Page 47 of Hers for the Weekend

Holly continued, “—as much as you’re enjoying yourselves, this old inn is about to burst at the seams. Some of us need to get out of the way so the people who live here can finish wedding preparations.”

Tara heard Hannah grumble, “The wedding preparations have been done for weeks. Please. This is me.”

“So, we’re going to do a classic midmorning activity. Karaoke! Follow the giant blond man!”

At this, Cole waved his arms, the crowd cheered again, and at least half of them peeled off to head to the barn after him.

Hannah shot Tara two thumbs-up, although Tara wasn’t sure how she knew it had been Tara’s plan to begin with.

She hated karaoke. It was chaotic, and people who were bad at singing did it anyway, picking songs they thought they knew the words to but didn’t actually, and everything was noise and flashing lights and people screaming over the music. She liked bars, when she could go to dance, but sitting still in sensory overload and listening to people butcher Queen songs? No.

But here she was, at the front of the barn, where a microphone stand had materialized along with the promised karaoke machine. Gavi was setting up the projector in the back, and suddenly something that looked like an old Windows screensaver was on the wall behind her.

“Can you sing?” Cole asked Holly.

Holly shook her head. “I’m real bad.”

“Great. You need to start,” he told her. “Tara sings very well, and it tends to kill the mood if the first person is great. It intimidates people.”

Tara nodded. “I do intimidate people.” It was also true that she could sing, but she rarely let herself do so in front of people.

Holly had a moment of looking like a deer in the headlights, but then nodded. “Nicholas, I need you to cue up the Violent Femmes.”

As she started singing the opening lines of “Blister in the Sun,” the crowd whooped and started jumping. By the time she got to the chorus, the whole barn was singing along. It wasn’t good, but it was cute.

Tara was in real trouble if she thought a woman singing off-key was cute.

The midday winter sun streamed in through the open barn doors, and dust mites danced in the air as the floor bounced. It was surreal, and a little beautiful, in spite of the chaos.

When Holly was done, Tara grabbed the mic. “Y’all, I need people to sign up for slots here, or Cole is going to take over, and he knows every word to every Meat Loaf song. I would do anything for the love of him, but I won’t listen to that.”

Cole gasped, clutching his chest. “I will have you know,” he said, taking the microphone from her, “that I am planning an ode to a great bisexual icon and hero of our generation, Billie Joe Armstrong.”

That was smart. Cole also sung very well, which you might notice in a hair band ballad, but wouldn’t if he was screaming a Green Day song. She relinquished the stage to him, and he began “When I Come Around.”

She would have gone with “Welcome to Paradise,” but it worked the way it was intended. People thought of nostalgic songs they could mostly remember and signed up.

As she listened to a Rosenstein cousin launch into “Don’t Stop Believin’,” she watched Holly. Her red waves had been stuffed under a Pikachu hat and she had black liquid liner ringing her eyes. She was wearing ripped-up jeans over fishnets with her big platform black Docs. Tara wasn’t sure what about seeing Holly this way, completely in her element, wearing no masks, she found so damn adorable.

A tiny voice in the back of her mind whispered that if she and Holly ever dated, Holly would have to put that self back into storage, at least for family and work functions. The voice asked, Is that fair? Is that what you want? Tara ignored it. Obviously, she would support Holly dressing any way she wanted, and Tara would never ask her to mask when it was just them, but everyone had to mask sometimes.

No one really ever got to only be who they wanted; that was life. Plus, they weren’t going to ever date. Even if a part of Tara was starting to wish maybe, in some world, they could.

While Elijah and Jason Green were in the middle of a rendition of “I’ll Cover You” from Rent that had most of the audience close to tears (Jason must be one hell of a theater teacher), her phone buzzed with a text.

Hannah: You’re a lifesaver! let’s get everyone back inside.

It was time for her to shut this down, which meant she was going to have to sing.

Through a series of eyebrow movements and telepathic communications, Cole got her center stage and cued up her music. He winked at her when she saw what was on the screen. She could sing, sure, but could she sing Idina Menzel? They were going to find out. And, if she fell flat, she would be in good company.

“This has been so much fun, but Hannah tells me we’re moving on to the next part of the schedule, and what Hannah says, goes.” The crowd tittered at this. “So, to close us out, let’s go… into the unknown.”

When her nieces had watched Frozen for the first time, they’d said, “Auntie Tara is Queen Elsa!” and though she’d known they meant it as a compliment, it hadn’t felt that way. A woman who refuses to use her power because she’s scared of it, who is happier to freeze than love? That might be how Tara appeared on the outside, but she knew, inside, she was a whole different person.

The cold had always bothered her.

Right now, though, this song… Every word felt like it was being ripped out of the depths of her soul—an unnerving thing for an almost-forty-year-old to feel about a Disney princess, but many unnerving things had happened to her this week, and it hadn’t killed her yet.

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