Heart Breaths (13 page)

Following Sam, we sat down at a little table and people-watched as Chris and Bryan, Hannah’s boyfriend, went to get drinks. “You excited for your karaoke debut?” asked Mary Elizabeth, one of Sam’s friends I had met at the birthday barbeque.

“Uh, no,” I said.

She laughed. “Liquid courage will change all that,” she drawled. “Don’t you worry.”

The music began, a loud, rollicking country song. Sam whooped. “Come on, let’s dance!” she said, pulling me from the table.

“Don’t fight the tacky,” said Chris, coming back with a pitcher of beer. “Go dance.”

“But someone has to stay at the table,” I protested.

Chris turned to look at Bryan and Hannah who were making out at the table. “I think that’s covered.”

The music was loud, filled with guitars and yee-haws. I tried to concentrate as Mary Elizabeth and Sam taught me the moves to the dance. “Now, step, touch, touch, step, touch, kick,” Mary Elizabeth instructed.

Slowly, clumsily, I began to repeat the steps with her, getting a little more confident as I went. “You see?” Sam yelled over the music. “You’re dancing!”

“This isn’t dancing!” I yelled back, a small grin creeping across my face. “This is an interpretive cattle stampede!”

“You’re crazy!” she yelled, laughing and swinging me in a circle. “Crazy, crazy, crazy!”

I was crazy.

And that was kind of okay.

“Can I cut in?” I turned to see a cowboy standing there. He was actually pretty hot, in his plaid button down, jeans, and cowboy boots. But no. I was not going to get picked up while I was dressed as Dolly Parton’s Northern, less well-endowed, miniature clone.

“Sorry, not tonight,” I said, flashing him an icy smile and hoping he would leave without anything happening.

“You sure?” he asked.

“Positive,” I said, turning back to Mary Elizabeth and Sam who were watching me, open-mouthed. “Thanks for asking.”

“Holy shit, girl, how did you do that?” Mary Elizabeth asked as we headed back toward the table.

“Do what?”

She looked at me like I had just fallen off the moon. “Brush him off like that. You literally turned into an icicle. A really nice, smiling icicle, but an icicle.”

I shrugged. “Product of my upbringing,” I muttered.

The night wore on, with us sitting around the table, laughing, drinking beer, and occasionally dancing to a truly terrible country song. I hadn’t been to that many bars when I lived in New York, having cocooned myself in, studying and trying to keep living. But I doubted this was a typical bar. Maybe it was for North Carolina. I was slowly relaxing, sitting here in what felt like a giant Lincoln Log house, and mostly forgetting about my hair and clown makeup. It felt like what a barn dance probably felt like—everyone was here—from college kids to grandparents, and everyone was dancing. The music was a mix of every country station I had heard driving down—Johnny Cash and Taylor Swift and George Straight and Carrie Underwood. It was music, and it was loud, and that was what counted.

The music wound down, and the microphone clicked on. “Good evening, ladies and gents!” drawled a Southern voice. “And welcome to Billy Bob’s Innnnncredible Karaoke Night!” The crowd cheered, and I clapped politely, hoping that there would be so many people who wanted to sing that there wouldn’t be enough time for me to go.

“And for our first performer, we have Myra Ellen Banksfield!” The crowd clapped and cheered as an overly made-up lady walked on stage. She took a little bow and walked over to the karaoke machine. A few seconds later, the music began, fast and upbeat. “This is for all you girls about thirteen,” she began to sing along to Martina McBride, her voice a little off-key but enthusiastic.

“You’re beautiful the way you are,” Sam sang along, bobbing her head in time to the music.

“Come on, everyone!” Myra Ellen called, like we were at a concert instead of some little hillbilly karaoke bar. But everyone sang along, stumbling over the words, off-key and loud. This was one of the most bizarre crowds I had ever been a part of—I don’t know where the mean drunks were that night, but obviously karaoke wasn’t their thing.

“This is kinda fun,” I said to Sam.

She flashed me a brilliant smile. “I told you so,” she sang, poking me in my ribs. “I told you so, I told you so, I told you so.”

“Okay, try not to let it get to your head,” I retorted, smiling at her exuberance. “I said kinda, not all the way.”

“Thank you!” said Myra Ellen, taking a sweeping bow and walking off the stage as the crowd clapped and cheered for her.

Watching one karaoke singer after another, I leaned back against my chair, enjoying the show.

“And next singer on our little roster is Maddie Gray. Maddie?”

Oh no.

“Maddie, that’s you!” Hannah said, pointing out the obvious.

“Maybe there’s someone else named Maddie,” I said, feeling my heart plummet to my stomach. It wasn’t stage-fright. It was reliving some painfully bittersweet memories. Ones that would probably make me cry. And the last thing I wanted to do now was start crying on the karaoke stage in front of a herd of tipsy Southerners.

Sam threw me a dirty look. “Stop being a baby,” she said. “Go and sing.”

“I can’t sing,” I protested.

“We had this conversation already,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Nobody cares. I don’t think that anyone here is really all that sober anyway. And you can’t possibly be any worse than that last guy.”

I shuddered. If there was a tune to the song he had sung, he had never heard of it.

Let your heart breathe.

Let yourself live.

He wants you to be happy.

I stood up and walked toward the front, listening to the table cheer. I stared down at the microphone and waited for the song I chose to play. The audience was mostly quiet as I sat down on the stool in the middle of the stage, listening as the music began to play. It was a song that was supposed to be sung as a duet, but there was nobody to sing it with me.

Fitting.

“Whiskey Lullaby.”

The song had haunted me. Closing my eyes, I let myself sing with all I had. It wasn’t about anyone watching anymore. I was singing for myself. I was singing for Ravi. For Devi. For the truck driver, who hadn’t survived the accident, either. I was singing for myself.

And as I sang, I let myself breathe out. Breathe out the life the truck driver had had. The life that led him to driving a semi while completely and utterly drunk.

I didn’t forgive him.

I couldn’t.

But I was able to breathe out the pain that he had to numb so he could keep going. Until he numbed it so much that he stopped breathing. I breathed out, and finished the song. “They laid her next to him beneath the willow, while the angels sang a whiskey lullaby,” I sang, humming along as the song drew to a close.

The music stopped, and there was complete and total silence.

I opened my eyes and stood up. “Thank you,” I whispered, and put down the microphone.

It was like the room snapped out of a trance. Applause spread through the audience like a wave, and I smiled as I walked back to my table.

“You said you can’t sing, you liar!” Sam yelled, wiping her eyes and sniffling before reaching over and pulling me into a hug. “Maddie, you just cracked my heart into little pieces.”

I shrugged. I hadn’t sung since before the accident. I hadn’t let myself.

The cheering continued, as I sat down at the table, blushing, but feeling a smile creep across my face. I felt my heart breathing a little as the applause continued.

“I believe we have an angel singing in this room tonight, y’all,” Billy Bob yelled over the cheers of the crowd. “Right in our own little karaoke bar!”

I smiled, remembering what it felt like to be applauded.

Remembering the nights I would join his band, the nights we would get together and make music.

“Encore! Encore! Encore!” the chant began, with Sam, Hannah and Mary Elizabeth laughing and yelling along.

“Miss Maddie!” yelled Billy Bob into the mic. “Can you do us the pleasure of gracing us once more with your beautiful voice?”

Breathe, Maddie.

Standing up, I walked back to the stage as the cheering got louder. “Thank you,” I said, picking up the microphone again. “And since this is an encore, does anyone have any song suggestions?”

All at once, everyone was yelling, and of course, I couldn’t hear what any of them were saying.

“Okay, try this again,” I called, getting back into the rhythm of working a crowd. I had never done a karaoke honky-tonk, but a crowd was a crowd was a crowd. “Raise your hand if you want something slow, and raise two hands if you want something fun.”

The crowd’s hands flew up, and I laughed. “Okay, I can’t tell, so we’re going to do some Taylor Swift.”

A couple of men booed. “Y’all, I’m not from around here, I don’t know that many country songs. You want an encore, you have to work with what I know.” I leaned against the karaoke machine and flashed them a grin. “I can always sing something like ‘I Will Survive’,” I threatened.

“Noooo!!” they yelled.

Flipping through the song choices, I found the Taylor Swift song I was looking for. “One, two three,” I counted as the music began, putting on what Ravi used to call my metaphorical sassy pants.

I was singing there, with a banjo as my backup, asking why people had to be so mean, and Salena’s words drifted through my head. Breathe out a memory you don’t need anymore.

And once again, I thought of my mother. Of the condescending remarks she made the first months after I moved back into the house. Not that she would ever be watching a football game, but the feeling was there just the same.

The girls in the crowd joined in as I sang the chorus, with everyone cheering at the end.

“Thank you!” I said, taking a little bow as the crowd cheered. Hopping off the stage, I headed back to the table. “No more encores,” I said as I sat down at the table while they clapped.

“How come you never told me you could sing?” Sam demanded as we drove back to town.

I shrugged. “Didn’t think it was so important,” I said. I hadn’t sung for years. I barely remembered that I knew how to.

“Didn’t think it was so important?” she echoed, staring at me incredulously. “Maddie, you’re like, a superstar!”

“No, not really,” I said, laughing. “Just someone who likes singing.”

“I like to sing, too, but I sound like a dead frog,” Chris said as he drove down the highway.

“You don’t sound like a dead frog,” Sam protested.

Chris raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, you sound like a dying frog,” she said, giggling as he reached over to tickle her. “What? You started it!”

“Well, you’re right,” he said. “So there is that.”

I smiled. “I’m sure you’re not that bad.”

“Trust me when I say that Chris has many, many talents,” drawled Sam. “Singing is just not on the list.”

“Many, many talents,” he echoed, wiggling his eyebrows.

“Get a room!” I yelled, clapping my hand over my eyes and laughing.

“Prude,” Sam teased me.

“Yup.”

I blushed as I thought of my very unprude-like behavior a few days ago. It’s a good thing Sam didn’t know.

“So, what other talents have you been hiding?” Sam asked, leaning back in her seat as we drove back toward town.

I shrugged. “None that I know of,” I said, lying.

“Liar.”

“Not really.”

“You’re impossible, you know,” she said. “If you’re not careful, I’m going to sneak into your room one night and threaten you with scissors.”

“You’re not coming anywhere near my head with your scissors, young lady,” I said. “Keep your hair-cutting trigger finger to yourself.”

“New plan for this summer,” Sam teased, reaching over and swatting at me gently. “Get Maddie drunk enough to pull the stick out of her ass.”

I burst into laughter. Should I have been offended? Maybe. But Sam’s honesty was a welcome change from the fake cheerfulness of the dumb debutantes that I had been forced into spending time with before. And there was a stick up my ass.

“What are you doing tomorrow?” she asked as the car pulled up in front of the darkened café.

“Work?”

“After work,” she said, leaning out the window.

“I don’t know,” I said. Start my Sudoku book, maybe? Finally burn the stupid
New York Times
? I didn’t know. I would think of something productive. Of course, I could also mope around and cry.

That was always an option.

“Well, I have an idea,” she said, her eyes twinkling.

“Oh, Lord,” I groaned. “This is not a good idea.”

“Excuse me. Every idea I’ve had so far was brilliant, and you know it,” she said, sticking her tongue out at me.

“If Chris says it’s okay, than maybe,” I said. “But I don’t know if I can trust him anymore either.”

Chris burst into laughter. “I am firmly planted under her thumb,” he said, reaching over to kiss Sam’s cheek.

“You’re whipped,” I nodded, feeling an easy camaraderie with the two of them I hadn’t had with anyone in years. I hadn’t just lost Ravi and Devi that day—I lost my friends then, too. I lost who I was.

It was about damn time I found her again.