Sweet Like Honey

I was really looking forward to the live music, but Harvey conveniently forgot to mention that live bands only play on the weekends. Tonight is competitive karaoke night, not that I’m complaining or anything but when it comes to karaoke I can’t control myself. Well according to seven different karaoke restaurants back home, I can’t control myself. I gave them the best shows of their lives and how do they repay me? With life time bans! Whatever, their loss. Tonight, my goal is to get up there sing my heart out and not get banned. Something tells me this small town doesn’t have many karaoke restaurants, I don’t want to blow it here.

“Karaoke! Karaoke! Karaoke!” I sing to myself as I wait around at the table for Harvey. He’s striking up a conversation with the bar tenders at the far right of the restaurant. This place is so cute and red! The entire building is made from bricks and there’s a giant fire place opposite to the bar with little couches and coffee tables. The mini stage is in the back of the room where there’s a small patch of polished wood floor for dancing. And the food smells great! I smell a mix of pizza, spaghetti and something sweet. My nostrils could use some relief, after smelling the inside of Harvey’s apartment. My nostrils burned a little the entire way here. Ew.

“Ryan’s not going to make it. He’s got some family event going on right now.” Harvey sits down in front of me and pulls up his menu.

“Is Ryan real or did you just make him up so that you wouldn’t sound lonely?” I ask accusingly and point a half-eaten bread stick at him.

“He’s real,” Harvey responds and he stanches my bread stick away and eats it. Agh he’s quick!

“Hey get your own!” I complain.

“I would but you inhaled them all already,” he adds pointing at the empty bread basket.

“I can’t help that I haven’t had real food in the last twenty four hours.”

With that said I proceeded to order as much food as I felt necessary. I need as much energy possible if I want to kick some butt tonight. When the food got here I gobbled it all down and Harvey complained that my eating habits were attracting attention. I just get a little carried away when I’m eating hardy foods and not tasteless salads like the ones they serve at the dumb events my dad dragged me to.

“Don’t forget to chew,” adds Harvey as I dig into my slice of gooey, thick and rich chocolate cake. Just then it hits me that Harvey could be upset because Ryan stood him up.

“Hey you should sing with me,” I say with a mouthful of cake.

“No thanks,” he responds and steals a bite of my gooey cake.

“Come on. It’ll be fun!” I exclaim.

“Karaoke isn’t really my thing,” he says.

“Geez you’re no fun for a gay guy,” I mumble under my breath. He just glares at me and continues to pick at my cake.

I’m about to beg him to go up with me when his cell phone rings. Apparently the call is so important he has to step outside of the restaurant to take it. What could be more important than karaoke? Besides chocolate cake and pudding I would say nothing!

“Abigail Jefferson.” A voice calls out from the stage. I walk over to find the source of the voice and find a short older man. He hands me the microphone and a remote to pick a song.

“Good luck young lady,” he says with a toothy smile and pats me on the back. Normally I would find such a gesture creepy but this old man was just too cute! He has a sweet tone of voice and is just so frail I couldn’t possibly find him creepy.

When I finally settled on an old song by Alicia Keys, the spot light turns on and I start to sing like there’s no tomorrow. For the duration of the song I find myself hitting every note correctly and the restaurant disappears. It becomes all about the song and not about the audience. It’s just me in harmony with the background music. I hit the last note and the restaurant comes back into focus and I hear people clapping. I expect the old man to come back up and take the microphone but am greeted by a guy my age instead.

“Nice job,” he says.

I take a moment to get a good look at him. He’s taller than me by a long shot but not as huge as Harvey. He’s got dark brown eyes like . . . pudding and has broad swimmer’s shoulders. The kind of shoulders that look ready for battle with a giant underwater creature. For a sturdy guy he’s pretty slim I bet he could be mistaken for a teenager from a distance. His hair is perfectly in place and fluffy like a cloud. I bet combs have a great time running through his hair. The color of his hair kinda reminds me of the ginger cookies my grandma makes. I could smell her cookies just looking at his hair.

Wow this guy reminds me of dessert. Maybe I’ll have some more cake later. The entire time I take looking at him he says something in the microphone that I don’t catch. I start to listen when he starts talking to me again.

“Well it looks like you win by default no one else signed up to sing tonight. Congratulations you get a fifty percent discount on tonight’s meal,” he says and I can’t help but grin. Victory! Ha! I didn’t even have to challenge the winner to a sing-while-arm-wrestling match. It’s a good thing too because my clever challenge seems to get me banned everywhere I go.

“Yes!!!” I add triumphantly.

“Hey would you be interested in singing with my band for a night? Our lead singer is out of town for the month and we could really use the talent,” he says and I can’t help but feel drawn to his offer. It’s those damn pudding brown eyes of his! I can’t resist anything that reminds me of pudding especially when it’s accompanied by ginger cookie hair!

“Um well I only sing for fun. It’s just a hobby really I don’t want it turning into anything more than that,” I explain trying to break eye contact with him.

“We only play for fun too. It’s nothing serious,” he explains.

I feel myself getting closer to saying yes and my stranger alert goes off. He is an unknown male which means he can’t be trusted agent Abigail!

“Um I’ll think about it,” I passively state and look away.

“When I’m not working I play here. It’s usually around 7pm on Friday nights. Stop by one day if you feel like singing.” He doesn’t even insist after that and just steps off stage and starts to bus a table.

I look over to where I’m sitting and find that Harvey is still m.i.a. That is one long phone call. I head toward my table only to be approached by that guy again.

“My name’s Zack by the way.” He swings the rag in his hand over one of his shoulders and sets the large tray full of dirty dishes on the table next to me. He reaches out to shake my hand and I actually shake his hand.

“I’m Abigail,” I say before I can stop myself and give out a fake name. Shoot!

“Nice to meet you,” and with that statement he takes off toward another table, but not before giving me a cute-as-a-puppy and happy-like-a-kid smile. He’s attractive. Really attractive, which means he's dangerous. Gotta watch out for this one.

“Sorry I stepped out for so long. I hope I didn’t ruin tonight for you,” says Harvey walking up to our table.

“Oh it’s fine I just talked to,” I turn around to the table where Zack was and he’s long gone.

No trace of him anywhere. Oh he’s agile—another red flag.

“To who?” Harvey asks skeptically. I bet he can’t believe I talked to a stranger. Hmm I can’t believe I talked to a stranger either.

“Oh just an employee.” I look around the restaurant to see if he’s at another table, but he’s not.

We walk out to the car after paying for only half the check—courtesy of my talent—and Harvey takes his time telling me about his phone call. It turns out Ryan was at a family dinner that wasn’t supposed to go on so long. The problem came about because they didn’t tell Ryan’s brother/roommate that their mother would be in town. He ended up storming out and Ryan had to take care of his mother after his brother said all these mean things to her.

“He works at the place we were just at,” adds Harvey.

Then Ryan could have gotten us a discount! Ugh why didn’t Harvey think of this before? Oh Harvey can be so silly sometimes.

“I mean his brother works here. Ryan thought he may have stormed off to work, but I didn’t see him. It’s a shame too, he probably would have given us a discount,” says Harvey and I realize how much we really do think alike. My best friend’s not so silly after all! I take a moment to think about any grouchy employees, but I can’t remember any. They were all so nice! Suddenly, I realize something.

“Oh poop!” I exclaim.

“What?” asks Harvey, startled.

“Why didn’t you tell me I look like someone slammed my face on the side walk,” I complain as I look at myself through his rear view mirror. My hair has never been this unkempt and greasy and just plain nasty! Not to mention I have dark circles under my eyes and my skin is so pale I look dead.

Harvey doesn’t respond he just laughs as I complain about my wrinkled clothes and smelly body. Great, freaking great. I went up and scared the poop out of everyone so no one wanted to compete with me. Oh no! That Zack guy probably thinks I’m a hobo now. He probably only wants me to play with his band because he wants to give me money.

What a great first impression you must have made on pudding boy and the rest of the employees agent Abby!