A Real Story

I downloaded the duet app mostly as a joke after my sister said my Bumble bio made me sound like a tax auditor. The whole premise is you record half a song, it gets sent to a stranger, and they sing the other half without hearing you first. My first attempt was “Landslide” and I sounded like a dying smoke alarm, but a guy named with a username referencing vinyl records matched it back with this warm, cracking baritone that somehow made the whole thing work. We didn’t message for two days, just kept trading songs — Roy Orbison, a terrible attempt at “Islands in the Stream,” a Sufjan Stevens track that got way too emotional for a Tuesday. When we finally texted, the first thing he said was “your vibrato is a war crime and I respect it.” We met up at a karaoke bar three weeks later because it felt like the only appropriate venue, and he ordered a beer and immediately signed us up for a duet before we’d even said a real hello in person. He still can’t hit the bridge in that Fleetwood Mac song. I still can’t hold a note past four seconds. We’ve been dating for five months and our whole relationship kind of started as a recording neither of us would ever want played back at a wedding.