“What do you want to sing, Sadie?” I ask as I step closer to the stage.
“Our song.”
Brandon overhears her. “Taylor Swift? On it.”
“No.” I put my hand up to stop him. “That’s not our song.”
His eyes widen as he realizes what she means.
I tell Brandon, “‘When You Say Nothing at All,’” and the song title wrings my heart out like a drenched towel.
“Alison Krauss and Union Station?” Brandon says.
I nod before I walk up the steps to join Sadie. She throws her arms around me, squealing, and then very loudly in the microphone says, “My high school sweetheart, everyone! Then he left me to play professional football because duh. Professional. Football. He looks like a football player, right?” Her words are slurred, and her eyes heavy.
I wince. Alcohol is apparently a truth serum for Sadie, a truth serum with major consequences since I’m sure she won’t remember half of what she is saying tomorrow.
I pull Sadie from the mic, nodding to Brandon with my eyebrows raised, hoping he’ll get the music going quickly. This will be Sadie’s last song tonight.
The speakers come to life, the familiar song drifting through the room. Sadie starts, stumbling over parts of the lyrics until I join her and become the anchor to her floating. I watch her, not the people in the bar.
She grabs my hand when the lyrics fade into instrumental, placing my arm around her waist as she steps into me. She looks up, her brown eyes misty, and whispers loudly, “Your smile is my favorite smile. It’s never changed, you know? How you make me feel when you smile at me.”
But she confesses into the microphone, and even with howloud the music is, I can hear the soft sighs of women ripple through the smoky room.
I reply by pressing my lips to her forehead. “My smile is yours, Sadie.”
When the last note plays over the speakers, I pull her a little closer, and into the microphone I say, “Thanks for the evening and enthusiasm, everyone.”
I practically carry Sadie through the bar, but before we get to the door, she loudly whispers in my ear, “What about my list?”
“What about it?” I ask.
“I’m supposed to kiss a stranger, and that guy bought me so many drinks.”
I shake my head. “You don’t owe him anything, Sadie.”
“But I have to kiss a stranger sometime,” she pouts.
“Not tonight. You won’t remember it.”
“I could kiss you instead,” she says, her eyes hot on my face. “I used to love kissing you.”
I used to love kissing her, too. She was my first, and the feel of her softness is permanently engraved on my lips, but I know if she kisses me now, she’s not really kissing me. She’s kissing a memory.
We leave the bar, the salty breeze wafting around us.
“Oh! The ocean!” Sadie squeals, pushing against me as I hold her tightly. “Let’s go swim!”
“I’m not sure that’s a great idea.”
She pushes out her bottom lip. “But I want to. I want to be pulled under by the current and become a mermaid. I’d be so pretty with shiny green scales. Wouldn’t that make a beautiful story?”
Four piña coladas should not do this much damage, whether rushed or not, and I have a feeling this is more than alcohol. This is alcohol mixed with the taste of freedom.
“That would be a beautiful story, but you know what another beautiful story would be?”
She looks at me with expectant eyes.
