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“How are you feeling?” I ask her now, meaning it.

“Good.” She considers. “Weird. Light? Like when you take a rucksack off after a really long walk, and your shoulders don’t know what to do with themselves.” She picks up the pink drink again. “I stopped reaching for my phone to text him a few weeks ago.”

Sydney waves a hand. “You’re going to be great. You already are. You walked in here tonight looking like a sexy mamacita, and you can do whatever you like!”

Gianna considers this. “I do look like a sexy mamacita, don’t I?” We all break into a fit of giggles—the cocktails just beginning to get to us.

The DJ mixes things up and puts on something with more bass, and Sydney puts her second cocktail down, stands up, and looks at the dance floor with the expression of a woman whose patience has officially run out.

“I need to dance,” she announces. “Gianna, come.”

“I’m drinking.” She whines.

“Bring it.”

“Sydney—”

“Gianna, Mark is gone. Your MCAT is done”—she points at me —”summer is coming”—she points at the ceiling—”and that is a genuinely good song. We are going.” She extends both hands. Gianna looks at them. Looks at me.

“Go,” I say. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

Sydney gives me a look that says I know what ‘in a minute’ means from you, but she doesn’t push it. Then she’s pulling Gianna through the crowd, and the two of them disappear into the warm press of people near the stage.

I sit with my drink.

I watch Sydney find the beat immediately and dance like nobody is watching. Gianna takes about thirty seconds longer, and then she’s in it too, laughing at something Sydney’s said, and I watch them from the table.

Then the bartender passes, carrying a tray, and there’s a moment when I think he looks like Cal. No, it isn’t him. His jaw is a little too high, and his eyes aren’t bright blue.

I pick up my drink. I put it down.

I thought it would get better after the exam. I thought once the thing I’d been grinding toward was done, the rest of my brain would come back online, and I would feel like myself again. I sat that exam, then I got home, made dinner, went to bed, and in the morning, I woke up, and the first thing I thought about was not the MCAT.

It was a stupid dolphin tattoo.

I pick my drink back up.

I should go dance. I should go be with my friends, who are right there, twenty feet away, actively having a good time.

I go to the bathroom instead. Someone’s left the tap running slightly, and there’s a hand dryer going somewhere and two girls at the mirror discussing one of their boyfriends having a girl best friend and is that ok or is it a red flag.

I look at myself in the mirror.

You’re fine, I tell my reflection.

My reflection does not look convinced.

The door opens. Sydney comes in, still slightly breathless from dancing, her hair half out of its bun. Behind her, Gianna, who takes one look at my face and says nothing, just comes to stand at the mirror next to me.

“Hey,” Sydney says.

“Hey.”

“You’re not dancing with us.”

“I’m aware.”

“You look sad.” She pouts and uses her fingers to squish my face into a smile. I bat her hands away.