“Second glass?” asked Rachel.
“Yes,” I said.
“Then it’s time.”
She made the statement with the gravity of a doctor about to wheel a patient back for a risky surgery.
“Time for what?”
“For you to sing your new anthem. Grab the mic. I’ll cue it up.”
“I don’t know about—”
“Just do it, Vivian!”
I handed off my phone and stepped on the tiny stage. My eyes got wide when I saw that my new anthem was about to be “I Will Survive.”
But I was not Gloria Gaynor.
My heart beat so hard, I thought it might come up my throat. My palms were so slick I almost dropped the microphone.
One glance at the women in the room, though, and I knew I was in the safest place I could possibly be.
I took a deep, ragged breath and then belted the song for all I was worth. The others joined in. By the end, adrenaline coursed through my veins in a brilliant catharsis.
I wasn’t going to limit myself to singing backup anymore.
To make things better, Mom had figured out how to order an appetizer sampler platter, so we all paused to gorge ourselves on chicken tenders and mozzarella sticks and all sorts of snacks that were bad for us but oh so good.
“Time for some mother-daughter bonding,” Mom said.
“I don’t know about this,” I said. I might have been feeling the wine, but I was feeling the grease even more.
“It’ll be a slow song.”
“Fine,” I said. That was how I ended up singing “Love Can Build a Bridge” with my mother.
Now warmed up, Abi tackled Beyoncé, Alanis Morissette, and Britney Spears. Then Rachel took over with an impassioned “Wrecking Ball” before calling Abi and me up there for the Black Eyed Peas’ “Where Is the Love?”
Mom recorded the whole thing with my phone, including the part where Rachel sang into a champagne bottle instead of the microphone. We all collapsed into another fit of laughter after that and decided that it might be time to go home.
“One more, one more,” Abi said. She cued up a song, while Rachel propped my phone up to record us and led Mom to the stage. Mom grinned when she heard the telltale harmonica in “That’s What Friends Are For.”
Still smiling, we cleaned up after ourselves and headed out into the main area of the club, where every seat was now filled. Someone was singing an off-key version of “Saving All My Love for You.”
“Someone thinks she’s Whitney Houston, and she sure ain’t,” Abi said under her breath.
Rachel stopped in her tracks, and my tipsy self ran into her. “What?”
“Nothing,” she muttered quickly, picking up her pace.
But it was my turn to stop dead in my tracks and have my mother run into me. There on the stage was Tabitha in a slinky red dress. And there in the front row, grinning like a jackass eating saw briers, was Mitch, the man who supposedlyhatedred.
“Oh, for the love of Pete,” Mom said. “Come on, Vivian, let’s go.”
For a few hours, I’d forgotten about my soon-to-be ex-husband. I’d forgotten about his cheating. I’d forgotten about all of it. Of all the karaoke clubs in the world, why did he have to bring his new girlfriend to the one where I was going to sing? And that was before we even got to all the times Mitch had told me he had no interest in making a fool of himself at some karaoke joint.
I took a step in his direction, but Mom grabbed my arm. “Don’t.”
