I could even be myself, if I ever figure out who that is.

Danni is DJing tonight, which means the music is so loud the words are getting sucked into the bass. It’s too loud to talk, too loud to hear, too loud to think.

Just the way I like it.

I stare into the spinning blue lights and then blink so that blue spots cover the dark walls, the dark boys, the black jeans, the clear glass, the stretched white shirts.

I’m struck with a sudden and deep hunger. I want it. I want it all.

Relax, the speaker screams. Don’t do it.

Easy for Frankie to say.

Over the course of the evening, I:

• Dance with a hundred cute shirtless boys

• Sing along to a hundred different songs

• Dream a hundred different dreams

But at the end of the night, I’m still alone.

James doesn’t dance. Instead, he leans against the wall, smoking the long, thin cigarettes he encases in an etched silver holder, his extensive bangs obscuring his face.

Becky says that James observes people like a scientist. I think he’s more like an alien, sent to report back to his home planet on the deteriorating state of humanity.

Becky and I have spent an absurd amount of time debating this.

But there’s no debate about how tonight will play out. It’s always the same.

At some point, almost everyone will try to get James to dance. They’ll stand, hand against the wall next to his head, leaning in to make their case. Trying to be charming enough. Sexy enough. Eccentric enough.

James will smile and run his fingers through his hair. For a moment, he’ll give them 100 percent of his attention and 90 percent of his piercing gaze, and they’ll each feel as if they’re the center of his world.

But he won’t leave the space he’s staked out against the wall.

Not until the last song, anyhow.

Then, Danni will give in to James’s standing request and play Roxy Music’s “More Than This.” James will make his way to me, and we’ll dance, him swaying like he’s possessed, and mouthing the words as Bryan Ferry sings about being carefree for a while.

Everyone will watch. And it’s easy to believe, in that moment, there is nothing that matters to him more than that.

Time moves faster as you get older. That’s what my dad complains about, anyhow.

I once tried to explain to him how time stretches and retracts on the dance floor. How you can lose yourself in the overlapping beats as one song bleeds into another, and you can almost ride the lights as they swirl and spin, and the smoke of the dry ice mixes with the heady scent of cloves and who knows what else until you’re someplace different altogether.

All I got from my father in response was an eye twitch that too closely resembled the one I remember from when Connor still lived at home. I stopped trying to explain it.