“I swear, if I get tipsy and start crying about my eighth-grade boyfriend, someone please cut me off.”
“No promises.” I take a big sip of mine.
Viv lifts her glass like she’s channeling a warrior queen on the eve of battle. “To grief, to girlfriends, and to the men we loved and lost. To the heartbreaks that taught us, the therapy that healed us, and the wine that carried us through it all. We may be bruised, but we are not broken. We rise, we thrive, and damn it, we sparkle. We will not be shaken!”
Marin blinks, her glass poised in a half toast. “Okay, Joan of Arc.”
I nod solemnly. “Truly inspiring. I think the goats saluted.”
Viv grins, entirely unbothered. “Wait ‘till my closing statement at dessert.”
We clink glasses. At this point, resistance feels both futile and disrespectful to the moment we are trying to lose ourselves in. Somewhere behind us, the band hits a salsa crescendo, and a woman in linen pants begins an interpretive dance involving what can only be described as jazz hands and hip circles.
I have to admit, it’s more entertainment than the home makeover channel was going to provide for us tonight.
Viv disappears for a suspiciously long six minutes, and just when I think she’s gone off to abandon Marin and me to the salsa gurus, the music shifts. Something with a bongo beat and an aggressive cowbell starts thumping through the speakers.
Then I see her.
Viv, arms in the air, hips swaying like she’s auditioning forDancing with the Midlife Stars, parading around the dance stage in full formation.
“Conga line!” she shouts, like it’s a spiritual call. And I watchin awe as people in all states of alcohol-induced disinhibition fall in line behind her.
Marin, now halfway through the drink she insisted she didn’t want and already eyeing a second, groans. “Here we go.”
“Birdie! It’s time to release the pain and inhibition!”
Before I can bolt, she’s at my side, Viv, not pain, though same energy.
“Up! Now!” she commands, yanking me from my chair with the strength of someone fueled by merlot and righteous heartbreak.
“I don’t think I have the ankle stability for this,” I protest, but it’s too late.
I’m swept into the line, hands landing, regretfully, on the hips of a tan, overly confident man who looks like he’s been divorced since the ’90s and absolutely thriving. He gives me a wink that suggests he owns at least one timeshare and an expensive Bluetooth headset.
Behind me, Marin reluctantly joins in, muttering, “Plaid pants were not made for congo lines.”
Viv leads the way like a guru on a mission, high-kicking past the cheese table and nearly taking out a startled goat on a leash.
And now I’m part of the conga line at a goat wine bar on a Thursday night, hands on a stranger’s hips, questioning all my life choices.
“So,” Timeshare Ken yells over the music as he sashays his hips under my hands, “you recently divorced or emotionally unhinged?”
I blink a few times before realizing he can’t see me and yell back, “Neither?”
He winks. “Same. Love that journey for us.”
I try to sidestep out of the line, but it surges forward like a Merlot-powered stampede. Suddenly, we’re snaking between wine barrels and bachelorette parties, and someone behind me throws glitter. Actual glitter. It sticks to the sweat at the back of my neck and itches like a festive rash.
The salsa band kicks it up a notch, drums pounding like a heartbeat gone wild. Viv shouts something unintelligible, maybe “Liberate your hips!”, and throws her hands skyward like she’s channeling every ounce of joy buried deep under years of laundry and color-coordinated holiday cards. The air crackles with a kind of reckless freedom.
I don’t know what comes over me, maybe it’s the sangria, maybe it’s the exhaustion of trying to stay stiff and collected and not sweaty in this crowd, but something in me snaps. A breath fills me, slow and steady, and I let out a sigh I didn’t realize I’d been holding. A release I haven’t felt for years. Then, without thinking, I lean into it. Literally.
I start swinging my hips. I mean, really swinging them. Like I’m channeling Shakira shaking my ass in gold fringe. My arms start moving too, out of sync but passionately committed. I toss my head back and let out a yell that’s meant to be carefree but sounds slightly feral.
“GRIEF ISN’T LINEAR, BABY!”
I look back to see the woman whooping behind me isn’t Marin. She must’ve abandoned ship. Someone claps. A man in a floral shirt joins in uninvited and tries to start a second conga line, which fails, but honestly? The spirit was there.
