“It’s not drugs,” he clarified, biting a tab into halves. He handed her one and placed the other back in the bottle. “It’s medicine, and you need to fucking calm down.”

She reluctantly placed the pill between her teeth before finding it with her tongue and swallowing it dry.

“The cooler you play this, the better it will go. I promise.”

Alex wondered why she hadn’t thought of taking Xanax before. In a matter of what felt like minutes, she had never been more at ease in her own skin. Her constantly churning anxieties over what these people thought of her—that hyper-awareness of everything, from what she was wearing to how she would describe her internship—simply ceased to matter. It wasn’t that the anxiety was gone, per se; she could still intellectually understand that it existed. But she felt as if she were in a warm pool, floating a safe distance away from the pointed edges of her own thoughts. She could almost see the potential stressors drifting by her and felt the rather odd urge to wave at them.

She could even appreciate Guy’s minimalist apartment, instead of just feeling resentful of its overwhelming niceness. She ran her hand along his light wood dining table, noting that he probably bought it while visiting his mother in Norway.

And with another glass of prosecco in her hand, rapidly going flat, as she felt no particular urgency to drink it, she had frankly never felt better. The usual suspects were there, including a few guests who always made her feel supremely inadequate, but their voices became one with the tasteful indie pop soundtrack playing on the speakers, creating a gentle hum that seemed to wrap itself around her as she gently rocked back and forth.

“Alex, hey,” Danial said, appearing before her like a storybook prince: tall and elegant, with lush black waves forming a kind of crown around his face. “You look great.” He smiled, clinking his fresh can of beer to her glass. She looked down at her own body, remembering suddenly the effort she had put into her appearance.

“Hi.” She smiled, cat-like, raising her glass to her lips. “You look good, too.”

His cheeks bloomed pink at her compliment as he laughed, looking at his can. “Can you believe we’re finally graduating?”

From over his shoulder, she could see Paul, seated in the corner of Guy’s deep white sectional and staring at her with suspicion. She smiled woozily at him and shook her head in an approximation of “it’s fine.”

Danial glanced at Paul from over his shoulder before turning back to her. “How many Proseccos have you had?” He searched to meet her unfocused eyes with his own.

She grinned, taking another deep sip from her glass. “Enough to make you handsome.”