Chapter 18

"What doyou think about the place?" Mae glanced at Dell, who was looking over the landscape of Moonie's while their favorite butch bartender grabbed their drinks. One of Dell's hands rested on the edge of the bar, his body just behind hers. She liked it a little too much, the brush of his chest against her shoulder. It felt like a distinctly couple-ish pose, like she was meant to lean back into him. "I can tell you're thinking something."

Dell looked down at her, quirking a brow as the bartender brought them their drinks.

"I was just thinking," he said after giving the bartender a nod and retrieving his IPA, "that this place looks like any other dive bar on the coast I've ever been to."

Mae smiled around the tiny straw of her vodka cranberry as they pushed away from the bar.

That was what made The Moonlight Café so great. In a city chock full of hipness, it was decidedly a dive, on a lonely stretch of industrial wasteland in the north of the city. A place meant for truckers, taken over by queers.

"It's different, though." Mae stepped to the side, paused along the wall underneath a mirror that advertised Miller High Life. She wanted to talk about this with Dell before they made their way back to the group. "Because we're safe here. You know?"

Mae hadn't been surprised that Dell had never been to Moonie's, that he seemed to have never even heard of it. Every queer Mae knew had been here at least once, but Dell was clearly a person who wasn't super obvious about his queerness, and she had no idea what his life in Portland had been like. She'd been dying to ask him more about it, this last day and a half, today especially, as they explored the city more well-rested. They'd spent a healthy chunk of the day at the storage unit, but she'd also shared her favorite breakfast sandwich, her favorite matcha, her favorite scoop of gelato. She'd made him drive past her most recent apartment, partly to see how it made her feel—sentimental but not regretful, the optimal result—but mostly just because she wanted to show him.

He had been calm and good-natured the whole time, even as she'd continued watching him for signs of stress. But he had never once broken his easy I'm Just Visiting facade, never given any indication that he knew the place. No I used to go here, too, no this was my old neighborhood. She wanted to know his old neighborhood, the places he used to go, as badly as she wanted to show him hers. But she'd kept her mouth shut, because she knew it was likely a miracle he was here with her at all. She'd kept her mouth shut because she didn't want to hurt him.

But for her sanity, she had to know that he understood Moonie's.

"I want to feel comfortable at any old dive bar on the coast," she continued. "I want to feel safe at Freddy Hampton's. But I don't. And I know I am here, from the moment I walk in the door. You have to get that, right? That that's important."

She looked into Dell's brown eyes, imploring.

"Yeah, Mae," he said, those eyes suddenly as gentle as his voice. "I get it."

She wanted to keep looking at him. She wanted to lean into him, hidden here against the wall. She wanted to taste the hops on his lips.

She turned and walked to their table instead, in the middle of the main room on the other side of the bar, to the right of the dance floor. She slipped into her seat next to Vik, Dell sliding in next to her. The karaoke was already in swing, a singer Mae didn't know doing their best Avril Lavigne.

"Hey, Dell, good to see you again." Ben leaned across the table. "I forgot to ask you yesterday—do you happen to know Emerson King? He owns a farm out on the coast, just a bit north of Greyfin Bay."

Dell shook his head, taking a sip of his beer. "Can't say I do."

Ben slumped back against his seat.

"That's too bad. He comes up to farmers' markets here sometimes; we somehow befriended him last year."

Alexei shook his head. "Somehow," he said with a small smile at Ben. And to Dell: "Ben befriends everyone."

"Couldn't relate," Dell said. Alexei's smile grew.

"Anyway, he sells some delicious stuff, and takes care of our dog whenever we fly back East. He just went through a divorce recently, and I think he could use some friends. He's a good guy."

"Ben." Alexei shook his head again. "Stop trying to set Emerson up. I think he's doing just fine."

"What's his name again? Maybe I can sell some of his stuff at the store." Mae got out her phone and opened up the notes app, her newest best friend.

"Emerson King. Owner of Short King Farms."

Mae threw her head back and laughed. Even Dell chuckled beside her. It was hard to hear anything at Moonie's, once the karaoke got going, but Mae could still feel the vibrations of Dell's chuckle, like they rumbled through her own chest.

"Okay, yes," she gathered herself enough to say. "I remember you mentioning this now. This is excellent."

Dell said, "You guys have a dog?"

Mae turned then, as Alexei and Dell exchanged slide shows, to listen in as Theo complained about a new coworker to Vik. As Ozzy lamented one of their old favorite restaurants shutting down. As Jackson talked more, somehow, about bread.

Until one of their favorite Moonie's regulars, an attractive, athletic-looking guy, approached the mic.

And he opened his mouth to sing Taylor Swift's "Cruel Summer."

Jackson's story slowly died from his lips. As one, they all turned to watch the singer move his hips, rotate his shoulders, shuffle his feet just perfectly. Vik's hand found Mae's under the table and held on tight.

This had been Jesus's favorite Taylor song.

It was a difficult song to sing, and the dreamboat on the dance floor wasn't doing it particularly well, but that technicality was canceled out by his enthusiasm. Along with the enthusiasm of half of the gays in the bar.

"At least Jesus lived through the Eras Tour," Vik murmured halfway through.

"He actually said that," Mae said with a tremulous laugh, "at the hospital."

"Of course he did," Ozzy said with a sad smile.

Mae had been uncertain about whether she'd sing tonight. She always had, before. But it was a vulnerable thing, if silly, singing karaoke, and she hadn't been sure if she was up for it with Dell in the room. Even if he had already witnessed her solo dancing to Judy Garland.

But when the singer returned to his seat, giving his boyfriend a kiss on the forehead, Mae rose from hers. Walked over to Kiki, the karaoke jockey, and wrote her standard selection on a slip of paper. Like she had at least ten times before. Except this time, the slip of paper only read Mae.

By the time she returned to the table full of people she loved, the moment that had settled over them during "Cruel Summer" had been mercifully broken by the next song, by the next exchange of stories, shouted over the sticky table.

Mae grew true Moonie's-loose after one of their own approached the mic, Ozzy with a rendition of The Fugees' "Killing Me Softly with His Song." After she'd spent time on the dance floor, bumping hips with Theo, lip syncing and dipping low with Vik.

Once Kiki called Lily to the mic.

"What's she gonna do, what's she gonna do," Ben chanted, drumming his hands on the table.

Mae, face flushed from the previous song, leaned over to speak into Dell's ear.

"This one has the best set of pipes of anyone in here." She wondered if Dell could feel her breath on his neck. If he had goosebumps, too. She knew she was leaning in too close, that she could've shouted it at a normal distance instead.

But there was something about Moonie's that made you want to play with fire.

"We live for her performances," she finished.

Even now, more than twenty-four hours since they'd departed from Greyfin Bay and his workshop, Dell still smelled like sawdust. So strong Mae almost sneezed with it.

As the music started to play, the big blonde woman stood with her hands behind her back, head down as the recognizable guitar intro echoed through the room. Goosebumps returned to Mae's skin. Vik released a small groan.

"Oh, fuck me," they muttered. "I am cooked already."

By the time Lily stepped to the mic, singing the first lines of "Dream On," the whole room had settled into a hush. Moonie's knew to shut up when Lily was singing.

By the time she reached those high-pitched dream ons of Steven Tyler's youth, the whole crowd was on their feet.

Even Dell.

Tears stung the corner of Mae's eyes; she blinked them away as the bar cheered Lily off the stage. Even the butch bartender gave a hearty clap, the highest sign of Moonie's approval. Lily curtsied with a shy smile before retreating into the waiting arms of her partner at the bar.

"Now that," Kiki said into the mic, "was one for the ages. And now let's welcome up…Mae!"

"What!" Mae shouted. "Oh, this is some bullshit."

But the rest of her table only laughed. Vik shoved her shoulder. "Go."

Kiki handed over the mic with a kind smile. "You got this, babe," she said.

Mae squinted into the lights. Attempted to take a breath.

Traditions could still live on. Maybe the shape of things changed, the walls painted new colors, but the foundation could still be there.

Her face grew hot with a pulse of embarrassment as she stood in front of the mic, as the iconic tinkling piano of Vanessa Carlton's "A Thousand Miles" splashed through Moonie's. She didn't have a good voice like Lily or Ozzy, but Jesus hadn't, either. They had always completely trashed this song, together.

And the point of Moonie's wasn't very fine singing. It was about laughing with your friends and feeling nostalgic about the stages of life that had passed you by, painted through old pop songs. And Jesus had always done that, alongside her on this stage, so very well.

And for the first half of the song, she felt him there next to her, still doing it. Still making her laugh. Vik and Ben hollered and clapped; the familiarity of how many times she'd sung this song, right here, made the words come easy. She tried to make her off-key voice as pouty as Vanessa's; she bounced her shoulders up and down along with the strings.

But then Mae caught Theo's eye. He was turned in his chair, staring straight at her. His eyes were glassy.

And the facade crumbled.

All at once, the words she was actually singing crashed through her in the most horrible, discordant way. Because she did still need him. She did still miss him. She would walk a thousand miles to see him again.

She had no idea how she had thought this was a good idea, singing this song that she had only ever sung with Jesus Herrera-Baptiste. It was too much, that he didn't get to hear Lily slay 1970s Aerosmith. It was too much, that he would never get to meet Dell.

Her voice caught in her throat at the last line, her mouth open without any sound, the words bouncing uselessly off the screen in front of her.

She needed to get off this dance floor.

And so she did. Returning the mic to Kiki before the song was even fully over, she turned on her heel and marched swiftly away from the bar, through the narrow hallway that held the bathrooms, straight out the back door to the crumbling patio.

She pushed her palms into her eyes, taking deep breaths of the cool night air before she heard the door swing open behind her.

"Hey, Mae." Vik's arms were around her first. When Mae finally dropped her hands and turned, she saw everyone, save Dell: Vik and Jackson, Theo and Ozzy, Ben and Lex.

"Sorry," she said, before bursting into tears for real.

And then they were all hugging, and it was too dark out here to tell, but Mae thought half of them were crying, too, even as almost all of them laughed.

"Do you think," she eventually recovered enough to say, "this is the first time anyone's had an emotional meltdown to Vanessa Carlton?"

"Oh honey," Theo said. "You're not the first and you won't be the last."

Mae smiled.

Vik squeezed her arm. "Jesus would be proud of you, Mae."

"Well, that's too much," Mae laughed. "Fuck you."

Vik smiled back. "Fuck you, too."

They separated to give each other some room.

"I don't think I really thought about it," Theo said. "How hard it'd be to come here without them."

"I keep thinking I'm doing okay," Jackson said, wiping a hand underneath an eye. "And then karaoke night shows up and punches me in the face."

"Yeah," Vik said. "Grief's like that, sometimes."

"Okay." Mae took a deep breath. "Steve and Jesus wouldn't want us crying out here all night, though. We okay now?"

Both Theo and Vik kissed her cheeks.

"Yeah, girl," Theo said. "We're good."

And when Mae finally did feel ready to re-enter Moonie's, she was stopped short by Dell. Leaning against the wall in the narrow hallway by the bathrooms, arms crossed. Waiting for her.

The rest of her friends squeezed around them. She avoided their eyes, focused on Dell's face. Curling photographs were tacked onto the wall next to them, flash-heavy shots of Moonie's patrons from years gone by.

"Hey," he eventually said once they were alone. Well, with the exception of the occasional bargoer coming in and out of the bathrooms. Nothing about Moonie's was exactly sanitary, but this corner of it in particular was rather dire. Mae couldn't believe Dell was willingly standing here. "You okay?"

"Yeah." Mae swallowed, caught between wanting to make a joke about what he had just witnessed—it was, objectively, pretty funny that she had broken down, publicly, while singing "A Thousand Miles"—and wanting to step even closer to him. To do something in this dark hallway that wouldn't involve laughing at all.

"Just needed a little moment of catharsis," she eventually said. He wouldn't stop looking at her. It had been cold outside, a second ago, but her skin felt at once overly warm under his attention.

Dell, she almost opened her mouth to say. What the hell are we doing?

But he pushed off the wall before she could.

"We can leave early if you need to," he said.

"No." She shook her head. "I'm all right."

But she had liked the way he said it. We.

With a grave nod, he turned. She followed him back to the table, still avoiding the eyes of her friends.

But before Dell could retake his seat, Kiki read out his name.

Mae jerked her head in his direction, mouth parting in surprise.

Dell tilted his head, scratched behind his ear, as if he was going to explain. But then he simply left, walking toward Kiki.

"Hell yeah," Vik said, voice low. "I am ready for this."

"Do you know what he's singing?" Ben asked.

"No. I?—"

And then she was truly struck speechless as an easy, gentle acoustic guitar swept through the room.

Mae never would have expected Dell McCleary to actually sing at karaoke. And she certainly never would have predicted he'd sing this.

In general, Mae held high standards for anyone who dared to sing Tracy Chapman. But the moment Dell opened his mouth to begin "Baby Can I Hold You," it became clear to everyone in the room that of the small percentage of people in the world who could do her justice, Dell McCleary was one of them.

By the time he got to the first chorus, Theo swooned into Ozzy's lap, hand over his heart.

Alexei, who had started putting on his coat, froze.

Mae dared Dell to look at her, at the same time that she was terrified of what would happen to her already alarming internal temperature if he did. But he only stared straight ahead at the screen, even if it was clear he didn't need the prompted lyrics. As whenever he wasn't looking at the screen, he had his eyes closed.

Which he had to know was the sexiest move he possibly could've pulled.

With each passing second, the sensation that had been haunting her for the past two days grew heavier, deeper, a weighted blanket sinking over her chest. Because dammit, everything about this trip had felt couple-ish, and not just because of his skill at holding his body behind hers at the bar, although that was part of it. It was Dell asking teasing questions about her belongings inside her storage unit; it was wanting to share her favorite memories with him. It was Dell waiting for her to click in her seatbelt before he started the ignition; it was Dell sharing his radio. It was Dell, sitting with her friends last night over pizza, sitting at the table with her friends here at Moonie's: simultaneously in-line and on the outside of their group, connected to this world only through her.

Even if it wasn't rational, even if she shouldn't have thought it, every time her eyes snagged on him at those tables, she thought: Mine.

When he finished, the screams of applause were so loud as to almost be painful, a ringing in Mae's ears. She still couldn't look directly at anyone else at the table. She couldn't move. She focused on her breathing very, very carefully, her hands trapped between her thighs under the table.

Dell had barely returned to his seat when a hand slid down his shoulder. Mae broke her statue-esque meditation to look at the man currently caressing Dell's flannel.

"Hi there, honey," he cooed. "My entire table was just wondering if you're single."

Distantly, Mae heard the rest of the table barely conceal their laughter. But she could only focus on Dell's face. He glanced at her for a fraction of a second.

"I'm not looking, at the moment," he said to the man, not unkindly, though his face remained passive. The man retracted his hand with a small pout.

"Well, you can't blame a girl for trying," he said before returning to his friends.

Mae watched Dell take another sip of beer.

And then, unable to stop herself, she leaned in too close, again—entirely too close, this time—to say it directly into his ear.

"You know everyone in this room wants to fuck you now, right?"

When he didn't respond, when he didn't move a muscle, she pulled back. He turned to stare straight at her, eyes dark in the dim light of the bar.

"Do you?"

Of course I do, she thought. No one asked that question, in that way, if they didn't already know the answer.

"It's not fair," she murmured instead. "It hasn't been fair since the beginning."

"What isn't?"

"Um. Mae?"

With a blink, Mae turned at Alexei's voice. He stood behind Ben's chair across from them, coat zipped, pale cheeks pink. He gave them a small wave.

"I was just, uh. Saying goodbye."

"Of course," Mae said smoothly, picking up her glass to take a healthy gulp before realizing it was already empty. Alexei could only handle about an hour of Moonie's karaoke, or any activity, really, that involved potential sensory overload. She always loved him a little bit more, each time he decided to leave an event. She loved a person with boundaries. Perhaps there were limitless ways Mae should strive to be more like Alexei. "It was great to see you."

"See you at home." Ben lifted Alexei's hand for a kiss of Alexei's knuckles before Alexei waved to the rest of the table on his way out.

"I'm going to get another drink," Mae announced. "Anyone need anything?"

The five minutes alone, away from the heat of Dell's body, helped. A little, anyway. When she returned to the table, she vowed to keep her mouth away from Dell's ear, her eyes on her friends. Exhaustion started to set in: a long drive followed by sleeping in a house that wasn't your own, the physical labor of moving things around the storage unit, the emotional whiplash of this whole night.

But then…another stranger sang another song Mae used to love.

And like always, a night at Moonie's began to take on an insular, outside-of-time-and-space quality, where nothing else quite mattered other than singing until your throat was raw. Dell never joined the dance floor, during the songs when the rest of the table was inspired to dance, but even he visibly, slowly loosened as the night progressed, opening his mouth to sing along on almost every song. Mae tried to not be impressed with it, how many songs he apparently knew by heart, but it was hopeless. And when she thought about him sitting on his porch with his guitar, she wasn't truly surprised. The depth of ways Dell could make her attracted to him knew no bounds.

And she tried to be good, keep the leaning of her body toward his to a minimum, but he started changing the rules. Started being the one to lean into her, listing his random observations of the night into her ear, the bristle of his beard brushing her neck. He laughed more than she'd perhaps ever seen him laugh. When he leaned in again just after midnight to say, his naturally scratchy voice scratchier than she'd ever heard it, "I think I have to turn in soon, Mae," she just about fainted with relief.

"Yeah," she said, even though the rest of the table was currently fully engaged on the dance floor with no signs of slowing down. "We can go."

They had both stood, started to pull on their jackets, when Kiki said Dell's name again.

Mae looked up at him in surprise.

"Oh shit," he said, eyes just as surprised, before he let out a startled laugh. "I forgot I put another song in."

The portion of the crowd that was lucid enough to remember Dell's first performance was already chanting his name. Cheeks turning crimson, he draped his coat back across his chair.

Mae sank back into her own, defeated. She had barely survived his first song, and her defenses by now were practically nonexistent. This…was not good.

But yet, when Dell took the mic with a half-nervous smile and the words "Teenage Dirtbag" displayed on the screen behind him, a laugh managed to burst out of Mae's lungs.

"I mean," Vik rushed back to her side to say, breathless, "the range."

"I know," Mae agreed, still laughing. "I know."

The vibe could not have been any different from "Baby Can I Hold You," yet Dell attacked "Teenage Dirtbag" with the same intensity and absolute capability that he had shown hours earlier. Except…goofier, as fitting the song and the hour of night, and Mae could barely process this version of the song. The high, nasally vocals of the original were replaced with the deep raggedness of Dell's, and particularly when he certifiably yelled out the chorus, it was as if pop-punk had been smashed together with metal. It was utterly perplexing and hypnotizing and Moonie's could not get enough of it.

He looked at her this time.

He looked at her a lot.

A sensation creeped over her skin, one she typically only found at live shows: when she could feel every single breathing atom of a song, each chord progression a miracle.

Mae thought she was possibly vibrating.

"When I tell you I thought I was obsessed with this man before," Ben said across the table.

Mae didn't know what to say, either during the performance or when Dell returned to the table, promptly putting on his coat and gesturing toward the door, eyes on hers.

Dear god.

She had truly just gotten wet from watching a person sing Wheatus. She was never going to forgive him.

"We're going to go now," she heard herself say, distantly, to Vik, whose lips were quivering with holding in their laughter.

"Yeah, you are," they said.

And then she was up, and out, and the harsh night air revived her brain for a few precious seconds. Until Dell twined a hand through hers as they walked toward his truck, and she lost it again.

A second before they got there, before they separated for their respective doors, Dell pulled off some kind of clever maneuver that resulted in both of their hands grasped together, face to face. And with a tug and a push, Mae found her back against the metal of the driver side door, Dell's stomach against her own, hands pinned just above her head. Mae couldn't stifle the sound that escaped her at the relief of their bodies pressing together, everything she'd been aching to feel for so long, boiling up through her.

"Dell," she said, needing to be honest, to finally get it out in the open. "Dell, I want you so badly."

His face was in shadow; she couldn't make out his expression. But the minute step he took, pressing their bodies even further together, said enough. She wanted to drag her hands away from his to slip underneath his clothes, to scratch his back, to squeeze his ass, to pull him, somehow, even closer than they already were, until she couldn't tell where her body ended and his began.

"Mae," he said, voice low, almost broken, breath hot against her cheek. Mae liked to imagine she could feel the rumble of that single syllable, vibrated from his chest to hers.

Her eyes drifted closed; she arched her neck. Dell groaned, and it wasn't only her imagination this time. She felt it, his noises absorbed into her own skin, like they belonged there.

She was molten lava.

"Mae," Dell said, voice strained. "I have a fisherman."

It took a few long seconds for the words to process.

When they did, the lava plummeted, hot and icy all at once, through the cavern of her chest.

She had forgotten. She had somehow forgotten, in the heat of the moment, the blur of Moonie's, that Dell already had someone.

She licked her lips.

"Your—your novelist is also a fisherman?"

A breath that might have been a laugh or a whimper, against her chin as Dell dipped his head.

"Yeah." And it was hard to think against the force of her lust, but confusion began to pierce through. Because it was Dell's hands, Dell's body capturing hers against this truck. It had been Dell, singing to her inside, whispering in her ear. Dell who offered to come to Portland with Mae in the first place.

Mae had told Dell about Becks, about how shitty her history with cheating made her feel. What was he—what was?—

"But Mae, it's?—"

A shot rang out.

Then two.

Mae recognized the sound, an instinctual alert felt deep in her mind. She'd been close enough to a shooting before—and one time was too many—to know the difference between the loud blast of a firework, the surprising boom of a backfiring truck, and this—the pop, so quick your mind might think you'd imagined it, if your body didn't know.

And Dell's body reacted immediately.

"In the truck." His voice was quiet, deadly serious; his hands had disappeared from Mae's in the blink of an eye. He already clutched his keys in his fingers. "Mae. Now."

And even though somewhere in her brain, she knew the pops had been far enough away that they likely weren't in immediate danger, Mae was scrambling around the hood, fumbling with the handle of the passenger side door. It was only when she was clicking in her seatbelt that her brain caught up.

"Dell, should you?—"

"I'm fine." The truck was already moving, tires crunching toward the parking lot exit. Mae stared at him in panic, remembering the blank anger on his face when he'd thrown that mug. That was not a face that should be driving. In a shitty neighborhood. Of a city he hated. In the middle of the night.

That—fuck—she had brought him to.

But he glanced at her then, pausing just before he pulled out of the lot to reach over and take her hand. It was only a small squeeze, before his hands returned to the wheel and his foot to the gas, but it was something.

"It's okay, Mae," he said as he pulled onto Columbia. "I'm okay. I just need to get home."

Mae stared straight out the windshield, heart still hammering as the dark night passed them by. She knew Dell didn't mean Vik and Jackson's. She knew, as Dell navigated down the road toward the I-5 ramp, that they were going back to Greyfin Bay.

And maybe the fretting, rational part of Mae's brain worried about Dell, driving almost three hours in the middle of the night in the midst of a trigger, and her own safety next to him.

But the more she watched him from the corner of her eye, his hands never leaving 10 and 2 on the wheel, his profile hard but calm, something in her gut settled. She sent Vik a quick text: Something happened, and we're okay, but we're heading back to Greyfin Bay right now. I'm sorry promise I'll explain later. She understood, somehow, that this was what Dell needed. She trusted him.

And she found, as the quiet miles went by, that she didn't really care about whatever belongings she'd left back at Vik's place. The things on her Portland to-do list she hadn't yet gotten done. She just wanted Dell to be able to get back to Greyfin Bay. To be with his dogs. To be in his workshop.

Every time her eyelids started to droop on the long drive, she pinched the skin on her wrist. Dell always seemed alert, every single time she glanced at him, but she had to stay awake to make sure. That he was okay. That they were almost there.

Almost home.