Page 36 of The Christmas Yes List

“You’d really screw up karaoke right now. On purpose.”

“Yes.”

“But what about the cheese ball?” I’m grinning now, because this entire concept is just so ridiculous. “You would sacrifice the cheese ball to make a point?”

“I’d sacrifice the cheese ball if you really wanted me to, yes.”

I bite my lip. Then glance to the crowd. Then back at him.

I mean . . . I’ve heard people sing well all their lives. What I’ve never come across in all my life, though, is a man so untouchable by outside opinion he’d sing terribly to a crowd of strangers. On purpose.

It’d be mesmerizing. Possibly even . . . life-changing.

“I dare you,” I whisper. A flush of adrenaline, excitement, and secondhand embarrassment comes rushing up my neck, making me feel positively giddy.

And I see a change of emotions whoosh through James’s piercing green eyes—seriousness, a hint of fear, and ultimately, a flash of his own childish excitement. He smiles. “Okay.”

I smile too. Together, I feel as though we’re eight years old, sharing a secret the rest of the world only wishes they could be let in on.

The prospect of what we’re about to do is terrifying.

But it also feels . . . fun.

My stomach flies to my throat as I hear the song end and the clapping commence around the room, and before I know it, Peter is calling us onstage.

I take a step.

“Oh gosh, I don’t think I can do this,” I whisper under my breath.

James gives my hand an encouraging, confident squeeze. “I have faith in you,” he whispers, for the second time today, with a dash of daring in his eyes.

Our lovely and thoughtfully agreed-upon song of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” begins its melody, and throughout the bustling room I see several faces—including a girl I remember vaguely who always walked around school dragging a French horn case and a guy who had a heavily vested interest in Star Wars—nod along to the tune.

I take the first stanza.

It goes fine.

And then, well, then James begins the second.

Let’s just say, singing like a sick horse to a happy tune is bad, but showing up and absolutely butchering a gorgeously slow, melodic one is a nightmare.

A hilarious—hilarious—nightmare.

To say the room is taken aback when this dignified man in the blasé dress clothes opens his mouth and croaks out his first word is an understatement.

They’re shocked, really.

People don’t know whether to laugh or cry for the guy. But after his very raking and elongated note on the word “gleams,” where he grabs the microphone and dips with it, they decide it has to be a joke and that he, the fresh face in the room, is absolutely too good for words.

Star Wars guy is the first to clap.

Others chime in.

I go on singing the third stanza with all the respect for musical literacy I have, while James, who has cracked a very full smile now in actual fun, takes it upon himself to begin bending his knees offbeat and clapping at random intervals.

Which people begin to copy.

He becomes the comedic sideshow, and people in their caffeine/sugar/holiday highs love it all the way up to the final word “dreams,” when he takes my hand, gives me several twirls I didn’t expect that wind me up in my microphone, and holds me tight, nudging me into a terribly off-key, opposite-of-harmony final note sung together.