Meredith pulled a twenty from her pocket. "I remember."
"Also some waters," Olivia added. "For later. Hydration is important."
"You sound like my doctor," Lori said.
"Your doctor is correct."
They found a spot along the wall where they could actually hear each other.
“Man, this place hasn't changed," Carrie said, looking around. She'd changed three times before leaving the house, settling at last on a sundress she hadn't worn since before the divorce. "It's exactly the same."
"That's the point," Jen said. "That's why people keep coming back."
The band started their first set with a nineties cover that made Jen laugh out loud. "Oh, come on. We danced to this at Rowan."
"We danced to everything at Rowan," Olivia said. "We had no standards."
"We had excellent standards," Jen shot back. "We just also had no inhibitions."
The music was good, if predictable. Classic rock, some newer stuff, a crowd-pleasing setlist designed to keep people ordering drinks and staying late. By the second song, half the crowd was on their feet, and by the third, Lori had dragged Carrie onto the dance floor despite her protests.
Meredith stayed at the table, holding her beer without drinking, watching her friends move. It had been years since they'd done this, really done it, not just dinner and conversation but actually going out, being loud, dancing like they were twenty-two again. They'd all gotten so careful. So measured. So focused on managing everything that they'd forgotten how to just be.
Olivia leaned in beside her. "You're thinking too hard."
"I'm not thinking at all."
"You have your organizing face on. The one that means you're cataloging everyone's energy levels and calculating when we should leave."
Meredith laughed. "Maybe a little."
"Stop. For once, just stop." Olivia reached for her glass. "We have tonight. Tom's handling the teens. Nobody needs us to be anywhere or do anything. When was the last time that happened?"
Meredith considered. "I don't remember."
"Exactly."
Nearby, Jen had joined Carrie and Lori on the dance floor. The band launched into a faster track, and someone near the stage let out a whoop that sent ripples of laughter through the crowd.
"Fine," Meredith said. "But if I pull something, you're explaining it to Tom."
"Deal."
They joined the others, five women in their mid-forties who had stopped caring what anyone thought of them. The songs blurred together, one into the next, familiar and unfamiliar, music that didn't ask anything of you. Around them, younger people were reaching up to slap the low ceiling in time with the beat, an OD tradition that never seemed to die. At some point, the lead singer made a joke about the crowd's energy, and Lori yelled something back that made him laugh into the microphone.
A younger woman near them, maybe twenty-five with blond highlights and a complicated-looking cocktail, leaned over to Carrie. "You guys are goals. Seriously."
Carrie blinked. "We are?"
"My mom's book club never goes out like this. They just drink wine and complain about their husbands."
"Honey," Jen called over, "we do both. We're multitaskers."
The woman laughed and raised her glass in their direction before being pulled away by her friends. Carrie watched her go.
"What?" Meredith asked.
"Nothing. Just—" She shook her head. "Nothing. I'm going to get more water."
