It was warm near the bar’s fireplace, and she felt heat on the back of her legs. Perfume, cologne, and hair gels clouded the air. The effect was dizzying, but she couldn’t really blame the bar. She’d felt off all day. She’d awakened with an odd sense of disorientation, as if she didn’t even belong in her own apartment. Since then, she’d been up and down in huge swings. One minute, she would be euphoric, and the next she’d feel a formless anxiety grip her stomach.

Her brain kept trying to remember something, but nothing was there.

Noah came back, holding a bottle of amber IPA. He wore a black sport coat over a red T-shirt and blue jeans and sneakers, which was how thirty-six-year-olds tried to shave a decade off their age. He was a few donuts shy of being overweight. He had messy red hair and a goatee, as if he’d spotted a photograph of Ed Sheeran in People and decided that was the way to meet girls. Christie could have told him that the Redbeard pirate look only worked for Ed Sheeran because he was Ed Sheeran.

They’d been set up on a blind date by one of her colleagues at the bank. She should have been firmer in saying no.

“You having fun?” Noah asked.

“Sure,” she replied without enthusiasm. He didn’t seem to notice, so she checked her watch to make her point. She wasn’t looking to prolong the evening. It was almost midnight, and her date was already a pumpkin.

“You know, I thought you were going to blow me off,” he said.

“Oh?”

“I texted you like four times yesterday, but you didn’t answer.”

“Sorry. I slept the whole day. I guess I wasn’t feeling well.”

“Was it a cold or something? I take a crap load of vitamin C every day, and I never get colds.”

“No, I don’t know what it was,” Christie said. “Maybe some kind of twenty-four-hour bug. I crashed out and lost the whole day.”

“Are you feeling better now?”

“A little, but I don’t want to make it a late night.”

Noah still didn’t take the hint. The music on the jukebox changed from Aerosmith to the B-52s, and his freckled face brightened into a grin. “Hey, great song!” he said. “Come on, let’s dance!”

“No, I don’t really feel up to it—” she began, but he didn’t take no for an answer. He took her wrist and pulled her through the crowd to the postage-stamp dance floor. Most of the dancers were drunk. Noah writhed to “Love Shack,” and she was pleasantly surprised to find that he followed the beat like a pro. His supple moves made him much more attractive than he’d been a minute earlier. He knew it, and his confidence glowed in his face.