I watched them with a kind of aching admiration. The dancing people. The ones who let music take over without checking themselves first, without wondering how they looked from the outside.
I’d always wanted to be like that—to move because it felt good, not because it was safe. But shyness had been stitched into me early, a constant awareness of my body, of taking up space, of being seen before I was ready. So, I learned to stand at the edges, most of the time. To sway instead of leap. To enjoy the moment without ever fully stepping into it.
Tonight, though, something in me felt looser, less guarded. Like maybe I could just … dance.
Maybe.
I took another sip of my drink, the sweetness sharp on my tongue. “I needed this,” I admitted.
Beth softened instantly. “Yeah. You did.”
Natasha leaned in, resting her elbow on the bar. “You’ve been carrying a lot lately.”
“I don’t even know what I’m carrying,” I said. “That’s the problem.”
They didn’t interrupt. Didn’t rush to fix it. Just waited.
“I finished everything,” I continued. “School. Licensure. Got a job. All of it. And now everyone keeps asking me what’s next, and I just want to scream.”
Beth nodded. “Classic post-achievement panic.”
“But it’s more than that,” I said. “I don’t want the life I aimed for. I just don’t know when that changed.”
Natasha reached over and squeezed my hand. “You’re allowed to change.”
“I know,” I said. “Intellectually. Emotionally? I feel like I’m betraying some past version of myself.”
Beth tilted her head. “Or honoring her.”
That landed harder than I expected.
I’d always been like that—sometimes holding on past the point of usefulness. Ideas, goals, versions of myself that had once made sense and then quietly stopped fitting.
I told myself it was loyalty. Follow-through. Grit. But maybe it was fear. Fear of letting go before I understood what something had given me, or who I’d be without it. I’d stayed in places I’d already outgrown simply because leaving felt like admitting I’d been wrong to begin with.
I looked down at my drink, watching the slushy surface melt. “I don’t want to listen to people’s problems all day,” I said quietly. “That sounds awful, doesn’t it?”
“No,” Natasha said firmly. “It sounds honest.”
Beth raised her cup again. “To honesty. And not knowing shit.”
We drank to that.
A cheer erupted near the dance floor, and Beth immediately grabbed my wrist. “Come on. We are not standing still all night having feelings.”
“I like having feelings,” I protested weakly as she dragged me away from the bar.
“You can like them tomorrow,” she said. “Tonight, we dance.”
The floor was packed, bodies moving close, the music loud enough to drown out thought. I let myself be pulled into it, letting my hips follow the rhythm, letting my mind quiet.
For once, I wasn’t the planner.
The listener.
The one holding space.
I was just a woman on a girls’ trip in a city I didn’t know, moving to music that didn’t ask anything of me.
