Her face grew hot with a pulse of embarrassment as she stood in front of the mic, as the iconic tinkling piano of Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles” splashed through Moonie’s. She didn’t have a good voice like Lily or Ozzy, but Jesus hadn’t, either. They had always completely trashed this song, together.
And the point of Moonie’s wasn’t very fine singing. It was about laughing with your friends and feeling nostalgic about the stages of life that had passed you by, painted through old pop songs. And Jesus had always done that, alongside her on this stage, so very well.
And for the first half of the song, she felt him there next to her, still doing it. Still making her laugh. Vik and Ben hollered and clapped; the familiarity of how many times she’d sung this song, right here, made the words come easy. She tried to make her off-key voice as pouty as Vanessa’s; she bounced her shoulders up and down along with the strings.
But then Mae caught Theo’s eye. He was turned in his chair, staring straight at her. His eyes were glassy.
And the facade crumbled.
All at once, the words she was actually singing crashed through her in the most horrible, discordant way. Because she did still need him. She did still miss him. She would walk a thousand miles to see him again.
She had no idea how she had thought this was a good idea, singing this song that she had only ever sung with Jesus Herrera-Baptiste. It was too much, that he didn’t get to hear Lily slay 1970s Aerosmith. It was too much, that he would never get to meet Dell.
Her voice caught in her throat at the last line, her mouth open without any sound, the words bouncing uselessly off the screen in front of her.
She needed to get off this dance floor.
And so she did. Returning the mic to Kiki before the song was even fully over, she turned on her heel and marched swiftly away from the bar, through the narrow hallway that held the bathrooms, straight out the back door to the crumbling patio.
She pushed her palms into her eyes, taking deep breaths of the cool night air before she heard the door swing open behind her.
“Hey, Mae.” Vik’s arms were around her first. When Mae finally dropped her hands and turned, she saw everyone, save Dell: Vik and Jackson, Theo and Ozzy, Ben and Lex.
“Sorry,” she said, before bursting into tears for real.
And then they were all hugging, and it was too dark out here to tell, but Mae thought half of them were crying, too, even as almost all of them laughed.
“Do you think,” she eventually recovered enough to say, “this is the first time anyone’s had an emotional meltdown to Vanessa Carlton?”
“Oh honey,” Theo said. “You’re not the first and you won’t be the last.”
Mae smiled.
Vik squeezed her arm. “Jesus would be proud of you, Mae.”
“Well, that’s too much,” Mae laughed. “Fuck you.”
Vik smiled back. “Fuck you, too.”
They separated to give each other some room.
“I don’t think I really thought about it,” Theo said. “How hard it’d be to come here without them.”
“I keep thinking I’m doing okay,” Jackson said, wiping a hand underneath an eye. “And then karaoke night shows up and punches me in the face.”
“Yeah,” Vik said. “Grief’s like that, sometimes.”
“Okay.” Mae took a deep breath. “Steve and Jesus wouldn’t want us crying out here all night, though. We okay now?”
Both Theo and Vik kissed her cheeks.
“Yeah, girl,” Theo said. “We’re good.”
And when Mae finally did feel ready to re-enter Moonie’s, she was stopped short by Dell. Leaning against the wall in the narrow hallway by the bathrooms, arms crossed. Waiting for her.
The rest of her friends squeezed around them. She avoided their eyes, focused on Dell’s face. Curling photographs were tacked onto the wall next to them, flash-heavy shots of Moonie’s patrons from years gone by.
“Hey,” he eventually said once they were alone. Well, with the exception of the occasional bargoer coming in and out of the bathrooms. Nothing about Moonie’s was exactly sanitary, but this corner of it in particular was rather dire. Mae couldn’t believe Dell was willingly standing here. “You okay?”
