“WHERE IS everyone?” Dusit Sitwat glanced up from the latest social media post that rang his notifications. The bar was empty. He grabbed on to the bar top to stop himself from meeting the floor. The bartender threw a hand out to help keep him on the stool. “Careful there. It’s closing time. Everyone’s gone home.” “Home.” Dusit sighed. Such an incredible idea—a safe place to call your own, but one that seemed out of reach living in Bangkok. “Thanks.” He should really know the guy’s name. He’d been coming in here for a few months. No one knew him, but he found the familiar faces more comfortable to get drunk around. “Everyone’s gone?” Dusit was alone again. “Sleeping it off. Exactly what you should be doing. Can I call you a taxi?” The bartender tossed the bar cloth in a bin. Dusit waved him off. “Nah, it’s okay. I can walk.” The music changed from something easily ignored to something familiar. The angelic voice reached out to him. “Let me sit for a minute.” Dusit laid his head on the bar and crooned the words. The lyrics stirred his heart with the best memories of his life, followed by gut-wrenching pain. He drank the shot in front of him. “Oh shit,” the bartender said. “Sorry. Let me find the remote and turn this off. I know how you hate this song.” Was this guy that good that he’d noticed? “Why do you think that?” “I gauged your reaction.” The bartender shrugged. “And you told me several times you hate hearing this song.” “Sorry.” Dusit hoped he hadn’t rambled or raged much. “Where is—ah. Found it.” The bartender pulled out the remote from inside a drawer and pointed the clicker at the stereo system. “Don’t. Don’t.” Maybe he had no right to demand anything, but this near stranger honored the request. “Sure, man. Whatever you want.” The bartender put the remote away. Whether Dusit heard this song or not, it had embedded itself in his heart years ago and would forever play on an endless loop. “So, you like this song?” “It’s an excellent song, and my sisters love it.” The bartender grabbed a fresh cloth and began wiping down the liquor bottles. Dusit sighed and set his empty glass on the coaster. “You know, I wasn’t even a singer or an actor when I had moved to Bangkok.” “Where from?” The bartender continued to straighten up behind the bar. “Chiang Mai. I got a job at a production studio, working in their maintenance department.” The job was mostly indoors, and it paid well. The bartender paused and tilted his head, which was all the invitation Dusit needed to continue. Shrugging, he admitted the truth. “It was crazy. I had been passing by to change a light bulb at the end of the hall.” “Passing by where?” The guy leaned on the bar, listening intently the way bartenders did. “The recording studio. This woman—the singer’s mother, it turned out—asked me to stand in for the other singer, who couldn’t make it.” Dusit’s words might have been a bit slurred, but from the look on the bartender’s face, he was making himself clear enough. The man seemed interested. “Whose mother?” the bartender asked. “His.” Pain ripped through Dusit, wrapped in regret as it did whenever he so much as thought the name, let alone tried to say it out loud. “Oh, okay.” None of the judgment his vague words usually received sounded in the bartender’s voice. Dusit wanted someone to believe him. “I tried telling her I didn’t sing except for a little karaoke. You know what she said?” The bartender leaned toward him. “No clue.” “She laughed at me and told me she expected little. I would be a placeholder for someone better.” That summed up the story of his life. “Sorry, I’m rambling.” “I don’t mind. Talk to me. I’m all ears.”