The notes are loud enough to make my teeth ache, concentrated enough to make me feel drunk. I close my eyes and the room spins and my head spins and I give in and let it, and then I wonder if this is what hard drugs feel like and if Nancy Reagan will tell us to “Just Say No” to music because nothing this good could possibly be legal.

Gabriel’s arms, sudden around my waist.

Gabriel’s breath in my ear.

He fakes biting my neck as the singer repeats “Undead” over and over. I turn my head, bare my skin. Open myself up. Finally understand why people write love songs. Lust songs. Whatever.

Run away with me, he whispers in my ear.

My stomach leaps. I know he can’t mean it. We’ve only seen each other at the club. Haven’t exchanged phone numbers or addresses. Had we gone to school together, I’d have known him for only a week instead of seeing him a few times stretched over a couple of months.

But a part of me is already packed and out the door.

Instead of running away, we dance.

Whatever else we have or don’t have…

Whatever else we do when we aren’t here…

Whatever else we dream about or want to escape from…

…this rhythm has infected us.

When the room is too crowded, too sticky, too smoky, when the music turns to bubblegum pop and the floor fills with girls in leg warmers and boys in Chinos, we maneuver to the wall. Sweaty, spent, and, for a minute, satisfied.

Gabriel shakes his damp hair and smiles at me. Time stops.

Becky made me memorize a list of things she thinks I need to find out about Gabriel before I let myself fall too hard for him. His favorite color. His favorite band. What he does when he isn’t at the club. Whether he’s actually looking for a boyfriend. Whether he wants to be monogamous.

But her questions aren’t my questions, and all I need to know is this: When he smiles at me as if he recognizes something within me that I’ve never said out loud; when my vision narrows so that the only thing I can see is him; when he makes me laugh and then my laughing makes him laugh…it’s too late for the rest to matter.

How do you write a song? he asks me. How do you come up with the ideas?

I consider the hours I spend moving my fingers over the frets, listening for a tune somewhere inside me.

The time it takes to run to Manny’s Music and buy new strings.

The balls of paper stacked in the garbage can when I’m trying to write a lyric.

And I shrug.

Gabriel tells me he likes to hang out in Washington Square Park on Sundays and watch the boys playing chess. He doesn’t ask me to meet him, but also doesn’t tell me not to.

When I ask their advice later, James says to go, that Gabriel wouldn’t have shared the information unless he was testing to see if I’d show up.