“I know,” Nevaeh says excitedly. “I’m so inspired.”

She whirls around to grab Taylor’s sport coat off the back of the couch and spins to the beat of the drums, slinks across the room toward Katherine, hips twitching in time with the music, drops down low, and then slithers back up along Katherine’s body. Katherine blushes. Nevvie struts away, poses with her hands in her pockets, makes finger guns, winks, and swaggers to the middle of the room. A pause, and then she spins and slouches out of the sport jacket, shimmying it to her elbows, watching us over her shoulder as she rolls it to the music. She kicks back, lets the coat fall, and catches it on her toes, then whips forward into a graceful handstand, jacket still draped over her pointed toes. We’re startled into shouting, and Taylor’s clapping like he has lost his mind, and I am whooping, and the bass is pounding. Nevaeh grins at us upside down, twirls her leg to fling off the coat, and then rolls sideways into a split.

“That is amazing,” Katherine says. “You are amazing.”

We change into pajamas and bounce ideas off one another like we’re in improv and comp, starting to sketch the shapes of acts and the beginning shadows of choreography. Taylor’s shoulders make every roll look a little raunchy. Nevaeh pretends to bite my cheek until I pose for a selfie. Katherine stops in the center of the room.

“I’m going to hula-hoop,” she says decisively.

“How are you going to remove your clothes and hula-hoop?” Taylor says, with very skeptical eyebrows.

“I can do anything and hula-hoop,” Katherine says, and then demands that we stop making dirty jokes.

I strut down the center of our very small imaginary runway and pose, one hand behind my head, one hand on my bumped-out hip. And pose, hand on my butt, and pose, flicking open the buttons of my pajama shirt. And pose, throwing it open to my soft sports bra and cleavage and also immediate goose bumps, unexpected nerves, unexpectedly shy; what the hell? I’ve gone onstage in essentially sports bras and shorts without even blinking, and now I’m balking at taking my shirt off in front of my friends, getting wobbly at the idea of taking my clothes off in front of a bunch of people.

“Addie!” Nevaeh cheers, and Taylor whistles, and I let my top fall shut again, instead of off my arms and to the floor. I play it off, bounce onto the couch, and tease Katherine about her hula-hooping.

Nevvie, her dark skin brilliant against her ivory camisole, points at Taylor’s jacket, declaring she’s going to start in a three-piece suit and a hat and strip down to lingerie. Taylor is going to go from super femme to drop-dead bodybuilder, and all the genders in between, he decides.