Page 30 of Changing the Playbook
Maya’s grin lights up the hallway. “Yes! But we need to change first…”
“Why?” I frown. “You look like a million bucks.”
“I know, but you?” Maya grins. “Well, let’s just say it needs work…”
With a resigned shrug, we head for the exit, and I try to embrace therapeutic karaoke. It’ll be a few hours when mybiggest concern is remembering lyrics instead of medication interactions, and where “complicated” just means picking a song, not navigating the minefield of my entire life.
Everything else can wait.
The inside of the karaoke bar throbs with organized chaos—cheap beer mixing with someone’s vanilla body spray, the stage lights turning everyone’s skin sickly purple and radioactive green, and voices cracking over Beyoncé before someone else murders death metal.
But despite all the apparent carnage, I’m reveling in the fact that, for the first time in weeks, my brain isn’t running its usual diagnostic checklist. No spying on Mom’s number of steps in our synced health apps. No cataloging symptoms I might have missed. No reminding her about medications.
Just me, screaming through “Since U Been Gone” until my voice splinters.
Now at the end of the song, I weave through the crowd toward the bar, my throat raw in that good way, from actually using my voice instead of swallowing down all the things I can’t say. The bartender shouts something about another vodka soda, and I nod, settling against the sticky bar top.
As the chaos swirls around me, movement near the stage catches my eye. Someone tall grabbing the microphone with the confidence of someone who either knows exactly how bad they are or has consumed enough alcohol to achieve the same effect.
The stage lights shift, and—oh God—it’s Maine, Mike’s teammate. The one who’d introduced himself by flexing and asking if I was single while the other players groaned with theexhaustion of people who’d witnessed this particular tragedy before.
My first instinct is to disappear into the crowd before any other hockey players materialize. Because in my experience, they crowd together, and the last thing I need is to run into Mike or any of my dad’s other players, who’d no doubt have agreattimegetting to knowtheir coach’s oldest daughter.
But when the opening piano notes of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” fill the bar, and Maine strikes a pose straight from a telenovela’s death scene—one hand pressed to his chest, the other reaching skyward—I’m frozen in place by curiosity.
“TURN AROUND,” he begins.
Sweet Jesus. This isn’t just bad. This is catastrophically, weapons-grade awful. His voice cracks on every third note, and he’s reading the lyrics a full beat behind the music, creating this weird echo effect that makes my ears want to file for divorce.
“EVERY NOW AND THEN I GET A LITTLE BIT LONELY AND YOU’RE NEVER COMING ROUND…”
He spins in a circle, nearly taking out the mic stand, and I laugh. Not a polite chuckle but an actual, genuine laugh that surprises me. The bartender slides my drink across the bar, and I leave cash without looking away from this beautiful disaster.
“TURN AROUND!”
The entire bar watches now, phones out, and instead of showing one molecule of self-awareness, Maine commits harder. He drops to his knees for the chorus, sliding across the stage in a move that definitely wasn’t designed for someone of his size and stature.
“EVERY NOW AND THEN I FALL APART!”
Both hands clutch his chest now, his face contorted in manufactured agony that would make a soap opera actor tell him to tone it down a little. The crowd loses it, especially a tableof girls who shriek with delight, and even the bartender stops mid-pour to witness this crime against music.
“AND I NEED YOU NOW TONIGHT! AND I NEED YOU MORE THAN EVER!”
For three magical minutes, Maine builds his catastrophe higher, adding choreography that might be interpretive dance if interpretive dance were having a seizure. Every movement is too big, too enthusiastic, all gangly limbs and complete commitment to being terrible.
I find myself clapping along, caught in the pure joy of watching someone fail this spectacularly and love every second of it. I can’t imagine ever doing something like this, hamming it up deliberately for the crowd. Hell, when was the last time I didanythingwithout calculating the outcome first?
When he’s done, Maine drops to his knees again, sliding until he’s hanging off the stage edge. The crowd erupts and Maine bounces up, bowing elaborately in every direction, blowing kisses as if he just won a Grammy. Someone throws a bra and he catches it mid-flight, twirls it overhead, then flings it back.
“Thank you, thank you!” he shouts. “I’ll be here all night! Unless management kicks me out! Which happens more than you’d think!”
As he bounds offstage, high-fiving everyone within reach, and getting more than a few numbers from the table of girls, I realize I’m grinning. Actually grinning, a real smile that makes my cheeks ache, rather than the careful expression I wear for family dinners or study groups.
“That was actually worse than last time.”
The voice—warm and low and absolutelynotsupposed to be here—makes my stomach drop and twist. The bar noise fades to static as I turn to see Mike, standing inches away, and God, he looks unfairly good. Dark jeans, a blue button-down with the sleeves rolled up to show his forearms, andthathalf-smile.
“Mike.” My voice comes out breathless, which is mortifying, given what we did a few weeks ago.
