Page 6 of The Dating Game

Grant is headed our way and I steel myself for his presence, getting my forced smile ready.

“Mind if I pull up a chair?” he asks.

Yes, I want to say,I do mind because I specifically told you that my sister needed me tonight and you should stay home. “Of course not, babe,” I exclaim instead, because two more weeks. Just two. “Go for it.”

Grant turns to grab a chair from a nearby table, and I catch sight of Sydney smirking at me. She looks as if she’s fighting a laugh. Pointedly I avert my gaze.

“So is anyone going to actually sing tonight?” Belinda asks, taking a sip of her drink as she flips through the karaoke menu on the table. “I’m thinking about doing an old Olivia Newton John song myself.”

“I think Grant and Brooke should do a song,” Sydney announces a note of mischief in her voice.

“What?” Grant looks appalled at the very idea.

“Oh yeah, we totally should,” I enthuse because anything is better than sitting here trying to make stilted conversation rather than ask him why he thought it was a good idea to crash my night.

“Nah, I don’t think so,” he says nervously. “Karaoke isn’t my thing.”

“But you were singing karaoke the night we met,” I protest.

“Yeah, but that was just a one-off. Plus, I was with my friends; I’d had a couple of beers.”

Is my smile still on my face? I try to force the corners of my mouth to stay curved up as I reply, but it’s like gravity got a hold of them. “Right,” I chirp. “I see.”

“Aww, Brooksie,” Grant says with a frown. “Are you mad?”

“No,” I say hastily, glancing Sydney’s way. “Why would I be mad that my boyfriend doesn’t like karaoke? Not like I own a karaoke bar or something.” I let out a strangled laugh. “Anyway, I can just do a solo or drag Jill up there with me.”

“Yeah, definitely,” Jill says, her gaze popping back and forth between me and Grant in confusion. “I can get up there with you. Although if we do a guy/girl song it’s your turn to be the guy. What are you thinking—“Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”? Ooh, “The Boy is Mine”?”

“You pick,” I tell her. Jill grabs for the second karaoke menu and flips to the back where all the duetsare listed.

“Let's go put our name in,” she says, her chair scraping against the floor as she gets to her feet and grabs me.

“I’ll be back,” I tell Grant who gives me a very enthusiastic double thumbs up, then whoops.

“Grant seems…” Jill searches for the right word as we walk across the bar, “enthusiastic,” she finishes.

“Yup,” I pop the p. “That he is. So what do you think of doing a Shania song?” I brush past an unwelcome discussion about Grant. Neither of my sisters know about my bet with Sydney. Hannah doesn’t know because she’s had enough of her own drama lately with her job and secret boyfriend who just became her public boyfriend but then broke up with her earlier tonight. And Jill doesn’t know because there’s no way she would approve.

Though to be fair there’s very little Jill approves of. I think this might be a side effect of her husband being a senator and her being his campaign manager. She spends so much time worrying about Max’s approval ratings she has no time to approve of anything else.

“It has been a few weeks since we did Shania,” Jill muses.

“Shania it is!” I declare. I need a Shania song tonight. The woman is like a power ballad-making machine, and tonight I need to declare my power. Or possibly tell Grant through song that he don’t impress me much.

“How about that duet she did with Billy Currington?” Jill suggests. “I heard that in my car the other day and haven’t been able to get it out of my head.”

I hold back a frown. “Party for Two” isn’t exactly a power ballad, but it’s probably better for me not to get onstage and essentially challenge Grant with song lyrics to try and impress me more with his touch. I repress a shudder.

“Okay,” I say, “but can you pretty please do Billy’s part? I know you were the guy last time, but I could really use a Shania moment.”

When you own a karaoke bar and you and your sisters all love getting onstage to perform, you take the mindset they took in Shakespeare's day and let anyone play any part regardless of gender. The important thing is that the roles get filled.

Jill rolls her eyes but nods. “Fine.” She looks back at our table and sighs. “Do you think Hannah is going to be okay?” she asks me. I follow her gaze to where Hannah is sitting, playing idly with the straw in her now empty glass.

“I’m sure she will be,” I say, but there’s no real conviction behind the words. She’s heartbroken. How do you bounce back from that? I’m not sure, since I have no experience with it.

“What song are you ladies doing tonight?” Eddie, my sound guy for the night, asks us.

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