“Anyway.” Brijesh peeks into my cocktail. “What are we drinking?”
I hold up the Jack and Jill for him to taste. He sips it, then passes it to the guy behind him, who I didn’t realize was with Brijesh until now. The dude is huge, well over six feet tall, wearing dark jeans and a plain white muscle tee.
“This is delicious,” the giant groans, handing my glass back to Brijesh. “So delicately balanced.”
“Thank you!” Freddy shouts from behind the bar. “I’ll make you one!”
Brijesh leans toward me. “The CrossFit buff is my backup Casey. Convincing, no?”
“I’m irreplaceable,” I retort, grabbing for my drink.
“First, remind me what it is I always say about lateness.”
I roll my eyes. “Being late all the time isn’t a cute personality trait, it’s just rude.”
He smiles. “You’re forgiven. But I’m keeping the drink.”
Freddy whips up another round, and then before I know it, he’s clocking out, shouting the recipe for the J&J into the late-night bartender’s ear. I sign a tab. It’s less money than I thought—exactly eleven dollars. I think there’s only one drink on it, but I’m not sober enough to question anything.
We pour out of the bar in a tumble of drunken stupor, and Brijesh is humming, “Casey and the boys, Casey and the boys.” Alex and I find street hot dogs to devour while Brijesh describes in intimate detail the meal I missed.
“Tantalizingly tender tamales—”
“Shut up.”
“The huitlacoche was to die for—”
“I said I was sorry, didn’t I?”
“And the pozole.”
“You really screwed up,” Alex tells me. “This hot dog’s only descriptor is average.”
Still, the food sobers me up a little, and I chug a bottle of water for good measure. Then all five of us head toward Miriam’s favorite karaoke bar. (It took next to no convincing to get everyone on board.)
Halfway there, Freddy sidles up between me and Alex. “Want to know a song that Alex knows every single word of?”
“Don’t tell her that!”
“Hips. Don’t. Lie.”
It is obviously the first song I request when we arrive.
The bar is a grungy basement haunt, but there’s still a waitlist, and we have to get through Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5,” sung by a bachelorette party in purple feather tutus, and then Ariana Grande’s “Santa Tell Me,” performed by an Australian woman in all black. All five of us line the sticky, overrun bar as we watch.
“Dude.” Alex pushes away my elbow, knocking half the liquor out of the shot I just ordered to get him primed for his performance. “This smells like rubbing alcohol.”
“Welcome to the bourgeoisie.” I fix him with a stern look.
Alex narrows his eyes, then takes the shot from me and drinks it straight. “For the record, I’ve never spent a dime of my dad’s money he didn’t force on me. I just have more respect for my body than this.”
I’m about to retort that I treat my body like a debauched temple, thank you very much, but then Sasha barrels up to me, her boyfriend, Miguel, in tow. We all make hazy introductions, and Sasha gives me a pointed look she should have saved for a Girls’ Night In, jerking her head at Alex with a question in her eyes. He doesn’t notice, too busy fangirling over Miguel, who is some famous Yankees player or something. Figures.
“Ring of Fire” starts to play, and a smile pulls at my lips as I remember Dad playing this song whenever we’d have a bonfire with our neighbors. Alex notices. He pulls me close so he can shout in my ear, and his lips graze my skin.
Since our first two touches, memorized, cataloged, I’ve lost track of all the others: my feet kicking his calf, his elbow against mine, shoulders bumping on the outside curb, knuckles scraping as we walked.
“What’s your song?” His hold on my arm loosens already.
“I go back and forth between ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and ‘Promiscuous’!” I shout.
“Nice range!” he shouts.
“Thanks! Tonight, though, I wrote down something to sing with Miriam!”
The DJ calls Alex’s song. He shoots me a devastating smile—all sparkly teeth and swoopy hair and eyes that are questionably responsible for global warming—before lifting off his chair and heading onstage in one drunken bound. Grabbing the mic from the MC’s outstretched palm, Alex starts perfectly in sync, his voice low, scraping out of his throat: “I never really knew that she could dance like this.”
My hand claps over my mouth.
Throughout the whole thing, I stay resolutely put on my bar stool despite the crowd swarming, gathering around Alex, belting out the lyrics in a cacophonous echo. He kneels like a prince, one elbow crossing his knee, offering his mic up to a girl’s eager mouth, and she sings, “You make a woman go mad!” And I think to myself that some days, all you can really ask for is the chance to witness a twenty-five-year-old man in his work clothes at midnight, singing an old-school Shakira song in a West Village basement.
Miriam materializes out of nowhere dressed in her after-work quick change of a cotton dress and tennis shoes. The moment Brijesh sees her, his expression makes it clear that she and he are tonight’s endgame. Miriam goes to him after I buy her a lemon drop shot, and Brijesh’s hands tangle in her hair, and hers travel underneath the sleeves of his shirt. The only time he lets her out of his arms from then on is when she’s in the bathroom with Sasha or onstage singing with me (“Through the Dark” by One Direction, because we always promised we’d carry each other over fire and water).
We dance, and sing, and things get even more hazy, and then there’s this point where Alex and I both just … stop drinking altogether. Even though we didn’t talk about it, even though we don’t have to. It’s almost like an unspoken pact: Okay, this is enough.
Somewhere between “Mr. Brightside” and “Friends in Low Places,” I realize half our crew has Irish exited. When I grab my phone, there’s a text from Miriam: heading home. where does Alex live?
Bruh idk??? I send back.
His thigh is pressed against mine, elbows propped on the bar behind him, hand clutching a plastic cup full of ice water. When Sasha and Miguel take their leave of the stage after a truly horrendous attempt at “Before He Cheats,” they call an Uber home to the Upper West Side.
On the street, Sasha pulls me in for a hug. “On a scale of one to junior-year Global Leadership Scholars semiformal, how drunk are you?”
“Third quarter of a lame football game. Against Bowling Green.”
She sighs, pulling away. “That’s exactly what I was hoping to hear.”
Their Uber comes. Miguel and Sasha get inside. It pulls away from the curb, and then Alex and I are alone.
Like, alone alone.