There's Something About Sweetie(84)

Samir nodded.

Pinky settled in beside him with a giant blended coffee. Her eyes glittered, feverish and bright. “These are buy one, get one! I got this one for free! Free!”

Ashish rolled his eyes just as Samir laughed.

His phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out. He had three text messages from Celia he hadn’t read yet. A fourth one had just come in: a picture of her in a bath towel.

Getting ready for you, the caption said.

Swallowing, Ashish put the phone away.




The first band, Hot Cup of Tea, finished up right at their allotted five-minute mark, and the second band went on. They were all guys, dressed in black, with fake tattoos up and down their arms. They called themselves Torn.

Sweetie stood staring at them as they began to play. She felt like she was here but not really. The world felt like it was at a remove. She laughed a little and joked with Suki, Kayla, and Izzy, all of whom were hopped up on free espresso shots courtesy of Antwan, but Sweetie couldn’t fully get into it. She’d given up trying to find Ashish in the crowd when the guys from Torn had been in front of her blocking her view (darn tall people), but she could now see unhindered.

He was sitting in a chair next to Samir and Pinky, and he was looking at his phone. He had the weirdest look on his face as he put it away. Sort of like anticipatory determination. Sweetie pulled in a deep, shuddering breath and looked away. She didn’t even want to know what he was anticipating.

Torn wasn’t half bad, and when they finished four and a half minutes later, it was Sweetie, Kayla, Suki, and Izzy’s turn. They walked up onstage with their instruments (all except Sweetie, who wasn’t playing one, and Suki, who was using the drum set that someone had loaned to Roast Me for the night). Like he did with Hot Cup of Tea and Torn, the emcee introduced all of them by name and what they’d be doing that night. There was immediate cheering from Antwan’s crowd and Ashish’s crowd. Sweetie was kind of glad the spotlights made it hard for her to see the audience. She didn’t want to see Ashish being supportive and sweet right now. Not when she half wanted to murder him and half wanted to sob against his chest.

She had a moment of panic at the thought of all those pairs of eyes on her—the last count had been at sixty-eight audience members. She thought she looked adorable in her dress, and so did her friends (and apparently Ashish, but she didn’t want to think about that), but people in general did not echo that sentiment. She began to self-consciously tug at her dress, wishing she’d worn a cardigan or something to cover up her arms, then forced herself to stop. This was about the music, just about the music. She could do this. So what if they laughed at her? She thought of Anjali Chechi’s words. You’re getting up there and singing because you have a beautiful voice and you believe in yourself.

And she began to sing.

She’d heard people muttering to themselves and laughing a bit—usual not-completely-engaged audience stuff—as Kayla introduced their band. But when she filled the coffee shop with her music, the silence fell like a hammer. It was immediate, absolute. Sweetie closed her eyes and felt the music flood her blood; it wrapped around her bones like sinuous vines and filled her heart to bursting with light.




Ho-ly cra-ap.

It was like watching something heavenly, something unearthly, come into being right before his stupefied eyes.

She was a goddess. She was … she was unspeakably … stunning. There were no words that did her justice in that moment.

Ashish couldn’t look at anything except Sweetie. The entire world melted away.





CHAPTER 28





Sweetie had a moment of clarity, of near panic, when she wondered what she looked like to the audience. Were they totally distracted and grossed out by her arms? By her stomach? Her thick calves? What about Ashish? He was probably just staring at his phone and thinking about stupid Celia in her stupid red halter.

She put even more of herself into her song, in a desperate attempt to forget everything else.

Sweetie didn’t give the audience much of a chance to jeer—or cheer—between the two songs she was singing. This was for her own mental health. It was easier at track meets—she was on the track, running past them, so everyone just looked a blur. Plus, most people could barely see anything from the bleachers besides a girl in a blue-and-gold track uniform streaking past them. But this … this was almost as bad as if she’d invited everyone to come watch her sing in the shower. Almost. There was nothing else for them to focus on but her. And Sweetie knew what people were like. She didn’t want to give them a chance to shout out humiliating comments about her weight or for them to laugh at her. She didn’t want to let the girls down, and if she heard anything like that, it’d be really, really hard for her to keep going. Especially after what had happened with Ashish.

As the last note of the second, and final, song drifted through the air and spiraled into silence, Sweetie’s palms broke out in a sweat. This was it. She had nothing more to give them; their judgment would come now and she wouldn’t be able to stop it.

The room almost cracked in half with the force of their applause.

At first Sweetie wasn’t sure what was happening—this applause sounded so different from the applause the other bands had gotten. She wondered if it was the acoustics of being onstage. But then she saw shadowy shapes getting to their feet and a rhythmic chant began to go up. It took Sweetie a moment to realize they were saying her name. And then she realized they were giving her a standing ovation. She turned to Kayla, Suki, and Izzy in complete surprise, grinning, and they were all grinning back at her, too. Suki raised one fist in the air and whooped—the audience went even wilder. Sweetie closed her eyes, letting the sound of their cheering and her name wash over her. Her heart was a helium balloon, lifting with pure, giddy joy. They loved her. They loved her. They didn’t care what her stomach or her thighs looked like. It was like they could see the light she’d always nurtured inside of her and were acknowledging that, yes, it was just as special as she’d suspected and, yes, she had something extraordinary to offer the world.