“Oh my gosh, you sing? How fun!” Dina whined. She was a friend of Sam and Natalie, and that was the only reason why she didn’t roll her eyes.
Natalie noticed the look on her face, quickly adding, “You know what might be fun? Karaoke.” She grabbed Sam’s arm. “There’s this great karaoke bar with good happy hour specials fifteen minutes from here.”
She winced. She knew how much Natalie loved karaoke because of her love for Pop music and performing, but she would rather scrape her nails on a chalkboard than sing into a cheap sound system at a bar.
“Yeah! Singers love karaoke!” Dina said, enthusiastically.
“Um, that’s not necessarily tr–” she began, but the other three were so excited that they began to talk over her. Where was it written, or agreed upon, that vocalists loved to do karaoke? She shook her head to herself as they all got into Sam’s car.
“This place has the best song selection and there’s four-dollar beers–”
“Yay! I love karaoke!”
“Can we pick teams?”
“Tiffany’s on my team–”
She began to rub her head where she felt a headache coming on. She should’ve drove her own car.
They parked and walked into the bar. There was a pungent smell of liquor in the air and several people were yelling, clearly already intoxicated.
“Just think of it this way: this is the best place to get up and sing because everyone’s so drunk, that even when you mess up, everyone will still cheer you on,” Sam jokingly said in her ear.
“You do realize everything that is wrong with the statement you just made, right?” she asked, looking sideways at Sam.
Natalie and Dina were too busy chatting away to see how uneasy she felt. She knew Sam was trying to make her feel better, but it made her feel even worse knowing that no one would care if she hit the right notes in some random Pop song, much less even remember her face. She sat back in her chair, casually sipping a beer as different people got up and mumbled into the microphone.
This was going to be an interesting night.