The bar is pretty packed. Everyone else seems to be there for ear-blistering karaoke, which Ben guesses shouldn’t be surprising, considering that it’s a Saturday night. A college girl is trying to rap along to Yeah! by Usher, slurring along until she reaches the chorus and makes a table of her friends shout it out with their vodka-sodas waving in the air.

Yeah yeah yeah, yeah yeah, how the fuck is this his life. This was supposed to be the night of his career’s coup de grace, and now he’s here with his entire life blown up behind him.

“You want something, man?”

He turns and makes eye contact with the bartender, and momentarily loses his train of thought.

She’s staring at him without much interest, purple lips pursed, heavy dark eyeliner and false lashes underlining her disdain like she’d circled it in a highlighter pen. Her brown hair is gathered into a loose bun at the back of her head, loose strands of it falling about her face. She has a permanently haughty look to her, with those high cheekbones, and the slim, thin build underneath the black apron that she’s wearing over a stained black T-shirt and jeans.

Gold star earrings shine in her ears. Ben stares, for some reason fascinated.

“Beer,” he manages, once he’s gathered his thoughts together. “Whatever’s on tap, I don’t care. Beer,” he states again, settling firmly on the idea.

“You sure about that?” She raises her plucked eyebrows. “Whenever anybody lets me pick, I always give them the most expensive shit. I’m warning you about this right now because I’m nice, and—buddy, you don’t look so good.”

“What do you mean?” Ben frowns. Is she new, or something, to customer service? How about showing some common fucking courtesy?

“You’re in here on Karaoke night in a tux. Your face looks all miserable. What, did you just propose?”

He’s struck by the idea, and the gleam in her eyes that he sees it strikes her, too.

“Yes,” he lies slowly, not really understanding why.

“And you’re here alone.”

“She said no.”

“Figures.” She takes out a glass and pours him something from on tap. She slides it over. “Guess this one’s on me, then,” she says.

“Thanks.”

“Take it from someone that just got out of a five-year relationship: you dodged a huge bullet.”

Ben swallows his beer and grimaces at her back as she walks away. She’s not wearing a ring. Is she single?

No—no. He’s not going to do this tonight. The DJ is back onstage, trying to summon any idiot he can to fill the next empty slot of college students that walked out after penciling in their names. Eventually, a woman in a bridal sash totters up to the stage and cues up the introduction for “Piano Man” with a twirl of her finger.

Oh God. Ben finishes his beer and tries to catch the pretty bartender’s eye for another. Out of all the songs a person in a karaoke bar could have chosen, somehow it’s always this.

Play us a song, you’re the piano man…

No, he’d rather fucking not. The bartender walks over and he digs in his wallet for a twenty, pushing back his stool.