I haven’t sung it since.
Not properly.
And now she’s standing here, in a pub full of people who have no idea what they’re hearing, giving it back to me like it belongs to both of us.
She doesn’t look at anyone else.
Not really.
Her eyes find mine as she sings the first line, and the rest of the room fades into something secondary. I’m aware of it, of the noise and the movement and the presence of the others beside me, but none of it reaches the same place.
She remembered.
Not just the song.
The moment.
The meaning behind it.
My throat tightens, and I swallow hard, suddenly aware of how exposed I feel sitting here while she stands there without hesitation.
She isn’t hiding.
She never has.
She finishes the last line and lets the final note settle naturally, her hand still resting on the microphone stand like she’s steadying something that doesn’t need steadying.
The applause begins a second later, but I barely hear it.
Because she’s looking at me like she already knows what it did.
And she did it anyway.
The applause fades slowly after the fourth song, dissolving back into the usual noise of the pub as people turn toward their drinks and their conversations again. Christina stays on the small stage a moment longer, leaning toward the guitarist as he says something to her. She laughs, her hand going briefly to her chest like she’s trying to hold the feeling in place.
Then the band starts unplugging cables.
Taking a break.
She looks out across the room, searching.
When she finds me, her face changes completely.
She doesn’t walk.
She runs.
She weaves between chairs and people, ignoring the narrow spaces and half-turned bodies, her focus fixed entirely on our table. By the time she reaches us, she’s breathless and glowing in a way that makes it clear she hasn’t fully processed it yet.
“They want me,” she says.
Her voice comes out half laugh, half disbelief.
“I'm in. As lead singer.”
Emma lets out a shriek beside Alex and launches herself at Christina, wrapping her in a hug that nearly knocks them both sideways.
“I knew it,” Emma says. “I knew it. I told you.”