“I forgot the words,” Claire said, “to a song I’ve been singing for decades. How is that possible? Should I get checked by a doctor?”
“Stage fright erases everything,” Nina said. “I forgot my own name up there for a minute.”
“I didn’t forget anything,” Harper said, smiling. “I was perfect.”
“You pointed at a man in the front row and winked at him. It was very cringey,” Claire said.
“It felt right in the moment. That man and I will always have that,” she said, playfully putting her hand over her heart.
“He blushed, Harper. A grown man blushed.”
“You’re welcome.”
Nina had her phone out.
She had recorded a shaky ten seconds of the performance.
They could barely see anything through the poor lighting and the crowd, but she texted it to Lucia with the caption, “proof.”
Lucia’s response came back almost instantly. Three skull emojis, which apparently meant she was dying laughing. Nina figured it was a compliment, but she was not quite sure.
“Elena is going to see this,” Nina said, looking at her phone. “Lucia will show her, and Elena will have opinions.”
“Oh, Elena has opinions about everything,” Claire said. “Elena once had opinions about the way I folded towels.”
“Well, were you folding them wrong?” Harper asked.
“Apparently, there is a correct way to fold towels, and it has been passed down through Elena’s family for generations. I was disrespecting her entire lineage by folding in thirds instead of halves.”
They laughed until Claire’s ribs ached.
The bar was starting to thin out, with serious karaoke performers leaving and allowing the closing-time stragglers to come in.
Hank was wiping down the soundboard with a cloth. He was humming something that sounded much like a Willie Nelson song.
“We should go,” Claire said, looking at the time. It was past eleven. She had a forty-five-minute drive back to Beaufort, and she still needed to get Nina back to Edisto. Harper had an hour to Charleston on a weeknight.
They were fifty years old, out past eleven on a Friday at a karaoke bar on the outskirts of town. The absurdity made Claire want to laugh and cry.
She wanted to call her twenty-year-old self to report that the future would be confusing and not without surprises.
They walked into the parking lot. The night was cool. Claire’s car sat under a street lamp that buzzed and flickered. They stood beside it but did not get in.
“Month one,” Harper said. “Done.” She did a little check mark with her finger in the air.
“That was the most fun I’ve had in years,” Claire said, and she actually meant it. She meant it with her entire body, which was still buzzing from her time on the stage and maybe from the wine.
It was still buzzing from the feeling of doing something useless and joyful for absolutely no reason except that she had promised on a napkin that she would.
“So who picks next month?” Nina asked.
“Me,” Harper said, “Rotation. Nina picked this one, I pick month two, Claire picks month three.”
“It better be something good,” Claire said.
“Remember, it has to scare us,” Nina reminded.
“Oh, it will. Trust me.”
