Page 3 of Sawyer

“Isn’t a man. Got it.” Dottie glances out across the dance floor. “What was it that Cher said? Something like, yeah, you don’t need men, but life is more fun if they’re in it?”

“I’m here to have fun with y’all.”

I mean that. Fun was in very short supply toward the end of my marriage. Dan wouldneverapprove of me being out on a Saturday night to go dancing with my girls. Much less me being gone for a whole weekend.

What an idiot I was to thinkthatwould be my happily ever after, waiting hand and foot on a man who never took it upon himself to return the favor in any meaningful way.

If I learned anything from being a wife, it’s that commitment inevitably leads to disappointment. Men don’t carry their fair share of the load, and loving them ends up trapping you in a never-ending cycle of housework, childcare, and loneliness.

Men just don’tcare.

The disappointment happens bit by bit. Death by a thousand paper cuts. Dan and I were head over heels in love when we got married, even if he disapproved of the free-spirited Pisces side of me. I would ask him every night how his day went. Not only that, I genuinely cared about his answer. He’d ask about me too early on in our relationship. But every so often, he’d come home without saying a word to me.

Eventually, he stopped asking me about my day, or my thoughts, or my feelings altogether. He’d tell me I was crazy for expecting that level of intimacy. Even crazier for asking him to pick up the house or make a meal. Didn’t I get that he had a big, important, stressful job as a pharmaceutical sales rep? The implication being, of course, that he made more money than me, so obviously he didn’t have to talk to me or do anything around the house. That was my job.

So was taking care of our baby. And that imbalance, along with the fact that Dan put a lot of pressure on me to tone down my fun-loving, spontaneous nature, was ultimately what led me to ask for a divorce. I could handle all the cleaning and the cooking and the scheduling when it was just me and Dan. But add a newborn to the mix, and bam. I drowned.

I was done.

I’ve been single ever since. Am I open to dating? Sure. Falling in love? I’d consider that too. But I never, ever want to live with another man again, and Ineverwant to marry one.

Bee shrugs. “If you say you want fun, let’s go have fun. I call dibs on the lead guy.”

“I’ll take the drummer,” Dottie replies, slipping her arm through mine. “Let’s see who wins at eye-fucking, shall we?”

Laughing, I let my sister lead me to the dance floor. It’s late—well, late for me, anyway, considering my bedtime is shortly after my daughter goes down at seven thirty—and the place is already packed.

But Dottie, being Dottie, cuts through the crowd and finds us a spot right in front of the stage. The music is loud here, so loud that I can’t hear anything but the song and the pounding of boots on the beat-up hardwood floor.

The whiskey hits, and I throw up my arms when the band plays a rowdy version of an old Tim McGraw song. My sisters and I dance, moving with the crowd as we all sing along at the top of our lungs to Tim, and then to an Alan Jackson cover, and then a Shania Twain cover, followed by several George Strait songs.

When the band’s modified version of “It Just Comes Natural” ends, Bee cups her hands around her mouth and shouts at the band, “I don’t know who y’all are, but I love you!”

The lead singer laughs too. “Howdy, ma’am. My name’s Hank, and this here is our band The Mighty Longhorns.”

“Terrible name!” the guitarist shouts, drawing laughter from the crowd.

I turn to Bee. “We need some Johnny Cash, don’t we?”

“Hell yeah, we need some Johnny Cash.” Dottie digs a twenty out of her purse and hands it to me. “Ask the band to play your favorite song.”

Grinning, I hold up the cash and drop it into the red plastic bucket beside the lead singer’s microphone.

He leans down. “What would you like to hear?”

“‘Ring of Fire,’ please.”

He grins. “You got it, darlin’.”

The bar erupts in cheers and whistles when the band plays the song’s first thumping notes. Bee hollers. Dottie stomps her feet, the two of us shouting the lyrics together at the top of our lungs.

Closing my eyes, I let the music guide me to exactly where I want to be—here, now. Wholly present. I focus on the feel of the smile on my face, how my cheeks hurt and my heart throbs. I sing and I dance, aware of the people around me dancing too. There’s a lightness in my belly and legs from the whiskey. Bee—I know it’s her from the sound of her cackle—bumps her hip into mine.

All the while, I sing Johnny’s lyrics, a little breathless the longer I move my body.

Burns, burns, burns.

God, does the burn in my belly and my heart feel good.

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