“Yep. Here.” I handed over my phone, opened to the photo app.
“Aww.” She flicked through the firehouse pics, commenting at one point how cute my hair looked. Then she stopped, made a funny sound.
“What’s wrong?” I looked down, glimpsing water. She’d obviously scrolled back too far. “Oh, that’s the ferry.”
“Yeah, I see that.” Her smile was knowing.
“What?” I looked closer at the image. It was Elliot and me against the backdrop of the river and the Statue of Liberty. Then I saw what she was reacting to; I was smiling happily at the camera with Elliot’s arm around me, but he was gazing at my face with a strange expression I couldn’t quite place. And then I remembered, the mother taking the picture telling us both to look at the camera, clearly because Elliot had been staring at me.
“Girl, if I didn’t know better …” Riley handed me back the phone.
“You’d what?”
“You don’t see it?” she said, mystified. “The way he’s looking at you there?”
“It’s nothing,” I said. “He was caught off guard, he wasn’t ready to pose, that’s all.” It couldn’t have been anything else. Could it?
“Okay,” Riley giggled. “What you two get up to in that room all day is none of my business.”
“Seriously, it’s nothing!” I yelped, just as Elliot slid back into the booth with a Coke.
“What is?” he asked curiously.
Oh God.“They’ve asked me to sing!” I said, downing another mouthful of beer.
“How was the ferry, Elliot?” Riley asked. “See anything particularly beautiful?”
Elliot frowned. “What?”
I could have cheerfully murdered her at that point but was saved by the drunk students tumbling off the platform, just as a haunting synth and drums hook filled the air.
“Who requested ‘Bette Davis Eyes?’” Juno said, looking around.
“Who cares!” I scrambled out of the booth, desperate to escape. “I mean, I’ll sing it.”
“What happened to ‘I don’t sing, I shout?’” Elliot asked.
“It feels like shouting time.” Maybe it was the fear of Elliot working out what Riley had determined in just a few seconds or maybe it was the beer coursing through my system; either way I couldn’t sit in that booth for a moment longer. I hopped onto the little stage and grabbed the mic, hands shaking.
“You don’t have to do this!” Riley yelled.
“I’m doing it!” I made the mistake of catching Elliot’s eye.He was looking up at me as if I was something brilliantly new, a slow smile creasing his face to show those goddamn dimples again. I was so lost in him I almost missed the first line of the song, but my scratchy warble was rewarded by a whoop and a cheer from one of the bartenders.
“Yeah!” Noah was up on his feet clapping as I lurched into the next line. By the time I’d squeaked my way to the chorus, the whole bar was shouting along with me, and I was laughing so hard I couldn’t get the words of the next verse out. But my stumble was short-lived because suddenly, Elliot was on stage next to me belting out the words tunelessly, wagging his finger at me as we sang how the woman in the song knew just what to do to make someone blush. And then Riley was alongside us, dancing and yelling the words just as out of key as Elliot. Juno ignored the warning yells from the bartender to jump on a nearby table with the drunk students from before to belt out the words at top volume.
And it felt so good, to shout at the top of my lungs, to forget all the cares that had plagued me these past few weeks. It felt right to throw caution to the wind and wrap my arm around Elliot’s waist as we sang to applause from the scattered patrons of 1on1. As we trailed off the last line, Juno and Noah stormed the stage and wrapped their arms around Elliot and me, squeezing us together in a cloud of beery breath and laughter.
“For the record, Lucie, that wasn’t shouting, that was actual singing,” Elliot said, putting out his hand for a high five.
I high fived him back. “Thanks for the save.”
“Ah, you didn’t need it,” he said. “I just couldn’t not sing along with you.”
“Interesting,” Riley whispered in my ear, the second Elliot turned away.
“Stop it,” I ordered, topping up my beer.
“I’m just saying,” she cooed playfully. “A wise woman once taught me about fart logic. This feels very much like a fart-logic situation. For both of you.”
