“No, I—”

“It’s okay Rory. It’s okay. I don’t mind. I’m happy,” she says. “I’m really happy.”

I think she’s already tipsy.

“I’m happy for you.”

“You could be happy here,” she says. She’s just talking to me now, her back to Mia. “I miss you. I wish you would move closer. I know you’re big-city now. You’ve always been big-city. But we could do this all the time!”

“We could,” I say, lifting the cherry out of my drink by the stem and dropping it into her glass.

I’m a little off-kilter. It’s distracting, being around this many people, having them so close to me. All these strangers. I can hear their hearts beating, the air as it enters and exits their lungs. I can smell their sweat. It’s sensory overload. The colors in the room are too much. The lights glow aggressively. My peripheral vision is extensive, and there’s this primal, uncanny awareness of the space around me. This terrifying ability to razor-focus on the humidity of that guy’s breath, the notes of that woman’s perfume, on hands moving and feet moving and mouths moving. Tongues. Saliva. Teeth and the remnants of dinner wedged between them. Distant conversations, words across the bar that reach me as if they’re being spoken directly into my ears.

My skin crawls. The hair on the back of my neck stiffens. I don’t want to pay attention, but there’s a need I can’t ignore. A base need to know everything that’s going on around me.

This is just a reminder that I’m not normal, that my body is functioning at a different level, and there’s no on-off switch. I can’t opt out of this supernatural surveillance.

“Are you having fun?” Ash asks me. Her voice cuts through the noise, wonderfully familiar.

“Yeah,” I lie.

“Cheers to that!” Mia says, and we clink our glasses.

“We should dance,” Ash says, pulling at my hips. “Let’s dance!”

“We need to put on some good music,” Mia says, shuffling over to the jukebox. She selects “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” “Remember that time we went to Planned Parenthood to get condoms and they were playing this?”

“Yeah,” I say. “We were, like, this is either very appropriate or very inappropriate.”

She laughs. “Little of both.”

The three of us sing along loudly and dance like lunatics. When a Spice Girls song comes on after, Ash screams.

Our antics get the attention of a group of four men. They look older than us, but not by much.

“They’re staring,” Mia says, grabbing my arm. “Let’s go talk to them!”

“Nah,” I say, trying to remember some Spice World–era choreography.

“Rory’s got a boyfriend!” Ash giggles.

“Really?” Mia asks. I’m a little offended she seems so surprised.

“Ian Pedretti!” Ash yells.

“Shh!” I tell her.

“Huh, that’s weird,” Mia says, her face bittering.

“Why is it weird?” I ask.

“Because I went out with him a few weeks ago.”

All sound in the room dies, and suddenly the only heartbeat I can hear is my own.