outshine him. Just then, he found his rhythm again. Our voices joined, growing more enthusiastic with each shared note. The muscles in his neck tensed as he leaned into it and let it all out.
“…deserved / more than I could afford.”
The song ended with the chorus, and I clapped. As his only audience member, I gave him the loudest applause I could. I cheered as if I had a hundred hands to clap with. Alex looked at the floor, blushing. It only made me applaud louder.
“You’re incredible! Why did you hold yourself back?”
He stepped off the stage and moved around the bar as if he were just a waiter who didn’t know how he had ended up in the spotlight in the first place. “You’re exaggerating.”
“Why would I? Just to kick myself out of the band I so desperately want to be in?”
“I could never do that without you. My voice isn’t nearly as beautiful as yours.”
“But your songs are at least ten times more beautiful than my voice.”
He glanced up, frowning, but I wasn’t having it.
“I’m not kidding,” I quickly added. “When you stood on that stage and sang, I questioned why I was even here with you. What would someone as talented as you need me for? I’m just a has-been who can hold a note and strum a few chords on a guitar. You, on the other hand, have got real talent.”
“What are you saying?”
“That you should try singing your own songs, too. Believe me, if you’d heard what I just heard, you’d think differently about yourself. With some training, you could do all of this on your own. Not that I want you to, but you could.”
My words made his shoulders slump.
“That’s not true,” he said quietly. “I wouldn’t be where I am right now without you. I wouldn’t have written that many new songs in such a short time if it weren’t for you. I wouldn’t finally have demos I always wished I could produce. And”—his voice broke—“I wouldn’t have had so much fun doing this. Until now, it was more like an escape. But ever since I met you, it feels like I have a purpose. I want people to hear the voice that turned my life upside down. That voice is yours.”
He shivered. His legs trembled as if they might give way at any moment.
I was probably not as good at encouraging someone as I’d thought.
“Hey, come here.” I got up from the stool, rushed around the bar, and opened my arms. He fell into me right away, letting me hold him. “I’m not saying youshoulddo this alone. It just means we can think about doing duets, too. We should try that. It could enhance some parts where we felt something was missing.”
“We could give it a try,” he mumbled, resting his head against my chest. “But I can’t promise anything.”
