Every single person in this room is looking at Natalie Ramirez.

The hipster dude clutching an IPA like it’s his firstborn son. The girl wearing a faded Nirvana shirt that screams Urban Outfitters. Brendan, the bartender, too distracted to realize he’s made not one but two rumless rum and Cokes. All of them have their eyes glued to the stage.

I finish wiping up a few water rings clinging to the counter and throw my white bar towel over my shoulder, craning my neck around the sea of people to get a better view.

The stage lights cast an odd purplish hue over everything. Her face is outlined in shades of lilac and violet, and her long black hair shines a deep burgundy. I watch as her hands move up and down the neck of the guitar without so much as a second glance, every fret memorized, the feel of the strings ingrained in her fingertips.

Because while all eyes are on her, Natalie Ramirez is only looking at me.

She gives me a small, secret smile. The same one that gave me butterflies five whole months ago, when her band first performed at Tilted Rabbit.

It was the best performance I’ve seen in the three years I’ve worked here. Being a small local venue, we’ve had our fair share of Alanis Morissette wannabes and weekend warrior cover bands. There was a guy just last week who tried to go full Neutral Milk Hotel and play a saw for an hour straight, the sound so screeching that everyone except my coworkers and his girlfriend left the building.

To be honest, between the iffy music, the weird hours, and the less-than-ideal pay, the turnover rate here is pretty high. I’d have quit ages ago, but… my mom needs money for rent. Plus, I do too, now that I’m leaving for college.

And I guess it’s all right. Because if I had quit, I wouldn’t have been there that night five months ago, and I wouldn’t be here right now, catching Natalie Ramirez’s gaze from behind the bar.

My stomach sinks as I realize this is the last time I’ll hear her play for a while, and even though I try to push that feeling away, it lingers. It sticks around through saying a final farewell to the ragtag crew of coworkers that let me study at the bar on school nights, through waiting for Natalie to get done with her celebratory drinks backstage before her band goes on their first-ever tour next week, and through the two of us veering off to spend my last night here at home exactly how I want to spend it.

With her.

We’re barely through the door of her cramped Manayunk apartment before she’s kissing me, her lips tasting like the cheese pizza and warm beer she has after every show.

It’s a blur of kicked-off Converse shoes and hands sliding up my waist as she pulls off my black T-shirt, the two of us stumbling across the space she escaped to after graduating last year from Central High, the public school just across the city from mine.

This place has pretty much been my escape all summer too, so I lead us effortlessly across the worn wooden floor into her room, dodging her bandmates’ instruments and sheet music and scattered shoes. Her bedsprings squeak as we tumble back onto her messy sheets, the door clicking shut behind us.

The moment is so alive, so perfect, but that feeling I had earlier still sits heavy on my chest. It’s impossible to not think about the bus that will whisk me away to college in the morning. The prickling nervousness I feel over leaving the place where I’ve lived my whole life. My mom, on the other side of the city, probably half a handle of tequila deep after spending the afternoon guilting me over “leaving her” just like Dad left us.

But, most importantly, I want to finally have the conversation I’ve been avoiding. The conversation about how I want to make this work long distance.

I zero in on the feeling of Natalie’s skin under my fingertips, her body pressed up against mine, working up the courage to pull away, to say something, when I feel her soft whisper against my lips.

“I love you.”

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