“Oh my God,” I heard my sister say next to me, and then felt her hand on my shoulder. “It’s him! It’s him! M.J.!” she squealed behind me.
And then I heard more voices and murmurs. Because it was absolutely unmistakable now. Undeniable. His voice was the voice that we’d all listened to growing up, there was no getting away from it. The second he opened his mouth and sang that song, we all knew exactly who we were listening to.
“It’s him!” Ian gasped.
“Who?” Samirah asked, sounding genuinely confused.
“M.J. Taylor. OH. MY. GOD!” he replied in a high-pitched, excited voice. “I should have seen it.”
And then like dominoes, more and more voices joined in the conversation.
“Wait, is that who I think it is?” someone else said.
“Oh my God, he sings exactly like the guy from Step To It.” The whispers round me were getting louder and louder.
“It’s him! Isn’t it!”
“That’s M.J. from Step To It!”
“It has got be him!”
“WHO?” Samirah asked again, much louder than she had before. “Who is he?”
“I didn’t know he could sing like that,” Faizel said, clearly as oblivious as Samirah was.
I felt two hands on my shoulders and turned. It was my sister, wide-eyed. “Is what I think’s happening, really happening now?” she asked, hardly able to contain her excitement.
“What’s happening, could someone tell me?” Samirah piped up angrily now.
“SSSHHHHH!” Several people glared at us and then put their fingers over their mouths. I turned back to watch Mark and that’s when I felt Harun next to me. I looked down at him and gave him a pat. This was all happening because of him. He’d been steering me in this direction, to this exact moment in time, since I’d met him. In fact, since leaving that elevator and almost losing my life, something had been steering me here. I looked back up at Mark as he sang, watching me with a cute, but slightly embarrassed smile.
“Oh my God! He’s singing to me,” I whispered to myself and then grabbed my sister by the hand and looked over at Samirah. She grinned at me.
“He’s totally singing to you,” she said excitedly. “Now this is a romantic gesture I can get behind.” And then a few people around me started singing along, and soon, the entire place had been turned into a giant sing-along. Even the people on phones were singing. Some of them had even lowered their phones to watch what was clearly a historic moment unfold in front of them.
And then, when it was over, when he’d sung the last lyric and strummed the last note, he put the guitar down and looked at me from the small stage. The crowd had gone deathly silent. And I swear, you would have heard a pin drop as every single person in the crowd held their breath. Mark looked slightly pleased with himself, in a totally adorable way. Not smug, but cute and self-assured. As if he knew damn well that singing that song to me had made my heart melt.
“So?” I heard Samirah say.
“So?” I looked at her.
“Are you just going to stand there like the cat got your tongue, or are you going to do something?” She pushed me forward with her hand. Mark jumped off the lip of the stage and landed in front of me with a thud. We stopped a few feet away from each other.
“Uh . . . that was . . .” My voice was soft, I didn’t want everyone to hear me, so I stepped closer to him. I took his hands in mine. “Amazing,” I whispered through a smile so big my face felt like it would break in two.
“Not completely cheesy?”
My smile grew. How was that even possible?
“Cheesy in the best kind of way.” I stepped closer, until our faces were almost touching. “You know everyone here knows who you are now? And possibly a million people on Facebook.”
He shrugged. “I don’t care.”
“You don’t?”
He shook his head. “I only care that you know how I feel about you.”
My heart zigzagged in my chest. “How do you feel?” I asked, still desperate to hear him say it.
