Page 169 of The Perfect Love

I am brave.

I am powerful.

I am loved.

Then the fun begins. People start playing music and Nadine and a couple of other women start lighting the pyre. A place to burn away everything we don’t need and claim what we do.

The women hurry away as the flames engulf the phoenix.

Let her burn and let her rise.

Small fireworks pop and crackle adding colorful hues to the wild flames.

“This is incredible,” Amanda says.

“Seriously,” Mackie says. “My mom would love this. I should invite her next year.”

“All the moms,” Sarah says, then elbows Rae. “Can you imagine how much trouble Mom and Katie would get into?”

I laugh too, picturing their mom and Miles’s mom sitting here with us. And Liz, too. Gran would love this.

“I’m so glad you were a part of planning this and asked us to join you,” Rae says. “I might never have known about it—or been brave enough to come—if it weren’t for you, and I’m so glad I’m here.”

“Yes to all of that,” Hyla says. “I want to see this grow every year, with more incredible women. Maybe our tribe will grow too.”

Even though it already is. Rae and Sarah recently added their cousin Dani to our Girl Gang texts now that she’s living in Ida—and dating Joel’s brother Jesse.

When the fire dies down enough to stand near it, Nadine appears again with a handful of other women and a group of musicians and drummers, who are playing and dancing by the fire.

“We invite you all to join us as we dance around the fire. If you want to feel completely free, we encourage you to leave your shirts behind and dance topless.”

Leave it to Nadine… who strips her shirt off, then goes a step further by chucking it in the fire.

I’m not throwing my new favorite shirt in the fire, but…

“Are we doing it?” I ask.

“I’m in!” Hyla yells and whips her shirt off, making Mackie choke because of course Hyla’s not wearing a bra.

Hyla winks at her, then Mackie shakes her head and pulls her shirt off too.

“I guess that’s a yes,” Amanda says, pulling off her shirt and bra and tossing them in the center of the blanket.

“You want to?” Sarah asks.

Rae stares blankly at her for a second, then smiles brightly. “Let’s do it.”

Without another thought I pull my shirt over my head and free myself from the confines of my bra, and we all make our way under the ropes and into the crowd of women—this beautiful sisterhood—dancing around the flames of the phoenix.

We hold hands and dance, singing along with chants and music, utterly free. The fire warms my skin as I dance with the women who have changed my life and helped me embrace all I’ve been through and who I’ve become, and in this wild, carefree moment, I’ve never felt more alive.

Our laughter is unhinged as we walk down the path back toward campus. Festivities are still happening, but with the girls needing to drive back to the lake house, we didn’t want to leave too late.

I’ve lost track of what we’re laughing about, but we’re leaning against each other, cackling like we’re drunk even though we’re all sober, as we hit the parking lot by the student center and keep walking down the hill toward a smaller one where our cars are.

It’s almost 11:00 p.m. and campus is quiet, though the sounds of music and drums from the festival still cut through the night air, which is rapidly cooling off. It was a warm weekend for early May, but the chill in the air without the sun is a reminder that it’s not quite summer yet.

As we get closer to the edge of the student center, I notice a couple of figures under one of the streetlights. I instinctively reach for Amanda and Hyla, who are on either side of me.

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