9. Chapter 9
Chapter 9
Vi
The karaoke place was packed that night. Gabe and Lina sat at one side of our table, and Jake and I sat at the other. A pseudo double date, but I tried not to think about it.
Most of the large room was kept at a low light, except for the singing platform which had several stage lamps pointed at it. Someone sang a song I didn't recognize in a way that sounded… fine, and one of the tables worked hard at cheering them on; probably their friends. We had wings and fries on the table, besides the moody candles among the plates and each of our drinks.
Lina munched on a fry. "Who's going to go out there first?"
I glanced at Jake by my side. He'd been quiet all night, with nervous energy buzzing about him. At Lina's question, he shook his leg, and the movement rubbed against my thigh softly but insistently.
"I'm going to fess up," he said. "I know you're all waiting for me to go there, but I'm not ready yet."
"Take your time, Jake." Gabe made a gesture to show he didn't think it was a big deal. "With a little bit of notice, I'm sure we can all go again as well if you need more time to prep."
I held back a sigh. I loved the friendship between Gabe and Jake.
"Besides, we're having fun too." Lina finished her fry and picked up another one right away. "I'm sure I can convince Gabe to go sing something, too."
Gabe chuckled. "I wish I could deny it but I would probably bend at the first please out of her lips."
"And we all know it," Lina added, and we all laughed.
"I will sing something, too." I reached for the big song binder hanging from its hook at the table, put it in front of me, and opened it at a random place. "What I lack in voice training, I make up for with my personality."
"You don't have to do this," Jake said. "We all know why we came here."
"We do!" I insisted. "We came here to have fun together, and for some of us to go up the stage and sing decently but nothing to write home about. And one of us maybe, just maybe, will go out there and sing something that's going to bring the house down."
I slid my finger down the plastic cover protecting the printed lists of songs, not really seeing my options, but trying to keep it casual and low pressure for him.
It seemed that I had failed.
Jake snorted. "No pressure. Bring the house down, Vi? I've never sung in front of this amount of people."
"I don't think I've actually heard you sing sing," Gabe said. "But the few times I heard you singing to yourself it sounded great."
"I didn't know you were so musical." Lina smiled. "But something tells me you're good, even if you don't quite bring the house down."
Jake shook his head. "Why must you all be so relentlessly supportive? Now I feel like I don't have an excuse."
"Let's not build it up in your head more than we have to," I said. "The only expectation we have is that you relax enough to give it a chance. We're not even going to be paying attention to how good you are or not."
He laughed. "I don't buy that for a second."
"It's true!" I lied. "Look, I'll submit a song for myself. I'll sing and have fun even if I'm no singer. Just like the person on stage right now."
We all gazed at the singer, who laughed through a poor rendition of 'Maneater' by Daryl Hall and John Oates. Everyone who paid attention to them clapped and laughed or sang with them, while the performer flipped their hair and called at someone at their table with a come-hither finger curl. We laughed.
"Okay, fine." Jake still chuckled. "That helps."
"And I'm going to help even more." Inspired by the current singer, I picked the first 80s song I recognized and texted it to the sign up number. "There we go. Song LPB29384 for Violeta is on the docket."
I put my phone face down on the table. Jake's large, warm hand landed on mine and squeezed.
"Thanks, Vi," he said.
I gazed at him. He stared at our linked hands, before taking it away and grabbing fries to add to his plate.
I shifted my gaze at Lina, who looked back at me with a gleam. The warmth of Jake's skin still tickled the back of my hand, and I had to fist it not to reach for him and ask for more, but all I did was wrinkle my nose at Lina and roll my eyes.
By the time my name was announced, I was ready to make the best of it. Gabe and Lina whooped, while Jake laughed and clapped, and I took to the stage with a big smile.
'Love is a Battlefield' by Pat Benatar started playing and I danced to the music; a long time ago I'd watched the video and I tried to imitate the shoulder move the singer had done for it. The memory was hazy and soon I had devolved to my own moves for the rest of the intro.
I put my all to the start of the song. With a groan-slash-rasping voice, I sang about strength, and kept on dancing while reading the lyrics I barely remembered. My smile faltered as I got more into the song and made sense of the lyrics, but I pushed through. Danced it away, like I hadn't noticed how the song could apply to me… and Jake.
Where was the young women empowerment I remembered from the video? They fought the patriarchy with cool dance moves! But the music alone was different. The lyrics talked about the push and pull of a relationship that has always been there, at the edge of turning into reality, only to fall apart again. Keeping you hooked. Full of angst. Or whatever you wanted to get out of the song, of course.
But I grinned, danced, and pretended I was fighting the patriarchy, too. I took in the claps, the singing that reached me from nearby tables, and bowed when the song ended. I kept my smile as I put the mic back in its holder, and went back to our table.
"That was amazing!" Gabe said. "You sing better than I remembered."
"So I didn't make a fool of myself?" I stole a glance at Jake, who looked at me with a smirk.
"You did not." Lina high-fived me. "So I got inspired and signed up myself."
"I did too." Jake continued to direct a smile my way. "Thank you for that."
"I'll have a hard time competing with the show you gave everyone, though," Lina added. "You're just so damn likeable."
"Not bad for a stuffy VP, right?" I laughed. "Besides, I'm sure you can stun them all, cu?adita."
"Yeah, no." She gave me a doubtful look. "I'll have fun, but I'm glad I'm not following your act."
"You'll steal the show, amor." Gabe kissed Lina on the cheek.
She smiled but gave my brother the side eye. "You say that because you love me."
"Yeah, and it's perfectly reasonable." Gabe took her chin, turned Lina's face to him, and gave her a smacking kiss on the lips.
Jake stared at his glass with a smirk on his lips. I gazed at the stage, where someone did a pretty good rendition of a love song.
I was ecstatic for Gabe and Lina and the love they shared. To see my big brother build the kind of relationship we'd been lucky to see in our parents growing up. Yet I couldn't deny the little tear that opened in my heart, that I couldn't say the same for myself.
Plenty of people might have said I was failing modern feminism by craving romantic love. To that I said, fuck it. If I wanted to know what romantic love felt like, that was my prerogative. The truth in my heart. And if you really got me going, I might have argued that diminishing the value of someone longing for love was a form of misogyny.
That wasn't where my thoughts went that night. They went to the fact Jake was by my side, and I had wondered for years if he might be that love for me.
If with him, I might finally feel what love should feel like.
It wasn't until he took to the stage that I had to confront just how deeply entwined Jake and the longing for love were inside of me.
He didn't even blush. Something had changed for him, and he appeared confident as he took the mic in his big hand. I could have looked at the screen to know what song he would play but I didn't— I couldn't, my eyes were for him alone.
The stage light had a tint to it that made his hair look more red than blond, and when he gazed out to the crowd, his eyes seemed a faint violet. I leaned forward on my chair, as if it would help me document every detail. Even my breathing slowed down, and I stilled, all in the service of avoiding any distractions. I wanted to consume every morsel of him I could get from the moment.
'Black' by Pearl Jam started playing, and my already-light breath hiccuped to a stop. I knew the song but didn't really remember the lyrics; the fact it was a rare choice for karaoke meant I should pay attention to it.
I did as best as I could but oh, his voice. His voice— it cut deep into me. Maybe because it was Jake, or maybe because he was good , but his singing held power over me. A spell in how he sang the song his own way; still a deep voice like the original singer, but also like he got to share the words and make them his own.
Everyone else could hear it, too. People around us whooped and laughed and clapped in excitement; some of them joined but no one compared. Jake filled the place with his voice, with throatiness where it helped, raspiness and grit when it grabbed you by the core and made it rumble along.
"Wow." Gabe left a shocked gust of air out. "Wow, Jake."
"Did you know this?" Lina turned to Gabe and dropped a heavy hand on his leg. "How good he is?"
Gabe shook his head, his eyes still on his best friend. It pained me to keep my eyes away from Jake to watch their interaction, but Lina caught my gaze.
"Is this real? Are we feeling okay?" she asked. "This is incredible."
All I could do was gulp through a tight throat, nod, and return to Jake.
I was not okay. I was shaken, I was taken, I was… I couldn't even finish the thought; he sang so thoroughly that my brain couldn't trace all the spaces where it took me. We were all in a trance, to the point that, when the song ended, the whole place was in silence for a hot second.
Then applause exploded, Jake smirked, and put the mic back in its holder like he hadn't just brought down the house.
A chill went down my spine. I didn't have a crush like when I was a teen. This was more. Whatever feeling this was, it couldn't be as simple as infatuation for my brother's best friend.
It was their friendship that took over first. Gabe jumped off his chair and met Jake halfway; they hugged, a long embrace full of affection that took several seconds to end. I balled my hands into fists and held back— I shouldn't insert myself between them and hug Jake like I wished to do, no matter how much I craved it.
My brother said a few things to Jake with his hands on Jake's shoulders. In turn, the guy I'd known since I was six shook his head, laughed, and rolled his eyes.
"What was that?!" Lina asked when they joined us. "Jake. You can sing!"
Jake snorted and sat in his place next to me. "Yes, I can."
Lina laughed. "One moment you went from oh, I don't know, my therapist said I should— to this?!"
The gentle giant next to me chuckled. "I figured, if I was going to do it, I might as well do it."
"And that song." Gabe shook his head again. "I bet it's not easy to sing, but you sang it like a pro. Like you felt the lyrics."
"Not autobiographical, I swear." He stole a glance my way. "Most of it doesn't apply."
And yet I knew I would look up the lyrics when I got to bed, and get lost in analyzing them for the tiny bit that might apply. Fantasize that it could be a piece about us.
"You write your own music, too, right?" I asked.
He nodded, not looking at me. "But I'm not ready to do that."
"It's okay." Lina got off her chair. "You can build to that. Come, Gabe. Let's get more drinks."
Gabe stood in preparation for following his girlfriend. "At this rate, next time you'll shrug, find a guitar, and serenade us all with a Stewart original."
He left with Lina toward the bar. It should have been okay. It would only be a few minutes alone with Jake, but the moment it was only the two of us, the air around us got charged with anticipation.
"What did you think?" He turned his gaze to me, a mix of seriousness and humor in his gaze. "Didn't make you regret coming here, did I?"
I shook my head. "Impossible. It's surreal how good you are."
"I read on the website that they have open stage nights every month. Maybe I'll build up my courage enough to do that one day."
"All so you can tell your therapist that you did it."
He smirked. "Exactly. Will you come next time, too?"
"Of course. I'll be here if you want me."
A few heavy seconds stretched in the air, thinning the distance between us. Our eyes remained locked, my heart steadily climbing up my chest and into my throat.
Definitely not a crush anymore.
He frowned and looked away. "Don't give me that look, Vi. We can't."
I rearranged my face to a surprised gesture. "How am I looking at you?"
"Even telling you would be crossing lines."
Warmth infused my face and I looked away, too. He finished the last sip of his drink in one big gulp, and we waited in silence for Lina and Gabe to return.