And it was...damn. I liked hearing Lily sing “Before He Cheats” for the pure fun, turn-me-on factor, but this was different. Lily’s voice, like Billy Corgan’s, somehow went from light and sweet to dark and gritty in the matter of a breath. This song was all fuzzy guitar and irrepressible energy, optimistic and bittersweet all at once, and halfway through I was already half-hard, just sitting there and watching her. My chest felt weirdly full of...happiness, maybe.

But I completely forgot that toward the end of the song, Billy sings I want to turn you on over and over. And this time, when the words came out of Lily’s mouth, a delicious growl, she didn’t lock eyes with me like before. She merely glanced at me once and away. But that glance was enough to make my throat dry.

That glance was enough to make me wonder what the hell I was doing.

Was this simply all in my head? Were her insides also churning when she sang I want to turn you on and looked at me? Because it was suddenly clear I was out of my depth here. Sitting at this table was the most impulsive thing I had done in...my life?

She was the one who came to me. So maybe impulsive wasn’t the right word, since I was pretty much dragged into this situation, albeit willingly. Maybe this was normal for her, or her friends? Maybe they dragged strangers into their lives all the time?

But it struck me very deeply at that moment, surrounded by that table of almost-acquaintances, watching Lily on the dance floor—a Lily who knew my name, who looked at me when she sang tonight, and not just on accident—that it wasn’t normal for me.

What was the endgame here? Were we just going to sing together, and drink together, and say goodbye? And then the next time we were both at Moonie’s again we could laugh and hug and say, ‘Hey! How’ve you been?’ That sounded nice. Normal-ish, maybe, for people who were better at socializing than me, who didn’t hang out with the same core group of people they’d known since college and no one else.

Or were Lily and I going to end the night with one of us straddling the other’s lap, our tongues in each other’s mouths? That seemed like a very un-me, not-normal possibility—my tongue hadn’t been in anyone’s mouth since Dan, and after Dan, I seriously contemplated whether the muscle should remain safe and sound inside my own body for the rest of my life, and had landed pretty firmly on yes.

But yet, it was becoming increasingly difficult to not picture that happening with Lily and me. Which was...exciting, obviously. And terrifying.