Will’s smile vanished.

“Are you okay?” he asked, Jackie still watching Hannah with uneasy eyes.

“What?” Hannah responded, suddenly twisting in her chair to see if she could relieve some of the tension in her back.

“I just asked if you were okay,” Jackie’s boyfriend said tentatively. “I had asked about your job. I heard you work in movies and theater—in New York City. Sounds very exciting.”

“Yes!” Hannah responded, suddenly aware that she’d shouted. “Yes,” she repeated, more subtly, her eyes shifting.

“What exactly do you do? Are you a director? A producer?”

“Jesus, no,” Hannah answered, perhaps too aggressively. She took another sip of the white wine that had been placed in front of her. “I’m a casting director,” she continued. “I cast plays and commercials. And I recently started casting some films.”

“That’s fascinating,” the ear, nose, and throat doctor responded enthusiastically, suddenly leaning forward and firing off questions at a speed that made Hannah nauseated. “Have you cast anything I’ve seen? Do you do Broadway? How do you know who to cast? Have you met a lot of famous people? God, it must be so much fun. I mean, you must love your job, right?”

Hannah closed her eyes. His words suffocated her. He didn’t stop.

“When I first got to college, there was a part of me that wondered if I should go into theater, but it just didn’t seem stable,” the doctor continued. “But I think I would have loved it. Maybe someday. I always wonder how doctors get jobs advising medical shows. I think I’d be great at that. Do you know how people get those jobs?”

Jackie’s boyfriend had hunched forward, his elbows on the table in front of him. He stared at Hannah, awaiting her response. She felt her eyes well up with tears. She grabbed her stomach and closed her eyes as fresh sweat beaded above her lip.

She blinked away the moisture and fought a sudden urge to flip the table. She imagined the wineglass in front of her shattering into little pieces. She imagined the inquisitive doctor’s perfect teeth falling out of his mouth. She could feel her heartbeat in her fingertips. She curled her toes and closed her eyes. She wiped her nose and mouth with her napkin.

“Jesus, Hannah. What the hell is wrong?” Jackie asked, her voice soft and concerned.

“I don’t know,” Hannah murmured, her eyes still closed.

Just minutes ago Hannah had been so calm. She’d seen Tom from across the room and had felt nothing. More accurately, she’d felt pain, confusion, and excitement, but it was as if those emotions had been tamed by a greater force. Intellectually she knew she was upset, but she was incapable of actually feeling her emotions. Hannah assumed it was the pills that had dulled her senses and dispelled whatever negative emotions would have otherwise taken over her brain.

She was fine with that, thankful that Dawn had been thoughtful enough to drug her. But now she felt like Cinderella at midnight. Her body, which had behaved like a stretch limo all night, threatened to turn back into a pumpkin. It was as if she wore a corset that was quickly unraveling.