The words were scrolling across the monitor too slowly, but it didn’t matter; I knew them by heart. As I sang, I let my gaze scan the crowd of people dancing, some watching me, some singing along. This was fun. Keith and I used to do things like this every weekend, laughing and drinking until we forgot our last name. I didn’t want to give in, didn’t want to be that person, yet I wondered what our lives would be like if I hadn’t asked him to pick up that bottle of Merlot.

If he hadn’t chosen to head south down Ashland Avenue that day at the exact same time that the kid in the black SUV decided to look down at a text message.

Where would we be?

Behind the karaoke screens, the pop videos still played on the television screens in the background, even though they’d been muted for the amateur singers.

As I sang, a motion on one of the television screens caught my eye.

It was the group of people dancing that made me look in the first place, but then I was focused on the man in the center as the camera zoomed in close to his face.

I kept singing as the shot zoomed out again, the connection brewing in my mind but still fuzzy.

When the camera zoomed in again, the man’s face was clear, right in the middle of the screen. I stumbled over the lyrics that I knew so well before stopping completely, the cool head of the microphone pressed against my lips.

I stared at his face, but I wasn’t seeing him there, on the TV. I saw him in the back seat of my car, his body leaned forward, his gaze locked on mine in the rearview mirror.

Lotti.

He was right there, dancing on the television in the middle of a group of gyrating, scantily clad women, as if it were the only place in the world he belonged.

At some point, the microphone slipped from my fingers and crashed to the floor.

• • •

“What do you mean, he flirted with you?”

There was a voice asking me that question, but I couldn’t place it. There was an entire room full of people watching me, and I swayed a little.

“Who liked your unwashed hair?”

I blinked and finally looked up to see the DJ looking at me, a smile on his face. He was watching me, waiting for me to respond as Alanis carried on in the background.

Surely, I had not said that out loud.

Surely. I had not. Said that. Out loud.

But the moments before I’d dropped the microphone were a blur, and the expressions on the faces of the people standing in front of me suggested otherwise.