When the song ended, the piano resonated for a moment, and then everyone began to clap. Rob got to his feet, and then Priya did, too, as Emily said thank you and then walked off the stage, past where Rob was standing. He reached out and touched her arm.
“It’s a crime that you’re not on stage anymore,” he said. “Come tour with me.”
Emily’s only response was to squeeze his hand, because she knew that if she opened her mouth, there was a good chance she would say yes. She hadn’t realized how much it meant to her to play, to share her music with other people, to make that emotional connection. How much she really missed it, really needed it to feel like herself.
“Wow,” Priya said, when Emily got back to the table. “You’re really good. Like, really good. I had no idea you could perform like that.”
“It was fun,” Emily said. “Want a drink?”
“You really do contain multitudes,” Priya replied. “I’ll take another vodka tonic.”
The women sat together drinking and listening to music, and then it was time for Tony and Rob to close the show.
“So as most of y’all know,” Rob said, “I’m Austin Roberts, and Tony here, the owner of this fine establishment, is my friend from college. So he offered to come up and play drums while I sing my Billboard hit—I still can’t even believe I’m saying that—‘Crystal Castle.’”
Tony whispered something to Rob.
“Oh! And Tony says that our friend Emily—you remember her from her kick-ass Tracy Chapman before—promised she’d come play with us for old times’ sake. Queenie?”
Emily stood up and walked up on stage with them and sat down at the piano.
“You remember the chord progression for ‘Queen of All the Keys’？” Rob said to her off mic. “It’s the same.”
She nodded, not telling him that she’d already figured that out.
The three of them started playing, Rob started singing, and Emily offered some harmony lines that matched the ones she used to sing in “Queen of All the Keys.” It only took them a couple of measures to get their groove back. And then they rocked it. Emily followed Rob’s lead, the way she always did, and listened for Tony’s beat, and the three of them were totally in sync, playing together as if they hadn’t ever stopped.
When the song ended, Rob turned to Emily and mouthed, Please come on tour.
Emily smiled at him and stood up from the piano bench, but he shook his head. She sat down again, not sure what he had in mind.
“Since we’ve got our band back together again, we’re gonna play one more song for y’all, the finale we used to jam to thirteen years ago. So please give us a break if we don’t remember all the words.”
He turned to Emily. “Only love can break your heart,” he said.
She smiled at him, wondering if she would actually remember any of what she was supposed to sing.
He kept going, and she responded without even thinking about it until the duet started in earnest.
It all came back to Emily, almost as if the song had shortcut her brain and somehow appeared in her fingers and in her vocal cords. She stood up, nudging the piano bench to the side with her foot, and was flirting with Rob on stage the way they used to. They were laughing and teasing each other, and then they got to the final bit they sang together, facing each other. They sang about how wonderful life was because they were both in the world.
And Emily realized all of a sudden that the part that came after that was a kiss. Rob raised his eyebrows at her, and a piece of Emily was tempted to nod, to say: Yes, kiss me. To feel his lips against hers again, to turn back time, to rewind to the days before they’d played Webster Hall, before she’d gotten pregnant, before she’d fallen and broken her hand and broken up the band. But she was an adult now, and she couldn’t go back. She shook her head, and instead the two of them hugged, Rob swinging his guitar to the side, so it wouldn’t get caught between them.
“I really am so glad you’re in the world,” he whispered into her ear. “It makes it more wonderful to me.”
“I’m glad you’re in the world, too,” she whispered back. “I really, truly am.”
xxviii
I know I said that I wasn’t sure if I wanted to have children, but meeting Ezra has made me reevaluate that. I think I might want Ezra to be the father of your brothers or sisters. He’s the best man I’ve ever met. He’s just . . . good. He’s a deeply good person. And he makes me want to be better, to focus more on other people, on helping them, on being like Dr. West. He has a quote stenciled around his living room, traveling from wall to wall, just under the seam where it meets the ceiling, that says: “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”