All the best stories start with “Here, hold my beer.” So, when I see Mick pass his beer to his brother Ryan and start toward the karaoke stage, I know right away that he’s in big trouble.

“Oh, no,” my sister Finny hisses at me and yanks on the sleeve of my blouse. “You have to go stop him.”

I turn to speak close to her ear, so she’ll be able to hear me over the thumping music. “Why should I do it? He has family and friends here.” I nod my head toward the redhead sitting on the other side of the VIP lounge. “And her. She can go save him.”

Finny rolls her eyes. “She’s nothing,” she bleats out. “He’s barely looked at her all night.”

But she has been looking at him. With longing. With dreams of a future. Or at least dreams of his tongue in all her wet places.

“Frankly, I can’t believe he brought someone here,” Lark says, leaning toward me.

“It’s fine,” I say quickly. “We went on a few dates. That’s all.”

Mick takes the microphone from the guy running the karaoke machine. Finny nudges me again. “Go save him!” she whispers fiercely.

“There are about a hundred people here who could save him. Why me?” I hiss back.

“Because you’re secretly in love with him and if you let him do this, you’ll have to tolerate the shame of it for the rest of your life.”

My cheeks heat up instantly, and I shush her. “Why would you put that out into the atmosphere?” I take a sip of my water. “And I am not in love with him,” I mutter.

“But you like him,” she sings out, her tone containing a jaunty little melody that irks the shit out of me.

What’s not to like? Mick is a tall drink of water on a really thirsty night. He’s broad-shouldered, with dark hair and dark eyes, and he’s kind and considerate and…he’s not mine.

Mick trips over the edge of the stage as he walks up to take the microphone, and the people on the other side of the red velvet rope that keeps us away from the public laugh.

Finny makes a scissoring motion at them with her fingers and says, “If you snicker one more time, I will chop out your tongues.” She arches her brow at them until they both blanch, and then she turns back to face me with a sigh.

I sit with my heart in my throat as I watch Mick pick a song. I don’t know Mick very well, and yet he knows me better than anyone.

Finny jerks me out of my reverie with a loud groan. “We have to go save him,” she says. She grabs me by the elbow and jerks me out of my seat.

“Would you stop?” I say. But she doesn’t stop walking. She grabs our other three sisters too as we walk through the crowded bar toward the stage.

We form a group of five, with all our hands linked, just like we’ve always been, since the day we met at a group home for kids who didn’t have parents. We bonded. We all were adopted by the same family, and we became sisters in every sense of the word.

We came to the club wearing ball caps and casual clothes. We’re not a rock band right now. We’re not Fallen from Zero, the internationally famous rock band. We’re the Vasquez sisters.

Until we step onto the stage. I know that if we all go up there, we’ll give up our night of peace and fun and we’ll have to go home. So, I stop them at the edge of the stage. “I got this,” I say to them.

“Are you sure?” Star asks, worrying her lip between her teeth.

I nod. “I got it. Go sit down and pretend you’re not famous.”

I walk onto the stage, my boots clicking against the wood floor. Mick looks over at me and suddenly stops singing. “Hey, Wren,” he says into the mic and the room goes quiet.

“Hey, Mick,” I say, but no one but him can hear me. “Pick a song for me, will you?” I pull out a stool and settle on the edge of it. Mick turns and speaks to the guy running the karaoke machine, and a tune begins to play.

“Not that one,” I say, shaking my head.

Mick stares into my eyes. “Yes, that one.”

I get to my feet. “Not that one,” I say again.

I can hear the opening bars of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” playing softly, and it’s like Mick has just kicked me in the gut. He knows what that song meant to me. He knows that my mother, who died in a car accident, used to sing it to me and Star and Tag when we were little. He knows it means the world to me. He knows because I told him. I put the words of that song on the wall in the nursery I was building, before it all happened. He saw them. My mother sang the song with the wrong words, and so do I. Instead of troubles melting like lemon drops, she sang about laughter falling like lemon drops. I still sing it like that, because it’s the way I learned it. That song is special. And painful. And I can’t sing it. Not now. Not here. Probably not ever.

“I won’t sing that song,” I tell the karaoke operator.

He nods and starts to scroll through the list.

“I’m sorry,” Mick mouths at me.

I nod and avoid his eyes.

“I didn’t know.”

He knew.

“I didn’t mean to…” he says, and this time he catches my gaze. “Really.” I stare into the dark depths of his eyes until I can swallow past the lump in my throat.

“Okay,” I whisper. He looks at me. “It’s okay,” I say again. He didn’t know I’d have quite such a visceral reaction to that song. I get it.

“I wasn’t trying to hurt you,” he says.

“Okay,” I say again.

Suddenly, my sisters are right next to me.

Finny whispers something to the operator and he scrolls through his list until he finds one of our songs. I know it’s ours the minute I hear the melody. It’s the song Finny wrote about her mother, and it’s about the unconditional love you get from a family. It’s about what moms are supposed to be.

I nod. “I’ll sing that one.”

I glare at Mick and he pretends to poke his bottom lip out and sulk when we take over his song. He crosses his arms and leans against the wall, probably because he can no longer hold himself up. His eyes are rimmed with red and there’s a form of pain hidden in the dark depths that I can only begin to guess at.

The crowd goes wild when we start to sing along with the melody. Cameras nearly blind us as people take pictures of us, but we keep singing all the way to the end. Then we take a deep, dramatic bow and rush off the stage. My sisters’ husbands and significant others meet us at the edge of the platform.

“I can’t believe you did that,” Sam, my sister Peck’s husband, says. He grabs Peck’s hand and leads her toward the rear of the building. If we don’t get out of here quickly, there’s a good chance we’ll be mobbed.

“Is this the way out?” someone else asks.

Sam and Peck, Finny and Tag, Star and Josh, and Ryan and Lark rush down the hallway, and Mick and I follow. Mick’s fingers touch the small of my back as we go out the door. “You okay?” he asks as we step out onto the street.

“I’m fine.” I’m angry as hell, but I stop to really look at him as my family members all pile into two waiting cars. He’s drunk. Really drunk. “Are you okay?” I ask Mick as he weaves like he’s walking a tightrope.

“You might not be aware of this yet, but I’m a tiny bit drunk,” he tells me. He covers his mouth, holding his fingers over his lips to stifle a burp. “Just a little,” he says. He straightens his shirt, pulling it down and rubbing across the front as though he’s pressing out a crease.

“You don’t say,” I reply, trying to stifle my worry for him.

“Are you being sarcastic?” he asks. He narrows his eyes and stares at me.

I hold up my hands like I’m being held at gunpoint and shake my head. “No, definitely not.”

“Because I happen to have a thing for sarcastic chicks.”

My heart starts to thump. “You don’t say,” I mutter again.

His eyes dance across my face. “Yes, sarcastic chicks with bow-shaped mouths and sparkly eyes. They totally do it for me.”

My pulse beats double-time.

My sister Finny sticks her head out the open car door and says, “Stop making moony eyes at my sister and get in the fucking car.”

I feel his fingers at the small of my back again, and the hairs on my arms stand up. It feels good. It’s intimate and comfortable and… God, I have missed having a man touch me there. “Need some help?” he asks.

I jerk myself out of my stupor and slide across the seat. Mick closes the door behind me and leans in the open window.

“Aren’t you coming?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “I have to go collect my date.”

Oh, hell. I completely forgot about her. “Of course, you do.”

“Can I call you?” he asks me quietly.

“Depends.”

He smiles a slow smile. “On what?”

“Are you going to sleep with her?”

His brow arches. “Is there a reason why I shouldn’t?”

I swallow hard enough that I can hear it. “No. No reason.” I push the button to raise the window and he’s forced to step back.

“Well, that was a shit show,” Finny complains. She wipes a hand across her sweaty brow. Lifting her fist high, she drops it hard against Ryan’s upper arm. “What the fuck was your brother thinking, bringing a date with him tonight?” She signs the words at him, her hands flying fiercely.

Ryan rubs the sting out of his arm. “She’s just someone who works with him. It wasn’t a date.”

Finny glares at him.

“Really, it wasn’t. He’s not dating anyone. Not since her.” He jabs a finger in my direction. “I think you broke my brother’s penis, Wren,” he says. He pretends to wipe a tear from his eye. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“What did I do to break Mick’s penis?” I toss back. I never even got a chance to see his penis.

Ryan is suddenly completely serious. He stares into my eyes. “You made him fall in love with you.”