Then, a few seconds later: Or not. Either way.

Then, as I was trying to type back . . . This is Oscar. Should have said that first.

Reading these texts made me feel like a hot-air balloon.

I replied with the cross streets and he wrote back: On my way.

My heart started pounding louder than the music. I blinked at Jules over the thumbnail I was biting. She waved for me to come dance but I couldn’t do more than pace, glancing compulsively at the door. Then I remembered the bouncer and ran out to wait on the sidewalk.

The street was busy. A taxi stopped down the block and I started toward it, but it was a middle-aged couple with a cat in a carrier. Somebody touched my shoulder and I turned, clutching my chest.

“I couldn’t work,” Oscar said, smile flickering. “Couldn’t concentrate.”

The ultimate compliment.

“We go this way,” I said.

The doorman was nice enough to make a show of examining a piece of gum stuck to the sidewalk as I took Oscar’s hand and led him into the back alley. There was a line tonight. God knew why.

“Are you gonna mug me?” Oscar asked.

“Maybe.”

He’d dressed up. Black tee, gray pants, almost enough to make him look like a New Yorker. The gleam in his eye gave him away, though, the way he took in everything—dingy back door, dumpster, fire escape ladder—like he’d just dropped into Oz.

And then his eyes crash-landed on me—and burst into flames. This couldn’t possibly be an everyone thing. He reached out to tease one of my curls loose from my braid, letting it bounce against his finger.

My breath got stuck. I stepped back, swept the hair nervously back into place, and opened the “VIP entrance,” waving for him to walk through.

The music was deafening as we reached the dance floor. I tried to ask him if he wanted a drink, although I wasn’t sure how you procured such a thing, but he was already heading for the center of the crowd.

Jules spotted him and gave him a hug, like they were best friends, then shot me this icy “What the hell is wrong with you” glare. Then, to make it even clearer, she mouthed, “Come! Dance!”

I edged my way through the crowd, jostled on all sides, wondering anew what the appeal of this was.

When I reached Oscar, he pressed his hand to the small of my back, as if to balance me, and bent to shout-whisper, “You were right! This music is terrible!”

“Right?”

They were playing some generic song with lyrics that went, “Grind up, gotta grind up, you know you grind up on meeeeee.” And repeat.