ONE MORE SONG — The Last Dance After the Lights Came On

2:45 A.M.

The party was over. The DJ was packing up. The taxis were waiting. But the best part of the night hadn't happened yet.

At exactly 2:45 in the morning, somebody turned on the lights.

Not the beautiful lights. Not the pink and blue ones that had been making everybody look ten years younger and considerably better at dancing.

The real lights.

The unforgiving, industrial, absolutely unnecessary lights that revealed every abandoned plastic cup, every suspicious stain on the floor, and a silver balloon that had somehow become trapped behind a speaker.

The magic vanished in half a second.

Or at least, that's what I thought.

The DJ stopped the music. A few people groaned. Someone near the bar shouted a disappointed "No!" as if the entire building had personally betrayed them.

A man in a white shirt looked down at himself and discovered that someone had spilled something orange on his stomach hours earlier. He examined the stain with the expression of a detective investigating a very personal crime.

Near the entrance, a woman was searching for an earring. Her friend was holding three handbags and giving advice that was neither useful nor particularly encouraging.

The party was over.

I had my coat in one hand and my phone in the other.

Outside, a taxi was waiting.

Inside, I was trying to remember when I'd last had such a good night.

And standing beside me, already halfway into her jacket, was Nina.

She was leaving the city the next morning.

Not for a holiday. Not for a few weeks.

She had accepted a job somewhere else, found an apartment with an actual view instead of a brick wall, and bought a suitcase large enough to suggest that she wasn't planning to change her mind.

We had been friends for eleven years.

I had spent the entire evening trying to find the right words to say goodbye.

Instead, I had spent most of it dancing badly.

Which, under the circumstances, was probably the more honest thing to do.

The Things We Planned to Say

Nina and I had met at a party almost exactly like this one.

Not a remarkable party. Nothing that would have appeared in a photograph with the caption the night everything changed.

There had been terrible drinks, somebody's extremely confident attempt at karaoke, and a broken speaker that made every song sound as though it was being played underwater.

I was standing by a window, pretending to look for someone.

Nina came over, looked at the empty glass in my hand, and asked, "Are you having a good time, or are you just professionally attending?"

That was our first conversation.

It seemed like an unusually rude question from a stranger.

Eleven years later, I still hadn't come up with a better opening line.

There had been plenty of nights since then. Birthday parties, weddings, terrible concerts, wonderful concerts, restaurants we couldn't afford, restaurants we should never have entered, and one New Year's Eve when we somehow ended up eating breakfast at a gas station.

We had become very good at being part of each other's ordinary lives.

That was what made her departure strange.

It wasn't the thought of missing an enormous event.

It was the possibility of seeing something ridiculous on the way to work and having no one nearby who would understand why it was funny.

It was the familiar coffee shop that wouldn't have her sitting in the corner.

It was a Saturday morning suddenly requiring a plan instead of a two-word message.

Coffee?

Obviously.

All evening, I'd carried a small folded piece of paper in my coat pocket.

I'd written down what I wanted to tell her.

There were several versions.

The first sounded like a speech given by somebody receiving an award.

The second sounded like a farewell message printed inside an expensive greeting card.

The third was better, but it contained the phrase the next chapter of your journey, which was enough to make me question every decision that had led me to this moment.

By midnight, I'd given up.

By one, we were laughing too hard to discuss anything serious.

By two, we were dancing.

And by 2:45, the music was gone.

The Great Escape

"Taxi's here," Nina said.

"I know."

"You're looking at your phone like it's going to negotiate with the driver."

"I might ask for a few extra minutes."

"For what?"

I looked around.

The dance floor was nearly empty. The DJ was disconnecting a cable. Someone had left a pair of shoes in the hallway, which raised several questions I didn't want answered.

"Not sure," I admitted.

Nina smiled.

"That's a terrible reason to keep a taxi waiting."

She was right.

Unfortunately, being right had always been one of her more irritating qualities.

A few friends were collecting their belongings by the door.

The people who had been unstoppable on the dance floor an hour earlier were suddenly moving like exhausted office workers on the last train home.

Everyone was discussing tomorrow.

Someone had a meeting at nine.

Someone needed to walk the dog.

Someone was already calculating the amount of sleep left before breakfast.

Tomorrow had begun to invade the room, and nobody seemed particularly pleased about it.

I knew tomorrow mattered.

Nina had a train to catch. I had things to do. Everybody had a real life waiting outside, complete with clocks, responsibilities and emails.

But for one small, unreasonable moment, I hated how easily a night could disappear.

An hour earlier, all of us had been singing together.

Now we were discussing transport.

I turned toward the DJ.

He had headphones around his neck and a cable wrapped around one hand.

"Excuse me," I said.

He looked up.

"Please tell me you haven't forgotten a phone behind the booth."

"No."

"Good. Because there are already three of them."

I took a breath.

"Could we have one more song?"

He stared at me.

Then he looked at the room.

Then he looked back.

"We're done."

"Just one?"

"That's what people said twenty minutes ago."

"Was I one of them?"

"Probably."

He went back to his cable.

A reasonable person would have accepted the answer.

I have never been accused of being reasonable at 2:45 in the morning.

A Very Small Rebellion

I walked back toward Nina.

"Well?"

"He said no."

"An excellent decision."

"He's clearly wrong."

"Professionally, perhaps. Legally, probably not."

I looked at our friends by the door.

Then, for reasons I still cannot fully explain, I raised one hand and said, "One more song?"

Nobody responded.

It was a spectacularly unsuccessful beginning.

One person thought I was asking for the name of the last track.

Another thought I was saying goodbye.

The man with the orange stain looked genuinely concerned.

Nina covered her face.

"Please don't."

But from somewhere near the coat rack, a voice answered.

"One more!"

Then another.

"Come on, one more!"

A woman who had been searching for her earring suddenly stood up.

"Oh, absolutely. One more song."

She hadn't found the earring.

Apparently, her priorities had changed.

Someone clapped twice.

Another person copied them.

The sound was uneven and ridiculous, with no rhythm whatsoever.

The DJ looked across the room.

We must have been a disappointing sight.

A handful of exhausted adults. Half of us wearing coats. One person carrying a handbag large enough to contain emergency supplies for a small expedition.

Nothing remotely resembling a glamorous nightclub crowd.

But we were smiling.

Even Nina, who had spent the last five minutes telling me how sensible it would be to leave, was laughing.

The DJ sighed.

He checked the time and exchanged a few words with the person managing the room.

Then he pointed at us.

"One track. And when it's finished, you're all leaving. Agreed?"

The response was absurdly enthusiastic for a group of people being given permission to remain indoors for approximately three more minutes.

The DJ shook his head and turned back to the equipment.

Nina took off her jacket.

"Oh, this is a terrible idea."

"Probably."

"I have to get up early."

"I know."

"If I miss my train, I'm blaming you."

"Fair."

She threw her jacket onto a chair.

"All right. Make it count."

The Last Song

The first beat landed.

A few people cheered.

Then something happened that I still remember more clearly than anything else from that night.

Nobody tried to look impressive.

Maybe it was the bright lighting.

Maybe we were too tired.

Maybe the knowledge that the evening had already ended had finally freed us from the burden of pretending otherwise.

Whatever the reason, the dance floor became wonderfully, gloriously ridiculous.

The man with the orange stain started moving first.

I have no idea what kind of dancing he believed he was doing.

It involved both elbows, one knee, and a level of confidence unsupported by the available evidence.

The woman missing an earring joined him.

Someone tried to spin beneath another person's arm and nearly knocked over a chair.

Nina laughed so hard she had to stop dancing.

Then she grabbed my hand.

"Come on!"

And suddenly we were right in the middle of it.

There were no dramatic spotlights.

No carefully timed entrance.

No perfect camera angle waiting to capture the moment for someone else's approval.

Just tired people, bright lights and a song that had somehow become the most important song in the building.

I looked around and noticed how many people were singing.

Not well.

Not even approximately well.

A man near the door was confidently delivering lyrics that had never existed.

Two friends were singing completely different parts.

Someone had forgotten the words and was compensating with enormous gestures.

Nobody cared.

The DJ, who had spent the previous five minutes looking like a man planning his escape, was grinning.

The person behind the bar tapped a finger against the counter.

Even the people who had stayed near the exit were moving.

It was contagious.

Not in the polished, carefully organized way that a professional performer might command a crowd.

It spread awkwardly, one person at a time, until the entire room seemed to agree on the same thing.

For these last few minutes, there was nowhere else we needed to be.

Not because tomorrow had disappeared.

Not because we had somehow defeated time.

We simply weren't thinking about it.

For once, the present didn't have to compete with everything waiting after it.

We could be there completely.

That was enough.

The Moment Nobody Filmed

At some point, I reached for my phone.

I wanted a video.

Of course I did.

The ridiculous dancing. The terrible singing. Nina laughing with her head thrown back. The man with the orange stain conducting an imaginary orchestra.

I wanted proof.

Because proof is what we collect now.

We take photographs of our meals before eating them, record concerts we're standing inside, and film fireworks while looking at a smaller version of them on a screen.

It isn't necessarily a bad habit.

Sometimes those little recordings become precious.

But that night, my phone was still in my hand when Nina turned toward me.

For a moment she looked exactly as she had eleven years earlier.

The same expression.

The same slightly raised eyebrow.

The same mischievous smile that usually meant she was about to say something I wouldn't enjoy hearing.

"Are you professionally attending again?"

I stopped.

Then I put the phone back in my pocket.

"No," I said.

She nodded.

"Good."

And we danced.

I couldn't tell you exactly which part of the song played next.

I don't remember who stood beside us or whether I was moving in anything resembling the correct rhythm.

What I remember is laughing.

Not politely.

Not for a camera.

The kind of laughter that makes it difficult to breathe, particularly when you've already spent most of the night dancing.

Nina was trying to imitate the man with the orange stain.

He noticed.

Instead of getting offended, he applauded.

For approximately ten seconds, the entire room seemed to be participating in the least competitive dance contest in human history.

There were no winners.

That may have been the best part.

What the Music Couldn't Fix

Of course, one more song didn't solve anything.

I think that's important.

The next morning would still arrive.

Nina would still leave.

Her old apartment would still be empty, except for the things she'd forgotten to pack.

We would still have to figure out how to remain part of each other's lives from different places.

There would be missed calls, strange schedules, postponed visits and messages answered three days too late.

No amount of dancing could negotiate with any of that.

But halfway through the last chorus, I realized I'd been asking the wrong thing of the evening.

I had wanted it to stop the clock.

I had wanted the night to become so memorable that it could somehow compensate for every ordinary afternoon we wouldn't spend together.

I had wanted the perfect goodbye.

Something complete.

A speech that would summarize eleven years of friendship without sounding like a speech.

It was an impossible assignment.

And it was making me overlook what was happening directly in front of me.

Nina didn't need me to turn our friendship into a beautiful final statement.

She already knew what she meant to me.

We had spent eleven years demonstrating it in far less impressive ways.

Showing up.

Bringing medicine.

Sharing bad news.

Remembering birthdays.

Forgetting birthdays and apologizing spectacularly.

Sitting through terrible films because one of us had insisted they were masterpieces.

Knowing when the other person needed advice and when they simply needed someone to listen.

We hadn't built a friendship out of perfect moments.

We'd built it out of thousands of imperfect ones.

One last imperfect dance was a much better ending than anything I'd written on that folded piece of paper.

When the Music Finally Stopped

The DJ let the final beat finish.

Really finish.

No interruption. No dramatic announcement over the ending.

For a moment, there was a tiny pocket of silence.

Then everybody cheered.

The orange-stained dancer bowed.

The woman who had lost her earring lifted one shoe above her head like a trophy. I couldn't work out why, but everyone applauded anyway.

Nina leaned against me, breathless.

"That," she said, "was ridiculous."

"Completely."

"Possibly the worst dancing we've ever done."

"Speak for yourself."

"Your arms looked like you were directing airport traffic."

"That was the artistic intention."

She laughed again.

And just like that, we were back where we'd started.

The lights were on.

The floor was sticky.

The DJ was putting the final cable away.

The taxi outside was no longer ours. The driver had quite reasonably moved on, and we'd have to order another.

Nobody complained.

People began retrieving their coats, shoes and mysterious belongings from the hallway.

Goodbyes happened in little clusters.

A few phone numbers were exchanged.

Someone promised to send photographs.

The man with the orange stain was still explaining what had happened to his shirt, despite the fact that nobody had asked.

Nina and I stood by the door.

I reached into my pocket and felt the folded paper.

For a second, I considered giving it to her.

Instead, I took it out, looked at the creased edge, and slipped it back.

"What is that?" she asked.

"Something I wrote."

"For me?"

"Sort of."

"Can I see?"

"Absolutely not."

"Is it embarrassing?"

"Extremely."

She held out her hand.

I shook my head.

"Maybe another day."

She studied me for a moment.

Then she smiled.

"Good. That means we'll need another day."

I couldn't have asked for a better answer.

Okay. Now We Can Go.

Outside, the air was cold enough to feel like a different season.

The street was almost empty.

A delivery van passed, a traffic light changed for nobody, and somewhere in the distance the first sounds of morning were beginning to replace the last sounds of the night.

Nina opened the taxi app.

I stood beside her with my coat still hanging over one arm.

We had finally run out of reasons to stay.

The strange thing was that I no longer wanted another song.

Not because I'd stopped enjoying myself.

Because we'd had enough.

Not enough in the tired, disappointed sense.

Enough in the way a beautiful meal is enough.

The way a good conversation can end without running out of things to say.

The way you sometimes close a book, hold it for a moment, and know that the final page landed exactly where it should.

I had spent the last hour fighting the end of the night.

Now I was ready to let it end.

Nina's new taxi appeared around the corner.

She turned to me.

"Same time next year?"

"Different city," I said.

"Better dancing?"

"Let's not make promises we can't keep."

She hugged me.

Then she got into the car.

For a moment I stood on the pavement, watching the red taillights disappear.

It should have felt like the end of something enormous.

Instead, I was smiling.

Because I remembered her shouting over the music, pulling me back onto the dance floor.

I remembered the stranger conducting an imaginary orchestra.

I remembered the terrible singing, the bright lights and the ridiculous courage it had taken to ask for one more song.

And I understood something that would have sounded hopelessly sentimental if I'd written it on that piece of paper.

We don't always ask for one more song because we believe the night can last forever.

Sometimes we ask because we know perfectly well that it can't.

We know that people move away. Parties end. Rooms empty. Clocks keep going, even when we aren't watching them.

And still, there are moments worth asking for a little more of.

One more laugh.

One more terrible dance.

One more memory that nobody planned.

Not to prevent tomorrow.

Just to make tonight worth remembering.

I put on my coat.

Looked once more at the quiet street.

And finally said the words I hadn't been ready to say an hour earlier.

"Okay."

I smiled.

"Now we can go."

An original fictional story inspired by ONE MORE SONG by LORQAI.

LORQAI — Music Beyond Boundaries.