He danced for over two hours straight, bouncing to Daft Punk, voguing to Madonna, swirling gothily to Siouxsie and the Banshees, breaking out his rudimentary hip-hop moves for Kendrick. “Dancy Dance” was heavy on gay club songs—Pet Shop Boys, New Order, Scissor Sisters—but he’d been steadily adding anything he liked to it. He danced to “Animals” by Maroon 5, remembering the way Marissa would flip her hair and roll her hips to this song, yelling over the noise, “We really shouldn’t like this! It’s totally problematic!” He jumped around to House of Pain, spun around to Dead or Alive, and lost the elastic in his hair during an exhilarating three-song Lady Gaga streak. When he got to the end of “Ray of Light” by Madonna, he was swaying with exhaustion.

Sweat dripped off the loose tips of his hair. He groped for the tablet and, panting, switched to his “Interesting Acoustic Guitar” playlist. “Cover Me Up” by Jason Isbell began to play; he stood still, letting the soft, sad, undanceable song help cool him down.

“Ángel.”

He startled. Oberon was leaning in the doorway to the gym, hands in his pockets, watching him.

Ángel grabbed the tablet and turned off the music. “God, I’m sorry,” he said, wondering for the first time whether the gym’s soundproofing was proof against Oberon’s excellent sense of hearing. “It’s the middle of the night. I’m not keeping you awake, am I?”

Oberon didn’t answer this. Instead he said, “When I saw you on the monitors I thought you were dancing for joy. But now that I’m here . . .”

“I’m— No, I’m okay,” said Ángel automatically.

And then he thought, God, enough; it’s not like he could pretend. This whole room probably reeked of his emotions, pouring out of his body. He amended, “No, I’m not really okay. Just feeling sorry for myself, I guess. But I feel better now.”

“It’s because no one emailed you on your birthday?” asked Oberon.

Surprised, Ángel said, “Yeah. You knew?”

“I should have said something.”

Ángel shrugged, uncomfortable. “I haven’t been talking to you. My own fault.”

“But I misjudged the importance of the day.” Oberon shoved off the doorway and came into the room. “It’s your custom to go dancing on your birthday?”

Ángel mopped sweat off his face with his shirt, avoiding Oberon’s eyes. “Do you, uh, do your people dance?”

“We do,” said Oberon, approaching slowly. “We dance for celebration. We dance to perform magic. And we dance meditatively, to help process our emotions, as I think perhaps you do. But when we do it, we are not so radiant as you.”