"I Kissed a Girl?"
"What? No!"
"Friday?"
"That one song by that internet girl? Absolutely not. Ooh, look, there's Born in the USA."
"Ugh, gross. I'm not a hundred and five."
Betsy squeezed in between them, looking at the song selection on the tiny screen in front of them. "Since I made you two come up here together, I guess I should pick your song. You're taking forever." She scrolled through them. "Oh, this one is nice." She selected it without consulting then and hopped back down to her seat.
At the first couple notes Danny groaned and Mindy hopped up and down excitedly, grabbing the mic so she could start off the duet. "Danny, my mom and dad always do this one, wipe that frown off your face right now." She turned to the crowded bar and belted out the first line. "Baby when I met there was peace unkown"
Danny grabbed her arm, whispering loudly. "You're singing the man's part."
She ignored him, shoving her elbow into his side, continuing. "I set out to get you with a fine tooth coooomb. I was soft inside. There was something going on." She turned toward Danny, dramatically singing the next lines to him as he stared at the floor in mortification. God, he hadn't had enough beer for this. "You do something to me that I can't explain. Hold me closer and I feel no pain. Every beat of my heart." She nodded at him, expectantly, her eyebrows raised. He knew he was supposed to come in at this point.
He sighed hugely, and joined her at the mic. "We got something going on."
She laughed on the last couple words, but smiled up at him exuberantly, and suddenly this wasn't the most embarrassing thing he'd ever done, suddenly she was the only person in the room. She greedily took the mic back, totally enjoying being the center of attention.
They sang the rest of the song together, Mindy only needing to poke at Danny a few times to get him to really belt out a couple of the lines. By the end, he felt a smile being coaxed out of him, one that only Mindy had ever been able to produce. He thought he could even discern a flush, not from the heat of the bar, when they got to the middle, singing, "Making love with each other, ah ha."
At some point, they had turned away from the other people around them, and were solely singing to each other, lost in some sort of alternate universe. They reached the end of the song. "And we rely on each other, ah ha. From one lover to another, ah ha."
Suddenly the music cut off, and Danny was left, sweaty and panting staring down at Mindy's own shiny happy face. The smile there causing his stomach to flip. Still caught up in the moment, he reached forward and grabbed her face, still staring a moment before he crushed his lips down on hers, not worrying about the fact that they'd never discussed anything like this before.
Perhaps it was the slight beer buzz he still had, or maybe it was the camaraderie he felt were her in this moment, but he just wanted to pull her to him, and never let go. He'd deal with the consequences later. When he felt her slide her arms up around him, her hands making their way to his nape, her fingers curling into his hair, crushing his mouth closer to hers, he realized he'd probably made the best decision of his life.