Biddies Pub, Friday night. It's packed. Too warm, too loud, and perfect for ignoring what hurts.

Gibsie was on his third Coke and pretending it didn’t bother him that the guy sitting next to her — his girl, but not really — had his arm slung over the back of her chair like he’d earned it. Like he even knew her.

He didn’t.

None of them did. Not the way Gibsie did.

They were all crammed into the usual booth: Joey, Hughie, Patrick, Claire, Lizzie, Shannon — the lot of them. And then there was Johnny, nudging Gibsie in the ribs with a smirk and a karaoke mic.

“You’re up, lover boy.”

Gibsie blinked. “What?”

“You said we’d do one if they called our names.” Johnny grinned like the devil and nodded toward the screen. Their names were up. Undressed – Sombr. His choice. Of course.

“Come on,” Johnny said, already halfway to the mic. “Don’t make me sing about your heartbreak solo.”

Gibsie rolled his eyes, but his legs moved before his brain did. The pub buzzed around him, but the only thing loud in his head was her laugh. From earlier. At something the rugby lad said.

They climbed the stage. Lights low. Crowd restless. The song started slow.

Johnny opened with the first verse, confident and teasing. Gibsie barely registered it.

He was watching her.

And then it was his line.

“I don't want the children of another man to have the eyes of the girl I won’t forget…”

His voice cracked — just a little. But it was real.

He didn’t take his eyes off her.

She stilled. Right there in the booth. The lad beside her still talking, still smug, still clueless — but she wasn’t listening anymore.

She was looking at Gibsie like the ground had just dropped out from under her.

And he kept singing.

One line. Just one line. But it said all the things he’d been shoving down for months.

He finished the verse, handed the mic back to Johnny, and walked off the stage like he hadn’t just handed her his heart in front of everyone they knew.

No one said a word.

But when he passed their booth — when he passed her — her eyes followed him.

And her smile, the one she always gave the rest of them, never came.